Upheaval Turning ​Points for Nations in Crisis

Jared Diamond - Guns, ​Germs and Steel
In ​this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed religion --as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war --and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth club of California's Gold Medal.

Hunter S. Thompson - Kingdom ​of fear
Be ​afraid. Hunter S. Thompson – hellraising author of _Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas_, high priest of hedonism and supreme chronicler of the American nightmare – tells the uncensored story of a life dedicated to excess in this outrageous autobiography. Here, for the first time, the godfather of Gonzo journalism takes on the subject no one else could handle: himself. It’s a tale of fast living, hard drinking, sharp writing and ingesting most illegal substances known to humanity. Of crazed road trips, girls, guns, bikes, brushes with the law and accidentally being accused of trying to kill Jack Nicholson. And it’s an explosive, no-holds-barred assassination of America today.

Marge Piercy - Small ​Changes
Small ​Changes is the explosive novel of women struggling to make their places in a man's world. Set against the early days of the feminist movement, it tells of two women and the choices they must make. Intelligent, sensual Miriam Berg trades her doctorate for marriage and security, only to find herself hungry for a life of her own but terrified of losing her husband Shy, frightened Beth runs away from the very life Miriam seeks to a new world of different ideas, and a different kind of love--the love of another woman...

Timothy Snyder - On ​Tyranny
"In ​politics, being deceived is no excuse." - Leszek Kołakowski

Michelle Obama - Becoming
In ​a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America—the first African-American to serve in that role—she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare. In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it—in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations—and whose story inspires us to do the same.

Robin Norwood - Women ​Who Love Too Much
WHEN ​BEING IN LOVE MEANS BEING IN PAIN... Why do so many women become obsessed with the wrong men - men who are emotionally unavailable, addicted to work, alcohol or other women - men who cannot love them back? In this stunning bestseller, therapist Robin Norwood helps these women recognize, understand and change the way they love.

Michael Lewis - The ​Fifth Risk
What ​are the consequences if the people given control over our government have no idea how it works? "The election happened," remembers Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, then deputy secretary of the Department of Energy. "And then there was radio silence." Across all departments, similar stories were playing out: Trump appointees were few and far between; those that did show up were shockingly uninformed about the functions of their new workplace. Some even threw away the briefing books that had been prepared for them. Michael Lewis’s brilliant narrative takes us into the engine rooms of a government under attack by its own leaders. In Agriculture the funding of vital programs like food stamps and school lunches is being slashed. The Commerce Department may not have enough staff to conduct the 2020 Census properly. Over at Energy, where international nuclear risk is managed, it’s not clear there will be enough inspectors to track and locate black market uranium before terrorists do. Willful ignorance plays a role in these looming disasters. If your ambition is to maximize short-term gains without regard to the long-term cost, you are better off not knowing those costs. If you want to preserve your personal immunity to the hard problems, it’s better never to really understand those problems. There is upside to ignorance, and downside to knowledge. Knowledge makes life messier. It makes it a bit more difficult for a person who wishes to shrink the world to a worldview. If there are dangerous fools in this book, there are also heroes, unsung, of course. They are the linchpins of the system—those public servants whose knowledge, dedication, and proactivity keep the machinery running. Michael Lewis finds them, and he asks them what keeps them up at night.

Noam Chomsky - Profit ​Over People
Why ​is the Atlantic slowly filling with crude petroleum, threatening a millions-of-years-old ecological balance? Why did traders at prominent banks take high-risk gambles with the money entrusted to them by hundreds of thousands of clients around the world, expanding and leveraging their investments to the point that failure led to a global financial crisis that left millions of people jobless and hundreds of cities economically devastated? Why would the world's most powerful military spend ten years fighting an enemy that presents no direct threat to secure resources for corporations? The culprit in all cases is neoliberal ideology—the belief in the supremacy of "free" markets to drive and govern human affairs. And in the years since the initial publication of Noam Chomsky's Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order, the bitter vines of neoliberalism have only twisted themselves further into the world economy, obliterating the public’s voice in public affairs and substituting the bottom line in place of people’s basic obligation to care for one another as ends in themselves. In Profit Over People, Chomsky reveals the roots of the present crisis, tracing the history of neoliberalism through an incisive analysis of free trade agreements of the 1990s, the World Trade Organization, and the International Monetary Fund—and describes the movements of resistance to the increasing interference by the private sector in global affairs. In the years since the initial publication of Profit Over People, the stakes have only risen. Now more than ever, Profit Over People is one of the key texts explaining how the crisis facing us operates—and how, through Chomsky’s analysis of resistance, we may find an escape from the closing net.

Noam Chomsky - Understanding ​Power
The ​best of Chomsky's recent talks on the past, present, and future of the politics of power. In a series of enlightening and wide-ranging discussions, all published here for the first time, Chomsky radically reinterprets the events of the past three decades, covering topics from foreign policy during Vietnam to the decline of welfare under the Clinton administration.

Noam Chomsky - The ​Essential Chomsky
For ​the past forty years Noam Chomsky’s writings on politics and language have established him as a preeminent public intellectual and as one of the most original and wide-ranging political and social critics of our time. Among the seminal figures in linguistic theory over the past century, since the 1960s Chomsky has also secured a place as perhaps the leading dissident voice in the United States. Chomsky’s many bestselling works — including _Manufacturing Consent_, _Hegemony or Survival_, _Understanding Power_, and _Failed States_ — have served as essential touchstones for dissidents, activists, scholars, and concerned citizens on subjects ranging from the media to human rights to intellectual freedom. In particular, Chomsky’s scathing critiques of the U.S. wars in Vietnam, Central America, and the Middle East have furnished a widely accepted intellectual inspiration for antiwar movements over nearly four decades. _The Essential Chomsky_ assembles the core of his most important writings, including excerpts from his most influential texts over the past forty years. Here is an unprecedented, comprehensive overview of Chomsky’s thought.

Seth Dickinson - The ​Monster Baru Cormorant
A ​breathtaking geopolitical fantasy as fraught as Game of Thrones, The Monster Baru Cormorant is the long-anticipated sequel to Seth Dickinson gut-wrenching debut, The Traitor Baru Cormorant. Baru Cormormant's world was shattered by the Empire of Masks. To exact her revenge, she has clawed her way up razor-edged rungs of betrayal, sacrifice, and compromise, becoming the very thing she seeks to destroy. Now she strides in the Masquerade's halls of power. To save the world, she must tear it asunder...and with it, all that remains of her soul.

Erik H. Erikson - Identity: ​Youth and Crisis
Identity: ​Youth & Crisis collects Erik H. Erikson's major essays on topics originating in the concept of the adolescent identity crisis. Identity, Erikson writes, is as unfathomable as it's all-pervasive. It deals with a process that is located both in the core of the individual & in the core of the communal culture. As the culture changes, new kinds of identity questions arise--he comments, for example, on issues of social protest & changing gender roles that were pronounced in the 1960s.

Kim Stanley Robinson - New ​York 2140 (angol)
A ​new vision of the future from Kim Stanley Robinson, the _New York Times_ bestselling author of science fiction masterworks such as the _Mars_ trilogy, _2312_, and _Aurora_. The waters rose, submerging New York City. But the residents adapted and it remained the bustling, vibrant metropolis it had always been. Though changed forever. Every street became a canal. Every skyscraper an island. Through the eyes of the varied inhabitants of one building Kim Stanley Robinson shows us how one of our great cities will change with the rising tides. And how we too will change.

John Scalzi - The ​Collapsing Empire
Our ​universe is ruled by physics and faster than light travel is not possible -- until the discovery of The Flow, an extra-dimensional field we can access at certain points in space-time that transport us to other worlds, around other stars. Humanity flows away from Earth, into space, and in time forgets our home world and creates a new empire, the Interdependency, whose ethos requires that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It’s a hedge against interstellar war -- and a system of control for the rulers of the empire. The Flow is eternal -- but it is not static. Just as a river changes course, The Flow changes as well, cutting off worlds from the rest of humanity. When it’s discovered that The Flow is moving, possibly cutting off all human worlds from faster than light travel forever, three individuals -- a scientist, a starship captain and the Empress of the Interdependency -- are in a race against time to discover what, if anything, can be salvaged from an interstellar empire on the brink of collapse. “John Scalzi is the most entertaining, accessible writer working in SF today.” –Joe Hill "If anyone stands at the core of the American science fiction tradition at the moment, it is Scalzi." ―The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Third Edition

William R. Forstchen - The ​Final Day
The ​highly-anticipated follow-up to William R. Forstchen’s New York Times bestsellers, One Second After and One Year After, The Final Day immerses readers once more in the story of our nation’s struggle to rebuild itself after an electromagnetic pulse wipes out all electricity and plunges the country into darkness, starvation, and terror. After defeating the designs of the alleged federal government, John Matherson and his community have returned their attention to restoring the technologies and social order that existed prior to the EMP (Electro-Magnetic Pulse) attack. Then the government announces that it’s ceding large portions of the country to China and Mexico. The Constitution is no longer in effect, and what’s left of the U.S. Army has been deployed to suppress rebellion in the remaining states. The man sent to confront John is General Bob Scales, John’s old commanding officer and closest friend from prewar days. Will General Scales follow orders, or might he be the crucial turning point in the quest for an America that is again united? As the dubious Federal government increasingly curtails liberty and trades away sovereignty, it might just get exactly what it fears: revolution.

Julie Bindel - Straight ​Expectations
From ​picket line to picket fence - what does it mean to be gay in the era of same-sex marriage and equal rights? More than four decades after the start of the gay liberation movement, lesbians and gay men can legally marry, adopt children, and enjoy the same rights and respect as heterosexuals...or can they? In Straight Expectations, Julie Bindel, an out lesbian since 1977, tracks the changes in the gay community in the last forty years and asks whether fighting for the right to marry has achieved genuine progress, or whether the new legal rights have neutered a once-radical social movement. Drawing on extensive original research into changing attitudes towards sexuality, as well as interviews with scientists examining the 'gay gene', gay liberation pioneers, religious figures and key players of all political persuasions, Straight Expectations asks: Is sexual orientation learned or latent?; Do lesbians and gay men have anything in common?; and Have we now reached a stage where the 'only gay in the village' mentality no longer has any place in society? In this stimulating, thought-provoking book, Julie Bindel gets to the heart of the values, politics, hopes and dreams of a minority group that still inspires fear, loathing and fascination for many.

Jodi Picoult - Small ​Great Things
Ruth, ​an African-American nurse, has worked at a CT hospital for nearly twenty years as a labor and delivery nurse. So when a young couple, Turk and Brittany, come into the hospital to have their baby, it is business as usual -- until Turk calls in Ruth's white supervisor after the birth. He says, “I don't want her or anyone like her to touch my boy,” and pulls up his sleeve to reveal a Confederate flag tattoo: he and his wife are Skinheads. The hospital is used to making patient requests -- they have women who request female OBs, and others who don't want be cared for by a resident. So a note is placed on the baby's file and all African-American staff are exempted from caring from that patient -- meaning Ruth, who is the only Black nurse on the ward. The baby is taken to the nursery a day after its birth so circumcision can be done. However, Ruth's nursing colleague is called away on an emergency C section and Ruth is the only person in the nursery when the baby has cardiac/respiratory failure. After a brief hesitation – she intervenes – and yet, the baby dies. Not long after that, Ruth learns she has been charged with negligent homicide by the state. Ruth's attorney is a white woman -Kennedy McQuarrie- who would not consider herself a racist by any means. Like Ruth, she has a child. But unlike Ruth, her family has never had to think about race on a daily basis. In spite of the evidence and the request of a Skinhead barring Ruth from doing her job, Kennedy knows she won't talk about race in court, because she'd run the risk of polarizing the jury or the judge and losing the case. But to Ruth, that's not justice. As the two women form an alliance, and then an unlikely friendship, Kennedy begins to see that racism isn't just about intent, but power. That even if Skinheads like Turk did not exist, Ruth would still be fighting an uphill battle. And she begins to seek a way to make a predominantly white jury see that they are responsible for the house they did not build…but in which they live.

Amy Ewing - The ​Black Key
The ​thrilling conclusion to the New York Times bestselling Lone City trilogy, which began with The Jewel, a book BCCB said "will have fans of Oliver's Delirium, Cass's The Selection, and DeStefano's Wither breathless." For too long, Violet and the people of the outer circles of the Lone City have lived in service of the royalty of the Jewel. But now, the secret society known as the Black Key is preparing to seize power. While Violet knows she is at the center of this rebellion, she has a more personal stake in it—for her sister, Hazel, has been taken by the Duchess of the Lake. Now, after fighting so hard to escape the Jewel, Violet must do everything in her power to return not only to save Hazel, but the future of the Lone City.

Brené Brown - I ​Thought It Was Just Me
Shame ​manifests itself in many ways. Addiction, perfectionism, fear and blame are just a few of the outward signs that Dr. Brené Brown discovered in her 6-year study of shame’s effects on women. While shame is generally thought of as an emotion sequestered in the shadows of our psyches, I Thought It Was Just Me demonstrates the ways in which it is actually present in the most mundane and visible aspects of our lives—from our mental and physical health and body image to our relationships with our partners, our kids, our friends, our money, and our work. After talking to hundreds of women and therapists, Dr. Brown is able to illuminate the myriad shaming influences that dominate our culture and explain why we are all vulnerable to shame. We live in a culture that tells us we must reject our bodies, reject our authentic stories, and ultimately reject our true selves in order to fit in and be accepted. Outlining an empowering new approach that dispels judgment and awakens us to the genuine acceptance of ourselves and others, I Thought It Was Just Me begins a crucial new dialogue of hope. Through potent personal narratives and examples from real women, Brown identifies and explains four key elements that allow women to transform their shame into courage, compassion and connection. Shame is a dark and sad place in which to live a life, keeping us from connecting fully to our loved ones and being the women we were meant to be. But learning how to understand shame’s influence and move through it toward full acceptance of ourselves and others takes away much of shame’s power to harm. It’s not just you, you’re not alone, and if you fight the daily battle of feeling like you are—somehow—just not "enough," you owe it to yourself to read this book and discover your infinite possibilities as a human being.

Tom Clancy - Mark Greaney - Command ​Authority
The ​Russian Federation has a new president, Valeri Volodin. His ambitions are to usher Russia into a new age reminiscent of the days of the Soviet Union. President Jack Ryan must oppose Volodin and his interventions in Estonia, and with Russian plans on invading Ukraine, Volodin must be stopped. Sergey Golovko, former chairman of SVR, was assassinated by a radioactive agent with links to the Seven Strong Men and a Cold War mystery that Ryan himself was involved in when the Berlin Wall was still standing. To solve this mystery, Ryan and the Campus race to solve a mystery before a new Cold War begins.