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  Genghis Khan - Life Death and...

  John Man

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  “A thrilling account” of the brilliant, ruthless founder of the Mongol Empire (The Guardian). 
   
  Genghis Khan is one of history’s immortals, alive in memory as a scourge, hero, military genius and demigod. To Muslims, Russians, and westerners, he is a murderer of millions, a brutal oppressor. Yet in his homeland of Mongolia he is the revered father of the nation, and the Chinese honor him as the founder of a dynasty. In his so-called Mausoleum in Inner Mongolia, worshippers seek the blessing of his spirit. In a supreme paradox, the world’s most ruthless conqueror has become a force for peace and reconciliation. 
   
  As a teenager, Genghis was a fugitive, hiding from enemies on a remote mountainside. Yet he went on to found the world’s greatest land empire and change the course of world history. Brilliant and original as well as ruthless, he ruled an empire twice the size of Rome’s until his death in 1227 placed all at risk. To secure his conquests and then extend them, his heirs kept his death a secret—and secrecy has surrounded him ever since. His undiscovered grave, with its imagined treasures, remains the subject of intrigue and speculation. 
   
  This is more than just a gripping account of Genghis’ rise and conquests. John Man uses firsthand experiences in China and Mongolia to reveal the khan’s enduring influence. He has traveled the length of the empire, and he spotlights the tension between Mongols and Chinese, who both claim Genghis’ spirit. He is the first writer to explore the hidden valley where Genghis is believed to have died, and one of the few westerners to climb the mountain where he was likely buried. 
   
  This stunning narrative paints a vivid picture of the man himself, the places where he lived and fought, and the passions that surround him still. For in legend, ritual, and intense controversy, Genghis lives on. 
   
  “[An] engrossing book.” —Booklist 
   
  “A rattling good read.” —The Independent

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  Forgotten Souls - The Search for...

  Cheryl W. Thompson

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  NPR investigative journalist and the daughter of a Tuskegee Airman, Cheryl W. Thompson explores the stories of the 27 Tuskegee Airmen—the Black pilots who fought for America in WWII—who went missing in combat, the lives they lived, the reasons their planes went down, why the remains of all but two were never found, and the impact their disappearances had on their families and communities. 
    
  In 1945, World War II ended one of the deadliest conflicts in history. Geared for battle were nearly 1,000 trailblazing Black pilots trained at the Tuskegee Army Air Field, an unrepentantly segregated facility in Alabama. Hailing from the Iowa cornfields to the Texas Gulf Coast to the tobacco plantations of North Carolina, the Tuskegee Airmen already proved, under the toughest circumstances, to be among the most resilient and defiantly patriotic men of the Army Air Corps. 
    
  Twenty-seven of them disappeared during the final critical missions in Europe. So, too, would the government’s efforts to find them or help to bring closure to the loved ones that the valiant 332nd Fighter Group left behind. 
    
  In Forgotten Souls, award-winning investigative journalist Cheryl W. Thompson delves into the true stories of the Black combat pilots who faced unimaginable racism—before, during and after the war—from a military that told them they were less than, even as their courage and aviation prowess saved scores of White brothers-in-arms from the enemy and possibly death. 
    
  As cruel as war itself could be, the friends, family, communities and fellow Tuskegee Airmen who mourned the lost pilots never imagined how unforgivable it could get. After 80 years, Forgotten Souls honors the impact they made, and the sacrifices they endured on America’s behalf. 
    
  “Forgotten Souls is a tenacious reporting journey that illuminates a part of American history too often relegated to the shadows. Its exploration ensures heroic men and women won’t be forgotten, starting with the author’s own father.”—Robert Samuels, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of His Name Is George Floyd

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  Pragmatism

  John R. Shook

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  A concise, accessible overview of pragmatism, the most influential school of American philosophical thought. 
   
   
   
  Pragmatism, America's homegrown philosophy, has been a major intellectual movement for over a century. Unlike its rivals, it reaches well beyond the confines of philosophy into concerns and disciplines as diverse as religion, politics, science, and culture. In this concise, engagingly written overview, John R. Shook describes pragmatism's origins, concepts, and continuing global relevance and appeal. With attention to the movement's original thinkers—Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead—as well as its contemporary proponents, he explains how pragmatism thinks about what is real, what can be known, and what minds are doing. And because of pragmatism's far-reaching impact, Shook shows how its views on reality, truth, knowledge, and cognition coordinate with its approaches to agency, sociality, human nature, and personhood.

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  Narrative of the Life of...

  Frederick Douglass

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  Part of the Hero Classics series 
  “Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” 
  Douglass cultivated himself to such an extent that the listeners of his lectures doubted if his narratives were true. His autobiography is both a compelling tale of a slave and a contribution to the public discourse on slavery. His language is poetic and precise honed in its simplicity as if something artificially put together but immensely natural at the same time. Opening this book is opening the door into Douglass's consciousness and tracking his inner journey of finding himself in the world: a story of his childhood and youth – a long and laborious path to freedom. Douglass talks about the explicit punishments and tortures that slaves were exposed to. Despite the suffering, he emphasises the power of self-education and continuous resistance that pushes one to fight their predicament. The publication of this book was such an unprecedented event that the author had to leave the US for Europe for about two years. The fact that Douglass's experience and meditations were issued in print gave him a wider audience, not restricting dissemination of his beliefs to those who could physically come to his public speeches. 
  The Hero Classics series:MeditationsThe ProphetA Room of One’s OwnIncidents in the Life of a Slave GirlThe Art of WarThe Life of Charlotte BronteThe RepublicThe PrinceNarrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American SlaveUtopia

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  The Internet Is Not What You...

  Justin E. H. Smith

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  An original deep history of the internet that tells the story of the centuries-old utopian dreams behind it—and explains why they have died today 
   
  Many think of the internet as an unprecedented and overwhelmingly positive achievement of modern human technology. But is it? In The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is, Justin Smith offers an original deep history of the internet, from  
  the ancient to the modern world—uncovering its surprising origins in nature and centuries-old dreams of radically improving human life by outsourcing thinking to machines and communicating across vast distances. Yet, despite the internet’s  
  continuing potential, Smith argues, the utopian hopes behind it have finally died today, killed by the harsh realities of social media, the global information economy, and the attention-destroying nature of networked technology. 
   
  Ranging over centuries of the history and philosophy of science and technology, Smith shows how the “internet” has been with us much longer than we usually think. He draws fascinating connections between internet user experience,  
  artificial intelligence, the invention of the printing press, communication between trees, and the origins of computing in the machine-driven looms of the silk industry. At the same time, he reveals how the internet’s organic structure and  
  development root it in the natural world in unexpected ways that challenge efforts to draw an easy line between technology and nature. 
   
  Combining the sweep of intellectual history with the incisiveness of philosophy, The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is cuts through our daily digital lives to give a clear-sighted picture of what the internet is, where it came from, and where it might be taking us in the coming decades.

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  I Dream with Open Eyes - A Memoir

  George Prochnik

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  Whatever the ideological slant of our information feeds, nowadays we all share a sense of binge-watching the apocalypse. Facing so much uncertainty, we need a language for thinking about the unknown not simply as a threat but also as a space of fertile possibility. George Prochnik has chosen to reflect on these urgent themes through the lens of a personal narrative: an account of his own family's decision to leave the United States. 
   
   
   
  I Dream with Open Eyes begins with an exploration of Prochnik's ancestral past: the pilgrimage of his mother's family, who were among the first English settlers in the New World. In the aftermath of the 2016 election, a parallel migration unfolds as Prochnik, along with his wife and their son, makes the decision to uproot their lives in New York to move to England. 
   
   
   
  A deep critique of this current moment, Prochnik takes the words of nineteenth-century poet Heinrich Heine, "I dream with open eyes, and my eyes see," as an inspiration to ask how, as a society, we might use art and literature to refract and expand our vision of the future, while simultaneously generating a new focus on present realities.

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