history

"In 2020, the novel coronavirus pandemic made it painfully clear that the U.S. could not adequately protect its citizens. Millions of Americans suffered-and over a million died--in less than two years, while government officials blundered; prize-winning economists overlooked devastating trade-offs; and elites escaped to isolated retreats, unaffected by and even profiting from the pandemic. Why and how did America, in a catastrophically enormous failure, become the world leader in COVID deaths? . . . Veteran journalists Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera offer fresh and provocative answers . . . [T]hey investigate both what really happened when governments ran out of PPE due to snarled supply chains and the shock to the financial system when the world's biggest economy stumbled. They zero in on the effectiveness of wildly polarized approaches, with governors Andrew Cuomo of New York and Ron DeSantis of Florida taking infamous turns in the spotlight. And they trace why thousands died in hollowed-out hospital systems and nursing homes run by private equity firms to 'maximize shareholder value'"--Provided by publisher.

"Copyright is everywhere. Your smartphone incorporates thousands of items of intellectual property. Someone owns the reproduction rights to photographs of your dining table. At this very moment, battles are raging over copyright in the output of artificial intelligence programs. Not only books but wallpaper, computer programs, pop songs, cartoon characters, snapshots, and cuddly toys are now deemed to be intellectual properties--making copyright a labyrinthine construction of laws with colorful and often baffling rationales covering almost all products of human creativity. It wasn't always so. Copyright has its roots in eighteenth-century London, where it was first established to limit printers' control of books. But a handful of little-noticed changes in the late twentieth century brought about a new enclosure of the cultural commons, concentrating ownership of immaterial goods in very few hands. Copyright's metastasis can't be understood without knowing its backstory, a long tangle of high ideals, low greed, opportunism, and word-mangling that allowed poems and novels (and now, even ringtones and databases) to be treated as if they were no different from farms and houses. Principled arguments against copyright arose from the start and nearly abolished it in the nineteenth century. Nonetheless, countless revisions have made copyright ever stronger"--Provided by publisher.

The radio and Fox News host returns to the page to provided commentary on the Democrat's agenda.

A revelatory look at how poet Allen Ginsberg transformed experiences of mental illness and madness into some of the most powerful and widely read poems of the twentieth century. Allen Ginsberg's 1956 poem "Howl" opens with one of the most resonant phrases in modern poetry: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness." Thirty years later, Ginsberg entrusted a Columbia University medical student with materials not shared with anyone else, including psychiatric records which documented how he and his mother, Naomi Ginsberg, struggled with mental illness. In Best Minds, psychiatrist, researcher, and scholar Stevan M. Weine, M.D., who was that medical student, examines how Allen Ginsberg took his visions and psychiatric hospitalization, his mother's devastating illness, confinement, and lobotomy, and the social upheavals of the post-war world and imaginatively transformed them.

"Since the first humans began to spread around the world, people have been developing new ways to move themselves and their possessions. From wheels to warships, follow the development of transportation technology throughout the ancient world"--.

"From building brick houses to the Great Pyramids, ancient peoples accomplished great works of construction by developing new technologies and building off ancient building techniques. Discover the science behind the architecture of the ancient world"--.

"In [this book], Amitav Ghosh traces the transformative effect the opium trade had on Britain, India, and China, as well as the world at large. The trade was engineered by the British Empire, which exported Indian opium to sell to China to redress their great trade imbalance, and its revenues were essential to the empire's financial survival. Following the profits further, Ghosh finds opium central to the origins of some of the world's biggest corporations, of America's most powerful families and prestigious institutions . . . and of contemporary globalism itself"--Provided by publisher.

"An entertaining and accessible introduction to great economic thinkers throughout history, now in its fourth edition, with updates and commentary on the 2020 'great cessation,' Trump and Obama economic policies, the dominance of Amazon, and many other timely topics"--Provided by publisher.

The author shares her account of the 2020 US election, based on her interviews with campaign officials, reporters, Supreme Court justices, and Donald Trump.

"Explores how, when, and why books became so iconic. It's not just the content within a book that compels; it's the physical material itself, what [the author] calls 'bookhood': the smell, the feel of the pages, the margins to scribble in, the illustrations on the jacket, its solid heft. Every book is designed to influence our reading experience--to enchant, enrage, delight, and disturb us--and our longstanding love affair with books in turn has had direct, momentous consequences across time"--Provided by publisher.