Download or read book Nineteen Eighty Four written by George Orwell and published by epubli. This book was released on 2021-01-09 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel", often published as "1984", is a dystopian social science fiction novel by English novelist George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Thematically, "Nineteen Eighty-Four" centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of persons and behaviours within society. Orwell, himself a democratic socialist, modelled the authoritarian government in the novel after Stalinist Russia. More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within politics and the ways in which they are manipulated. The story takes place in an imagined future, the year 1984, when much of the world has fallen victim to perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, historical negationism, and propaganda. Great Britain, known as Airstrip One, has become a province of a totalitarian superstate named Oceania that is ruled by the Party who employ the Thought Police to persecute individuality and independent thinking. Big Brother, the leader of the Party, enjoys an intense cult of personality despite the fact that he may not even exist. The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a diligent and skillful rank-and-file worker and Outer Party member who secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion. He enters into a forbidden relationship with a colleague, Julia, and starts to remember what life was like before the Party came to power.

Download or read book The Ministry of Truth written by Dorian Lynskey and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Rich and compelling. . .Lynskey’s account of the reach of 1984 is revelatory.” --George Packer, The Atlantic An authoritative, wide-ranging, and incredibly timely history of 1984--its literary sources, its composition by Orwell, its deep and lasting effect on the Cold War, and its vast influence throughout world culture at every level, from high to pop. 1984 isn't just a novel; it's a key to understanding the modern world. George Orwell's final work is a treasure chest of ideas and memes--Big Brother, the Thought Police, Doublethink, Newspeak, 2+2=5--that gain potency with every year. Particularly in 2016, when the election of Donald Trump made it a bestseller ("Ministry of Alternative Facts," anyone?). Its influence has morphed endlessly into novels (The Handmaid's Tale), films (Brazil), television shows (V for Vendetta), rock albums (Diamond Dogs), commercials (Apple), even reality TV (Big Brother). The Ministry of Truth is the first book that fully examines the epochal and cultural event that is 1984 in all its aspects: its roots in the utopian and dystopian literature that preceded it; the personal experiences in wartime Great Britain that Orwell drew on as he struggled to finish his masterpiece in his dying days; and the political and cultural phenomena that the novel ignited at once upon publication and that far from subsiding, have only grown over the decades. It explains how fiction history informs fiction and how fiction explains history.

Download or read book Amusing Ourselves to Death written by Neil Postman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2005-12-27 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens when media and politics become forms of entertainment? As our world begins to look more and more like Orwell's 1984, Neil's Postman's essential guide to the modern media is more relevant than ever. "It's unlikely that Trump has ever read Amusing Ourselves to Death, but his ascent would not have surprised Postman.” -CNN Originally published in 1985, Neil Postman’s groundbreaking polemic about the corrosive effects of television on our politics and public discourse has been hailed as a twenty-first-century book published in the twentieth century. Now, with television joined by more sophisticated electronic media—from the Internet to cell phones to DVDs—it has taken on even greater significance. Amusing Ourselves to Death is a prophetic look at what happens when politics, journalism, education, and even religion become subject to the demands of entertainment. It is also a blueprint for regaining control of our media, so that they can serve our highest goals. “A brilliant, powerful, and important book. This is an indictment that Postman has laid down and, so far as I can see, an irrefutable one.” –Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World

Download or read book Predicting the Next President written by Allan J. Lichtman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2024-07-01 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the days after Donald Trump’s unexpected victory on election night 2016, The New York Times, CNN, and other leading media outlets reached out to one of the few pundits who had correctly predicted the outcome, Allan J. Lichtman. While many election forecasters base their findings exclusively on public opinion polls, Lichtman looks at the underlying fundamentals that have driven every presidential election since 1860. Using his 13 historical factors or “keys” (four political, seven performance, and two personality), Lichtman had been predicting Trump’s win since September 2016. In the updated 2024 edition, he applies the keys to every presidential election since 1860 and shows readers the current state of the 2024 race. In doing so, he dispels much of the mystery behind electoral politics and challenges many traditional assumptions. An indispensable resource for political junkies!

Download or read book The Handmaid s Tale Movie Tie in written by Margaret Atwood and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2017-04-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from “the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction” (New York Times). Now an award-winning Hulu series starring Elizabeth Moss. Includes an introduction by Margaret Atwood. In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian future, environmental disasters and declining birthrates have led to a Second American Civil War. The result is the rise of the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian regime that enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women. Offred is one of these, a Handmaid bound to produce children for one of Gilead’s commanders. Deprived of her husband, her child, her freedom, and even her own name, Offred clings to her memories and her will to survive. At once a scathing satire, an ominous warning, and a tour de force of narrative suspense, The Handmaid’s Tale is a modern classic. Look for The Testaments, the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale

Download or read book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism written by Shoshana Zuboff and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 658 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called "surveillance capitalism," and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior. In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth. Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new "behavioral futures markets," where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new "means of behavioral modification." The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a "Big Other" operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled "hive" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit -- at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future. With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future -- if we let it.

Download or read book The Grand Inquisitor written by Fyodor Dostoevsky and published by Lindhardt og Ringhof. This book was released on 2021-12-06 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘The Grand Inquisitor’ is a short story that appears in one of Dostoevsky’s most famous works, ‘The Brothers Karamazov’, but it is often read independently due to its standalone story and literary significance. In the tale, Jesus comes to Seville during the Spanish Inquisition and performs miracles but is soon arrested and sentenced to be burned. The Grand Inquisitor informs Jesus that the church no longer needs him as they are stronger under the direction of Satan. ‘The Grand Inquisitor’ is incredibly interesting and compelling for its philosophical discussion about religion and the human condition. The main debate put forth in the poem is whether freedom or security is more important to mankind, as an all-powerful church can provide safety but requires its followers to abandon their free will. This tale remains remarkably influential among philosophers, political thinkers, and novelists from Friedrich Nietzsche and Noam Chomsky to David Foster Wallace and beyond. Dostoevsky’s writing is both inventive and provocative in this timeless story as the reader is free to come to their own conclusions. ‘The Grand Inquisitor’ should be read by anyone interested in philosophy or politics. Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) was a famous Russian writer of novels, short stories, and essays. A connoisseur of the troubled human psyche and the relationships between the individuals, Dostoevsky’s oeuvre covers a large area of subjects: politics, religion, social issues, philosophy, and the uncharted realms of the psychological. He is most famous for the novels ‘Crime and Punishment’, ‘The Idiot’, and ‘The Brothers Karamazov’. James Joyce described Dostoevsky as the creator of ‘modern prose’ and his literary legacy is influential to this day as Dostoevsky’s work has been adapted for many movies including ‘The Double’ starring Jesse Eisenberg.

Download or read book Diaries written by George Orwell and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2012-08-20 with total page 690 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major literary event—the long-awaited publication of George Orwell's diaries, chronicling the events that inspired his greatest works. This groundbreaking volume, never before published in the United States, at last introduces the interior life of George Orwell, the writer who defined twentieth-century political thought. Written as individual books throughout his career, the eleven surviving diaries collected here record Orwell’s youthful travels among miners and itinerant laborers, the fearsome rise of totalitarianism, the horrific drama of World War II, and the feverish composition of his great masterpieces Animal Farm and 1984 (which have now sold more copies than any two books by any other twentieth-century author). Personal entries cover the tragic death of his first wife and Orwell’s own decline as he battled tuberculosis. Exhibiting great brilliance of prose and composition, these treasured dispatches, edited by the world’s leading Orwell scholar, exhibit “the seeds of famous passages to come” (New Statesman) and amount to a volume as penetrating as the autobiography he would never write.

Download or read book Fahrenheit 451 written by Ray Bradbury and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-01-10 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A totalitarian regime has ordered all books to be destroyed, but one of the book burners, Guy Montag, suddenly realizes their merit.

Download or read book After Hegemony written by Robert O. Keohane and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2005-02-28 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a comprehensive study of cooperation among the advanced capitalist countries. Can cooperation persist without the dominance of a single power, such as the United States after World War II? To answer this pressing question, Robert Keohane analyzes the institutions, or "international regimes," through which cooperation has taken place in the world political economy and describes the evolution of these regimes as American hegemony has eroded. Refuting the idea that the decline of hegemony makes cooperation impossible, he views international regimes not as weak substitutes for world government but as devices for facilitating decentralized cooperation among egoistic actors. In the preface the author addresses the issue of cooperation after the end of the Soviet empire and with the renewed dominance of the United States, in security matters, as well as recent scholarship on cooperation.

Download or read book Politics and the English Language written by George Orwell and published by Renard Press Ltd. This book was released on 2021-01-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Politics and the English Language, the second in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell takes aim at the language used in politics, which, he says, ‘is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind’. In an age where the language used in politics is constantly under the microscope, Orwell’s Politics and the English Language is just as relevant today, and gives the reader a vital understanding of the tactics at play. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times

Download or read book I Predict 1984 written by Lester Sumrall and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Slash Prediction written by C. Phillip Weatherspoon and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 6 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Minds Brains and Science written by John R. Searle and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1986-01-01 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Minds, Brains and Science takes up just the problems that perplex people, and it does what good philosophy always does: it dispels the illusion caused by the specious collision of truths. How do we reconcile common sense and science? John Searle argues vigorously that the truths of common sense and the truths of science are both right and that the only question is how to fit them together. Searle explains how we can reconcile an intuitive view of ourselves as conscious, free, rational agents with a universe that science tells us consists of mindless physical particles. He briskly and lucidly sets out his arguments against the familiar positions in the philosophy of mind, and details the consequences of his ideas for the mind-body problem, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, questions of action and free will, and the philosophy of the social sciences.

Download or read book Imagining the Internet written by Janna Quitney Anderson and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2005-07-21 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early 1990s, people predicted the death of privacy, an end to the current concept of 'property,' a paperless society, 500 channels of high-definition interactive television, world peace, and the extinction of the human race after a takeover engineered by intelligent machines. Imagining the Internet zeroes in on predictions about the Internet's future and revisits past predictions—and how they turned out. It gives the history of communications in a nutshell, illustrating the serious impact of pervasive networks and how they will change our lives over the next century.

Download or read book The Iron Heel written by Jack London and published by The Floating Press. This book was released on 2009-05-01 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Iron Heel is a dystopian novel by American writer Jack London, first published in 1908. Anthony Meredith, a scholar in about the year 2600 AD (or 419 B.O.M. - the Brotherhood of Man), annotates the "Everhard Manuscript", an account that chronicles the years from 1912 to 1932 when the great "Iron Heel" oligarchy rose to power in the United States.

Download or read book Superforecasting written by Philip E. Tetlock and published by Crown. This book was released on 2015-09-29 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE ECONOMIST “The most important book on decision making since Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow.”—Jason Zweig, The Wall Street Journal Everyone would benefit from seeing further into the future, whether buying stocks, crafting policy, launching a new product, or simply planning the week’s meals. Unfortunately, people tend to be terrible forecasters. As Wharton professor Philip Tetlock showed in a landmark 2005 study, even experts’ predictions are only slightly better than chance. However, an important and underreported conclusion of that study was that some experts do have real foresight, and Tetlock has spent the past decade trying to figure out why. What makes some people so good? And can this talent be taught? In Superforecasting, Tetlock and coauthor Dan Gardner offer a masterwork on prediction, drawing on decades of research and the results of a massive, government-funded forecasting tournament. The Good Judgment Project involves tens of thousands of ordinary people—including a Brooklyn filmmaker, a retired pipe installer, and a former ballroom dancer—who set out to forecast global events. Some of the volunteers have turned out to be astonishingly good. They’ve beaten other benchmarks, competitors, and prediction markets. They’ve even beaten the collective judgment of intelligence analysts with access to classified information. They are "superforecasters." In this groundbreaking and accessible book, Tetlock and Gardner show us how we can learn from this elite group. Weaving together stories of forecasting successes (the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound) and failures (the Bay of Pigs) and interviews with a range of high-level decision makers, from David Petraeus to Robert Rubin, they show that good forecasting doesn’t require powerful computers or arcane methods. It involves gathering evidence from a variety of sources, thinking probabilistically, working in teams, keeping score, and being willing to admit error and change course. Superforecasting offers the first demonstrably effective way to improve our ability to predict the future—whether in business, finance, politics, international affairs, or daily life—and is destined to become a modern classic.