Secondhand History & Culture Bargain Book Box SP2848

Secondhand History & Culture Bargain Book Box SP2848

Eighteen books on the big questions facing the modern world — climate change, globalisation, the future of the internet, the emptying oceans, Iraq, COVID-19, and the fate of the Arctic — from Al Gore, Hamish McRae, Jonathan Zittrain, Mervyn King, and an extraordinary roster of economists on globalisation. A box that takes the long view.

1. The Fourth World: The Heritage of the Arctic and its Destruction — Sam Hall — A vivid account of the Arctic world and the indigenous cultures that depend on it, examining the environmental and political forces threatening the region and the peoples who have called it home for millennia.
2. Y: The Descent of Men — Steve Jones — Geneticist Steve Jones's fascinating and at times alarming account of the Y chromosome — what it tells us about maleness, evolution, and the future of men — from the award-winning author of Almost Like a Whale.
3. The Empty Ocean — Richard Ellis — Marine artist and naturalist Richard Ellis's sobering account of how human activity is depleting the world's seas, examining the commercial and industrial forces driving the collapse of marine ecosystems.
4. The World in 2020: Power, Culture and Prosperity — Hamish McRae — Financial journalist McRae's remarkable 1994 forecast of how the world would look in 2020 — fascinating now for how much it anticipated, and how much it didn't.
5. An Inconvenient Truth — Al Gore — The book that accompanied Gore's landmark documentary, presenting the scientific case for climate change in a format accessible to general readers — one of the most influential environmental books of the twenty-first century.
6. The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It — Jonathan Zittrain — Harvard Law professor Zittrain's prescient warning that the open, generative architecture of the internet is under threat from the very devices and services it has spawned — more relevant now than when it was written.
7. Great Feuds in Medicine: Ten of the Liveliest Disputes Ever — Hal Hellman — Ten of the most consequential conflicts in medical history — from Harvey's discovery of circulation to the battles over antisepsis — showing how science actually advances through argument and controversy.
8. The Future of Iraq: Dictatorship, Democracy, or Division? — Liam Anderson and Gareth Stansfield — A rigorous analysis of Iraq's political future, examining the competing forces of sectarianism, federalism, and authoritarianism in a country whose post-invasion path was anything but certain.
9. Age of Discovery: Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New Renaissance — Ian Goldin and Chris Kutarna — Oxford economists arguing that we are living through a moment analogous to the fifteenth-century Renaissance — extraordinary opportunity and extraordinary danger in equal measure.
10. Tracking Globalization — ed. J.S. Sodhi — Essays from an all-star cast of economists — Bhagwati, Amartya Sen, Stiglitz, Skidelsky, and others — examining the forces, consequences, and contested meanings of economic globalisation.
11. World War C: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic and How to Prepare for the Next One — Dr. Sanjay Gupta — CNN's chief medical correspondent's account of the pandemic's failures and what they reveal about our collective unpreparedness for the infectious disease threats still to come.
12. No Ordinary Disruption: The Four Global Forces Breaking All the Trends — Richard Dobbs, James Manyika, and Jonathan Woetzel — McKinsey Global Institute analysts identify the four forces — urbanisation, technological change, ageing populations, and global connectivity — simultaneously reshaping the world economy.
13. It Shouldn't Be This Hard to Serve Your Country — David Shulkin — The Ninth Secretary of Veterans Affairs's frank account of America's broken system for caring for its veterans, and what it would take to fix it.
14. Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis — Al Gore — Gore's follow-up to An Inconvenient Truth, moving from diagnosis to solution — a detailed and practical roadmap for the transition to a sustainable energy future.
15. The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking and the Future of the Global Economy — Mervyn King — The former Governor of the Bank of England's deeply thoughtful account of why the global financial system remains dangerously unstable, and what radical reform would be required to fix it.
16. Scientists Confront Creationism: Intelligent Design and Beyond — ed. Andrew J. Petto and Laurie R. Godfrey — A rigorous scientific rebuttal gathering leading researchers to explain the evidence for evolution and expose the intellectual sleight of hand at the heart of creationism's arguments.
17. Our Iceberg Is Melting — John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber — A business fable about a penguin colony facing an existential crisis, used to illustrate Kotter's influential eight-step model for navigating change — simple, memorable, and widely used in organisational settings.
18. Simple Acts to Save Our Planet: 500 Ways to Make a Difference — Michelle Neff — Five hundred concrete actions individuals can take to reduce their environmental impact — a practical and accessible guide for readers who want to do something rather than just worry.