-
Hot Pick
Things Fall Apart
In a land where tradition sings through drumbeats and ancestral fire, Things Fall Apart follows Okonkwo, a fierce warrior haunted by fear of failure and consumed by a need to escape his father’s shame. As colonial forces creep into the Igbo world, bringing both alien faith and foreign rule, the fragile balance between honor and change begins to crack. Through stark prose and lyrical intensity, the novel confronts a painful paradox: when the old ways falter, is it strength or surrender that preserves the soul? What happens to a man—and a people—when the pillars of their world begin to crumble? Achebe crafts a haunting elegy for a culture on the cusp of dissolution, where dignity and downfall are bound in the same breath.
- Originally Published: 1958
- Publisher: Penguin Books, 1994
- Genre: Novel
- Pages: 209
- Book Type: Hardcopy
- ISBN: 9780385474542
- Access: Members
-
Guns, Germs and Steel: A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years
Why did history unfold so differently across continents, and what silent forces shaped the fate of entire civilizations? Guns, Germs and Steel is a sweeping, sobering detective story of humanity’s uneven march through time—where geography, biology, and chance played far greater roles than genius or will. In tracing the roots of global inequality not to culture or intellect but to crops, microbes, and metal, it overturns long-held myths with unflinching clarity. This is not just a chronicle of conquests, but a meditation on the fragile accidents that shaped the modern world. What if the seeds of dominance were sown in the soil itself?
- Originally Published: 1997
- Publisher : Vintage, 2017
- Pages: 580
- Genre: Non-Fiction
- Book Type: Hardcopy
- ISBN-13: 978-0099302780
- Access: Members
-
Hot Pick
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
Why do some nations flourish while others are trapped in cycles of poverty and decay? Why Nations Fail cuts through geography, culture, and chance to expose the raw machinery of power—where inclusive institutions build prosperity and extractive ones hollow it out. With the force of a grand detective story, it reveals how empires collapse not from outside threats, but from within, when the few prey upon the many. Can a society rewrite its destiny, or are its failures hardwired into the very rules it lives by? This is a journey into the heart of inequality—and a blueprint for those bold enough to change it.
- Originally Published: 2012
- Publisher : Crown Currency, 2013
- Pages: 544
- Book Type: Hardcopy
- ISBN-13: 978-0307719225
- Access: Members
-
Hot Pick
Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
In a world increasingly shaped by algorithms, artificial intelligence, and global entanglements, Nexus dares to ask: what does it mean to be human when every frontier—biological, technological, and ideological—collides? With lucid urgency, the book maps the shifting currents that bind data to power, consciousness to code, and ancient instincts to modern dilemmas. It is not a tale of answers, but of unsettling clarity, where the questions themselves become a mirror to our time: Can we master the tools we’ve built—or are we simply becoming extensions of them? At once sweeping and intimate, Nexus is a meditation on connection in the age of disconnection—a call to navigate the future with both reason and responsibility.
- Originally Published: 2024
- Publisher : Random House, 2024
- Pages: 492
- Genre: History
- Book Type: Hardcopy
- ISBN-13: 978-0593736814
- Access: Prime Membership
-
Hot Pick
Animal Farm
On a quiet farm, where the animals rise in revolt against their human masters, an ideal of freedom is born—only to curdle into tyranny beneath the hoofprints of power. Animal Farm is a fable sharpened into a political blade, where noble dreams decay into slogans, and those who promise equality learn to walk upright over the backs of others. How does liberation become a new form of control, and why do the oppressed so often trade one master for another? With deceptively simple prose and chilling clarity, this tale reveals that the most dangerous lies are the ones we tell ourselves. A story for every age, it asks: who truly governs when all are supposed to be free?
- Originally Published: August 1945
- Genre: Novella, Political Satire
- Pages: 101
- Book Type: Hardcopy
- ISBN: 9780451526342
- Access: Members
-
The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time
Can we end poverty—not in theory, but in our lifetime? The End of Poverty charts a daring and data-driven journey through the heart of global suffering, revealing how economic despair is not an inevitable fate but a solvable problem. With clarity and urgency, it exposes the hidden mechanics that trap nations in extreme deprivation and unveils a roadmap of practical solutions that challenge apathy and resignation. This is not just an economic treatise—it is a call to moral action, a testament to the possibility that with enough resolve, compassion, and precision, humanity can lift its most vulnerable beyond survival into dignity. What does it say about us if we can rescue the poor—and choose not to?
- Originally Published: December 2005
- Publisher: Penguin Books, 2006
- Genre: Economics, Politics
- Pages: 464
- Book Type: Hardcopy
- ISBN: 978-0143036586
- Access: Members
-
Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism
The Globalists pulls back the curtain on a powerful, often invisible movement—one that sought not to dismantle the nation-state, but to encase it in a legal and economic armor that would protect markets from the turbulence of democracy. Through the rise of neoliberal thought in the 20th century, it tells the provocative story of economists and visionaries who believed freedom was best safeguarded not by parliaments, but by institutions beyond the reach of the people. Can true democracy survive when sovereignty is traded for stability, and when markets are placed beyond the will of the majority? With piercing clarity and unsettling relevance, this book traces the quiet construction of a global order designed not for chaos—but for control. It is the intellectual history of a world remade behind closed doors.
- Originally Published: March 2018
- Publisher: Harvard University Press
- Published: March 16, 2018
- Genre: Neoliberalism
- Pages: 400
- Book Type: Hardcopy
- ISBN: 978-0674979529
- Access: Members
-
Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism
In Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, the flags may have changed, but the power still flows from the same hands. With surgical precision and revolutionary fire, this book unveils how economic control, foreign aid, and multinational influence have replaced the old chains of empire with new, invisible shackles. If independence is declared but decisions are made abroad, can freedom truly be said to exist? It is a searing exposé of betrayal cloaked in diplomacy, where the promise of sovereignty is bartered for dependency. Through every page, the reader is challenged to ask: who profits when the colonizer never leaves—but merely changes form?
- Originally Published: 1965
- Publisher: Panaf, 2009
- Genre: Non-fiction
- Pages: 316
- Book Type: Hardcopy
- ISBN: 978-0901787231
- Access: Members
-
How to Be a Dictator: The Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century
How to Be a Dictator is a chilling descent into the architecture of absolute power—where fear is sculpted into law, truth is strangled by spectacle, and the cult of personality drowns all dissent. Through eight harrowing portraits, it reveals how tyrants rise not solely by force, but by mastering the dark alchemy of propaganda, surveillance, and manufactured devotion. What kind of world emerges when one man becomes the nation, the voice of the people silenced beneath a single echo? At once gripping and unsettling, this book asks readers to confront the fragile boundary between order and oppression, and to see in history’s monsters the reflection of our collective vulnerability. It is not merely a study of despots—it is a warning whispered through time.
- Originally Published: 2019
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019
- Genre: Politics, History
- Pages: 304
- Book Type: Hardcopy
- ISBN: 978-1408891612
- Access: Members
-
The Looting Machine: Warlords, Oligarchs, Corporations, Smugglers, and the Theft of Africa’s Wealth
The Looting Machine exposes a brutal paradox at the heart of Africa’s richest resource states: how nations teeming with oil, diamonds, and minerals can remain shackled by poverty, violence, and decay. With the urgency of investigative reportage and the gravity of a political thriller, the book maps a continent-wide system where global corporations, corrupt elites, and shadowy networks turn natural wealth into a curse. Can a land so rich be so poor by accident—or is the suffering by design? As veins of gold and crude are drained from beneath the soil, this powerful account compels readers to question who truly profits and who is left to bleed. It is a story of power without accountability and prosperity built on the silence of the exploited.
- Originally Published: May 2015
- Publisher: PublicAffairs, 2016
- Genre: Economics, History
- Pages: 368
- Book Type: Hardcopy
- ISBN: 978-1610397117
- Access: Members
-
The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics
What if power has less to do with ideology and more to do with cold, ruthless math? The Dictator’s Handbook dismantles the illusions of noble governance, revealing a chillingly pragmatic logic that guides both tyrants and democrats alike. In a world where survival hinges not on serving the people but on satisfying a select few, loyalty is currency and betrayal a tool of the trade. Witty, unflinching, and unsettlingly honest, this book invites readers to peer behind the curtain of leadership—and ask whether virtue ever truly rules. Do leaders shape systems, or do systems shape the leaders we get?
- Originally Published: September 2011
- Publisher: PublicAffairs
- Published: July 31, 2012
- Genre: Politics
- Pages: 352
- Book Type: Hardcopy
- ISBN: 978-1610391849
- Access: Members
-
Dead Aid: Why aid is not working and how there is another way for Africa
Dead Aid delivers a fierce and fearless indictment of the foreign aid system, arguing that what was meant to heal Africa may, in fact, be helping to hold it down. With unflinching logic and moral urgency, it dismantles the comfortable myth that money alone can fix poverty, revealing instead a cycle of dependency, corruption, and arrested growth. This is not a rejection of compassion—it is a challenge to rethink what true empowerment looks like. What if generosity, poorly aimed, becomes a weapon disguised as a gift? In the ruins of well-meant intentions, Dead Aid dares to ask what Africa truly needs to rise.
- Originally Published: 2009
- Publisher: Penguin, 2010
- Genre: Politics, Economics
- Pages: 188
- Book Type: Hardcopy
- ISBN: 978-0141031187
- Access: Members
-
A Brief History of Mathematical Thought: Key concepts and where they come from
From the ancient geometries etched in sand to the abstract symmetries of modern logic, A Brief History of Mathematical Thought is a luminous journey through the minds that dared to measure the universe. This is not merely a chronicle of numbers, but a meditation on how we shape the world—and ourselves—through patterns, proofs, and paradoxes. As it weaves through the philosophical, the aesthetic, and the profoundly human aspects of mathematics, the book asks: what does it mean to understand reality through symbols we cannot touch? At once intellectual and intimate, it invites the reader to see mathematics not as a cold discipline, but as a creative force pulsing through the story of civilization.
- Originally Published: 2015
- Publisher: Constable & Robinson, 2015
- Genre: Non-fiction
- Pages: 321
- Book Type: Hardcopy
- ISBN: 978-1472117113
- Access: Members
-
Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations
In the shadows of global diplomacy and beneath the silence of plausible deniability lies Rise and Kill First—a harrowing chronicle of Israel’s most closely guarded weapon: its secret assassination program. With unnerving clarity and cinematic intensity, the book unveils a world where morality bends beneath the weight of survival, and decisions made in dimly lit rooms shape the fate of nations. How far should a state go to protect its people—and what does it sacrifice in the process? Each page pulses with the tension of life-or-death choices, offering a sobering meditation on justice, vengeance, and the hidden costs of preemptive power. This is the realm where silence kills, and history is written in whispers and blood.
- Originally Published: 2018
- Publisher: Random House, 2018
- Genre: History
- Pages: 784
- Book Type: Hardcopy
- ISBN: 9781400069712
- Access: Members
-
The Bomber Mafia: A Tale of Innovation and Obsession
In the smoke-shadowed crucible of World War II, a renegade band of idealists dared to believe that precision—rather than firestorms—could win the war and preserve humanity. The Bomber Mafia traces their dream with the tension of a moral thriller, where strategy clashes with conscience and the sky becomes a stage for salvation and destruction alike. Can technology be a force for mercy in the machinery of war, or does every innovation eventually bow to chaos? With haunting elegance, this is a story of obsession, invention, and the fragile line between vision and devastation.
- Originally Published: 2022
- Publisher: Penguin Books, 2022
- Genre: Self-help
- Pages: 237
- Book Type: Hardcopy
- ISBN: 978-0141998404
- Access: Members
-
Following the Leader: Ruling China, from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping
What does it take to steer the world’s most populous nation through the crosscurrents of ambition, fear, and reform? Following the Leader opens a rare window into the minds of China’s political elite, revealing a system where power is personal, loyalty is currency, and the future hinges on a delicate dance between control and change. As rising leaders navigate an unforgiving terrain of ideology, bureaucracy, and global scrutiny, the question looms: who truly leads in a country where obedience and initiative must coexist? Both revealing and restrained, this is a story not just of politics, but of the human instincts that shape empires.
- Originally published: February 3, 2014
- Publisher: University of California Press, 2019
- Genre: Non-fiction
- Pages: 320
- Book Type: Hardcopy
- ISBN: 9780520303478
- Access: Members
