Politics
New Book Alerts is a free online service that showcases the newest titles purchased by your local library. You can select to receive alerts via email and/or RSS feeds. If you see a new title that you are interested in, just click "check catalog" to place a hold on the item right away.
Previous | Last 30 days
-
Contagious: Why Things Catch On
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Jonah Berger
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (2013, Mar 5th).
Pages: 256
New York Times bestsellerWhat makes things popular?If you said advertising, think again. People don’t listen to advertisements, they listen to their peers. But why do people talk about certain products and ideas more than others? Why are some stories and rumors more infectious? And what makes online content go viral? Wharton marketing professor Jonah Berger has spent the last decade answering these questions. He’s studied why New York Times articles make the paper’s own Most E-mailed List, why products get word of mouth, and how social influence shapes everything from the cars we buy to the clothes we wear to the names we give our children. In this book, Berger reveals the secret science behind word-of-mouth and social transmission. more
More Info | Google Books | Check Availability
-
The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Mark Mazzetti
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The (2013, Apr 9th).
Pages: 400
A Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter’s riveting account of the transformation of the CIA and America’s special operations forces into man-hunting and killing machines in the world’s dark spaces: the new American way of war The most momentous change in American warfare over the past decade has taken place away from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, in the corners of the world where large armies can’t go. The Way of the Knife is the untold story of that shadow war: a campaign that has blurred the lines between soldiers and spies and lowered the bar for waging war across the globe. America has pursued its enemies with killer drones and special operations troops; trained privateers for assassination missions and used them to set up clandestine spying networks; and relied on mercurial dictators, untrustworthy foreign intelligence services, and proxy armies. more
More Info | Google Books | Check Availability
-
The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: David A. Stockman
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: PublicAffairs (2013, Apr 2nd).
Pages: 768
A New York Times bestsellerThe Great Deformation is a searing look at Washington’s craven response to the recent myriad of financial crises and fiscal cliffs. It counters conventional wisdom with an eighty-year revisionist history of how the American state—especially the Federal Reserve—has fallen prey to the politics of crony capitalism and the ideologies of fiscal stimulus, monetary central planning, and financial bailouts. These forces have left the public sector teetering on the edge of political dysfunction and fiscal collapse and have caused America’s private enterprise foundation to morph into a speculative casino that swindles the masses and enriches the few.Defying right- and left-wing boxes, David Stockman provides a catalogue of corrupters and defenders of sound money, fiscal rectitude, and free markets. more
More Info | Google Books | Check Availability
-
The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Eric Schmidt
Format: Deckle Edge]
Publisher: Knopf (2013, Apr 23rd).
Pages:
In an unparalleled collaboration, two leading global thinkers in technology and foreign affairs give us their widely anticipated, transformational vision of the future: a world where everyone is connected—a world full of challenges and benefits that are ours to meet and to harness. Eric Schmidt is one of Silicon Valley’s great leaders, having taken Google from a small startup to one of the world’s most influential companies. Jared Cohen is the director of Google Ideas and a former adviser to secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton. With their combined knowledge and experiences, the authors are uniquely positioned to take on some of the toughest questions about our future: Who will be more powerful in the future, the citizen or the state? Will technology make terrorism easier or harder to carry out? What is the relationship between privacy and security, and how much will we have to give up to be part of the new digital age? In this groundbreaking book, Schmidt and Cohen combine observation and insight to outline the promise and peril awaiting us in the coming decades. more
More Info | Google Books | Check Availability
-
Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Brian Stelter
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (2013, Apr 23rd).
Pages: 320
Like Bill Carter chronicling the late night wars in his classic The Late Shift, star New York Times reporter Brian Stelter reveals all the dish and dirt behind the polite smiles and perky demeanors of morning television in his much-anticipated...TOP OF THE MORNINGWhen America wakes up with personable and charming hosts like Matt Lauer, Robin Roberts, and George Stephanopoulos, it's hard to imagine their show bookers having to guard a guest's hotel room all night to prevent rival shows from poaching. But that is just part of the intense reality New York Times staff writer Brian Stelter reveals in TOP OF THE MORNING--a gripping look at the most competitive time slot in television, complete with Machiavellian booking wars and manic behavior by the producers, executives, and stars. more
More Info | Google Books | Check Availability
-
Dirty Wars: The World Is A Battlefield
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Jeremy Scahill
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Nation Books (2013, Apr 23rd).
Pages: 612
In Dirty Wars, Jeremy Scahill, author of the New York Times best-seller Blackwater, takes us inside America’s new covert wars. The foot soldiers in these battles operate globally and inside the United States with orders from the White House to do whatever is necessary to hunt down, capture or kill individuals designated by the president as enemies.Drawn from the ranks of the Navy SEALs, Delta Force, former Blackwater and other private security contractors, the CIA’s Special Activities Division and the Joint Special Operations Command ( JSOC), these elite soldiers operate worldwide, with thousands of secret commandos working in more than one hundred countries. Funded through “black budgets,” Special Operations Forces conduct missions in denied areas, engage in targeted killings, snatch and grab individuals and direct drone, AC-130 and cruise missile strikes. more
More Info | Google Books | Check Availability
-
The Athena Doctrine: How Women (and the Men Who Think Like Them) Will Rule the Future
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: John Gerzema
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1 edition (2013, Apr 16th).
Pages: 320
How feminine values can solve our toughest problems and build a more prosperous futureAmong 64,000 people surveyed in thirteen nations, two thirds feel the world would be a better place if men thought more like women. This marks a global trend away from the winner-takes-all, masculine approach to getting things done. Drawing from interviews at innovative organizations in eighteen nations and at Fortune 500 boardrooms, the authors reveal how men and women alike are recognizing significant value in traits commonly associated with women, such as nurturing, cooperation, communication, and sharing. The Athena Doctrine shows why femininity is the operating system of 21st century prosperity.Advocates a new way to solve today's toughest problems in business, education, government, and moreBased on a landmark survey and results from Young & Rubicam's respected Brand Asset Valuator's global survey, as well as on-the-ground interviews in 18 countriesFrom acclaimed social theorist, consumer expert, and bestselling author, John Gerzema, and award-winning author, Michael D'AntonioBrought to life through real world examples and backed by rigorous data,The Athena Doctrine shows how feminine traits are ascending—and bringing success to people and organizations around the world. more
More Info | Google Books | Check Availability
-
The God Argument: The Case against Religion and for Humanism
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: A.C. Grayling
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA; 1 edition (2013, Mar 26th).
Pages: 288
What are the arguments for and against religion and religious belief--all of them--right across the range of reasons and motives that people have for being religious, and do they stand up to scrutiny? Can there be a clear, full statement of these arguments that once and for all will show what is at stake in this debate? Equally important: what is the alternative to religion as a view of the world and a foundation for morality? Is there a worldview and a code of life for thoughtful people--those who wish to live with intellectual integrity, based on reason, evidence, and a desire to do and be good--that does not interfere with people's right to their own beliefs and freedom of expression?In The Case Against Religion, Anthony Grayling offers a definitive examination of these questions, and an in-depth exploration of the humanist outlook that recommends itself as the ethics of the genuinely reflective person. more
More Info | Google Books | Check Availability
-
Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Fredrik Logevall
Format: Deckle Edge]
Publisher: Random House (2012, Aug 21st).
Pages:
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZENAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR • A GLOBE AND MAIL “BEST READS” SELECTION • LONGLISTED FOR THE LIONEL GELBER PRIZEThe struggle for Vietnam occupies a central place in the history of the twentieth century. Fought over a period of three decades, the conflict drew in all the world’s powers and saw two of them—first France, then the United States—attempt to subdue the revolutionary Vietnamese forces. For France, the defeat marked the effective end of her colonial empire, while for America the war left a gaping wound in the body politic that remains open to this day. How did it happen? Tapping into newly accessible diplomatic archives in several nations and making full use of the published literature, distinguished scholar Fredrik Logevall traces the path that led two Western nations to lose their way in Vietnam. more
More Info | Google Books | Check Availability
-
Detroit City Is the Place to Be: The Afterlife of an American Metropolis
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Mark Binelli
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Metropolitan Books (2012, Nov 13th).
Pages: 336
Once America’s capitalist dream town, Detroit is our country’s greatest urban failure, having fallen the longest and the farthest. But the city’s worst crisis yet (and that’s saying something) has managed to do the unthinkable: turn the end of days into a laboratory for the future. Urban planners, land speculators, neopastoral agriculturalists, and utopian environmentalists—all have been drawn to Detroit’s baroquely decaying, nothing-left-to-lose frontier.With an eye for both the darkly absurd and the radically new, Detroit-area native Mark Binelli has chronicled this convergence. Throughout the city’s “museum of neglect”—its swaths of abandoned buildings, its miles of urban prairie—he tracks both the blight and the signs of its repurposing, from the school for pregnant teenagers to a beleaguered UAW local; from metal scrappers and gun-toting vigilantes to artists reclaiming abandoned auto factories; from the organic farming on empty lots to GM’s risky wager on the Volt electric car; from firefighters forced by budget cuts to sleep in tents to the mayor’s realignment plan (the most ambitious on record) to move residents of half-empty neighborhoods into a viable, new urban center. more
More Info | Google Books | Check Availability