Books

Brief Summary Since she burst spectacularly into view with her debut novel almost two decades ago, Zadie Smith has established herself not just as one of the world's preeminent fiction writers, but also a brilliant and singular essayist. She contributes regularly to The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books on a range of subjects, and each piece of hers is a literary event in its own right. Arranged into five sections - In the World, In the Audience, In the Gallery, On the Bookshelf, and Feel Free - this new collection poses questions we immediately recognize. What is The Social Network, and Facebook itself, really about? "It's a cruel portrait of us: 500 million sentient people entrapped in the recent careless thoughts of a Harvard sophomore. " Why do we love libraries? "Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay." What will we tell our granddaughters about our collective failure to address global warming? "So I might say to her, look: the thing you have to appreciate is that we'd just been through a century of relativism and deconstruction, in which we were informed that most of our fondest-held principles were either uncertain or simple wishful thinking, and in many areas of our lives we had already been asked to accept that nothing is essential and everything changes and this had taken the fight out of us somewhat." Gathering in one place for the first time previously unpublished work, as well as already classic essays, such as, Joy, and, Find Your Beach, Feel Free offers a survey of important recent events in culture and politics, as well as Smith's own life. Equally at home in the world of good books and bad politics, Brooklyn-born rappers and the work of Swiss novelists, she is by turns wry, heartfelt, indignant, and incisive and never any less than perfect company. This is literary journalism at its zenith. " ISBN:9781594206252 Author:Zadie Smith

Brief Summary With his first novel since the internationally acclaimed The English Patient, Booker Prize-winning author Michael Ondaatje gives us a work displaying all the richness of imagery and language and the piercing emotional truth that we have come to know as the hallmarks of his writing. Anil’s Ghost transports us to Sri Lanka, a country steeped in centuries of tradition, now forced into the late twentieth century by the ravages of civil war. Into this maelstrom steps Anil Tissera, a young woman born in Sri Lanka, educated in England and America, who returns to her homeland as a forensic anthropologist sent by an international human rights group to discover the source of the organized campaigns of murder engulfing the island. What follows is a story about love, about family, about identity, about the unknown enemy, about the quest to unlock the hidden past–a story propelled by a riveting mystery. Unfolding against the deeply evocative background of Sri Lanka’s landscape and ancient civilization, Anil’s Ghost is a literary spellbinder–Michael Ondaatje’s most powerful novel yet. ISBN:9780375724374 Author:Michael Ondaatje

Brief Summary Acclaimed cultural critic bell hooks offers an open-hearted and welcoming vision of gender, sexuality, and society in this inspiring and accessible volume. In engaging and provocative style, bell hooks introduces a popular theory of feminism rooted in common sense and the wisdom of experience. Hers is a vision of a beloved community that appeals to all those committed to equality, mutual respect, and justice. hooks applies her critical analysis to the most contentious and challenging issues facing feminists today, including reproductive rights, violence, race, class, and work. With her customary insight and unsparing honesty, hooks calls for a feminism free from barriers but rich with rigorous debate. In language both eye-opening and optimistic, hooks encourages us to demand alternatives to patriarchal, racist, and homophobic culture, and to imagine a different future. ISBN:9780896086289 Author:bell hooks

Brief Summary America's Secret War: Inside the Hidden Worldwide Struggle Between the United States and its Enemies. George Friedman's company, STRATFOR (Strategic Forecasting), has received incredible accolades for working ahead of the news media and being right on the pulse of political and military action as it unfolds across the globe. A private intelligence agency, it provides commercial organizations with the most up-to-date information about world events which they in turn use to assess their business options. This incredible book, written by the founder of STRATFOR himself, details the secret battles and shock operations that have been taking place beyond the reaches of conventional information networks. Drawing on a wide network of contacts in governments, intelligence agencies and military organizations throughout the world, AMERICA'S SECRET WAR will open readers' eyes to an astonishing world of covert operations that - praise it or fear it - is the nature of this US administration. Compelling, surprising, written with all the pace of an action/adventure thriller, AMERICA'S SECRET WAR documents a terrifying world previously unknown to the general public. ISBN:9780349118925 Author:George Friedman