Notes from an Apocalypse
Notes from an Apocalypse

Author: Mark O'Connell

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2020-04-14

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0385543018

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AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • An absorbing, deeply felt book about our anxious present tense—and coming to grips with the future, by the author of the award-winning To Be a Machine. “Deeply funny and life-affirming, with a warm, generous outlook even on the most challenging of subjects.” —Esquire We’re alive in a time of worst-case scenarios: The weather has gone uncanny. A pandemic draws our global community to a halt. Everywhere you look there’s an omen, a joke whose punchline is the end of the world. How is a person supposed to live in the shadow of such a grim future? What might it be like to live through the worst? And what on earth is anybody doing about it? Dublin-based writer Mark O’Connell is consumed by these questions—and, as the father of two young children, he finds them increasingly urgent. In Notes from an Apocalypse, he crosses the globe in pursuit of answers. He tours survival bunkers in South Dakota. He ventures to New Zealand, a favored retreat of billionaires banking on civilization’s collapse. He engages with would-be Mars colonists, preppers, right-wing conspiracists. And he bears witness to places, like Chernobyl, that the future has already visited—real-life portraits of the end of the world as we know it. What emerges is an absorbing, funny, and deeply felt book about our anxious present tense—and coming to grips with what’s ahead.

Ride of the Second Horseman
Ride of the Second Horseman

Author: Robert L. O'Connell

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 0195119207

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In times of underpopulation, slaves weretaken to provide labor. O'Connell explores the histories of the civilizations of ancient Sumeria, Egypt, Assyria, China, and the New World, showing how war came to each and how it adapted to varying circumstances. On the other hand, societies based on trade employed war much more selectively andpragmatically. Thus, Minoan Crete, long protected from marauding pastoralists, developed a wealthy mercantile society marked by unmilitaristic attitudes, equality between men and women, and a relative absence of class distinctions. In Assyria, by contrast, war came to be an end in itself, in aculture dominated by male warriors. Despite the violence in the world today, O'Connell finds reason for hope. The industrial revolution broke the old patterns of subsistence: war no longer serves the demographic purpose it once did.

The Last Night Out
The Last Night Out

Author: Catherine O'Connell

Publisher: Canongate Books

Published: 2019-05-02

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1786895013

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Six friends. Three secrets. One murder. Maggie is destined to marry the perfect man in two weeks. Desperate for a last wild night on the town before the big day, she gathers her closest friends for a night to remember. Only things go wrong – horribly wrong. Angie’s body is found in the park the following morning and their night to remember quickly becomes a nightmare they wish they could forget. Under police scrutiny, how far will Maggie and her friends go to keep their secrets? Far enough to protect a killer?

To Be a Machine
To Be a Machine

Author: Mark O'Connell

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2017-02-28

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 0385540426

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“This gonzo-journalistic exploration of the Silicon Valley techno-utopians’ pursuit of escaping mortality is a breezy romp full of colorful characters.” —New York Times Book Review (Editor's Choice) Transhumanism is a movement pushing the limits of our bodies—our capabilities, intelligence, and lifespans—in the hopes that, through technology, we can become something better than ourselves. It has found support among Silicon Valley billionaires and some of the world’s biggest businesses. In To Be a Machine, journalist Mark O'Connell explores the staggering possibilities and moral quandaries that present themselves when you of think of your body as a device. He visits the world's foremost cryonics facility to witness how some have chosen to forestall death. He discovers an underground collective of biohackers, implanting electronics under their skin to enhance their senses. He meets a team of scientists urgently investigating how to protect mankind from artificial superintelligence. Where is our obsession with technology leading us? What does the rise of AI mean not just for our offices and homes, but for our humanity? Could the technologies we create to help us eventually bring us to harm? Addressing these questions, O'Connell presents a profound, provocative, often laugh-out-loud-funny look at an influential movement. In investigating what it means to be a machine, he offers a surprising meditation on what it means to be human.

And Now We Have Everything
And Now We Have Everything

Author: Meaghan O'Connell

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2018-04-10

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 0316393835

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A raw, funny, and fiercely honest account of becoming a mother before feeling like a grown up. When Meaghan O'Connell got accidentally pregnant in her twenties and decided to keep the baby, she realized that the book she needed -- a brutally honest, agenda-free reckoning with the emotional and existential impact of motherhood -- didn't exist. So she decided to write it herself. And Now We Have Everything is O'Connell's exploration of the cataclysmic, impossible-to-prepare-for experience of becoming a mother. With her dark humor and hair-trigger B.S. detector, O'Connell addresses the pervasive imposter syndrome that comes with unplanned pregnancy, the fantasies of a "natural" birth experience that erode maternal self-esteem, post-partum body and sex issues, and the fascinating strangeness of stepping into a new, not-yet-comfortable identity. Channeling fears and anxieties that are still taboo and often unspoken, And Now We Have Everything is an unflinchingly frank, funny, and visceral motherhood story for our times, about having a baby and staying, for better or worse, exactly yourself. Smart, funny, and true in all the best ways, this book made me ache with recognition." -- Cheryl Strayed

No One Listens to Your Dad's Show
No One Listens to Your Dad's Show

Author: Christian O'Connell

Publisher: Atlantic Books

Published: 2021-06-03

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1838952896

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'Christian has achieved something very beautiful and funny with this book, weaving ordinary life and every day sadness into something hopeful and profound. I loved it.' Russell Brand As a radio DJ in London, Christian O'Connell appeared to have it all. He held the number one spot nationally, with a faithful audience of millions who'd listened to him for years. Celebrities flocked to come on his show and no other radio DJ had won more awards. But not everything was as it seemed. Minutes before going live one morning, something happened that changed everything and led to a decision of seismic proportions. He quit his job, moved to the other side of the world, where no one knew him, and took on the toughest radio market in the world - Australia. Why? is the question he's been asked every day since landing Down Under. Until now he's never shared the real reason. No One Listens to Your Dad's Show is the story of Christian risking everything, uprooting his wife, two daughters and his dog to move to Australia. A move that lands him as a complete unknown in a country where, he soon finds out, no one wants to hear him on the radio. He was failing, fortysomething and falling apart. Until he wasn't.