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The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, The Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals
By Frank Partnoy. 2009
At the height of the roaring '20s, Swedish émigré Ivar Kreuger made a fortune raising money in America and loaning…
it to Europe in exchange for matchstick monopolies. His enterprise was a rare success story throughout the Great Depression. Yet after his suicide in 1932, it became clear that Kreuger was not all he seemed: evidence surfaced of fudged accounting figures, off-balance-sheet accounting, even forgery. He created a raft of innovative financial products- many of them precursors to instruments wreaking havoc in today's markets. In this gripping financial biography, Frank Partnoy recasts the life story of a remarkable yet forgotten genius in ways that force us to re-think our ideas about the wisdom of crowds, the invisible hand, and the free and unfettered market.Leaders: Myth and Reality
By Stanley McChrystal, Jeff Eggers, Jay Mangone. 2018
Leadership is not what you think it is--and it never was.Stan McChrystal served for thirty-four years in the US Army,…
rising from a second lieutenant in the 82nd Airborne Division to a four-star general, in command of all American and coalition forces in Afghanistan. During those years he worked with countless leaders, at every level of effectiveness, and pondered an ancient question: “What makes a leader great?” He came to realize that there is no simple answer. In this follow-up to his bestsellers My Share of the Task and Team of Teams, McChrystal profiles thirteen famous leaders from a wide range of eras and fields—from corporate CEOs to politicians and revolutionaries. He uses their stories to explore how leadership works in practice and to challenge the myths that complicate our thinking about this critical topic. With Plutarch’s Lives as his model, McChrystal looks at paired sets of leaders who followed unconventional paths to success. For instance. . .· Walt Disney and Coco Chanel built empires in very different ways. Both had public personas that sharply contrasted with how they lived in private. · Maximilien Robespierre helped shape the French Revolution in the eighteenth century; Abu Musab al-Zarqawi led the jihadist insurgency in Iraq in the twenty-first. We can draw surprising lessons from them about motivation and persuasion. · Both Boss Tweed in nineteenth-century New York and Margaret Thatcher in twentieth-century Britain followed unlikely roads to the top of powerful institutions. · Martin Luther and his future namesake Martin Luther King Jr., both local clergymen, emerged from modest backgrounds to lead world-changing movements. Finally, McChrystal explores how his former hero, General Robert E. Lee, could seemingly do everything right in his military career and yet lead the Confederate Army to a devastating defeat in the service of an immoral cause. Leaders will help you take stock of your own leadership, whether you’re part of a small team or responsible for an entire nation.First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong
By James R. Hansen. 2005
Marking the forty-fifth anniversary of Apollo 11's moon landing, First Man by James Hansen offers the only authorized glimpse into…
the life of America's most famous astronaut, Neil Armstrong--the man whose "one small step" changed history."The Eagle has landed." When Apollo 11 touched down on the moon's surface in 1969, the first man on the moon became a legend. In First Man, Hansen explores the life of Neil Armstrong. Based on over fifty hours of interviews with the intensely private Armstrong, who also gave Hansen exclusive access to private documents and family sources, this "magnificent panorama of the second half of the American twentieth century" (Publishers Weekly, starred review) is an unparalleled biography of an American icon. Upon his return to earth, Armstrong was honored and celebrated for his monumental achievement. He was also--as James R. Hansen reveals in this fascinating and important biography--misunderstood. Armstrong's accomplishments as engineer, test pilot, and astronaut have long been a matter of record, but Hansen's unprecedented access to private documents and unpublished sources and his interviews with more than 125 subjects (including more than fifty hours with Armstrong himself) yield this first in-depth analysis of an elusive American celebrity still renowned the world over. In a riveting narrative filled with revelations, Hansen vividly recreates Armstrong's career in flying, from his seventy-eight combat missions as a naval aviator flying over North Korea to his formative transatmospheric flights in the rocket-powered X-15 to his piloting Gemini VIII to the first-ever docking in space. These milestones made it seem, as Armstrong's mother Viola memorably put it, "as if from the very moment he was born--farther back still--that our son was somehow destined for the Apollo 11 mission." For a pilot who cared more about flying to the Moon than he did about walking on it, Hansen asserts, Armstrong's storied vocation exacted a dear personal toll, paid in kind by his wife and children. For the forty-five years since the Moon landing, rumors have swirled around Armstrong concerning his dreams of space travel, his religious beliefs, and his private life. In a penetrating exploration of American hero worship, Hansen addresses the complex legacy of the First Man, as an astronaut and as an individual. In First Man, the personal, technological, epic, and iconic blend to form the portrait of a great but reluctant hero who will forever be known as history's most famous space traveler.The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery
By Barbara K. Lipska, Elaine McArdle. 2018
As a deadly cancer spread inside her brain, leading neuroscientist Barbara Lipska was plunged into madness—only to miraculously survive with…
her memories intact. In the tradition of My Stroke of Insight and Brain on Fire, this powerful memoir recounts her ordeal and explains its unforgettable lessons about the brain and mind. In January 2015, Barbara Lipska—a leading expert on the neuroscience of mental illness—was diagnosed with melanoma that had spread to her brain. Within months, her frontal lobe, the seat of cognition, began shutting down. She descended into madness, exhibiting dementia- and schizophrenia-like symptoms that terrified her family and coworkers. But miraculously, just as her doctors figured out what was happening, the immunotherapy they had prescribed began to work. Just eight weeks after her nightmare began, Lipska returned to normal. With one difference: she remembered her brush with madness with exquisite clarity. In The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind, Lipska describes her extraordinary ordeal and its lessons about the mind and brain. She explains how mental illness, brain injury, and age can change our behavior, personality, cognition, and memory. She tells what it is like to experience these changes firsthand. And she reveals what parts of us remain, even when so much else is gone.DisneyWar: The Battle for the Magic Kingdom
By James B. Stewart. 2005
"When You Wish Upon a Star," "Whistle While You Work," "The Happiest Place on Earth" -- these are lyrics indelibly…
linked to Disney, one of the most admired and best-known companies in the world. So when Roy Disney, chairman of Walt Disney Animation and nephew of founder Walt Disney, abruptly resigned in November 2003 and declared war on chairman and chief executive Michael Eisner, he sent shock waves through the entertainment industry, corporate boardrooms, theme parks, and living rooms around the world -- everywhere Disney does business and its products are cherished. DisneyWar is the breathtaking, dramatic inside story of what drove America's best-known entertainment company to civil war, told by one of our most acclaimed writers and reporters. Drawing on unprecedented access to both Eisner and Roy Disney, current and former Disney executives and board members, as well as thousands of pages of never-before-seen letters, memos, transcripts, and other documents, James B. Stewart gets to the bottom of mysteries that have enveloped Disney for years: What really caused the rupture with studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, a man who once regarded Eisner as a father but who became his fiercest rival? How could Eisner have so misjudged Michael Ovitz, a man who was not only "the most powerful man in Hollywood" but also his friend, whom he appointed as Disney president and immediately wanted to fire? What caused the break between Eisner and Pixar chairman Steve Jobs, and why did Pixar abruptly abandon its partnership with Disney? Why did Eisner so mistrust Roy Disney that he assigned Disney company executives to spy on him? How did Eisner control the Disney board for so long, and what really happened in the fateful board meeting in September 2004, when Eisner played his last cards? Here, too, is the creative process that lies at the heart of Disney -- from the making of The Lion King to Pirates of the Caribbean. Even as the executive suite has been engulfed in turmoil, Disney has worked -- and sometimes clashed -- with a glittering array of stars, directors, designers, artists, and producers, many of whom tell their stories here for the first time. Stewart describes how Eisner lost his chairmanship and why he felt obliged to resign as CEO, effective 2006. No other book so thoroughly penetrates the secretive world of the corporate boardroom. DisneyWar is an enthralling tale of one of America's most powerful media and entertainment companies, the people who control it, and those trying to overthrow them. DisneyWar is an epic achievement. It tells a story that -- in its sudden twists, vivid, larger-than-life characters, and thrilling climax -- might itself have been the subject of a Disney animated classic -- except that it's all true.The 37th Parallel: The Secret Truth Behind America's UFO Highway
By Ben Mezrich. 2016
This real-life The X-Files and Close Encounters of the Third Kind tells the true story of a computer programmer who…
tracks paranormal events along a 3,000-mile stretch through the heart of America and is drawn deeper and deeper into a vast conspiracy.Like "Agent Mulder" of The X-Files, computer programmer and sheriff's deputy Zukowski is obsessed with tracking down UFO reports in Colorado. He would take the family with him on weekend trips to look for evidence of aliens. But this innocent hobby takes on a sinister urgency when Zukowski learns of mutilated livestock, and sees the bodies of dead horses and cattle--whose exsanguination is inexplicable by any known human or animal means. Along an expanse of land stretching across the southern borders of Utah, Colorado, and Kansas, Zukowski discovers multiple bizarre incidences of mutilations, and suddenly realizes that they cluster around the 37th Parallel or "UFO Highway." So begins an extraordinary and fascinating journey from El Paso and Rush, Colorado, to a mysterious space studies company and MUFON, from Roswell and Area 51 to the Pentagon and beyond; to underground secret military caverns and Indian sacred sites; beneath strange, unexplained lights in the sky and into corporations that obstruct and try to take over investigations. Inspiring and terrifying, this true story will keep you up at night, staring at the sky, and wondering if we really are alone...and what could happen next.Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker
By William L. Simon, Kevin Mitnick, Steve Wozniak. 2011
Kevin Mitnick was the most elusive computer break-in artist in history. He accessed computers and networks at the world's biggest…
companies--and however fast the authorities were, Mitnick was faster, sprinting through phone switches, computer systems, and cellular networks. He spent years skipping through cyberspace, always three steps ahead and labeled unstoppable. But for Kevin, hacking wasn't just about technological feats-it was an old fashioned confidence game that required guile and deception to trick the unwitting out of valuable information.Driven by a powerful urge to accomplish the impossible, Mitnick bypassed security systems and blazed into major organizations including Motorola, Sun Microsystems, and Pacific Bell. But as the FBI's net began to tighten, Kevin went on the run, engaging in an increasingly sophisticated cat and mouse game that led through false identities, a host of cities, plenty of close shaves, and an ultimate showdown with the Feds, who would stop at nothing to bring him down. Ghost in the Wires is a thrilling true story of intrigue, suspense, and unbelievable escape, and a portrait of a visionary whose creativity, skills, and persistence forced the authorities to rethink the way they pursued him, inspiring ripples that brought permanent changes in the way people and companies protect their most sensitive information.Our 50-State Border Crisis: How the Mexican Border Fuels the Drug Epidemic Across America
By Howard G. Buffett. 2018
From one of America's most prominent philanthropists, an eye-opening, myth-busting new perspective on the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. Howard…
G. Buffett has seen first-hand the devastating impact of cheap Mexican heroin and other opiate cocktails across America. Fueled by failing border policies and lawlessness in Mexico and Central America, drugs are pouring over the nation's southern border in record quantities, turning Americans into addicts and migrants into drug mules--and killing us in record numbers. Politicians talk about a border crisis and an opioid crisis as separate issues. To Buffett, a landowner on the U.S. border with Mexico and now a sheriff in Illinois, these are intimately connected. Ineffective border policies not only put residents in border states like Texas and Arizona in harm's way, they put American lives in states like Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Vermont at risk. Mexican cartels have grown astonishingly powerful by exploiting both the gaps in our border security strategy and the desperation of migrants--all while profiting enormously off America's growing addiction to drugs. The solution isn't a wall. In this groundbreaking book, Buffett outlines a realistic, effective, and bi-partisan approach to fighting cartels, strengthening our national security, and tackling the roots of the chaos below the border. A New York Times BestsellerRise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars
By Nathalia Holt. 2016
The riveting true story of the women who launched America into space. In the 1940s and 50s, when the newly…
minted Jet Propulsion Laboratory needed quick-thinking mathematicians to calculate velocities and plot trajectories, they didn't turn to male graduates. Rather, they recruited an elite group of young women who, with only pencil, paper, and mathematical prowess, transformed rocket design, helped bring about the first American satellites, and made the exploration of the solar system possible. For the first time, Rise of the Rocket Girls tells the stories of these women--known as "human computers"--who broke the boundaries of both gender and science. Based on extensive research and interviews with all the living members of the team, Rise of the Rocket Girls offers a unique perspective on the role of women in science: both where we've been, and the far reaches of space to which we're heading.My Mad Dad: The Diary of an Unravelling Mind
By Robyn Hollingworth. 2018
Inadvertent cross-dressing Attempted murder Jail break A waltz at a funeral A hernia the size of GuernseyHeartbreaking and darkly comic,…
these are the moments that litter the messy road from cared-for to carer, a journey that Robyn Hollingworth finds herself on when she's only twenty-five years old. Leaving London to return home to rural South Wales, Robyn finds that it's her old life - same teddy bears resting on her pillow, their bodies tucked under the duvet; same view of the garages behind which she'd had her first cigarette and first kiss - but so much has changed. Her dad, the proud, charmingly intelligent, self-made man who made people laugh, is in the grip of early onset Alzheimer's. His brilliant mind, which saw him building power stations and literally bringing light into the lives of others, has succumbed to darkness. As Robyn settles back in the rhythms of life in the rain-soaked vast Welsh valleys, she keeps a diary charting her journey as the dad she knew disappears before her eyes. Lyrical, poignant and with flashes of brilliant humour, My Mad Dad explores how in helping others we can heal ourselves. 'At some point the cared for become the carers...this isn't a shame and it isn't a tragedy and it isn't a chore. It is an honour. To be able to return the gift of love that someone bestows upon you is a gift in itself. This is a story of caring...'Einstein: Su vida y su universo
By Walter Isaacson. 2007
La biografía definitiva de Albert Einstein, uno de los iconos del siglo XX y su mayor genio. Albert Einstein es…
uno de los científicos más importantes de la historia y un icono del siglo XX. ¿Cómo funcionaba su mente? ¿Qué le hizo un genio? ¿Cómo era el hombre detrás de la celebridad? Walter Isaacson, que tuvo acceso a los archivos de Einstein, ofrece un extraordinario retrato del personaje y de su época, así como un fascinante relato de su vida. A partir de su correspondencia privada, cuenta cómo un funcionario de patentes imaginativo e impertinente (un mal padre con un matrimonio complicado, incapaz de conseguir un empleo en la universidad ni un doctorado) logró desvelar los secretos del cosmos y comprender los misterios del átomo y del universo. Su creatividad estaba ligada a su rebeldía. Su éxito se basó en cuestionar las verdades aceptadas y en asombrarse ante cuestiones que otros consideraban mundanas. Reseñas: «Espléndida, un gran trabajo de investigación con mucho material inédito. Una obra fundamental y definitiva.»Amir D. Aczel, The Boston Globe «Walter Isaacson ha logrado un retrato completo de Einstein. Con un estilo ágil que disimula su atención al detalle y a la precisión científica, nos lleva a un maravilloso viaje por la vida, la mente y la ciencia de un hombre que cambió nuestra visión del universo.»Brian Greene, autor de El tejido del cosmos «Una biografía extraordinaria de un gran hombre. Walter Isaacson ha conseguido reflejar a Einstein como ser humano y al tiempo explicar profundos conceptos físicos. Su biografía se lee con placer y logra que el gran científico vuelva a la vida.»Murray Gell-Mann, Premio Nobel y autor de El quark y el jaguar «Magnífica. La biografía más completa de Einstein para el gran público. Una narración excelente.»Sharon Begley, NewsweekThe Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon
By Brad Stone. 2013
The definitive story of Amazon.com, one of the most successful companies in the world, and of its driven, brilliant founder,…
Jeff Bezos.Amazon.com started off delivering books through the mail. But its visionary founder, Jeff Bezos, wasn't content with being a bookseller. He wanted Amazon to become the everything store, offering limitless selection and seductive convenience at disruptively low prices. To do so, he developed a corporate culture of relentless ambition and secrecy that's never been cracked. Until now. Brad Stone enjoyed unprecedented access to current and former Amazon employees and Bezos family members, giving readers the first in-depth, fly-on-the-wall account of life at Amazon. Compared to tech's other elite innovators--Jobs, Gates, Zuckerberg--Bezos is a private man. But he stands out for his restless pursuit of new markets, leading Amazon into risky new ventures like the Kindle and cloud computing, and transforming retail in the same way Henry Ford revolutionized manufacturing.THE EVERYTHING STORE will be the revealing, definitive biography of the company that placed one of the first and largest bets on the Internet and forever changed the way we shop and read.Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color
By Angela Y. Davis, Andrea Ritchie. 2017
A timely examination of the ways Black women, Indigenous women, and other women of color are uniquely affected by racial…
profiling, police brutality, and immigration enforcement.Invisible No More is a timely examination of how Black women, Indigenous women, and women of color experience racial profiling, police brutality, and immigration enforcement. Placing stories of individual women—such as Sandra Bland, Rekia Boyd, Dajerria Becton, Monica Jones, and Mya Hall—in the broader context of the twin epidemics of police violence and mass incarceration, it documents the evolution of movements centering women’s experiences of policing and demands a radical rethinking of our visions of safety—and the means we devote to achieving it.Discoverers of the Universe: William and Caroline Herschel
By Michael Hoskin. 2011
Discoverers of the Universe tells the gripping story of William Herschel, the brilliant, fiercely ambitious, emotionally complex musician and composer…
who became court astronomer to Britain's King George III, and of William's sister, Caroline, who assisted him in his observations of the night sky and became an accomplished astronomer in her own right. Together, they transformed our view of the universe from the unchanging, mechanical creation of Newton's clockmaker god to the ever-evolving, incredibly dynamic cosmos that it truly is. William was in his forties when his amateur observations using a homemade telescope led to his discovery of Uranus, and an invitation to King George's court. He coined the term "asteroid," discovered infrared radiation, was the first to realize that our solar system is moving through space, discovered 2,500 nebulae that form the basis of the catalog astronomers use today, and was unrivalled as a telescope builder. Caroline shared William's passion for astronomy, recording his observations during night watches and organizing his papers for publication. She was the first salaried woman astronomer in history, a pioneer who herself discovered nine comets and became a role model for women in the sciences. Written by the world's premier expert on the Herschels, Discoverers of the Universe traces William and Caroline's many extraordinary contributions to astronomy, shedding new light on their productive but complicated relationship, and setting their scientific achievements in the context of their personal struggles, larger-than-life ambitions, bitter disappointments, and astonishing triumphs.Call the Nurse: True Stories of a Country Nurse on a Scottish Isle (The Country Nurse #1)
By Mary J. Macleod, Claire Macdonald of Macdonald. 2012
Tired of the pace and noise of life near London and longing for a better place to raise their young…
children, Mary J. MacLeod and her husband encountered their dream while vacationing on a remote island in the Scottish Hebrides. Enthralled by its windswept beauty, they soon were the proud owners of a near-derelict croft house--a farmer's stone cottage--on "a small acre" of land. Mary assumed duties as the island's district nurse. Call the Nurse is her account of the enchanted years she and her family spent there, coming to know its folk as both patients and friends. In anecdotes that are by turns funny, sad, moving, and tragic, she recalls them all, the crofters and their laird, the boatmen and tradesmen, young lovers and forbidding churchmen. Against the old-fashioned island culture and the grandeur of mountain and sea unfold indelible stories: a young woman carried through snow for airlift to the hospital; a rescue by boat; the marriage of a gentle giant and the island beauty; a ghostly encounter; the shocking discovery of a woman in chains; the flames of a heather fire at night; an unexploded bomb from World War II; and the joyful, tipsy celebration of a ceilidh. Gaelic fortitude meets a nurse's compassion in these wonderful true stories from rural Scotland.Keeping Close to Nature's Heart
By Carollyne Hutter. 2017
The Beginning of Everything: The Year I Lost My Mind And Found Myself
By Andrea J. Buchanan. 2018
A real-life neurological mystery?and captivating story of reinvention by the New York Times bestselling author of The Daring Book for…
Girls. Andrea Buchanan lost her mind while crossing the street one blustery March morning. The cold winter air triggered a coughing fit, and she began to choke. She was choking on a lot that day. A sick son. A pending divorce. The guilt of failing as a partner and as a mother. When the coughing finally stopped, she thought it was over. She could not have been more wrong. When she coughed that morning, a small tear ripped through her dura mater, the membrane covering the brain and spinal cord. But she didn’t know that yet. Instead, Andrea went on with her day, unaware that her cerebrospinal fluid was already beginning to leak out of that tiny opening. What followed was nine months of pain and confusion as her brain, no longer cushioned by a healthy waterbed of fluid, sank in her skull. At a time in her life when she needed to be as clear-thinking as possible?as a writer, as a mother, as a woman attempting to strike out on her own after two decades of marriage?she was plagued by cognitive impairment and constant pain, trapped by her own brain—all while mystifying doctors and pushing the limits of medical understanding. In this luminous and moving narrative, Andrea reveals the astonishing story of this tumultuous year—her fraught search for treatment; how patients, especially women, fight to be seen as reliable narrators of their own experiences; and how her life-altering recovery process affected both her and her family. The mind-brain connection is one of the greatest mysteries of the human condition. In some folklore, the cerebrospinal fluid around the brain is thought to be the place where consciousness actually begins. Here, in the pages of The Beginning of Everything, Andrea seeks to understand: Where was “I” when I wasn’t there?My Father's Business: The Small-Town Values That Built Dollar General into a Billion-Dollar Company
By Cal Turner, Rob Simbeck. 2018
"This classic story told through the eyes of my friend Cal Jr. is instructive in almost every area of life.…
I simply could not put it down. Must-read!"-Dave Ramsey, bestselling author and nationally syndicated radio show hostThe first-person account of the family that changed the American retail landscape. Longtime Dollar General CEO Cal Turner, Jr. shares his extraordinary life as heir to the company founded by his father, Cal Turner, Sr., and his grandfather, a dirt farmer turned Depression-era entrepreneur. Cal's narrative is at its heart a father-son story, from his childhood in Scottsville, Kentucky, where business and family were one, to the triumph of reaching the Fortune 300--at the cost of risking that very father/son relationship. Cal shares how the small-town values with which he was raised helped him guide Dollar General from family enterprise to national powerhouse. Chronicling three generations of a successful family with very different leadership styles, Cal Jr. shares a wealth of wisdom from a lifetime on the entrepreneurial front lines. He shows how his grandfather turned a third-grade education into an asset for success. He reveals how his driven father hatched the game-changing dollar price point strategy and why it worked. And he explains how he found his own leadership style when he took his place at the helm--values-based, people-oriented, and pragmatic. Cal's story provides a riveting look at the family love and drama behind Dollar General's spectacular rise, pays homage to the working-class people whose no-frills needs helped determine its rock-bottom prices, and shares the life and lessons of one of America's most compelling business leaders.Cybersecurity Ethics: An Introduction
By Mary Manjikian. 2018
This new textbook offers an accessible introduction to the topic of cybersecurity ethics The book is split into…
three parts Part I provides an introduction to the field of ethics philosophy and philosophy of science three ethical frameworks virtue ethics utilitarian ethics and communitarian ethics and the notion of ethical hacking Part II applies these frameworks to particular issues within the field of cybersecurity including privacy rights intellectual property and piracy surveillance and cyberethics in relation to military affairs The third part concludes by exploring current codes of ethics used in cybersecurity The overall aims of the book are to provide ethical frameworks to aid decision making present the key ethical issues in relation to computer security highlight the connection between values and beliefs and the professional code of ethics The textbook also includes three different features to aid students Going Deeper provides background information on key individuals and concepts Critical Issues features contemporary case studies and Applications examine specific technologies or practices which raise ethical issues The book will be of much interest to students of cybersecurity cyberethics hacking surveillance studies ethics and information scienceFrom the best-selling, award-winning author of 1491 and 1493--an incisive portrait of the two little-known twentieth-century scientists, Norman Borlaug and…
William Vogt, whose diametrically opposed views shaped our ideas about the environment, laying the groundwork for how people in the twenty-first century will choose to live in tomorrow's world. In forty years, Earth's population will reach ten billion. Can our world support that? What kind of world will it be? Those answering these questions generally fall into two deeply divided groups--Wizards and Prophets, as Charles Mann calls them in this balanced, authoritative, nonpolemical new book. The Prophets, he explains, follow William Vogt, a founding environmentalist who believed that in using more than our planet has to give, our prosperity will lead us to ruin. Cut back! was his mantra. Otherwise everyone will lose! The Wizards are the heirs of Norman Borlaug, whose research, in effect, wrangled the world in service to our species to produce modern high-yield crops that then saved millions from starvation. Innovate! was Borlaug's cry. Only in that way can everyone win! Mann delves into these diverging viewpoints to assess the four great challenges humanity faces--food, water, energy, climate change--grounding each in historical context and weighing the options for the future. With our civilization on the line, the author's insightful analysis is an essential addition to the urgent conversation about how our children will fare on an increasingly crowded Earth.