Risultati letto da "Tim Fannon" in Tutte le categorie

Many think of the internet as an unprecedented and overwhelmingly positive achievement of modern human technology. But is it? In The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is, Justin Smith offers an original deep history of the internet, from the ancient to the modern world - uncovering its surprising origins in nature and centuries-old dreams of radically improving human life by outsourcing thinking to machines and communicating across vast distances. 

Rick Nagano is a graduate student in the history department at USC, struggling to make rent on the South Los Angeles apartment near the neighborhood where his family once lived. When he lands a job as a research assistant for the elderly Mrs. W--, the heir to an oil fortune, he sees it at first simply as a source of extra cash. But as he grows closer to the iconoclastic, charming, and feisty Mrs. W--, he gets drawn into a world of privilege and wealth far different from his racially mixed, blue-collar beginnings.  

“No one who loves elephants or how humans interact with wildlife should pass up Jacob Shell’s remarkable book.”—Dan Flores, author of Coyote America Giants of the Monsoon Forest journeys deep into the mountainous rainforests of Burma and India to explore the world of teak logging...

In the future there is no want, no war, no disease nor ill-timed death. The world is a paradise - and then, in a moment, it ends. The council that controls the Net falls out and goes to war. Everywhere people who have never known a moment of want or pain are left wondering how to survive. But scattered across the face of the earth are communities which have returned to the natural life of soil and small farm. In the village of Raven’s Mill, Edmund Talbot, master smith and unassuming historian, finds that all the problems of the world are falling in his lap. 

Plagues upon the Earth is a monumental history of humans and their germs. Weaving together a grand narrative of global history with insights from cutting-edge genetics, Kyle Harper explains why humanity’s uniquely dangerous disease pool is rooted deep in our evolutionary past, and why its growth is accelerated by technological progress. He shows that the story of disease is entangled with the history of slavery, colonialism, and capitalism, and reveals the enduring effects of historical plagues all around us, in patterns of wealth, health, power, and inequality.

We all have habits we’d like to break, but for many of us it can be nearly impossible to do so. There is a good reason for this: The brain is a habit-building machine. In Hard to Break, leading neuroscientist Russell Poldrack provides an engaging and authoritative account of the science of how habits are built in the brain, why they are so hard to break, and how evidence-based strategies may help us change unwanted behaviors. 

In an era of increasing social isolation, platforms like Facebook and Twitter are among the most important tools we have to understand each other. We use social media as a mirror to decipher our place in society, but, as Chris Bail explains, it functions more like a prism that distorts our identities, empowers status-seeking extremists, and renders moderates all but invisible. 

Productive Failure shows you how to design the experience of failing. Research shows that repeated experiences of intriguing, constructive failure can help students develop creativity and learn more deeply. When carefully curated, failure can become a signal for learning, not the noise...

In the bestselling book, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen, the authors wrote: "We receive a deluge of feedback—from bosses, colleagues, friends, family—yet it rarely improves performance. The problem is that we've focused all of our attention and training on the feedback giver. Instead, it is the feedback receiver who decides whether to make use of the feedback and improve."

Ground Combat reveals the gritty details of land warfare at the tactical level and challenges today's overly subjective and often inaccurate approaches to characterizing war. Ben Connable's motivation for writing the book is to offer an evidence-based approach to examining the future of war.

Top performers have figured out a radical new approach that is redefining what it means to be a "rainmaker" in today's professional services market. Drawing on a comprehensive, quantitative study of nearly 3,000 partners, The Activator Advantage identifies the five types of partners found across the professional services landscape and shows how only one of them—the Activator—drives consistent growth. 

Portia Kane is having a meltdown. After escaping her cheating husband and their posh Florida life, she finds herself transported back home and back to square one. In need of saving herself, she sets out to find and resurrect a beloved high-school English teacher who has retired after a violent...

The founding fathers of the United States created a unique institution, the presidency, as they were determined to authorize an effective chief executive but wary of monarchy. They endowed this office with broad prerogatives and power but hedged it in with limitations. The presidency that developed over the next generation, however, was fashioned less by the clauses in the Constitution than by the way that the first presidents responded to challenges such as sectional enmity and the vexing Napoleonic warfare that jeopardized maritime rights.

Hal Brands argues that a better understanding of Eurasia's strategic geography can illuminate the contours of rivalry and conflict in today's world. The Eurasian Century explains how revolutions in technology and warfare, and the rise of toxic ideologies of conquest, made Eurasia the center of twentieth-century geopolitics—with pressing implications for the struggles that will define the twenty-first.

In Human Hacked by Len Noe, a pioneering cyborg with ten microchips implanted in his body, you'll find a startlingly insightful take on the fusion of biology and technology. The author provides a groundbreaking discussion of bio-implants, cybersecurity threats, and defenses.

Earth was destroyed on June 12, 2180. Lieutenant Selene Genji watched it happen. And only she can prevent it. Thrown forty years into the past, into a time before the Universal War began, Genji can only guess what to do to change the events that led to the death of all humanity. She has no way of knowing the long-term impacts of her actions and can only depend on her instincts.

Despite efforts to sustain civilization, humanity faces existential threats from overpopulation, globalized trade and travel, urbanization, and global climate change. In A Darwinian Survival Guide, Daniel Brooks and Salvatore Agosta offer a novel—and hopeful—perspective on how to meet these tremendous challenges by changing the discourse from sustainability to survival. Darwinian evolution, the world’s only theory of survival, is the means by which the biosphere has persisted and renewed itself following past environmental perturbations, and it has never failed, they explain.

Many experts believe that we are at a fulcrum moment in history, a time that demands radical shifts in thinking and policymaking. Calls for bold change are everywhere these days, particularly on social media, but is this actually the best way to make the world a better place? In Gradual, Greg Berman and Aubrey Fox argue that, contrary to the aspirations of activists on both the right and the left, incremental reform is the best path forward.

Society largely praises early risers, while maligning so-called "night owls." However, countless research studies have consistently shown that night owls are more successful and wealthier than early risers. The Morning Myth is intended to show that, indeed, night owls are generally more successful in life than early risers. The book is intended to restore self-confidence to night owls and help them to achieve more on their natural schedules, and also to inform employers on just how much productivity they're losing by forcing night owls to be at work bright and early....

The unprecedented access to other humans that technology provides has ironically freed us from engaging with them. According to social psychologist Adam Waytz, our increasingly human-free lives come with a serious cost that we’ve already begun to pay: the loss of our humanity. Humans have superpowers. More than any other psychological stimulus, our presence can make experiences feel significant, inspire moral behavior, and encourage action. The Power of Human shows us how to rehumanize and harness these unique abilities to improve our lives, beginning with our jobs.