title
description
The Best of Slate:
Anniversary Anthology
Blink: The Power
Without Thinking
of
A Brief Guide to Islam
publisher
author
Slate pioneered online journalism-and now, in celebration of its 10th anniversary, a
collection of its smartest, funniest and best reporting./ When Slate launched in June
1996, the web was a novelty and internet journalism scarcely existed. In the decade
since, Slate has emerged as the most important new magazine of its generation. It has
shaped how Americans think about politics, media, and culture, published some of the
10th most exciting writers around, and pioneered an entirely original kind of journalism./ The
PublicAffairs
Best of Slate captures the magazine's funny, conversational style, its extraordinary
variety, and its provocative intellectual fierceness. The anthology will collect more than
60 pieces from the magazine's including articles by Michael Lewis, Jeffrey Goldberg,
Christopher Hitchens, Jack Shafer, Dahlia Lithwick, Marjorie Williams, Jeffrey Steingarten,
and Atul Gawande. Slate founding editor Michael Kinsley contributes an opening essay on
Slate's history, and current Slate editor Jacob Weisberg contributes the introduction./
Blink is about the first two seconds of looking--the decisive glance that knows in an
instant. Gladwell, the best-selling author of The Tipping Point, campaigns for snap
judgments and mind reading with a gift for translating research into splendid storytelling.
Building his case with scenes from a marriage, heart attack triage, speed dating, choking
on the golf course, selling cars, and military maneuvers, he persuades readers to think
small and focus on the meaning of "thin slices" of behavior. The key is to rely on our
"adaptive unconscious"--a 24//7 mental valet--that provides us with instant and
sophisticated information to warn of danger, read a stranger, or react to a new idea./
Thinking
Little, Brown and Malcolm
Gladwell includes caveats about leaping to conclusions: marketers can manipulate our
Company
Gladwell
first impressions, high arousal moments make us "mind blind," focusing on the wrong
cue leaves us vulnerable to "the Warren Harding Effect" (i.e., voting for a handsome but
hapless president). In a provocative chapter that exposes the "dark side of blink," he
illuminates the failure of rapid cognition in the tragic stakeout and murder of Amadou
Diallo in the Bronx. He underlines studies about autism, facial reading and cardio uptick
to urge training that enhances high-stakes decision-making. In this brilliant, cage-rattling
book, one can only wish for a thicker slice of Gladwell's ideas about what Blink Camp
might look like. --Barbara Mackoff/
Constable
Robinson
and
Paul Grieve
Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's NASA astronaut Michael Collins was the first man to walk in space and also piloted the Cooper
Journeys
first manned craft to land on the moon.
Press
Greenland, as well as modern ones such as Rwanda, have fallen apart. Not every
collapse has an environmental origin, but an eco-meltdown is often the main catalyst, he
argues, particularly when combined with society's response to (or disregard for) the
coming disaster. Still, right from the outset of Collapse, the author makes clear that this
is not a mere environmentalist's diatribe. He begins by setting the book's main question
in the small communities of present-day Montana as they face a decline in living
Collapse : How Societies Choose standards and a depletion of natural resources. Once-vital mines now leak toxins into the Penguin
to Fail or Succeed
soil, while prion diseases infect some deer and elk and older hydroelectric dams have Classics)
become decrepit. On all these issues, and particularly with the hot-button topic of logging
and wildfires, Diamond writes with equanimity./ Because he's addressing such significant
issues within a vast span of time, Diamond can occasionally speak too briefly and assume
too much, and at times his shorthand remarks may cause careful readers to raise an
eyebrow. But in general, Diamond provides fine and well-reasoned historical examples,
making the case that many times, economic and environmental concerns are one and the
Death on the Nile (Agatha Christie
Comic Strip)
Square Michael
Collins
(Non- Jared
Diamond
HarperCollins
Publishers Ltd
Agatha
Christie
reveals in this fascinating and important authorized biography -- misunderstood.
Armstrong's accomplishments as an engineer, a test pilot, and an astronaut have long
been a matter of record, but Hansen's unprecedented access to private documents and
unpublished sources and his interviews with more than 125 subjects (including more
than fifty hours with Armstrong himself) yield this first in-depth analysis of an elusive
American celebrity still renowned the world over./ In a riveting narrative filled with
revelations, Hansen vividly re-creates Armstrong's career in flying, from his seventyFirst Man : The Life of Neil A.
James
eight combat missions as a naval aviator flying over North Korea to his formative Simon & Schuster
Armstrong
Hansen
transatmospheric flights in the rocket-powered X-15 to his piloting Gemini VIII to the
first-ever docking in space. These milestones made it seem, as Armstrong's mother,
Viola, memorably put it, "as if from the very moment he was born -- farther back still -that our son was somehow destined for the Apollo 11 mission."/ For a pilot who cared
more about flying to the Moon than he did about walking on it, Hansen asserts,
Armstrong's storied vocation exacted a dear personal toll, paid in kind by his wife and
children. For the thirty-six years since the Moon landing, rumors have swirled around
R.
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist
Explores the Hidden Side of
Everything
Penguin
Ltd
text with his observations, personal examples, reflections, illustrations, application ideas,
and key learning points. Each section is headed by a short "lead line", introductory
sentence, and title or sub-title./ The depth and authority of this captivating book comes
from the research and writing of Jim's three previous bestselling books, specific research
for this book, decades of training and consulting with hundreds of organizations, and over
Growing the Distance: Timeless 25 years of applying these timeless principles to his own personal, career, and family life.
Principles for Personal, Career, "One of North America's leading transformation and improvement thinkers," Jim is the Stoddart
and Family Success
author of four other international bestsellers: "The VIP Strategy: Leadership Skills for
Exceptional Performance,""Firing on All Cylinders: The Service//Quality System for HighPowered Corporate Performance" (Canada's all time bestselling management book),
"Pathways to Performance: A Guide to Transforming Yourself, Your Team, and Your
Organization," and "The Leader's Digest."/ At the center of "Growing the Distance" (and
the
hub of Turkey,
the "leadership
wheel"
in theover
book)
Focus
Context:
The with
Corethe
of
Nicaragua,
the Far East
andmodel
elsewhere
theispast
halfand
a century
along
modern American war in Iraq, Chomsky indicates that America is just as much a terrorist
state as any other government or rogue organization. George W. Bush's 2003 invasion of
Iraq drew worldwide criticism, in part because it seemed to present a new philosophy of
pre-emptive war and an appearance of global empire building. But according to Chomsky,
such has been the operating philosophy of American foreign policy for decades.
Hegemony or Survival : America's Opponents of the Bush administration's tactics consistently point out how the American
Quest for Global Dominance (The government supported Saddam Hussein for many years prior to the 1990 invasion of
Owl Books
American Empire Project) (The Kuwait (pictures of Donald Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand are easy to come by) as a
American Empire Project)
means of pointing out how the United States is happy to fund despots when it's in
American interests. But Chomsky, armed with extensive historical notation, takes this
notion further, arguing how the repression of other nations' citizenry is, in fact, the very
reason Americans support certain foreign leaders. The charges made throughout the
book are severe, as are the dire consequences he posits if current trends are not
reversed, and Chomsky is no more likely to make friends or gain supporters from the
mainstream now than he's ever been. But Hegemony or Survival is relatively
This is a genius-level piece of writing that manages to blend literary biography with selfhelp and tongue-in-cheek with the profound. The quirky, early 1900s French author
Marcel Proust acts as the vessel for surprisingly impressive nuggets of wisdom on downto-earth topics such as why you should never sleep with someone on the first date, how
How Proust Can Change Your Life
Pantheon
to protect yourself against lower back pain, and how to cope with obnoxious neighbors.
Here's proof that our ancestors had just as much insight as the gurus du jour and
perhaps a lot more wit. De Botton simultaneously pokes fun at the self-help movement
and makes a significant contribution to its archives.
Steven
Books Levitt/
Stephen
Dubner
D.
J.
Jim Clemmer
Noam
Chomsky
Alain
Botton
De
The Illustrated
Freedom
Long
Walk
to
Little, Brown
Nelson
Mandela
National Book Award Finalist/ / A Time, Newsweek, Washington Post, Chicago
Tribune,and New York Times Book Review Best Book of the Year/ / A gripping narrative
that spans five decades,The Looming Tower explains in unprecedented detail the growth
of Islamic fundamentalism, the rise of al-Qaeda, and the intelligence failures that
culminated in the attacks on the World Trade Center. Lawrence Wright re-creates
The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and
firsthand the transformation of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri from Vintage
the Road to 9//11 (Vintage)
incompetent and idealistic soldiers in Afghanistan to leaders of the most successful
terrorist group in history. He follows FBI counterterrorism chief John O’Neill as
he uncovers the emerging danger from al-Qaeda in the 1990s and struggles to track this
new threat. Packed with new information and a deep historical perspective, The Looming
Tower is the definitive history of the long road to September 11.
Lawrence
Wright
Mao: The Unknown Story
Anchor Books
Jung Chang/
Jon Halliday
Memoirs of a Spymaster
Pimlico
The Mind of South Africa
Ballantine Books
A revelatory look at what happens when political Islam collides with the secular West/ /
Ian Buruma 's Murder in Amsterdam is a masterpiece of investigative journalism, a book
with the intimacy and narrative control of a crime novel and the analytical brilliance for
Murder in Amsterdam: Liberal which Buruma is renowned. On a cold November day in Amsterdam in 2004, the
Penguin
Europe, Islam, and the Limits of celebrated and controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was shot and killed by an
Classics)
Tolerence
Islamic extremist for making a movie that “insulted the prophet
Mohammed.” The murder sent shock waves across Europe and around the
world. Shortly thereafter, Ian Buruma returned to his native land to investigate the event
and its larger meaning as part of the great dilemma of our time.
(Non-
Markus Wolf/
Anne
McElvoy
Allister
Sparks
Ian Buruma
Sean Condon has moved to Amsterdam. He got married, and he’s unemployed
(what’s worse, so is his wife). Sean is back and funnier than ever, this time
exploring the strange habits of the Dutch. He also keeps a watchful and wonderfully selfMy 'Dam Life: Three Years in
deprecating eye on the whole strange business of writing about yourself doing, well, Lonely
Planet Sean
Holland (Lonely Planet Journeys
nothing much, in this post-modern age. Sean’s uncanny ability to find the Publications
Condon
(Travel Literature))
absurd in everyday life misses nothing and My ‘Dam Life will strike a sidesplitting chord with anyone who has ever been unemployed, been married or tried not to
be deported from a foreign land./ /
Inspirational yet honest, and always rhythmically rollicking, Oh, the Places You'll Go! is a
perfect sendoff for children, 1 to 100, entering any new phase of their lives.
Kindergartners, graduate students, newlyweds, newly employeds--all will glean shiny
pearls of wisdom about the big, bountiful future. The incomparable Dr. Seuss rejoices in
the potential everyone has to fulfill their wildest dreams: "You'll be on your way up! //
Random
House
Oh, the Places You'll Go! (Classic You'll be seeing great sights! // You'll join the high fliers // who soar to high heights." At
Books for Young Dr. Seuss
Seuss)
the same time, he won't delude the starry-eyed upstart about the pitfalls of life: "You can
Readers
get all hung up // in a prickle-ly perch. // And your gang will fly on. // You'll be left in a
Lurch."/ / But fear not! Dr. Seuss, with his inimitable illustrations and exhilarating
rhymes, is convinced ("98 and 3//4 percent guaranteed") that success is imminent. As
long as you remember "to be dexterous and deft. And NEVER mix up your right foot with
your left," things should work out. (All ages) --Emilie Coulter/ /
One Day in September : The Full
Story
of
the
1972
Munich
Olympics Massacre and the Israeli
Revenge Operation "Wrath of
God"
policemen, advisors, fellow athletes, media figures, and even the lone surviving member
of the group that carried out the attack. Reeve's control over his material is admirable.
He vividly paints images of the individuals involved, humanizing a narrative that cracks
and buzzes with the compact tension of those 24 hours. At the same time, he provides
the background to the attack, filling in vital historical context from the distant and recent
past, such as the Arab-Jewish dispute that produced this and other terrorist actions and
their responses./ Reeve conveys the public horror of Jews being incarcerated on German
soil, which led the German authorities to make crucial judgments, with tragic results. Arcade Publishing Simon Reeve
Fatal errors were made that can only be fully understood through the underlying
dynamics of not only Middle East history, but also postwar European politics, individual
and institutional arrogance, inexperience, and political pressure--including from the
International Olympic Committee. Reeve follows up the events of that day by exposing
the full extent of the Israeli revenge mission, which over the next 20 years hunted down
and killed those responsible for the attack. He has not only written a compelling book,
but provided a considerable service in allowing readers to understand the forces of
Palestine
and Gaza Strip in the early 1990s (where he conducted over 100 interviews with
Palestinians and Jews), Palestine was the first major comics work of political and
historical nonfiction by Sacco, who has often been called the first comic book journalist./
Sacco's insightful reportage takes place at the front lines, where busy marketplaces are
spoiled by shootings and tear gas, soldiers beat civilians with reckless abandon, and
roadblocks go up before reporters can leave. Sacco interviewed and encountered
prisoners, refugees, protesters, wounded children, farmers who had lost their land, and Jonathan Cape
families who had been torn apart by the Palestinian conflict./ In 1996, the Before
Columbus Foundation awarded Palestine the seventeenth annual American Book Award,
stating that the author should be recognized for his "outstanding contribution to
American literature," while his publisher, Fantagraphics, is "to be honored for their
commitment to quality and their willingness to take risks that accompany publishing
outstanding books and authors that may not prove 'cost-effective' in the short run."/ This
Joe Sacco
Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of
Hope
Verso Books
Tariq Ali
The Republican War on Science
Basic Books
Chris
Mooney
Shake Hands with the Devil: The
Failure of Humanity in Rwanda
Random House of Romeo
Canada Ltd.
Dallaire
The State of Africa: A History of
Fifty Years of Independence
Free Press
Martin
Meredith
Talk Left, Walk Right: South
Africa's Frustrated Global Reforms
Univ of Natal Pr
Patrick Bond
Think!: Why Crucial Decisions
Can't Be Made in the Blink of an
Eye
Pocket Books
Timbit Nation: A Hitchhiker's View
of Canada
Random House of
Stackhouse
Canada Ltd.
mimetics will recognise this concept, Gladwell's The Tipping Point has quite a few
interesting twists on the subject./ For example, Paul Revere was able to galvanise the
forces of resistance so effectively in part because he was what Gladwell calls a
"Connector": he knew just about everybody, particularly the revolutionary leaders in each
of the towns that he rode through. But Revere "wasn't just the man with the biggest
Rolodex in colonial Boston", he was also a "Maven" who gathered extensive information
about the British. He knew what was going on and he knew exactly whom to tell. The
The Tipping Point: How Little
phenomenon continues to this day--think of how often you've received information in an Back Bay Books
Things Can Make a Big Difference
e-mail message that had been forwarded at least half a dozen times before reaching
you./ Gladwell develops these and other concepts (such as the "stickiness" of ideas or
the effect of population size on information dispersal) through simple, clear explanations
and entertainingly illustrative anecdotes, such as comparing the pedagogical methods of
Sesame Street and Blue's Clues, or explaining why it would be even easier to play Six
Degrees of Kevin Bacon with the actor Rod Steiger. Although some readers may find the
transitional passages between chapters hold their hands a little too tightly, and Gladwell's
Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader offers in-depth portraits of North Korea+s
two ruthless and bizarrely Orwellian leaders, Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il. Lifting North
Korea+s curtain of self-imposed isolation, this book will take readers inside a society
Under the Loving Care of the that, to a Westerner, will appear to be from another planet. Subsisting on a diet short on
St.
Martin's
Fatherly Leader : North Korea and food and long on lies, North Koreans have been indoctrinated from birth to follow
Griffin
the Kim Dynasty
unquestioningly a father-son team of megalomaniacs. Revised and expanded for the
paperback edition, this fascinating, definitive history brings the reader right up to the
present-day tensions. For as this book direly predicted, North Korea has a legitimate
nuclear program and appears to be the greatest threat to the world today.
Michael
LeGault
Malcolm
Gladwell
Bradley
Martin
K.
The
Undercover
Economist:
Exposing Why the Rich Are Rich,
Why the Poor Are Poor--And Why
You Can Never Buy a Decent Used
Car!
The World Is Flat : A Brief History
of the Twenty-First Century
book to savor.”/ –The New York Times/ / “Harford writes like a
dream. From his book I found out why there’s a Starbucks on every corner
[and] how not to get duped in an auction. Reading The Undercover Economist is like
spending an ordinary day wearing X-ray goggles.”/ –David Bodanis,
author of Electric Universe/ / “Much wit and wisdom.”/ –The
Houston Chronicle/ From Publishers Weekly / Nattily packaged-the cover sports a Roy
Lichtensteinesque image of an economist in Dick Tracy garb-and cleverly written, this
book applies basic economic theory to such modern phenomena as Starbucks' pricing Random
House
Tim Harford
system and Microsoft's stock values. While the concepts explored are those encountered Trade Paperbacks
in Microeconomics 101, Harford gracefully explains abstruse ideas like pricing along the
demand curve and game theory using real world examples without relying on graphs or
jargon. The book addresses free market economic theory, but Harford is not a complete
apologist for capitalism; he shows how companies from Amazon.com to Whole Foods to
Starbucks have gouged consumers through guerrilla pricing techniques and explains the
high rents in London (it has more to do with agriculture than one might think). Harford
deliver
that soft
just on
when
we stopped
paying acknowledging
attention to these
developments--when
the
comes is
down
Chinese
sweatshops,
"conditions
in factories are
dot-com bust turned interest away from the business and technology pages and when
9//11 and the Iraq War turned all eyes toward the Middle East--is when they actually
began to accelerate. Globalization 3.0, as he calls it, is driven not by major corporations
or giant trade organizations like the World Bank, but by individuals: desktop freelancers
and innovative startups all over the world (but especially in India and China) who can
Thomas
compete--and win--not just for low-wage manufacturing and information labor but,
Gardners Books
Friedman
increasingly, for the highest-end research and design work as well. (He doesn't forget the
"mutant supply chains" like Al-Qaeda that let the small act big in more destructive ways.)
Friedman tells his eye-opening story with the catchy slogans and globe-hopping
anecdotes that readers of his earlier books and his New York Times columns will know
well, and also with a stern sort of optimism. He wants to tell you how exciting this new
world is, but he also wants you to know you're going to be trampled if you don't keep up
with it. His book is an excellent place to begin. --Tom Nissley/ / Where Were You When
