An unexpected inheritance gives the Heffley family a chance to make major improvements to their home. But they soon find that construction isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. When things get rough, will the Heffleys be able to stay ... or will they be forced to move?
Included in Backchannel’s (WIRED.com) “Top Tech Books of 2017” An “important” book on the “pervasive influence of Silicon Valley on our economy, culture and politics.” —New York Times How the titans of tech's embrace of economic disruption and a rampant libertarian ideology is fracturing America and making it a meaner place In The Know-It-Alls former New York Times technology columnist Noam Cohen chronicles the rise of Silicon Valley as a political and intellectual force in American life. Beginning nearly a century ago and showcasing the role of Stanford University as the incubator of this new class of super geeks, Cohen shows how smart guys like Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Mark Zuckerberg fell in love with a radically individualistic ideal and then mainstreamed it. With these very rich men leading the way, unions, libraries, public schools, common courtesy, and even government itself have been pushed aside to make way for supposedly efficient market-based encounters via the Internet. Donald Trump’s election victory was an inadvertent triumph of the "disruption" that Silicon Valley has been pushing: Facebook and Twitter, eager to entertain their users, turned a blind eye to the fake news and the hateful ideas proliferating there. The Rust Belt states that shifted to Trump are the ones being left behind by a "meritocratic" Silicon Valley ideology that promotes an economy where, in the words of LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, each of us is our own start-up. A society that belittles civility, empathy, and collaboration can easily be led astray. The Know-It-Alls explains how these self-proclaimed geniuses failed this most important test of democracy.
Marking his 17th studio album, 'Wrecking Ball' features 11 new Springsteen recordings and was produced by Ron Aniello with Bruce Springsteen and executive producer Jon Landau. Said long-time manager Jon Landau, "Bruce has dug down as deep as he can to come up with this vision of modern life. The lyrics tell a story you can't hear anywhere else and the music is his most innovative of recent years. The writing is some of the best of his career and both veteran fans and those who are new to Bruce will find much to love on 'Wrecking Ball.'" This special edition of 'Wrecking Ball' includes two bonus tracks and exclusive artwork and photography.
Psychomachia reads like an NA meeting with Donna Tartt, Joan Didion, DBC Pierre, James Frey, Angela Carter, Reinaldo Arenas, Virginia Despentes and JT Leroy battling their collective consciousness. Literature like this is usually presented through the male gaze, hence the fashion and rock n roll literati naming Kirsty Allison London's finest. She's hilarious - she's fucked up. Scarlet Flagg is so wasted, she doesn't know if she killed the arch patriarch of rock n roll, Malachi Wright of Wright States International Touring after he raped her at a festival at 14. Scarlet is the kinda girl you wanna help, fuck, and leave. But is she dangerous? Did she murder Malachi or was it her boyfriend, Iggy Papershoes, frontman of Heroshima? Or perhaps her drug-dealing father? Scarlet doesn't remember - she hardly remembers her own name. This is brutal female drug-lit at its finest. The first novel of the real nineties, Scarlet is an unreliable narrator of epic fin-de-millennia proportions floating in a Shoreditch-warehouse haze. Her fast moving chronicle of the secret drug-filled, love starved, sex satiated-nightmare world of East End fashion, art and music afterparties is set in an era before MeToo, when stigmas meant keeping schtum, and getting in with the male-dominated in-crowd relied on copious amounts of class-As. Like Jean Genet in a prison cell, without camera phones, social media or mental health awareness, Scarlet searches for redemption in the pursuit of revenge through blurred lines in Ibiza, Paris, London and New York.
The pressure's really piling up on Greg Heffley. His mom thinks video games are turning his brain to mush, so she wants her son to put down the controller and explore his "creative side." As if that's not scary enough, Halloween's just around the corner and the frights are coming at Greg from every angle. When Greg discovers a bag of gummy worms, it sparks an idea. Can he get his mom off his back by making a movie . . . and will he become rich and famous in the process? Or will doubling down on this plan just double Greg's troubles?
The Wrecking Ball is a collection of Aislin's recent favourite cartoons. All of the choice political material is here: Pauline Marois as Miley Cyrus, the Parti Québécois's Charter of Quebec Values, student demonstrators wandering through Montreal's deteriorating streets, corruption inquires and Montreal's succession of mayors, the Harper Tories and the Canadian Senate debacle, the coronation of Justin Trudeau, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, the Habs and the Sochi Olympics. Whew!
In 2011, Janet Devlin wowed X-Factor judges and charmed the nation with her unique vocals and performances. She consistently received the highest consecutive public vote out of all the contestants and gained a place on the live arena tour. But rather than this steering her towards greater musical success, Janet faced numerous challenges which almost cost her her career... "Believe it or not, you're holding my life in your hands. Not the picture-perfect version we've all become accustomed to, thanks to social media. This is my life as I've lived it - no filters.Each chapter in this book unlocks the truth behind a song from my album Confessional. They span ten years of intense self-discovery married with a lot of self-sabotage. My broken brain has taken me to dark places both in my own head and in the real world. But, with destruction comes creation. I genuinely hope that My Confessional does not personally resonate with you and that you've not been to the same Hell that I've come to call Home, but if you have let my life be proof that it all works out in the end. I see now that the world is truly what we make of it and that everything happens for a reason. Or, at least, that's what I tell myself. Here lyeth my confessional of the sins I want so much to be free from and to finally forgive myself for what I've done. I confess.Janet Devlin"
explosexuawesome: adj. An eye-bursting, skull-incinerating, kitty-consternating brand of cool. You know, the type of job we all want. Author Mose Hayward will have you laughing all the way to a new career with The Explosexuawesome Career Guide. Yes, there are actual people who are paid to blow up yachts, taste ice cream, and stand around nightclubs looking cool. How does one go about landing such jobs? What are the qualifications? And more important, how much does one get paid? These questions and many more are hilariously answered in Mose Hayward's The Explosexuawesome Career Guide. Exposing all the cool careers your guidance counselor never mentioned, The Explosexuawesome Career Guide is a perfect (and totally necessary) gift for all recent graduates. Weird, bizarre, and unusual but totally awesome jobs are out there for the taking. Author Hayward has sought out holders of these most outlandish, one-in-a-million jobs, and interviewed them to discover crucial information, such as how they got hired and what they do all day. With Hayward's insightful interviews, the reader gets hilarious step-by-step instructions on how they, too, can achieve these cool-yet-odd positions. Each career is illustrated by the comic art of Chris Stangl. This outlandish parody of career guidebooks is sure to entertain, whether or not you're in the market for a new career.