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In High Society, Joseph Califano points out that a child who reaches twenty-one without smoking, using illegal drugs, or abusing alcohol is virtually certain never to do so - and chronicles the fearfu

The Cold War meets Mad Men in the form of Karel Koecher, a double agent whose shifting loyalties and over-the-top hedonism reverberated from New York to Moscow. In the mid-1970s, the CIA and KGB were both watching Karel Koecher closely―and they were both convinced he was working for the enemy. They were both right. Traveling with his wife, Hana, Koecher posed as a Czechoslovak asylum seeker and arrived in the US as a Communist sleeper agent. After parlaying a doctorate from Columbia into a job at the CIA, Koecher proceeded to operate as a double agent at the height of the Cold War. Shunning a low profile, the Koechers embraced Manhattan’s high life ― with cocaine, swinging and parties emblematic of the times and their penchant for risk. Hana, who was no more than a shy teenager when she arrived, grew into a sophisticated international diamond dealer that relayed messages to Karel’s handlers. Riding a wave of euphoria, the Koechers felt unstoppable. But it was too good to last. Using

Joseph Nye coined the term "soft power" in the late 1980s. It is now used frequently?and often incorrectly?by political leaders, editorial writers, and academics around the world. So what is soft power? Soft power lies in the ability to attract and persuade. Whereas hard power?the ability to coerce?grows out of a country's military or economic might, soft power arises from the attractiveness of a country's culture, political ideals, and policies.Hard power remains crucial in a world of states trying to guard their independence and of non-state groups willing to turn to violence. It forms the core of the Bush administration's new national security strategy. But according to Nye, the neo-conservatives who advise the president are making a major miscalculation: They focus too heavily on using America's military power to force other nations to do our will, and they pay too little heed to our soft power. It is soft power that will help prevent terrorists from recruiting supporters from amon

Winners Take All meets Nickel and Dimed in this provocative debunking of accepted wisdom, providing the pathway to a sustainable, survivable economy. Confronted by the terrifying trends of the early twenty-first century – widening inequality, environmental destruction, and the immiseration of millions of workers around the world – many economists and business leaders still preach dogmas that lack evidence and create political catastrophe: Private markets are always more efficient than public ones; investment capital flows efficiently to necessary projects; massive inequality is the unavoidable side effect of economic growth; people are selfish and will only behave well with the right incentives. But a growing number of people – academic economists, business owners, policy entrepreneurs, and ordinary people – are rejecting these myths and reshaping economies around the world to reflect ethical and social values. Though they differ in approach, all share a v

An instant bestseller! A brilliant takedown and exposé of the great con job of the twenty-first century—the metaverse, crypto, space travel, transhumanism—being sold by four billionaires (Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreesen, Elon Musk), leading to the degeneration and bankruptcy of our society.At a time when the crises of income inequality, climate, and democracy are compounding to create epic wealth disparity and the prospect of a second American civil war, four billionaires are hyping schemes that are designed to divert our attention away from issues that really matter. Each scheme—the metaverse, cryptocurrency, space travel, and transhumanism—is an existential threat in moral, political, and economic terms.In The End of Reality¸ Jonathan Taplin provides perceptive insight into the personal backgrounds and cultural power of these billionaires—Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Marc Andreesen (“The Four”) —and shows how their tech monopolies have brought m

The beloved author of The Revenge of Analog lays out a case for a human future--not the false technological utopia we've been living.For years, consumers have been promised a simple, carefree digital future. We could live, work, learn, and play from the comforts of our homes, and have whatever we desire brought to our door with the flick of a finger. Instant communication would bring us together. Technological convenience would give us more time to focus on what really mattered.When the pandemic hit, that future transformed into the present, almost overnight. And the reviews aren't great. It turns out that leaving the house is underrated, instant communication spreads anger better than joy, and convenience takes away time rather than giving it to us. Oops.But as David Sax argues in this insightful book, we've also had our eyes opened. There is nothing about the future that has to be digital, and embracing the reality of human experience doesn't mean resisting change. In chapters explor

How America’s biggest company began taking better care of its workers--and why such efforts will never be enough.Fifteen years ago, Walmart was the most controversial company in America. By offering incredibly low prices, it had come to dominate the retail landscape. But with this dominance came a suite of ethical concerns. Walmart was accused of wiping out of mom-and-pop businesses across the country; ruthlessly pressuring suppliers to cut costs, even if it meant closing up U.S. factories and moving production overseas; and, above all, not taking adequate care of its own employees, who were paid so little that many wound up on public assistance. Today, while Walmart remains America's largest employer, the picture is very different. It has become an environmental leader among businesses, and has taken many other steps to use its immense scale to have a positive social impact. Most notably, its starting wage has risen from $7.25 to $12, and employee benefits have improved. With internal

A creative and fun smorgasbord of economics through the lens of food from one of today’s foremost thinkerWhat can the anchovy tell us about industrialization? How can we understand inequality through chicken or the welfare state through rye? In Edible Economics, leading economist Ha-Joon Chang uses everyday food and ingredients to teach us about the most important economic issues of our time. Through familiar foods, from pasta to Coca-Cola to coffee, Chang weaves together impressive arguments and adds needed clarity to describe how our economies function and falter. With each ingredient, condiment or beverage, he constructs a vivid narrative that grapples with the most pressing concerns of our global markets, supply systems, and more. Through rich anecdotes and surprising histories, Chang shows us how acorns can prove that culture is not as important as we think in determining economic outcomes or how milk contradicts the notion that competition is the only way to ensure economic

From a long-time Alibaba executive and former special assistant to Jack Ma, this is the first book to articulate how Alibaba's unique culture and “tai chi” management principles are providing a business and economic development model for the rest of the world.If you took the economic might of Amazon, and added the penetration of Facebook, the ubiquity of Google, and the cultural significance of YouTube, you might have something starting to resemble Alibaba. Commonly mischaracterized as a kind of Chinese eBay for businesses, Alibaba and its interlinked network of products and services have exploded into global markets, disrupting conventional businesses and creating previously unimaginable opportunities for millions of small businesses worldwide. This book reveals the Tao of Alibaba―the company’s “secret sauce”―a consciously cultivated ethos and spirit that has enabled Alibaba to weather tough times (including its recent setbacks with the Chinese government) and persist toward a common

An award-winning business writer dismantles the myths of entrepreneurship, replacing them with an essential story about the experience of real business owners in the modern economy.We're often told that we're living amidst a startup boom. Typically, we think of apps built by college kids and funded by venture capital firms, which remake fortunes and economies overnight. But in reality, most new businesses are things like restaurants or hair salons. Entrepreneurs aren't all millennials -- more often, it's their parents. And those small companies are the fabric of our economy.The Soul of an Entrepreneur is a business book of a different kind, exploring our work but also our passions and hopes. David Sax reports on the deeply personal questions of entrepreneurship: why an immigrant family risks everything to build a bakery; how a small farmer fights to manage his debt; and what it feels like to rise and fall with a business you built for yourself.This book is the real story of entrepreneu

The future of the American economy is hiding in an unlikely place: a new, reinvented manufacturing sector.It's easy to name the companies that have dominated the stock market over the past ten years. Apple, Google, Amazon, Netflix, Facebook--these are all among the best-performing stocks over a decade or more. But here's a company that has performed just as well: HEICO. Or what about Trex? Ever heard of Casella? Or Graco?These lesser known companies are all part of a sector known as industrial tech, and together they offer a surprisingly bright future not just to investors but to workers as well as our broader communities. Their products include aerospace parts, color enamels, and recycled plastic lumber; things consumers don't necessarily buy but which we all rely on for the functioning of our economy. And it turns out it's a booming business.In The Titanium Economy, McKinsey partners Asutosh Padhi, Gaurav Batra, and Nick Santhanam reveal this little-understood, under-appreciated and

The Civil War may have ended on the battlefield, but the fight over democracy never did.In 1865, the Confederacy was comprehensively militarily defeated, its economy shattered, its leaders in exile or in jail. Yet in the years that followed, Lincoln’s vision of a genuinely united country never took root. Apart from a few brief months, when the presence of the Union army in the South proved liberating for newly freed Black Americans, the victory was squandered. Old white supremacist habits returned, more ferocious than before.In Civil War by Other Means, Jeremi Suri shows how resistance to a more equal Union began immediately. From the first postwar riots to the return of Confederate exiles to the impeachment of Andrew Johnson to the highly contested and consequential election of 1876, Suri explores the conflicts and questions Americans wrestled with as competing visions of democracy, race, and freedom came to a vicious breaking point. What emerges is a vivid, and at times unsettling, p

A professor of law and technology at the University of San Diego offers a contrarian and optimistic argument that AI, robotics, and digital platforms can be used as a tool to help achieve equality. The Equality Machine ignites a deeply informed, aggressively researched conversation about the path to digital era equality. From closing the gender pay gap to exposing and correcting biases in hiring and marketing, tracking and preventing workplace harassment and diversifying the cultural images and voices we see and hear online, to increasing the privacy and safety of women and girls, artificial intelligence, big data, and digital platforms can offer a positive path towards a better future. This book presents a vision, a blueprint, and a call to action: despite its risks and flaws, digitization can and must become a powerful force for good -- for fairness, inclusion, and equality. Through wise implementation of new technology, we can implement a more equal market. This book offers new insi

The untold story of ever-growing wedge between the financial markets and the real economy, and the unprecedented crises it has caused. The 21st century has produced two major financial crises and many smaller ones in between. The fallout created chaos and disruption for people at all levels of the global economy. Nomi Prins examines the consequences of the unstable economy that caused what she calls the state of Permanent Distortion; a wedge between a funhouse financial realm that thrives even in times of social and political disorder, and a struggling economic one that does not adequately meet the needs of the general population. Through deep reporting and insightful analysis, Prins navigates the critical points in between the two polarities, including how the concept of "free markets" is dead, how a political power shift is bringing in a new world order, why trade wars have only just begun, and why we're in for more civil and social unrest, as a result.

In this World War II military history, Rommel's army is a day from Cairo, a week from Tel Aviv, and the SS is ready for action. Espionage brought the Nazis this far, but espionage can stop them―if Washington wakes up to the danger. As World War II raged in North Africa, General Erwin Rommel was guided by an uncanny sense of his enemies' plans and weaknesses. In the summer of 1942, he led his Axis army swiftly and terrifyingly toward Alexandria, with the goal of overrunning the entire Middle East. Each step was informed by detailed updates on British positions. The Nazis, somehow, had a source for the Allies' greatest secrets. Yet the Axis powers were not the only ones with intelligence. Brilliant Allied cryptographers worked relentlessly at Bletchley Park, breaking down the extraordinarily complex Nazi code Enigma. From decoded German messages, they discovered that the enemy had a wealth of inside information. On the brink of disaster, a fevered and high-stakes search for the source be

The future of finance – the way Wall Street operates and how individuals manage their money - is on the verge of upheaval. And the force underlying the change comes not from usual suspects such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, but China, where finance and technology are being merged into a system with consequences that resonate far beyond China’s border. The changes of this global revolution in finance and technology - fintech - will be as powerful as those wrought in social media, retailing and advertising by giants such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Twitter, which have overturned how we shop and communicate.​China reinvented money with lightning speed, transforming a backward, antiquated cash-based finance system into one centered on super-apps created by technology giants Alibaba and Tencent. More powerful than anything available outside of China, they allow their billion users to pay, borrow, invest, buy goods and services, travel, chat (and far more) all fuse

A new , important and pragmatic vision on what the job of the boss is in an age of lean/flat/agile organizations, self-organizing teams, and mass collaboration, .when bosses are expected to disappear, countering conventional wisdom of the media and management gurus.People in the business world are struggling to adapt to a rapidly changing economy. Beset by transformational forces, managers are bombarded with a bewildering array of schemes for how to be a boss and make an organization tick. t’s easy to be seduced by futurist fantasies where every company has the culture of a startup, where employees in wacky, whimsical office settings champion the end of old-fashioned corporate hierarchy. Autonomous employees liberated from hierarchies and bosses that oppress people, we are told, are the foundation for breakthrough performance. Be careful what you wish for say Nicolai Foss and Peter Klein. In their important rethinking of the crucial nature of hierarchy and how to be a boss today, they

Owen Ullmann’s intimate portrait of the heart and mind of Janet Yellen is the riveting story of one of the most remarkable careers of recent times. The ultimate glass-ceiling buster, Yellen is the first person to hold all three of America’s top economic policy positions. Currently Treasury Secretary (the first woman to hold the job), she has also been chair of the Federal Reserve and of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.As Ullmann vividly shows, empathy economics, the north star of Yellen’s work as researcher, analyst, and policymaker stems from her early family life. Yellen has pushed back against the cold, abstract quality of a male-dominated economics profession that all too often pushes policies that benefit the already well-to-do. She has strived to remake it as a tool for shaping compassionate programs that help people find remedies for financial plights that stem from a lack of economic opportunity because of poverty, unemployment or job discrimination.The trailblazi

In an era of deregulation when consumers have never been more vulnerable to corporate surveillance, unsafe food, and dangerously faulty products, the president and CEO of Consumer Reports gives us a playbook to put the power back in our hands.You've been getting ripped off. The rules that have protected consumers for decades are failing. Companies are spying on us. Many of the products we once trusted are dangerous and failing at alarming rates. Whether we are buying a crib, a small appliance, an iPhone app, or shopping for car insurance, it's become harder than ever to know whether the choices we make in the marketplace are putting us at risk-either from physical harm or the abuse of our personal data by hackers or corporations. This is intolerable. It's wrong. And we don't have to put up with it anymore. Marta L. Tellado, the president and CEO of Consumer Reports, has been an advocate for consumers for decades. In Buyer Aware, Tellado shows you the steps you can take to protect yours

A moving and inspiring memoir by Afghanistan's youngest female mayor and campaigner for human rights.I am one of the lucky ones.I got out of Afghanistan alive when the Taliban retook the country. Millions of others did not - they are now living under one of the world's most repressive regimes, with any progress that was made for women over the past twenty years being brutally reversed.Every day, I yearn for my motherland. Now it is my duty to make sure that the world knows what is happening to women there, and what we must do tochange things for them.Zarifa Ghafari was three years old when the Taliban banned girls from schools, and she began her education in secret. She was seven when American airstrikes began. She was twenty-six when she became mayor - the only female mayor in the country - of Maidan Wardak, Kabul. An extremist mob barred her from her office; her male staff walked out in protest; assassins tried to kill her six times. Finally, they killed their father. Ghafari stood h

The true story of an untrue story-- how the murder of a DNC political staffer spawned conspiracy theories, fanned the culture wars, and pitted one family against a media empire. In the small hours of June 16th, gunshots rang out and a young man lay bleeding and fatally wounded on a downtown Washington, DC, street. But who killed Seth Rich? When he was buried in his hometown, his rabbi declared: “There are no answers for a young man gunned down in the prime of his life”. But the rabbi was wrong. There were in fact many answers, way too many.The police had a suspect but they could not find evidence to charge him, and into the void hurtled the howling mob. Within 36 hours Reddit had thrown up an explanation: “given his position & timing in politics … Seth Rich was murdered by corrupt politicians for knowing too much information on election fraud”. A month later Julian Assange hinted that Rich might have been the source for stolen DNC emails provided to Wikileaks and offered a $20,000 re

From the bestselling author of The Storm Before the Storm and host of the Revolutions podcast comes the thrilling story of the Marquis de Lafayette’s lifelong quest to defend the principles of liberty and equalityA NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERA #1 ABA INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE BESTSELLER Few in history can match the revolutionary career of the Marquis de Lafayette. Over fifty incredible years at the heart of the Age of Revolution, he fought courageously on both sides of the Atlantic. He was a soldier, statesman, idealist, philanthropist, and abolitionist. As a teenager, Lafayette ran away from France to join the American Revolution. Returning home a national hero, he helped launch the French Revolution, eventually spending five years locked in dungeon prisons. After his release, Lafayette sparred with Napoleon, joined an underground conspiracy to overthrow King Louis XVIII, and became an international symbol of liberty. Finally, as a revered elder statesman, he was instrumental in the overthr

A Slate writer tries to make sense of his own obsession with Michigan football--not to mention America, politics, racism, and the burning question of whether head coach Jim Harbaugh will keep his job.On the field, modern college football is as thrilling and competitive as ever. But almost everywhere else it has come untethered from reality.While it presents itself as a proud American tradition of amateur scholar-athletes competing at a high level, this premise gives way under the slightest scrutiny. NCAA football makes hundreds of millions of dollars for its coaches, universities, sponsors, and gamblers--and nothing for its players. It bounces from one scandal to another, with a major program -- or two or three -- seemingly always under investigation, in court, or in the glare of public scrutiny. And this is to say nothing of the bizarre 2020 season, in which the league cut itself nearly in half over the twin questions of covid-19 safety and the players' desire to protest against racis

A former US senator reveals a far-right plot to radically change the laws of our land, and articulates a plan for how to handle it.Over the last two decades, a hushed, far-right effort to change the constitution through a convention―the nation’s first ever―has inched through statehouses. And by most counts, activists only need to enlist a few more states to reach the constitutional requirement: two thirds of the states. A convention would be a watershed moment in American history. Just like Madison, Hamilton, and Franklin in Philadelphia over two centuries ago, delegates would exercise almost unfettered authority to draft amendments changing the contours of our fundamental law and civic life. Every contentious political and social issue could be on the table: limiting the powers of the federal government, creating or retiring constitutional rights and freedoms, and restructuring Congress or the Supreme Court.While the Framers considered the amendment power to be a cornerstone of our co

An NPR education reporter shows how the last true social safety net-- the public school system--was decimated by the pandemic, and how years of short-sighted political decisions have failed to put our children first.School has long meant much more than an education in America. 30 million children depend on free school meals. Schools are, statistically, the safest physical places for children to be. They are the best chance many children have at finding basics like eye exams, safe housing, mental health counseling, or simply a caring adult. Flawed, inequitable, underfunded, and segregated, they remain the most important engine of social mobility and the crucible of our democracy.The cost of closing our schools for so long during COVID, made with good intentions, has not yet been fully reckoned with. In The Stolen Year, NPR education reporter Anya Kamenetz shows that the roots of our crisis run far deeper than COVID. She follows families across the country as they lived through the pande

A few years ago Linda Kinstler discovered that a man fifty years dead – a former Nazi who belonged to the same killing unit as her grandfather – was the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation in Latvia. The proceedings threatened to pardon his crimes. They put on the line hard-won facts about the Holocaust at the precise moment that the last living survivors – the last legal witnesses – were dying.Across the world, Second World War-era cases are winding their way through the courts. Survivors have been telling their stories for the better part of a century, and still judges ask for proof. Where do these stories end? What responsibilities attend their transmission, so many generations on? How many ghosts need to be put on trial for us to consider the crime scene of history closed?In this major non-fiction debut, Linda Kinstler investigates both her family story and the archives of ten nations to examine what it takes to prove history in our uncertain century. Probing and profound,

Singer. Actress. Beauty. Spy. During WW2, Josephine Baker, the world's richest and most glamorous entertainer, was an Allied spy in Occupied France. This is the story of her heroic personal resistance to Nazi Germany.Prior to World War II, Josephine Baker was a music hall diva renowned for her singing and dancing, her beauty and sexuality; she was the most highly-paid female performer in Europe. When the Nazis seized her adopted city, Paris, she was banned from the stage, along with all ‘negroes and Jews’. Yet, instead of returning to America, she vowed to stay and to fight the Nazi evil. Overnight she went from performer to Resistance spy. In Agent Josephine best-selling author Damien Lewis uncovers this little known history of the famous singer's life. During the years of the war, as a member of the French Nurse paratroopers―a cover for her spying work―she participated in numerous clandestine activities and emerged as formidable spy. In turn, she was a hero of the three countries i

A New York Times bestselling author writes the untold story of three Golden Age titans and the confrontations, cutthroat business strategies, and eccentric personalities that built the Ringling Bros., Barnum & Bailey Circus.Millions have sat under the "big top," watching as trapeze artists glide and clowns entertain, but few know the captivating stories behind the men who shaped the circus.Battle for the Big Top is the untold story of the battles of the three circus kings--James Bailey, P.T. Barnum, and John Ringling-all vying for control of the vastly profitable and widely influential American Circus.New York Times bestselling author Les Standiford recreates a remarkable era when a community-without regard for gender, creed, or nationality--would be captivated by the spectacle created by three diversely talented individuals who transcended the ordinary. Ultimately, the rivalry of these three men resulted in the creation of an institution that would surpass all intentions and, for 147

Each federal employee takes an oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic," but none had imagined that enemy might be the Commander-in-Chief. With the presidency of Donald Trump, a fault line between the president and vital forces within his government was established. Those who honored their oath of office, their obligation to the Constitution, were wary of the president and they in turn were not trusted and occasionally fired and replaced with loyalists. American Resistance is the first book to chronicle the unprecedented role so many in the government were forced to play and the consequences of their actions during the Trump administration. From Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and his brother Yevgeny, to Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, to Bill Taylor, Fiona Hill, and the official who first called himself "Anonymous"-Miles Taylor, among others, Rothkopf examines the resistance movement that slowly built in Washington. Draw

The revised edition contains a new chapter on the fragility of democracy and how small coalitions can overpower democratic governments if proper care isn't taken. The book also contains numerous updates and examples drawn from recent events, including the rise of authoritarianism around the world.

The long buried story of three extraordinary female journalists who permanently shattered the official and cultural barriers to women covering war. Kate Webb, an Australian iconoclast, Catherine Leroy, a French dare devil photographer, and Frances FitzGerald, a blue-blood American intellectual, arrived in Vietnam with starkly different life experiences but one shared purpose: to report on the most consequential story of the decade. At a time when women were considered unfit to be foreign reporters, Frankie, Catherine and Kate paid their own way to war, arrived without jobs, challenged the rules imposed on them by the military, ignored the belittlement and resentment of their male peers and found new ways to explain the war through the people who lived through it. In You Don't Belong Here, Elizabeth Becker uses these women's work and lives to illuminate the Vietnam War from the 1965 American buildup, through the Tet Offensive, the expansion into Cambodia, the American defeat and its aft

The breakthrough science of synthetic biology and its potential for helping solve humanity's existential challenges, from climate change to the health and feeding of millions, and fighting the next viral outbreak before it becomes a global pandemic.Synthetic biology is the promising and controversial technology platform that combines biology and artificial intelligence, opening up the potential to program biological systems much as we program computers. Synthetic biology enables us not just to read and edit DNA – the technique of CRISPR - but also write it. Rather than life being “a beautiful game of chance”, synthetic biology creates the potential to control our genetic destiny, to say “no” to bad genes and build a veritable genetic app store for downloading and adding new capabilities into any cell, microbe, plant, or animal. Amy Webb and Andrew Hessel’s riveting stories include: the work of scientists to develop plants that can be grown in sprawling indoor farms capable of feedin

From a veteran diplomat and prime minster at the heart of the Western alliance, and a deeply knowledgeable China watcher, a way forward for the US and China to avoid a superpower conflict, and a chilling vision of what that might look like if it was unleashed. The Avoidable War confronts the growing sense that the US-China relationship is beginning to hurtle out of control. Nationalists have gained ground in the politics of both capitals. So-called “realists” are in control of their respective national security policy agendas. “Liberal internationalists”, let alone “multilateralists”, are written off. And the United States has now formally concluded that forty years of “strategic engagement” between China and the United States has now come to an end, and ended in failure, and that we have now entered into a new era of “strategic competition”. There are no rules on this new road. A broad economic, cyber and high technology war, and perhaps a broader economic decoupling, is likely

The defining geopolitical contest of the twenty-first century is between China and the US. But is it avoidable? And if it happens, is the outcome already inevitable?China and America are world powers without serious rivals. They eye each other warily across the Pacific; they communicate poorly; there seems little natural empathy. A massive geopolitical contest has begun.America prizes freedom; China values freedom from chaos.America values strategic decisiveness; China values patience.America is becoming society of lasting inequality; China a meritocracy.America has abandoned multilateralism; China welcomes it.Kishore Mahbubani, a diplomat and scholar with unrivalled access to policymakers in Beijing and Washington, has written the definitive guide to the deep fault lines in the relationship, a clear-eyed assessment of the risk of any confrontation, and a bracingly honest appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses, and superpower eccentricities, of the US and China.

The definitive social history of tuberculosis, from its origins as a haunting mystery to its modern reemergence that now threatens populations around the world.It killed novelist George Orwell, Eleanor Roosevelt, and millions of others – rich and poor. Desmond Tutu, Amitabh Bachchan, and Nelson Mandela survived it, just. For centuries, tuberculosis has ravaged cities and plagued the human body. In Phantom Plague, Vidya Krishnan, traces the history of tuberculosis from the slums of 19th-century New York to modern Mumbai. In a narrative spanning century, Krishnan shows how superstition and folk-remedies, made way for scientific understanding of TB, such that it was controlled and cured in the West. The cure was never available to black and brown nations. And the tuberculosis bacillus showed a remarkable ability to adapt – so that at the very moment it could have been extinguished as a threat to humanity, it found a way back, aided by authoritarian government, toxic kindness of philanth

Leading experts in the cancer field, from doctors to policymakers to academics and more--reflect on the 50 years since Nixon declared the War on Cancer. In 1971, Richard Nixon signed into law a revelatory new program dedicated to cancer research and prevention. This legislation was an amendment to the Public Health Service Act of 1944 and represented the U.S. commitment to what President Nixon described as the "war on cancer," which had become the nation's second leading cause of death by 1970. Fifty years later, the leading experts have come together to reflect on how far this legislation has gone, its successes, failures and the road still ahead. Edited by Abbe Gluck, Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy, and Dr. Charles Fuchs, Director of Yale Cancer Center, these essays span the various implications of cancer on American society; from groundbreaking research, important policies, law, philanthropy and more. With an introduction by Sid

An exploration of why people all over the world love to engage in pain on purpose--from dominatrices, religious ascetics, and ultramarathoners to ballerinas, icy ocean bathers, and sideshow performers

* One of Inc.com's "6 Books You Need to Read in 2020 (According to Bill Gates, Satya Nadella, and Adam Grant)"* Adam Grant's # 1 pick of his top 20 books of 2020* One of 6 Groundbreaking Books of Spring 2020 (according to Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Dan Pink, and Adam Grant).A former rocket scientist reveals the habits, ideas, and strategies that will empower you to turn the seemingly impossible into the possible.Rocket science is often celebrated as the ultimate triumph of technology. But it's not. Rather, it's the apex of a certain thought process -- a way to imagine the unimaginable and solve the unsolvable. It's the same thought process that enabled Neil Armstrong to take his giant leap for mankind, that allows spacecraft to travel millions of miles through outer space and land on a precise spot, and that brings us closer to colonizing other planets.Fortunately, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to think like one.In this accessible and practical book, Ozan Varol reveals nin

A vivid character-driven narrative, fused with important new economic and political reporting and research, that busts the myths about middle class decline and points the way to its revival.For over a

Once upon a time, a group of libertarians got together and hatched the Free Town Project, a plan to take over an American town and completely eliminate its government. In 2004, Grafton, NH, a barely p