Technology: A World History
By Daniel R. Headrick
"Technology: A World History offers an illuminating backdrop to our present moment--a brilliant history of invention around the globe. Historian Daniel R. Headrick ranges from the Stone Age and the beginnings of agriculture to the Industrial Revolution and the electronic revolution of the recent past."--google books
Match Day: One Day and One Dramatic Year in the Lives of Three New Doctors
By Brian Eule
"In Match Day, Brian Eule follows three women from the anxious months before the match through the completion of their first year of internship. Each woman makes mistakes, saves lives, and witnesses death; each must keep or jettison the man in her life; each comes to learn what it means to heal, to comfort, to lose, and to grieve, while maintaining a professional demeanor."--books.google.com
Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century
by P. W. Singer
"Beginning with a brief and useful survey of robotics, Singer discusses its military applications during WWII, the arming and autonomy of robots at the turn of the century, and the broad influence of robotics on near-future battlefields. How, for example, can rules of engagement for unmanned autonomous machines be created and enforced? Can an artificial intelligence commit a war crime? Arguably more significant is Singers provocative case that war itself will be redefined as technology creates increasing physical and emotional distance from combat. As robotics diminishes wars risks the technology diminishes as well the higher purposes traditionally used to justify it. Might that reduce humanitys propensity for war making? Or will robotics make war less humane by making it less human? Singer has more questions than answers—but it is difficult to challenge his concluding admonition to question and study the technologies of military robotics—while the chance remains."--From Publishers Weekly via Amazon.com
The Causes of War
By David Sobek
"Is there an underlying "cause" of war and, if so, what is it? In this book, David Sobek argues that there is no single explanation for war: factors leading to war in one case may well lead to peace in another...Throughout the book Sobek draws on a wide range of examples - from the rise of Japan in the 19th century to the emergence of Hamas in the 21st century - to show how both domestic and international politics push states to, or pull them from, the brink of armed conflict...The Causes of War will be essential reading for students of security and strategic studies as well as anyone seeking to understand the rise of violent conflict in the contemporary world."--google books
War in an Age of Risk
by Christopher Coker
"In a rare blend of political science, sociology, history and cultural thought, Christopher Coker peels away the layers of meaning shrouding our current understanding of war and warfare. Using the ideas of writers such as Zygmunt Bauman, Ulrich Beck and Frank Furedi, he shows that risk has become the language of business, politics and public policy and so we should not be surprised that it has now become the language of war. The book highlights the increasing difference between homeland security and national security in the modern world, arguing that the defense of the citizen is often now more challenging than the defense of the state. By demonstrating the changing character and complexity of conflict from World War I to the current the current fight against terrorism, the book provides a powerful and highly distinctive account of the re-branding of war in an age of risk."--amazon.com
The Foie Gras Wars: How a 5,000-Year-Old Delicacy Inspired the World's Fiercest Food Fight
By Mark Caro
"In his relentless yet good-humored pursuit of clarity, Caro takes us to the streets where activists use bullhorns, spray paint, Superglue and/or lawsuits as their weapons; the government chambers where politicians weigh the ducks' interests against their own; the restaurants and outlaw dining clubs where haute cuisine preparations coexist with Foie-lipops; and the U.S. and French farms whose operators maintain that they are honoring tradition, not abusing animals. Can foie gras survive after 5,000 years? Are we on the verge of a more enlightened era of eating? Can both answers be yes? Our appetites hang in the balance."--google books
Complexity: A Guided Tour
By Melanie Mitchell
"In this remarkably accessible and companionable book, leading complex systems scientist Melanie Mitchell provides an intimate, detailed tour of the sciences of complexity, a broad set of efforts that seek to explain how large-scale complex, organized, and adaptive behavior can emerge from simple interactions among myriad individuals."--google books
Digital Diaspora: A Race for Cyberspace
By Anna Everett
"Deftly interweaving history, culture, and critical theory, Anna Everett traces the rise of black participation in cyberspace, particularly during the early years of the Internet. She challenges the problematic historical view of black people as quintessential information-age outsiders or poster children for the digital divide by uncovering their early technolust and repositioning them as eager technology adopters and consumers, and thus as coconstituent elements in the information technology revolution."--google books
Infectious Fear: Politics, Disease, and the Health Effects of Segregation
By Samuel Kelton Roberts, Jr., Samuel Kelton, Jr. Roberts
"For most of the first half of the twentieth century, tuberculosis ranked among the top three causes of mortality among urban African Americans. Often afflicting an entire family or large segments of a neighborhood, the plague of TB was as mysterious as it was fatal. Samuel Kelton Roberts Jr. examines how individuals and institutions—black and white, public and private—responded to the challenges of tuberculosis in a segregated society...Exploring the politics of race, reform, and public health, Infectious Fearuses the tuberculosis crisis to illuminate the limits of racialized medicine and the roots of modern health disparities. Ultimately, it reveals a disturbing picture of the United States' health history while offering a vision of a more democratic future."--google books
Immigrant Publishers: The Impact of Expatriate Publishers in Britain and America in the 20th Century
By Richard Abel, Gordon Graham
"In this unique historical analysis, Richard Abel and Gordon Graham show how publishing evolved post-World War II to embrace a different, more culturally inclusive, vision.Unfortunately, even among the learned classes, only a handful clearly understood either the nature or the likely consequences of the mounting geopolitical tensions that gripped pre-war Europe. The world was largely caught up in the ill-informed and unexamined but widely held smug and shallow belief that the huge price paid in "the war to end all wars" had purchased perpetual peace, a peace to be maintained by the numerous, post-war high-minded treaties ceremoniously signed thereafter.The history presented here has as its principals a handful of those who fled to the Anglo-Saxon shores in the pre-World War II era. The remainder made their way to Britain and the United States following that war. They brought an entirely new vision of and energetic pursuit of the cultural role of the book and journal in a society, a vision which was quickly adopted and naturalized by a perspicacious band of post-war native-born book people."--amazon.com