Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco Bryan Burrough , John Helyar
“One of the finest, most compelling accounts of what happened to corporate America and Wall Street in the 1980’s.” —New York Times Book ReviewA #1 New York Times bestseller and arguably the best business narrative ever written, Barbarians at the Gate...
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine Michael Lewis
EDITORIAL REVIEW:
The #1 New York Times bestseller: a brilliant account—character-rich and darkly humorous—of how the U.S. economy was driven over the cliff. When the crash of the U. S. stock market became public knowledge in the fall of 2008, it w...
Bowling Alone Robert D. Putnam
Once we bowled in leagues, usually after work -- but no longer. This seemingly small phenomenon symbolizes a significant social change that Robert Putnam has identified in this brilliant volume, Bowling Alone , which The Economist hailed as "a prodi...
Centuries of Childhood Philippe Ariès
In this pioneering and important book, Philippe Aries surveys children and their place in family life from the Middle Ages to the end of the eighteenth century. The first section of the book explores the gradual change from the medieval attitude to ...
A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy Joel Mokyr
Why Enlightenment culture sparked the Industrial Revolution
During the late eighteenth century, innovations in Europe triggered the Industrial Revolution and the sustained economic progress that spread across the globe. While much has been made of ...
The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner Daniel Ellsberg
Shortlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in NonfictionFinalist for The California Book Award in NonfictionThe San Francisco Chronicle's Best of the Year ListForeign Affairs Best Books of the Year In These Times “Best Books of the Yea...
From Third World to First: The Singapore Story, 1965-2000 Lee Kuan Yew
Few gave tiny Singapore much chance of survival when independence was thrust upon it in 1965. Today the former British trading post is a thriving Asian metropolis with one of the world’s highest per capita income. The story of that transformation is...
The History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides
Written by Thucydides around 400 AD, The History of the Peloponnesian War is a meticulous account by the Athenian general of the extended struggle that raged between Athens and Sparta for the better part of twenty years. Thucydides eschews the romanc...
How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built Stewart Brand
Buildings have often been studies whole in space, but never before have they been studied whole in time. How Buildings Learn is a masterful new synthesis that proposes that buildings adapt best when constantly refined and reshaped by their occupants...
The Idea of Decline in Western History Arthur Herman
Historian Arthur Herman traces the roots of declinism and shows how major thinkers, past and present, have contributed to its development as a coherent ideology of cultural pessimism.
From Nazism to the Sixties counterculture, from Britain's Fabian...
The omnivore's dilemma: a natural history of four meals Michael Pollan
EDITORIAL REVIEW: A national bestseller that has changed the way readers view the ecology of eating, this revolutionary book by award winner Michael Pollan asks the seemingly simple question: What should we have for dinner? Tracing from source to tab...
A People's History of the United States Howard Zinn
Since its original landmark publication in 1980, A People's History of the United States has been chronicling American history from the bottom up, throwing out the official version of history taught in schools–with its emphasis on great men in high p...
Productive Thinking Max Wertheimer
Max Wertheimer (1880-1943), a pioneer of 20th-century psychology, had a major influence on the development of cognitive psychology, especially the psychology of perception and of productive thinking. His work "Productive Thinking" (1945), written in...
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich William L. Shirer
National Book Award Winner: The definitive account of Nazi Germany and “one of the most important works of history of our time” (The New York Times). When the Third Reich fell, it fell swiftly. The Nazis had little time to destroy their memos, the...
The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century Thomas X. Hammes
4GW (Fourth Generation Warfare) is the only kind of war America has ever lost. And we have done so three times - in Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia. This form of warfare has also defeated the French in Vietnam and Algeria, and the USSR in Afghanistan....
Turing's Cathedral George Dyson
"It is possible to invent a single machine which can be used to compute any computable sequence," twenty-four-year-old Alan Turing announced in 1936. In Turing's Cathedral, George Dyson focuses on a small group of men and women, led by John von Neuma...
The Uses and Abuses of History Margaret MacMillan
Review"'In a world where the spin doctor has replaced the historian, MacMillan reminds readers of the importance of dispassionate, fact-driven narrative, as opposed to reassuring or self-serving accounts that pass for history while burying the unplea...
The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy Adam Tooze
An extraordinary mythology has grown up around the Third Reich that hovers over political and moral debate even today. Adam Tooze's controversial new book challenges the conventional economic interpretations of that period to explore how Hitler's sur...
Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation Steven Johnson
Where do good ideas come from? And what do we need to know and do to have more of them? In Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson, one of our most innovative popular thinkers, explores the secrets of inspiration. Steven Johnson has spent twenty ...
