Archives de catégorie : Current Issues

FOMO – FEAR OF MISSING OUT by Patrick McGinnis

« FOMO: Fear of Missing Out is provocative, timely and highly persuasive »

FOMO – Fear of Missing Out: Practical Decision Making in a World of Overwhelming Choice
by Patrick J. McGinnis
Sourcebooks, May 2020

FOMO speaks directly to the dark side of social media lurking below all the colorful memes and hashtags and explores how FOMO is a powerful, persistent and widespread mindset that causes stress, insecurity, jealousy, and even depression in individuals in its sway.Writing with urgency, vision and brio, Patrick is opening a window on a pervasive condition that affects a huge number of people in their personal and business relationships – filled with real life stories, current research, and personal insights, FOMO: Fear of Missing Out is provocative, timely and highly persuasive in defining a cultural ethos of our digital-driven age and calling for change. There is no similar book on the market or in the works.

Patrick J. McGinnis is a writer, speaker and venture capitalist and private equity investor who has invested in leading companies in the United States, Latin America, Europe, and Asia. He is credited with coining the term “FOMO” or “fear of missing out,” which was added to the Oxford Dictionary in 2013. His original article on the topic, written while at Harvard Business School, was published in the “Fear” issue of Lapham’s Quarterly alongside pieces by Sigmund Freud, Nadine Gordimer, Joseph Heller, Václav Havel, and Thomas Hobbes. A graduate of Georgetown University and Harvard Business School, Patrick has visited more than 80 countries and is fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, and French.

BLOWOUT de Rachel Maddow

Big Oil and Gas Versus Democracy–Winner Take All

BLOWOUT:
Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth
by Rachel Maddow
Crown, October 2019

Rachel Maddow’s Blowout offers a dark, serpentine, riveting tour of the unimaginably lucrative and corrupt oil-and-gas industry. With her trademark black humor, Maddow takes us on a switchback journey around the globe–from Oklahoma City to Siberia to Equatorial Guinea–exposing the greed and incompetence of Big Oil and Gas. She shows how Russia’s rich reserves of crude have, paradoxically, stunted its growth, forcing Putin to maintain his power by spreading Russia’s rot into its rivals, its neighbors, the United States, and the West’s most important alliances. Chevron, BP, and a host of other industry players get their star turn, but ExxonMobil and the deceptively well-behaved Rex Tillerson emerge as two of the past century’s most consequential corporate villains. The oil-and-gas industry has weakened democracies in developed and developing countries, fouled oceans and rivers, and propped up authoritarian thieves and killers. But being outraged at it is, according to Maddow, « like being indignant when a lion takes down and eats a gazelle. You can’t really blame the lion. It’s in her nature. »
This book is a clarion call to contain the lion: to stop subsidizing the wealthiest industry on earth, to fight for transparency, and to check the influence of predatory oil executives and their enablers. The stakes have never been higher. As Maddow writes, « Democracy either wins this one or disappears. »

Rachel Maddow is host of the Emmy Award-winning Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, as well as the author of Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power, a #1 New York Times bestseller. Maddow received a bachelor’s degree in public policy from Stanford University and earned her doctorate in political science at Oxford University. She lives in New York City and Massachusetts with her partner, artist Susan Mikula.

A ROPE FROM THE SKY de Zach Vertin

The untold story of America’s attempt to forge a nation from scratch, from euphoric birth to heart-wrenching collapse

A ROPE FROM THE SKY
The Making and Unmaking of the World’s Newest State
by Zach Vertin
Pegasus Books, January 2019

South Sudan’s historic independence was celebrated around the world―a triumph for global justice and an end to one of the world’s most devastating wars.  But the party would not last long; South Sudan’s freedom fighters soon plunged their new nation into chaos, shattering the promise of liberation and exposing the hubris of their foreign backers. Chronicling extraordinary stories of hope, identity, and survival, A Rope from the Sky journeys inside an epic tale of paradise won and then lost. This character-driven narrative follows a cast of liberators who rally around a common idea and achieve the unthinkable.  Mobilizing on their behalf is an unprecedented coalition of Americas: Democrats and Republicans, ideologues and activists, evangelical Christians, and Hollywood celebrities. This righteous alliance helps deliver South Sudan from tyranny, only to watch in disbelief as it comes dramatically undone.  Finally, a war-weary people must pick up the piece and start over again―an uncertain quest to salvage a republic from the shards of a broken dream. Weaving together narratives local and global, this is first a story of power, promise, greed, compassion, violence, and redemption from the world’s most neglected patch of territory.  But is also a story about the best and worst of America―both its big hearted ideals and its difficult reckoning with the limits of American power amid a changing global landscape.
Zach Vertin’s firsthand accounts, from deadly war zones to the halls of Washington power, bring readers inside this unique episode in global history―an unprecedented experiment in state-building, and a cautionary tale. From battlefields and ballrooms to the emerald green marshes of the Nile, A ROPE FROM THE SKY is brilliant and breathtaking, a modern-day Greek tragedy that will challenge our perspectives on global politics.

Zach Vertin is an American writer, foreign policy expert, and former diplomat; he has spent the last twelve years working in international peace and conflict issues, not least in South Sudan. He is currently a Lecturer at Princeton University and a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Doha Center. He previously served in the Obama Administration as a Senior Adviser to the U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan and Sudan South Sudan, and prior to that he was a Senior Analyst for the International Crisis Group. He has written or commented for: The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, The Economist, The Atlantic, CNN, the BBC, and more.

AN AMERICAN SUMMER d’Alex Kotlowitz

From the bestselling author of There Are No Children Here, a richly textured, heartrending portrait of love and death in Chicago’s most turbulent neighborhoods

AN AMERICAN SUMMER
Love and Death in Chicago
by Alex Kotlowitz
Nan A. Talese, March 2019

The numbers are staggering: over the past twenty years in Chicago, 14,033 people have been killed and another roughly 60,000 wounded by gunfire. What does that do to the spirit of individuals and community? Drawing on his decades of experience, Alex Kotlowitz set out to chronicle one summer in the city, writing about individuals who have emerged from the violence and whose stories capture the capacity–and the breaking point–of the human heart and soul. The result is a spellbinding collection of deeply intimate profiles that upend what we think we know about gun violence in America. Among others, we meet a man who as a teenager killed a rival gang member and twenty years later is still trying to come to terms with what he’s done; a devoted school social worker struggling with her favorite student, who refuses to give evidence in the shooting death of his best friend; the witness to a wrongful police shooting who can’t shake what he has seen; and an aging former gang leader who builds a place of refuge for himself and his friends. Applying the close-up, empathic reporting that made There Are No Children Here a modern classic, Kotlowitz offers a piercingly honest portrait of a city in turmoil. These sketches of those left standing will get into your bones. This one summer will stay with you.

Alex Kotlowitz is the author of three previous books, including the national bestseller “There Are No Children Here”, selected by the New York Public Library as one of the 150 most important books of the twentieth century. “The Other Side of the River” was awarded the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize for Nonfiction. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine and on This American Life. His documentary work includes The Interrupters, for which he received a Film Independent Spirit Award and an Emmy. His other honors include a George Polk Award, two Peabodys, the Helen B. Bernstein Award, and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award.

DRAWING BLOOD de Molly Crabapple, un livre qui fait du bruit aux Etats-Unis

Les mémoires de l’artiste Molly Crabapple, qui couvrent les années 2000 entre le 11 septembre et le mouvement Occupy, ont été publiées le 1er décembre par Harper et font déjà l’unanimité de la presse américaine !

DRAWING BLOOD a reçu une excellente critique dans The Guardian, une autre dans le New York Times, ainsi qu’un bel article dans le New York Times Style Magazine.

An unforgettable memoir of the years between 9/11 and the Occupy movement—in New York City and around the world—by the renowned underground artist and journalist

DRAWING BLOOD
by Molly Crabapple
Harper, December 2015

Art was my dearest friend.

To draw was trouble and safety, adventure and freedom.

In that four-cornered kingdom of paper, I lived as I pleased.

This is the story of a girl and her sketchbook

In language that is fresh, visceral, and deeply moving—and illustrations that are irreverent and gorgeous—here is a memoir that will change the way you think about art, sex, politics, and survival in our times.
From a young age, Molly Crabapple had the eye of an artist and the spirit of a radical. After a restless childhood on New York’s Long Island, she left America to see Europe and the Near East, a young artist plunging into unfamiliar cultures, notebook always in hand, drawing what she observed.
Returning to New York City after 9/11 to study art, she posed nude for sketch artists and sketchy photographers, danced burlesque, and modeled for the world famous Suicide Girls. Frustrated with the academy and the conventional art world, she eventually landed a post as house artist at Simon Hammerstein’s legendary nightclub The Box, the epicenter of decadent Manhattan nightlife before the financial crisis of 2008. There she had a ringside seat for the pitched battle between the bankers of Wall Street and the entertainers who walked among them—a scandalous, drug-fueled circus of mutual exploitation that she captured in her tart and knowing illustrations. Then, after the crash, a wave of protest movements—from student demonstrations in London to Occupy Wall Street in her own backyard—led Molly to turn her talents to a new form of witness journalism, reporting from places such as Guantanamo, Syria, Rikers Island, and the labor camps of Abu Dhabi. Using both words and artwork to shed light on the darker corners of American empire, she has swiftly become one of the most original and galvanizing voices on the cultural stage.

Now, with the same blend of honesty, fierce insight, and indelible imagery that is her signature, Molly offers her own story: an unforgettable memoir of artistic exploration, political awakening, and personal transformation.

Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer in New York. She is a contributing editor for Vice, and has written for publications including the New York Times, Paris Review, and Vanity Fair. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.