Epic Measures

Epic Measures
Author :
Publisher : Harper Collins
Total Pages : 169
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780062237521
ISBN-13 : 0062237527
Rating : 4/5 (21 Downloads)

Synopsis Epic Measures by : Jeremy N. Smith

Moneyball meets medicine in this remarkable chronicle of one of the greatest scientific quests of our time and the visionary mastermind behind it. Medical doctor and economist Christopher Murray began the Global Burden of Disease study to gain a truer understanding of how we live and how we die. While it is one of the largest scientific projects ever attempted—as breathtaking as the first moon landing or the Human Genome Project—the questions it answers are meaningful for every one of us: What are the world's health problems? Who do they hurt? How much? Where? Why? Murray argues that the ideal existence isn't simply the longest, but the one lived well and with the least illness. Until we can accurately measure global health issues, we cannot understand what makes us sick or do much to improve it. Challenging the accepted wisdom of the WHO and the UN, the charismatic and controversial health maverick has made enemies—as well as some influential friends, including Bill Gates who gave Murray a $100 million grant. Told with novelistic verve by acclaimed journalist Jeremy N. Smith, the story of Murray's lifelong determination to understand how we live and die encompasses wars and famines, presidents and activists, billionaires and billions of people worldwide living in poverty. It shows the human side of scientific revolutions and of revolutionary scientists—their breakthroughs and setbacks, their genius and their flaws, their champions and their critics—as they strive to bring the news of their findings to the world. This transformational effort is far from over, but the story of its genesis and impact is already an epic tale.

Cloud Atlas (20th Anniversary Edition)

Cloud Atlas (20th Anniversary Edition)
Author :
Publisher : Vintage Canada
Total Pages : 541
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780307373571
ISBN-13 : 0307373576
Rating : 4/5 (71 Downloads)

Synopsis Cloud Atlas (20th Anniversary Edition) by : David Mitchell

#1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A timeless, structure-bending classic that explores how actions of individual lives impact the past, present and future—from a postmodern visionary and one of the leading voices in fiction Featuring a new afterword by David Mitchell and a new introduction by Gabrielle Zevin, author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. The novel careens, with dazzling virtuosity, to Belgium in 1931, to the West Coast in the 1970s, to an inglorious present-day England, to a Korean superstate of the near future where neocapitalism has run amok, and, finally, to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history. But the story doesn’t end even there. The novel boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, David Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky. As wild as a video game, as mysterious as a Zen koan, Cloud Atlas is an unforgettable tour de force that, like its incomparable author, has transcended its cult classic status to become a worldwide phenomenon.

The Overstory: A Novel

The Overstory: A Novel
Author :
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages : 420
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780393635539
ISBN-13 : 0393635538
Rating : 4/5 (39 Downloads)

Synopsis The Overstory: A Novel by : Richard Powers

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction Winner of the William Dean Howells Medal Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize Over One Year on the New York Times Bestseller List A New York Times Notable Book and a Washington Post, Time, Oprah Magazine, Newsweek, Chicago Tribune, and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year "The best novel ever written about trees, and really just one of the best novels, period." —Ann Patchett The Overstory, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of—and paean to—the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

Seveneves

Seveneves
Author :
Publisher : Harper Collins
Total Pages : 419
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780062190413
ISBN-13 : 0062190415
Rating : 4/5 (13 Downloads)

Synopsis Seveneves by : Neal Stephenson

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anathem, Reamde, and Cryptonomicon comes an exciting and thought-provoking science fiction epic—a grand story of annihilation and survival spanning five thousand years. What would happen if the world were ending? A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space. But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain . . . Five thousand years later, their progeny—seven distinct races now three billion strong—embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown . . . to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth. A writer of dazzling genius and imaginative vision, Neal Stephenson combines science, philosophy, technology, psychology, and literature in a magnificent work of speculative fiction that offers a portrait of a future that is both extraordinary and eerily recognizable. As he did in Anathem, Cryptonomicon, the Baroque Cycle, and Reamde, Stephenson explores some of our biggest ideas and perplexing challenges in a breathtaking saga that is daring, engrossing, and altogether brilliant.

The Most Powerful Idea in the World

The Most Powerful Idea in the World
Author :
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Total Pages : 401
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780226726342
ISBN-13 : 0226726347
Rating : 4/5 (42 Downloads)

Synopsis The Most Powerful Idea in the World by : William Rosen

"The Most Powerful Idea in the World argues that the very notion of intellectual property drove not only the invention of the steam engine but also the entire Industrial Revolution." -- Back cover.

How to Prevent the Next Pandemic

How to Prevent the Next Pandemic
Author :
Publisher : Vintage
Total Pages : 235
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780593534496
ISBN-13 : 0593534492
Rating : 4/5 (96 Downloads)

Synopsis How to Prevent the Next Pandemic by : Bill Gates

Governments, businesses, and individuals around the world are thinking about what happens after the COVID-19 pandemic. Can we hope to not only ward off another COVID-like disaster but also eliminate all respiratory diseases, including the flu? Bill Gates, one of our greatest and most effective thinkers and activists, believes the answer is yes. The author of the #1 New York Times best seller How to Avoid a Climate Disaster lays out clearly and convincingly what the world should have learned from COVID-19 and what all of us can do to ward off another catastrophe like it. Relying on the shared knowledge of the world’s foremost experts and on his own experience of combating fatal diseases through the Gates Foundation, Gates first helps us understand the science of infectious diseases. Then he shows us how the nations of the world, working in conjunction with one another and with the private sector, how we can prevent a new pandemic from killing millions of people and devastating the global economy. Here is a clarion call—strong, comprehensive, and of the gravest importance.

The Plot to Get Bill Gates

The Plot to Get Bill Gates
Author :
Publisher : Three Rivers Press
Total Pages : 372
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0812990730
ISBN-13 : 9780812990737
Rating : 4/5 (30 Downloads)

Synopsis The Plot to Get Bill Gates by : Gary Rivlin

Moby Dick in Silicon Valley, this bright and readable (The New York Times) book tells the true story of Bill Gates and those who would harpoon him, offering a hilarious and original investigation into the meaning of America's most controversial mogul.

Homo Deus

Homo Deus
Author :
Publisher : HarperCollins
Total Pages : 464
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780062464354
ISBN-13 : 0062464353
Rating : 4/5 (54 Downloads)

Synopsis Homo Deus by : Yuval Noah Harari

Official U.S. edition with full color illustrations throughout. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Yuval Noah Harari, author of the critically-acclaimed New York Times bestseller and international phenomenon Sapiens, returns with an equally original, compelling, and provocative book, turning his focus toward humanity’s future, and our quest to upgrade humans into gods. Over the past century humankind has managed to do the impossible and rein in famine, plague, and war. This may seem hard to accept, but, as Harari explains in his trademark style—thorough, yet riveting—famine, plague and war have been transformed from incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces of nature into manageable challenges. For the first time ever, more people die from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals put together. The average American is a thousand times more likely to die from binging at McDonalds than from being blown up by Al Qaeda. What then will replace famine, plague, and war at the top of the human agenda? As the self-made gods of planet earth, what destinies will we set ourselves, and which quests will we undertake? Homo Deus explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century—from overcoming death to creating artificial life. It asks the fundamental questions: Where do we go from here? And how will we protect this fragile world from our own destructive powers? This is the next stage of evolution. This is Homo Deus. With the same insight and clarity that made Sapiens an international hit and a New York Times bestseller, Harari maps out our future.

The Rosie Project

The Rosie Project
Author :
Publisher : Penguin UK
Total Pages : 306
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781405912785
ISBN-13 : 1405912782
Rating : 4/5 (85 Downloads)

Synopsis The Rosie Project by : Graeme Simsion

Discover the delightfully heartwarming and life-affirming bestseller about one man's unlikely journey through love, perfect for fans of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine 'I couldn't put this book down. It's one of the most quirky and endearing romances I've ever read. I laughed the whole way through' SOPHIE KINSELLA 'Original, clever and perfectly written' JILL MANSELL ________ Love isn't an exact science - but no one told Don Tillman. A thirty-nine-year-old geneticist, Don's never had a second date. So he devises the Wife Project, a scientific test to find the perfect partner. Enter Rosie - 'the world's most incompatible woman' - throwing Don's safe, ordered life into chaos. But what is this unsettling, alien emotion he's feeling? . . . If you loved The Rosie Project, find out what Don did next in The Rosie Effect and The Rosie Result! ________ 'All three of the Rosie novels made me laugh out loud. Ultimately the story is about getting inside the mind and heart of someone a lot of people see as odd, and discovering that he isn't really that different from anybody else' BILL GATES 'Adorable' MARIAN KEYES 'Marvellous' JOHN BOYNE 'A sweet, funny rom-com . . . You'll be willing Don and Rosie on every step of the way' MARIE CLAIRE 'Hilarious, unlikely and heartbreaking' EASY LIVING

Showing Up for Life

Showing Up for Life
Author :
Publisher : Crown Currency
Total Pages : 210
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780385530378
ISBN-13 : 0385530374
Rating : 4/5 (78 Downloads)

Synopsis Showing Up for Life by : Bill Gates, Sr.

A heartfelt, deeply personal book that shines a bright light on the values and principles that Bill Gates Sr. has learned over a lifetime of “showing up”: lessons that he learned growing up during the Great Depression, and that he instilled in his children and continues to practice on the world stage as the co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Through the course of several dozen narratives arranged in roughly chronological fashion, Gates introduces the people and experiences that influenced his thinking and guided his moral compass. Among them: the scoutmaster who taught him about teamwork and self reliance; and his famous son, Trey, whose curiosity and passion for computers and software led him to ultimately co-found Microsoft. Through revealing stories of his daughters, Kristi and Libby; his late wife, Mary, and his current wife, Mimi; and his work with Nelson Mandela and Jimmy Carter, among others, he discusses the importance of hard work, getting along, honoring a confidence, speaking out, and much more. Showing Up for Life translates one man’s experiences over fourscore years of living into an inspiring road map for readers everywhere. As Bill Gates Sr. puts it: "I’m 83 years old. Representing the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and everyone who is a part of it has given me the opportunity to see more of the world and its rich possibilities than most people ever do. I never imagined that I’d be working this late in life, or enjoying it so much."