Tag: politics
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Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara
The grimmest travelogue I have ever read. This blew me away. The author’s style is blunt, clear and succinct, which makes this very readable and fast. The subject matter is another story though. Kara structures his book carefully, taking the reader on a trip from Kinshasa to the deepest parts of the Congo, to site…
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These are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs—and Wrecks—America by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner
I read a lot of ‘capitalists behaving badly’ books, and this was stunning even by those standards. It’s an interesting companion to The Big Myth in that it details exactly how wealthy private equity convinces governments and regulators that it’s a force for good in the world, while that’s only true for the bank balances of…
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The Ward: The Life and Loss of Toronto’s First Immigrant Neighbourhood by John Lorinc (ed.)
Bite-sized Toronto history that will send you on a scavenger hunt.
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Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology by Chris Miller
This is kind of two books. The first half is basically the post-WWII history of computers, full of colourful characters and rich (if too brief) stories. It reads like an abridged version of Isaacson’s The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution – there are even several sections which could make…
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The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro
The Power Broker is a masterpiece. Essential reading
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My Fourth Time, We Drowned: Seeking Refuge on the World’s Deadliest Migration Route by Sally Hayden
What debt do first-world, colonialist nations owe to nations that they victimized in the past? Whose interests should the UN, the ICC, and other NGOs represent? How does the media shape our perception of humanitarian crises though language, and accepting the narrative that governments and well-funded aid groups hire expensive PR firms to write and…