Books
The Evolution of the Armed Forces of the United Arab Emirates
by Athol Yates
This book traces the little-known and fascinating history of the country’s Armed Forces. It provides unparalleled detail on the constituent forces that evolved into the UAE Armed Forces in 1976, and how the unified force has grown since then. It provides essential background information on the country, the enduring roles of the military and the history of each military service, plus details on the political and command structure governing the military, and its manpower and materiel characteristics. The book concludes with profiles of the military sheikhs who have and continue to be central to the development of this growing regional powerhouse.
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From Rebel to Ruler: One Hundred Years of the Chinese Communist Party
by Tony Saich
Tony Saich tells the authoritative, comprehensive story of the Chinese Communist Party―its rise to power against incredible odds, its struggle to consolidate rule and overcome self-inflicted disasters, and its thriving amid other communist parties’ collapse. Saich argues that the brutal Japanese invasion in the 1930s actually helped the party. As the Communists retreated into the countryside, they established themselves as the populist, grassroots alternative to the Nationalists, gaining the support they would need to triumph in the civil war. Once in power, however, the Communists faced the difficult task of learning how to rule. Saich examines the devastating economic consequences of Mao’s Great Leap Forward and the political chaos of the Cultural Revolution, as well as the party’s rebound under Deng Xiaoping’s reforms.
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Tata: The Global Corporation That Built Indian Capitalism
by Mircea Raianu
Mircea Raianu tracks the fortunes of a family-run business that was born during the high noon of the British Empire and went on to capture the world’s attention with the headline-making acquisition of luxury car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover. The growth of Tata was a complex process shaped by world historical forces: the eclipse of imperial free trade, the intertwined rise of nationalism and the developmental state, and finally the return of globalization and market liberalization. Today Tata is the leading light of one of the world’s major economies, selling steel, chemicals, food, financial services, and nearly everything else, while operating philanthropic institutions that channel expert knowledge in fields such as engineering and medicine. Based on painstaking research in the company’s archive, Tata elucidates how a titan of industry was created and what lessons its story may hold for the future of global capitalism.
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20.07
The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos
by Sohrab Ahmari
As a young father and a self-proclaimed “radically assimilated immigrant,” opinion editor Sohrab Ahmari realized that when it comes to shaping his young son’s moral fiber, today’s America comes up short. For millennia, the world’s great ethical and religious traditions taught that true happiness lies in pursuing virtue and accepting limits. But now, unbound from these stubborn traditions, we are free to choose whichever way of life we think is most optimal—or, more often than not, merely the easiest. All that remains are the fickle desires that a wealthy, technologically advanced society is equipped to fulfill. The result is a society riven by deep conflict and individual lives that, for all their apparent freedom, are marked by alienation and stark unhappiness.
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The Call: Inside the Global Saudi Religious Project
by Krithika Varagur
The Call connects the dots on Saudi Arabia’s campaign to propagate its brand of ultraconservative Islam worldwide after it became oil-rich in the 20th century. Varagur visits diverse outposts of its influence, from a Saudi university in Jakarta to a beleaguered Shi’a movement in Nigeria. She finds that the campaign has had remarkably broad and sometimes uniform effects, from the intolerance of religious minorities to the rise of powerful Saudi-educated clerics. The kingdom has spent billions of dollars on its da’wa, or call to Islam, at many points with the direct support of the United States. But what have been the lasting effects of Saudi influence today? And what really happened to their campaign in the 21st century, after oil revenues slumped and after their activities became increasingly subject to international scrutiny?
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Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism
by Amanda Montell
What makes “cults” so intriguing and frightening? What makes them powerful? The reason why so many of us binge Manson documentaries by the dozen and fall down rabbit holes researching suburban moms gone QAnon is because we’re looking for a satisfying explanation for what causes people to join—and more importantly, stay in—extreme groups. We secretly want to know: could it happen to me? Amanda Montell’s argument is that, on some level, it already has . . . Our culture tends to provide pretty flimsy answers to questions of cult influence, mostly having to do with vague talk of “brainwashing.” But the true answer has nothing to do with freaky mind-control wizardry or Kool-Aid. In Cultish, Montell argues that the key to manufacturing intense ideology, community, and us/them attitudes all comes down to language. In both positive ways and shadowy ones, cultish language is something we hear—and are influenced by—every single day.
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Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass
by Mary L. Gray и Siddharth Suri
Hidden beneath the surface of the web, lost in our wrong-headed debates about AI, a new menace is looming. Anthropologist Mary L. Gray and computer scientist Siddharth Suri team up to unveil how services delivered by companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Uber can only function smoothly thanks to the judgment and experience of a vast, invisible human labor force. These people doing «ghost work» make the internet seem smart. They perform high-tech piecework: flagging X-rated content, proofreading, designing engine parts, and much more. An estimated 8 percent of Americans have worked at least once in this “ghost economy,” and that number is growing. They usually earn less than legal minimums for traditional work, they have no health benefits, and they can be fired at any time for any reason, or none.
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Beyond the Valley: How Innovators around the World are Overcoming Inequality and Creating the Technologies of Tomorrow
by Ramesh Srinivasan
In this provocative book, Ramesh Srinivasan describes the internet as both an enabler of frictionless efficiency and a dirty tangle of politics, economics, and other inefficient, inharmonious human activities. We may love the immediacy of Google search results, the convenience of buying from Amazon, and the elegance and power of our Apple devices, but it’s a one-way, top-down process. We’re not asked for our input, or our opinions—only for our data. The internet is brought to us by wealthy technologists in Silicon Valley and China. It’s time, Srinivasan argues, that we think in terms beyond the Valley.
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Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power and A.I. in a Traumatized World
by Charles Hugh Smith
Will you be richer or poorer? What does the future hold for you—and for the world? Supposedly we’re all getting richer, but many of us feel we’re becoming poorer. Why?One reason is our economy doesn’t even measure many kinds of wealth and ignores many costs. Clearly, clean air and water, good health and civil liberties are valuable, but you won’t find these on any balance sheet. Our system’s incentives are to maximize short-term financial profits, and everything else is treated as if it doesn’t exist.This book tackles three critical questions: 1. What if everything we don’t measure is worth more than financial wealth? Our obsession with financial capital is blinding us to a traumatizing global decline in other forms of wealth. 2. Will artificial intelligence (A.I.) make us all richer? What if A.I. will only enrich the few who own the platforms and technology?3. Is our economic model dooming us?
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Bridgital Nation: Solving Technology’s People Problem
by N. Chandrasekaran и Roopa Purushothaman
In this groundbreaking book, chairman of Tata Sons, N. Chandrasekaran presents a powerful vision for the future. To the coming disruption of artificial intelligence, he proposes an ingenious solution, where India is perfectly positioned to pave a unique path from the rest of the world. Instead of accepting technology as an inevitable replacement for human labour, India can use it as an aid; instead of taking them away, AI can generate jobs.
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The Fight for Fairfax: Private Citizens and Public Policymaking
by Russ Banham
This second edition of The Fight for Fairfax will appeal especially to those with an interest in business history and the challenges and opportunities linked to growth and change and to those interested in the region’s history.
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Formation: The Making of Nigeria from Jihad to Amalgamation
by Fola Fagbule и Feyi Fawehinmi
Formation: From Jihad to Amalgamation tracks the unlikely series of events and characters that turned a collection of disparate nations into a British colony in 1914. But the story of Nigeria’s formation begins much earlier, in 1804 when the jihadists launched their attack on countries along the Niger river. What unfolds is a story of conquests and slavery, betrayals and bravery, rivers and riots, victors and vanquished, all of which are central to understanding modern Black struggles. Formation runs, like the rivers Niger and Benue, through the rise and fall of empires. It explores Dan Fodio’s revolutionary jihad and the spread of Islam, the fall of the Oyo Empire, the influence of the returnee freed slaves, the growing influence of Christianity, and the palm oil politics in the Niger Delta in the territory that would come to be known as Nigeria. Inextricably linked to this is the story of the ascendency of the British Empire and the Industrial Revolution.
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Воспитание машин. Новая история разума
Автор: Сергей Шумский
Каковы социальные и экономические последствия развития машинного интеллекта и как изменится наша жизнь в ближайшие десятилетия? Отвечая на эти вопросы, известный российский специалист в области искусственного интеллекта Сергей Шумский использует исторический подход, отслеживая смену технологических эпох вплоть до сегодняшних дней. Появление машинного интеллекта знаменует начало перехода к новому укладу, новой цифровой экономике. Но эта революция, как и любая другая, чревата множеством рисков – от потери социальной стабильности в отдельных странах и на международной арене до экзистенциальных вызовов, связанных с утратой отдельными людьми и человечеством в целом контроля над собственной судьбой. Поэтому очень важно, чтобы искусственный разум максимально приближался к человеческому в отношении общественных инстинктов и гуманистических ценностей, а следовательно, настаивает автор, необходима надежная практическая программа по формированию человекоподобной искусственной психики и развитию новой науки машинного воспитания.