Jonathan Safran Foer

Inside of book in pretty good condition, but some slight fraying and rips on cover of spine (see photo)

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Minnesota

Like many young Americans, Jonathan Safran Foer spent much of his teenage and college years oscillating between enthusiastic carnivore and occasional vegetarian. As he became a husband, and then a father, the moral dimensions of eating became increasingly important to him. Faced with the prospect of being unable to explain why we eat some animals and not others, Foer set out to explore the origins of many eating traditions and the fictions involved with creating them. Traveling to the darkest corners of our dining habits, Foer raises the unspoken question behind every fish we eat, every chicken we fry, and every burger we grill. Part memoir and part investigative report, Eating Animals is a book that, in the words of the Los Angeles Times, places Jonathan Safran Foer "at the table with our greatest philosophers."

Eating Animals

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David Graeber

On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy

From the author of the international bestseller Debt- The First 5,000 Years comes a revelatory account of the way bureaucracy rules our lives

Where does the desire for endless rules, regulations, and bureaucracy come from? How did we come to spend so much of our time filling out forms? And is it really a cipher for state violence?

To answer these questions, the anthropologist David Graeber-one of our most important and provocative thinkers-traces the peculiar and unexpected ways we relate to bureaucracy today, and reveals how it shapes our lives in ways we may not even notice...though he also suggests that there may be something perversely appealing-even romantic-about bureaucracy.

Leaping from the ascendance of right-wing economics to the hidden meanings behind Sherlock Holmes and Batman, The Utopia of Rules is at once a powerful work of social theory in the tradition of Foucault and Marx, and an entertaining reckoning with popular culture that calls to mind Slavoj Zizek at his most accessible.

An essential book for our times,The Utopia of Rulesis sure to start a million conversations about the institutions that rule over us-and the better, freer world we should, perhaps, begin to imagine for ourselves.

The Utopia of Rules

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Cathy O'Neil

How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy

Longlisted for the National Book Award New York Times Bestseller A former Wall Street quant sounds an alarm on the mathematical models that pervade modern life -- and threaten to rip apart our social fabric We live in the age of the algorithm. Increasingly, the decisions that affect our lives--where we go to school, whether we get a car loan, how much we pay for health insurance--are being made not by humans, but by mathematical models. In theory, this should lead to greater fairness: Everyone is judged according to the same rules, and bias is eliminated. But as Cathy O'Neil reveals in this urgent and necessary book, the opposite is true. The models being used today are opaque, unregulated, and uncontestable, even when they're wrong. Most troubling, they reinforce discrimination: If a poor student can't get a loan because a lending model deems him too risky (by virtue of his zip code), he's then cut off from the kind of education that could pull him out of poverty, and a vicious spiral ensues. Models are propping up the lucky and punishing the downtrodden, creating a "toxic cocktail for democracy." Welcome to the dark side of Big Data. Tracing the arc of a person's life, O'Neil exposes the black box models that shape our future, both as individuals and as a society. These "weapons of math destruction" score teachers and students, sort r sum s, grant (or deny) loans, evaluate workers, target voters, set parole, and monitor our health. O'Neil calls on modelers to take more responsibility for their algorithms and on policy makers to regulate their use. But in the end, it's up to us to become more savvy about the models that govern our lives. This important book empowers us to ask the tough questions, uncover the truth, and demand change. -- Longlist for National Book Award (Non-Fiction) -- Goodreads, semi-finalist for the 2016 Goodreads Choice Awards (Science and Technology) -- Kirkus, Best Books of 2016 -- New York Times, 100 Notable Books of 2016 (Non-Fiction) -- The Guardian, Best Books of 2016 -- WBUR's "On Point," Best Books of 2016: Staff Picks -- Boston Globe, Best Books of 2016, Non-Fiction

Weapons of Math Destruction

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Ta-Nehisi Coates

Slight denting on front and back of cover. Otherwise like new condition. 

In the 150 years since the end of the Civil War and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, the story of race and America has remained a brutally simple one, written on flesh: it is the story of the black body, exploited to create the country's foundational wealth, violently segregated to unite a nation after a civil war, and, today, still disproportionately threatened, locked up and killed in the streets. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can America reckon with its fraught racial history? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’ attempt to answer those questions, presented in the form of a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his own awakening to the truth about history and race through a series of revelatory experiences: immersion in nationalist mythology as a child; engagement with history, poetry and love at Howard University; travels to Civil War battlefields and the South Side of Chicago; a journey to France that reorients his sense of the world; and pilgrimages to the homes of mothers whose children's lives have been taken as American plunder. Taken together, these stories map a winding path towards a kind of liberation—a journey from fear and confusion, to a full and honest understanding of the world as it is. Masterfully woven from lyrical personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me offers a powerful new framework for understanding America's history and current crisis, and a transcendent vision for a way forward.

Between the World and Me

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Nathan J. Robinson

In this sharp collection of essays from Current Affairs magazine, Nathan J. Robinson systematically demolishes the flimsy intellectual chicanery of contemporary critics of the left. Robinson shows the bankruptcy of conservative ideas and the value of a humane egalitarian alternative.

The Current Affairs Rules for Life

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Claudia Rankine

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

An American Conversation

FINALIST FOR THE 2021 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN NONFICTION

Claudia Rankine'sCitizen changed the conversation--Just Us urges all of us into it

As everyday white supremacy becomes increasingly vocalized with no clear answers at hand, how best might we approach one another? Claudia Rankine, without telling us what to do, urges us to begin the discussions that might open pathways through this divisive and stuck moment in American history.

Just Us is an invitation to discover what it takes to stay in the room together, even and especially in breaching the silence, guilt, and violence that follow direct addresses of whiteness. Rankine's questions disrupt the false comfort of our culture's liminal and private spaces--the airport, the theater, the dinner party, the voting booth--where neutrality and politeness live on the surface of differing commitments, beliefs, and prejudices as our public and private lives intersect.

This brilliant arrangement of essays, poems, and images includes the voices and rebuttals of others: white men in first class responding to, and with, their white male privilege; a friend's explanation of her infuriating behavior at a play; and women confronting the political currency of dying their hair blond, all running alongside fact-checked notes and commentary that complements Rankine's own text, complicating notions of authority and who gets the last word.

Sometimes wry, often vulnerable, and always prescient,Just Us is Rankine's most intimate work, less interested in being right than in being true, being together.

Just Us

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Michel Foucault

Slight denting and color lift on cover. Inside in excellent condition

The Birth of the Prison

A brilliant work from the most influential philosopher since Sartre.

In this indispensable work, a brilliant thinker suggests that such vaunted reforms as the abolition of torture and the emergence of the modern penitentiary have merely shifted the focus of punishment from the prisoner's body to his soul.

Discipline and Punish

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Thomas Warburton

Remnants of sticker on top of book cover. Otherwise like new

In a collection of stories, readers will discover how the Moomin family spend their first Christmas out of hibernation, how they save young Ninny from permanent invisibility, and what happens when Moomintroll catches the last dragon in the world.

Tales from Moominvalley

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Baz Dreisinger

Water damage on dust jacket and front cover (see photos). Otherwise inside of book is in good condition

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

A Journey to Justice in Prisons Around the World

Beginning in Africa and ending in Europe, Incarceration Nations is a first-person odyssey through the prison systems of the world. Professor, journalist and founder of the Prison-to-College-Pipeline, Baz Dreisinger looks into the human stories of incarcerated men and women and those who imprison them, creating a jarring, poignant view of a world to which most are denied access, and a rethinking of one of America's most far-reaching global exports: the modern prison complex.

Incarceration Nations

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Zachary Mason

Dent and ink marks on bottom of book. Otherwise in good condition.

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

A Novel

A riveting, beautifully written, fugue-like novel of AIs, memory, violence, and mortality

Not far in the future the seas have risen and the central latitudes are emptying, but it's still a good time to be rich in San Francisco, where weapons drones patrol the skies to keep out the multitudinous poor. Irina isn't rich, not quite, but she does have an artificial memory that gives her perfect recall and lets her act as a medium between her various employers and their AIs, which are complex to the point of opacity. It's a good gig, paying enough for the annual visits to the Mayo Clinic that keep her from aging.

Kern has no such access; he's one of the many refugees in the sprawling drone-built favelas on the city's periphery, where he lives like a monk, training relentlessly in martial arts, scraping by as a thief and an enforcer. Thales is from a different world entirely--the mathematically inclined scion of a Brazilian political clan, he's fled to L.A. after the attack that left him crippled and his father dead.

A ragged stranger accosts Thales and demands to know how much he can remember. Kern flees for his life after robbing the wrong mark. Irina finds a secret in the reflection of a laptop's screen in her employer's eyeglasses. None are safe as they're pushed together by subtle forces that stay just out of sight.

Vivid, tumultuous, and propulsive, Void Star is Zachary Mason's mind-bending follow-up to his bestselling debut, The Lost Books of the Odyssey.

Void Star

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John Fox

Some marks on cover, but like new inside.

Social Studies

A Mathematical Primer for Social Statistics, Second Edition presents mathematics central to learning and understanding statistical methods beyond the introductory level: the basic "language" of matrices and linear algebra and its visual representation, vector geometry; differential and integral calculus; probability theory; common probability distributions; statistical estimation and inference, including likelihood-based and Bayesian methods. The volume concludes by applying mathematical concepts and operations to a familiar case, linear least-squares regression. The Second Edition pays more attention to visualization, including the elliptical geometry of quadratic forms and its application to statistics. It also covers some new topics, such as an introduction to Markov-Chain Monte Carlo methods, which are important in modern Bayesian statistics. A companion website includes materials that enable readers to use the R statistical computing environment to reproduce and explore computations and visualizations presented in the text. The book is an excellent companion to a "math camp" or a course designed to provide foundational mathematics needed to understand relatively advanced statistical methods.

Jiji K

@jiji704392

Books Listed

Following

Followers

Jonathan Safran Foer

Eating Animals

David Graeber

The Utopia of Rules

Cathy O'Neil

Weapons of Math Destruction

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Between the World and Me

Nathan J. Robinson

The Current Affairs Rules for Life

Claudia Rankine

Just Us

Michel Foucault

Discipline and Punish

Tove Jansson

Tales from Moominvalley

Baz Dreisinger

Incarceration Nations

Zachary Mason

Void Star

John Fox

A Mathematical Primer for Social Statistics

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Jonathan Safran Foer

Eating Animals

David Graeber

The Utopia of Rules

Cathy O'Neil

Weapons of Math Destruction

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Between the World and Me

Nathan J. Robinson

The Current Affairs Rules for Life

Claudia Rankine

Just Us

Michel Foucault

Discipline and Punish

Tove Jansson

Tales from Moominvalley

Baz Dreisinger

Incarceration Nations

Zachary Mason

Void Star

John Fox

A Mathematical Primer for Social Statistics

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