The Next New World
The Next New World

Author: Bob Shacochis

Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

Published: 2014-09-09

Total Pages: 142

ISBN-13: 0802191770

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The “chameleon-like” ABA–winning author of Easy in the Islands offers a new collection of eight “surprising [and] memorable” short stories (Publishers Weekly). The haunting stories in Shacochis’s second collection combine comic wit and carnal certainty with an aura of history. Each of the eight tales here feature outrageously original characters who, through Shacochis’s ability to inhabit a spectacular range of voices, become eerily familiar. Two elderly sisters share a phantom lover; a Virginia patriarch, haunted by ghosts of Confederate soldiers, is buried with their bones; a family celebrates the Fourth of July in the shadow of the father’s Alzheimer’s syndrome; and a musician’s thunderous love turns him into a cannibal. From renaissance England to Cape Hatteras to the Caribbean islands, readers will find themselves submerged in exquisitely crafted fictions “charged with wit and style . . . intelligent, engaging, and richly realized.” (The New York Times Book Review). “Shacochis is a master of voices. . . . In The Next New World he roams about through history and across the globe, tethering his wit to a sense of political conscience. . . . Sometimes more is more.” —The Miami Herald “If we are in the golden age of the short story, Bob Shacochis is one of the writers who got us here.” —Providence Journal

New World A-Coming
New World A-Coming

Author: Judith Weisenfeld

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2018-11-06

Total Pages: 357

ISBN-13: 1479865850

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"When Joseph Nathaniel Beckles registered for the draft in the 1942, he rejected the racial categories presented to him and persuaded the registrar to cross out the check mark she had placed next to Negro and substitute "Ethiopian Hebrew." "God did not make us Negroes," declared religious leaders in black communities of the early twentieth-century urban North. They insisted that so-called Negroes are, in reality, Ethiopian Hebrews, Asiatic Muslims, or raceless children of God. Rejecting conventional American racial classification, many black southern migrants and immigrants from the Caribbean embraced these alternative visions of black history, racial identity, and collective future, thereby reshaping the black religious and racial landscape. Focusing on the Moorish Science Temple, the Nation of Islam, Father Divine's Peace Mission Movement, and a number of congregations of Ethiopian Hebrews, Judith Weisenfeld argues that the appeal of these groups lay not only in the new religious opportunities membership provided, but also in the novel ways they formulated a religio-racial identity. Arguing that members of these groups understood their religious and racial identities as divinely-ordained and inseparable, the book examines how this sense of self shaped their conceptions of their bodies, families, religious and social communities, space and place, and political sensibilities. Weisenfeld draws on extensive archival research and incorporates a rich array of sources to highlight the experiences of average members."--Publisher's description.

The Next 500 Years
The Next 500 Years

Author: Christopher E. Mason

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2022-04-12

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 0262543842

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An argument that we have a moral duty to explore other planets and solar systems--because human life on Earth has an expiration date. Inevitably, life on Earth will come to an end, whether by climate disaster, cataclysmic war, or the death of the sun in a few billion years. To avoid extinction, we will have to find a new home planet, perhaps even a new solar system, to inhabit. In this provocative and fascinating book, Christopher Mason argues that we have a moral duty to do just that. As the only species aware that life on Earth has an expiration date, we have a responsibility to act as the shepherd of life-forms--not only for our species but for all species on which we depend and for those still to come (by accidental or designed evolution). Mason argues that the same capacity for ingenuity that has enabled us to build rockets and land on other planets can be applied to redesigning biology so that we can sustainably inhabit those planets. And he lays out a 500-year plan for undertaking the massively ambitious project of reengineering human genetics for life on other worlds. As they are today, our frail human bodies could never survive travel to another habitable planet. Mason describes the toll that long-term space travel took on astronaut Scott Kelly, who returned from a year on the International Space Station with changes to his blood, bones, and genes. Mason proposes a ten-phase, 500-year program that would engineer the genome so that humans can tolerate the extreme environments of outer space--with the ultimate goal of achieving human settlement of new solar systems. He lays out a roadmap of which solar systems to visit first, and merges biotechnology, philosophy, and genetics to offer an unparalleled vision of the universe to come.

How to Run the World
How to Run the World

Author: Parag Khanna

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2011-01-11

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0679604286

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Here is a stunning and provocative guide to the future of international relations—a system for managing global problems beyond the stalemates of business versus government, East versus West, rich versus poor, democracy versus authoritarianism, free markets versus state capitalism. Written by the most esteemed and innovative adventurer-scholar of his generation, Parag Khanna’s How to Run the World posits a chaotic modern era that resembles the Middle Ages, with Asian empires, Western militaries, Middle Eastern sheikhdoms, magnetic city-states, wealthy multinational corporations, elite clans, religious zealots, tribal hordes, and potent media seething in an ever more unpredictable and dangerous storm. But just as that initial “dark age” ended with the Renaissance, Khanna believes that our time can become a great and enlightened age as well—only, though, if we harness our technology and connectedness to forge new networks among governments, businesses, and civic interest groups to tackle the crises of today and avert those of tomorrow. With his trademark energy, intellect, and wit, Khanna reveals how a new “mega-diplomacy” consisting of coalitions among motivated technocrats, influential executives, super-philanthropists, cause-mopolitan activists, and everyday churchgoers can assemble the talent, pool the money, and deploy the resources to make the global economy fairer, rebuild failed states, combat terrorism, promote good governance, deliver food, water, health care, and education to those in need, and prevent environmental collapse. With examples taken from the smartest capital cities, most progressive boardrooms, and frontline NGOs, Khanna shows how mega-diplomacy is more than an ad hoc approach to running a world where no one is in charge—it is the playbook for creating a stable and self-correcting world for future generations. How to Run the World is the cutting-edge manifesto for diplomacy in a borderless world.

What Will Be
What Will Be

Author: Michael L. Dertouzos

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2009-03-17

Total Pages: 683

ISBN-13: 0061873322

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Michael Dertouzos has been an insightful commentator and an active participant in the creation of the Information Age.Now, in What Will Be, he offers a thought-provoking and entertaining vision of the world of the next decade -- and of the next century. Dertouzos examines the impact that the following new technologies and challenges will have on our lives as the Information Revolution progresses: all the music, film and text ever produced will be available on-demand in our own homes your "bodynet" will let you make phone calls, check email and pay bills as you walk down the street advances in telecommunication will radically alter the role of face-to-face contact in our lives global disparities in infrastructure will widen the gap between rich and poor surgical mini-robots and online care will change the practice of medicine as we know it. Detailed, accessible and visionary, What Will Be is essential for Information Age revolutionaries and technological neophytes alike.

Moon Chosen
Moon Chosen

Author: P. C. Cast

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

Published: 2016-10-18

Total Pages: 608

ISBN-13: 1250100747

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The first book in an epic series. Five months on the bestseller list. Read the book that started the blockbuster bestselling series by #1 New York Times bestselling author P.C. Cast. #1 New York Times bestselling author P.C. Cast brings us Moon Chosen, a new epic fantasy set in a world where humans, their animal allies, and the earth itself has been drastically changed. A world filled with beauty and danger and cruelty... Mari is an Earth Walker, heir to the unique healing powers of her Clan; but she has cast her duties aside, until she is chosen by a special animal ally, altering her destiny forever. When a deadly attack tears her world apart, Mari reveals the strength of her powers and the forbidden secret of her dual nature as she embarks on a mission to save her people. It is not until Nik, the son of the leader from a rival, dominating clan strays across her path, that Mari experiences something she has never felt before... Now, darkness is coming, and with it, a force, more terrible and destructive than the world has ever seen, leaving Mari to cast the shadows from the earth. By forming a tumultuous alliance with Nik, she must make herself ready. Ready to save her people. Ready to save herself and Nik. Ready to embrace her true destiny...and obliterate the forces that threaten to destroy them all.

The Next Factory of the World
The Next Factory of the World

Author: Irene Yuan Sun

Publisher: Harvard Business Press

Published: 2017-10-17

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1633692825

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A Best Business Book of 2017 -- The Financial Times China is now the biggest foreign player in Africa. It's Africa's largest trade partner, the largest infrastructure financier, and the fastest-growing source of foreign direct investment. Chinese entrepreneurs are flooding into the continent, investing in long-term assets such as factories and heavy equipment. Considering Africa's difficult history of colonialism, one might suspect that China's activity there is another instance of a foreign power exploiting resources. But as author Irene Yuan Sun vividly shows in this remarkable book, it is really a story about resilient Chinese entrepreneurs building in Africa what they so recently learned to build in China--a global manufacturing powerhouse. The fact that China sees Africa not for its poverty but for its potential wealth is a striking departure from the attitude of the West, particularly that of the United States. Despite fifty years of Western aid programs, Africa still has more people living in extreme poverty than any other region in the world. Those who are serious about raising living standards across the continent know that another strategy is needed. Chinese investment gives rise to a tantalizing possibility: that Africa can industrialize in the coming generation. With a manufacturing-led transformation, Africa would be following in the footsteps of the United States in the nineteenth century, Japan in the early twentieth, and the Asian Tigers in the late twentieth. Many may consider this an old-fashioned way to develop, but as Sun argues, it's the only one that's proven to raise living standards across entire societies in a lasting way. And with every new Chinese factory boss setting up machinery and hiring African workers--and managers--that possibility becomes more real for Africa. With fascinating and moving human stories along with incisive business and economic analysis, The Next Factory of the World will make you rethink both China's role in the world and Africa's future in the globalized economy.

New World, Inc.
New World, Inc.

Author: John Butman

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2018-03-20

Total Pages: 483

ISBN-13: 0316307874

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Three generations of English merchant adventurers-not the Pilgrims, as we have so long believed-were the earliest founders of America. Profit-not piety-was their primary motive. Some seventy years before the Mayflower sailed, a small group of English merchants formed "The Mysterie, Company, and Fellowship of Merchant Adventurers for the Discovery of Regions, Dominions, Islands, and Places Unknown," the world's first joint-stock company. Back then, in the mid-sixteenth century, England was a small and relatively insignificant kingdom on the periphery of Europe, and it had begun to face a daunting array of social, commercial, and political problems. Struggling with a single export-woolen cloth-the merchants were forced to seek new markets and trading partners, especially as political discord followed the straitened circumstances in which so many English people found themselves. At first they headed east, and dreamed of Cathay-China, with its silks and exotic luxuries. Eventually, they turned west, and so began a new chapter in world history. The work of reaching the New World required the very latest in navigational science as well as an extraordinary appetite for risk. As this absorbing account shows, innovation and risk-taking were at the heart of the settlement of America, as was the profit motive. Trade and business drove English interest in America, and determined what happened once their ships reached the New World. The result of extensive archival work and a bold interpretation of the historical record, New World, Inc. draws a portrait of life in London, on the Atlantic, and across the New World that offers a fresh analysis of the founding of American history. In the tradition of the best works of history that make us reconsider the past and better understand the present, Butman and Targett examine the enterprising spirit that inspired European settlement of America and established a national culture of entrepreneurship and innovation that continues to this day.