English Culture

We are approaching a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change. Soon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organize your life, operate your business, and run core government services. You will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy. None of us are prepared. As co-founder of DeepMind, part of Google, Mustafa Suleyman has been at the center of this revolution. The coming decade, he argues, will be defined by this wave of powerful new technologies.

Step back inside the world of President Jed Bartlet’s Oval Office with Fitzgerald and McCormack as they reunite the West Wing cast and crew in a lively and colorful “backstage pass” to the timeless series. This intimate, in-depth reflection reveals how The West Wing was conceived, and spotlights the army of people it took to produce it, the lifelong friendships it forged, and the service it inspired.

The architects of America's cultural revolution of the 1960s were Beat authors like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, and celebrated figures like Norman Mailer, Timothy Leary, Eldridge Cleaver, and Susan Sontag. In examining the lives and works of those who spoke for the 1960s, Roger Kimball conceives a series of cautionary tales, an annotated guidebook of wrong turns, dead-ends, and blind alleys.

Misinformation and myths have attached themselves to the Egyptian pyramids since ancient Greece and Rome. While many Americans believe that the pyramids were built by aliens, archaeologists understand that the Giza pyramids were built by the pharaohs of the Fourth Dynasty around 2450 BCE. So why is there such a disconnect between scholarly opinion and the popular view of Egypt? Jason Colavito takes us back to Late Antique Egypt, where the replacement of polytheism with Christianity gave rise to local efforts to rewrite the stories of Egyptian history in the image of the Bible.

Neil Atkinson explores how Klopp, heralded as one of the most charismatic and successful managers in the history of football, has taken Liverpool FC to great heights over the past nine years. As Klopp's departure nears, Atkinson looks back on the trailblazing manager's time in Liverpool, the legacy he leaves behind and what it means for Liverpool: the club and the city.

Ben Horowitz, a leading venture capitalist, modern management expert, and New York Times best-selling author, combines lessons both from history and from modern organizational practice with practical and often surprising advice to help executives build cultures that can weather both good and bad times. What You Do Is Who You Are explains how to make your culture purposeful by spotlighting four models of leadership and culture-building.

Shola Richards had reached the end of the road: after nearly two years at a soul-sucking job, he felt numb and suicidal. So he quit and devoted himself to nothing less than transforming the workplace, turning it into a space of respect, courtesy, and endless energy. Making Work Work focuses on inspiring current and future leaders to start a movement that will banish on-the-job bullying, put meaning back into work, and enhance coworkers' happiness and engagement.

When it comes to recruiting, motivating, and creating great teams, Patty McCord says most companies have it all wrong. McCord helped create the unique and high-performing culture at Netflix, where she was chief talent officer. In her new book, Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility, she shares what she learned there and elsewhere in Silicon Valley.

In one memorable The Simpsons moment, Homer laughs hysterically at a standup comic, pausing only to gasp, "It's true, we're so lame!" In a sense, that is author Chris Turner's main thesis: Over the last 15 years, The Simpsons has chronicled the absurdities and the defining events of an increasingly confusing culture.

It seems like people are always talking about the end of the world, doesn't it? Y2K, the Mayan apocalypse, blood moon prophecies, nuclear war, killer robots, you name it. In Apocalypse Any Day Now, journalist Tea Krulos travels the country to try to puzzle out America's obsession with the end of days. Along the way he meets doomsday preppers - people who stockpile supplies and learn survival skills - as well as religious prognosticators and climate scientists, and much more.

The mysterious boy king Tutankhamun came to the U.S. in 2008, bringing rare treasures, never before seen outside Egypt. For the millions of fans wanting a keepsake and chronicle of this magnificent new exhibition, this audiobook will delight. Created by world-renowned art historians under the guidance of Zahi Hawass - director of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities and a well-known media personality - it surveys 3,000 years of ancient Egyptian history by focusing on the lives and lifestyles of great pharaohs.

Otto and Sheed are the local sleuths in their zany Virginia town, masters of unraveling mischief using their unmatched powers of deduction. And as the summer winds down and the first day of school looms, the boys are craving just a little bit more time for fun, even as they bicker over what kind of fun they want to have. That is, until a mysterious man appears with a camera that literally freezes time.

Over the last 50 years, humanity has developed an extraordinary shared utility: the global positioning system. Omnipresent, free, and available to all, GPS powers everything from your phone to the Internet to the Mars Rover. Greg Milner tells the sweeping story of GPS, from its conceptual origins as a bomb guidance system to its present ubiquity.

The hookup is now part of college life. Yet the drunken encounter we always hear about tells only a fraction of the story. Rising above misinformation and moralizing, Lisa Wade offers the definitive account of this new sexual culture and demonstrates that the truth is both more heartening and more harrowing than we thought. Offering invaluable insights for parents, educators, and students, Wade situates hookup culture within the history of sexuality, the evolution of higher education, and the unfinished feminist revolution.

Through historical newspaper accounts and the personal letters of soldiers, the events leading up to the battle and the battle itself are stunningly recreated. You will enter the mind of Robert E. Lee as he makes the fateful decision to cross the Potomac River and take the offensive. You will feel the frustration of Abraham Lincoln as he struggles to convince George McClellan to fight. And you will stand side-by-side with foot soldiers as the peaceful Maryland countryside explodes.

Popular pastor and speaker Mandy Smith invites us to detox from the deeply ingrained habits of Western culture so we can do kingdom things in kingdom ways again. She explores how we can be transformed by new postures and habits that help us see God already at work in and around us. The way forward isn't more ideas, programs, and problem-solving, but in Jesus's surprising invitation to the kingdom through childlikeness. Ultimately, rediscovering childlike habits is a way for us to remember how to be human.

Michael Kearns and Aaron Roth explain how we can better embed human principles into machine code - without halting the advance of data-driven scientific exploration.

Just as the moon obscures the sun's light during an eclipse, today's radical secularism has obscured the light of God. But God's light still shines—and He is calling us to shine His light in the growing darkness. In The Eclipse of God, bestselling author Erwin Lutzer exposes our nation's disastrous efforts to redefine God in its own image. The resulting damage has been so great that confusion about God has even crept into the church.

With Give and Take, Adam Grant not only introduced a landmark new paradigm for success but also established himself as one of his generation’s most compelling and provocative thought leaders. In Originals he again addresses the challenge of improving the world, but now from the perspective of becoming original: choosing to champion novel ideas and values that go against the grain, battle conformity, and buck outdated traditions. How can we originate new ideas, policies, and practices without risking it all?

When three-month-old Lia Lee arrived at the county hospital emergency room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents nor her doctors would ever recover. Lia's parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run "Quiet War" in Laos.