Topic: Books (Page 8)

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πŸ”— The Shock Doctrine

πŸ”— Medicine πŸ”— Economics πŸ”— Books πŸ”— Politics πŸ”— Women writers πŸ”— Medicine/Psychiatry

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism is a 2007 book by the Canadian author and social activist Naomi Klein. In the book, Klein argues that neoliberal free market policies (as advocated by the economist Milton Friedman) have risen to prominence in some developed countries because of a deliberate strategy of "shock therapy". This centers on the exploitation of national crises (disasters or upheavals) to establish controversial and questionable policies, while citizens are excessively distracted (emotionally and physically) to engage and develop an adequate response, and resist effectively. The book suggests that some man-made events, such as the Iraq War, were undertaken with the intention of pushing through such unpopular policies in their wake.

Some reviewers criticized the book for making what they viewed as simplifications of political phenomena, while others lauded it as a compelling and important work. The book served as the main source of a 2009 documentary feature film with the same title directed by Michael Winterbottom.

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πŸ”— The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way) by the KLF

πŸ”— Books πŸ”— The KLF

The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way) is a 1988 book by "The Timelords" (Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond), better known as The KLF. It is a step-by-step guide to achieving a No.1 single with no money or musical skills, and a case study of the duo's UK novelty pop No. 1 "Doctorin' the Tardis".

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πŸ”— Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage

πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/North American military history πŸ”— Military history/United States military history πŸ”— Books πŸ”— Military history/Intelligence πŸ”— Military history/Maritime warfare πŸ”— Military history/Military historiography

Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage (ISBNΒ 0-06-103004-X) by Sherry Sontag, Christopher Drew, and Annette Lawrence Drew, published in 1998 by PublicAffairs, is a non-fiction book about U.S. Navy submarine operations during the Cold War. Several operations are described in the book, such as the use of USSΒ Parche to tap Soviet undersea communications cables and USSΒ Halibut to do the same in Operation Ivy Bells.

The book also contains an extensive list of collisions between Western and Soviet submarines and U.S. submarine awards.

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πŸ”— Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell

πŸ”— Economics πŸ”— Books

Basic Economics is a non-fiction book by American economist Thomas Sowell published by Basic Books in 2000. The original subtitle was A Citizen's Guide to the Economy, but from the third edition in 2007 on it was subtitled A Common Sense Guide to the Economy.

Basic Economics is focused on how societies create prosperity or poverty for their peoples by the way they organize their economies.

πŸ”— Understanding Comics

πŸ”— Books πŸ”— Comics πŸ”— Comics/DC Comics

Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art is a 1993 non-fiction work of comics by American cartoonist Scott McCloud. It explores formal aspects of comics, the historical development of the medium, its fundamental vocabulary, and various ways in which these elements have been used. It expounds theoretical ideas about comics as an art form and medium of communication, and is itself written in comic book form.

Understanding Comics received praise from notable comic and graphic novel authors such as Art Spiegelman, Will Eisner, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Garry Trudeau (who reviewed the book for the New York Times). Although the book has prompted debate over many of McCloud’s conclusions, its discussions of "iconic" art and the concept of "closure" between panels have become common reference points in discussions of the medium.

The title of Understanding Comics is an homage to Marshall McLuhan's seminal 1964 work Understanding Media.

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πŸ”— George PΓ³lya: How to Solve It (1945)

πŸ”— Mathematics πŸ”— Books πŸ”— Systems

How to Solve It (1945) is a small volume by mathematician George PΓ³lya describing methods of problem solving.

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πŸ”— 1984

πŸ”— Mass surveillance πŸ”— Novels πŸ”— Books πŸ”— Novels/Science fiction πŸ”— Science Fiction πŸ”— Freedom of speech πŸ”— Politics πŸ”— Socialism

Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, often published as 1984, is a dystopian novel by English novelist George Orwell. It was published in June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. The story was mostly written at Barnhill, a farmhouse on the Scottish island of Jura, at times while Orwell suffered from severe tuberculosis. Thematically, Nineteen Eighty-Four centres on the consequences of government over-reach, totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of all persons and behaviours within society.

The story takes place in an imagined future, the year 1984, when much of the world has fallen victim to perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, historical negationism, and propaganda. Great Britain, known as Airstrip One, has become a province of a superstate named Oceania that is ruled by the Party who employ the Thought Police to persecute individuality and independent thinking. Big Brother, the leader of the Party, enjoys an intense cult of personality despite the fact that he may not exist. The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a diligent and skillful rank-and-file worker and Party member who secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion. He enters a forbidden relationship with a co-worker, Julia.

Nineteen Eighty-Four has become a classic literary example of political and dystopian fiction. Many terms used in the novel have entered common usage, including Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, Room 101, telescreen, 2 + 2 = 5, prole, and memory hole. Nineteen Eighty-Four also popularised the adjective "Orwellian", connoting things such as official deception, secret surveillance, brazenly misleading terminology, and manipulation of recorded history by a totalitarian or authoritarian state. Time included it on its 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. It was placed on the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels, reaching No. 13 on the editors' list and No. 6 on the readers' list. In 2003, the novel was listed at No. 8 on The Big Read survey by the BBC. Parallels have been drawn between the novel's subject matter and real life instances of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and violations of freedom of expression among other themes.

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  • "1984" | 2013-06-09 | 10 Upvotes 2 Comments

πŸ”— The art of not being governed

πŸ”— History πŸ”— Books πŸ”— Socialism πŸ”— Anarchism

The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia is a book-length anthropological and historical study of the Zomia highlands of Southeast Asia written by James C. Scott published in 2009. Zomia, as defined by Scott, includes all the lands at elevations above 300 meters stretching from the Central Highlands of Vietnam to Northeastern India. That encompasses parts of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar, as well as four provinces of China. Zomia's 100 million residents are minority peoples "of truly bewildering ethnic and linguistic variety", he writes. Among them are the Akha, Hmong, Karen, Lahu, Mien, and Wa peoples.

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πŸ”— The Cuckoo's Egg

πŸ”— Espionage πŸ”— Books πŸ”— Computer Security πŸ”— Computer Security/Computing

The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage is a 1989 book written by Clifford Stoll. It is his first-person account of the hunt for a computer hacker who broke into a computer at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL).

Stoll's use of the term extended the metaphor Cuckoo's egg from brood parasitism in birds to malware.

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πŸ”— Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928–1960

πŸ”— Novels πŸ”— Books

Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928–1960 is a 1998 novel, presented as a biography, by the Scottish writer William Boyd. Nat Tate was an imaginary person, invented by Boyd and created as "an abstract expressionist who destroyed '99%' of his work and leapt to his death from the Staten Island ferry. His body was never found." At the time of the novel's launch, Boyd went some way to encourage the belief that Tate had really existed.