268 products in Books

Andrew Dickson White's classic historical essay on hyperinflation is as powerful today as when it was written.

Star Trek fans and collectors will love this one-of-a-kind, mini-size collectible communicator with light and sound. The communicator is used for voice communication and serves as an emergency-signaling device for Starfleet. Kit includes a replica of the iconic communicator, with light and sound, and a 48-page book on the history of communicators, complete with full-color photos.

There are shelves of memoirs about overcoming the death of a parent, childhood abuse, rape, drug addiction, miscarriage, alcoholism, hustling, gangbanging, near-death injuries, drug dealing, prostitution, or homelessness. Cupcake Brown survived all these things before she’d even turned twenty. And that’s when things got interesting…. You have in your hands the strange, heart-wrenching, and exhilarating tale of a woman named Cupcake. It begins as the story of a girl orphaned twice over, once by the death of her mother and then again by a child welfare system that separated her from her stepfather and put her into the hands of an epically sadistic foster parent. But there comes a point in her preteen years—maybe it’s the night she first tries to run away and is exposed to drugs, alcohol, and sex all at once—when Cupcake’s story shifts from a tear-jerking tragedy to a dark comic blues opera. As Cupcake’s troubles grow, so do her voice and spirit. Her gut-punch sense of humor and eye for the absurd, along with her outsized will, carry her through a fateful series of events that could easily have left her dead. Young Cupcake learned to survive by turning tricks, downing hard liquor, partying like a rock star, and ingesting every drug she could find while hitchhiking up and down the California coast. She stumbled into gangbanging, drug dealing, hustling, prostitution, theft, and, eventually, the best scam of all: a series of 9-to-5 jobs. But Cupcake’s unlikely tour through the cubicle world was paralleled by a quickening descent into the nightmare of crack cocaine use, till she eventually found herself living behind a Dumpster. Astonishingly, she turned it around. With the help of a cobbled together family of eccentric fellow addicts and “angels”—a series of friends and strangers who came to her aid at pivotalmoments—she slowly transformed her life from the inside out. A Piece of Cake is unlike any memoir you’ll ever read. Moving and almost transgressive in its frankness, it is a relentlessly gripping tale of a resilient spirit who took on the worst of contem-porary urban life and survived it with a furious wit and unyielding determination. Cupcake Brown is a dynamic and utterly original storyteller who will guide you on the most satisfying, startlingly funny, and genuinely affecting tour through hell you’ll ever take. When it came time for me to talk, I wasn’t sure which parts of my past to tell, which to keep secret, and which to pretend never happened. Uncle Jr. had already seen the welts on my back, so he wasn’t too surprised when I told them about some of the physical abuse I endured at Diane’s. Everyone else hit the roof, except Daddy. He got really quiet and started balling and unballing his fists. I continued my update. Experience had taught me that adults have trouble accepting the idea of children having sex. I decided that from then on, that part of my life never happened. I picked up the story by telling them about Fly, the Gangstas, and getting shot. I was dying for a cigarette. So it seemed a good time to announce that I smoked cigarettes—and weed. After a moment Sam looked at me, smiled, and handed me one of her Marlboros. I preferred menthols, but beggars can’t be choosers. I kicked back, took a long drag, and closed my eyes. Daddy and Jr. were silent. They seemed a bit shocked and unsure about how to respond. “Well, Cup,” Jr. said, “it’s a little too late to be trying to raise you now. But those cigarettes will kill you. And weed will only lead you to stronger drugs.” He didn’t know how right he was. But for me, it was too late to be worrying about stronger drugs—the only worrying I did was whether I could find a connection to get some. So I just smiled, nodded, and took another hit off my cigarette. The eerie quiet returned. —from A Piece of Cake Also available as a Random House AudioBook and eBook.

The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times is René Guénon's most prophetic work. Having seen his telling analysis of Western culture, The Crisis of the Modern World, swiftly overtaken by events, he based this his final and most profound critique squarely on changeless metaphysical principles. He exposes with his fabled clarity the precise nature of the modern deviation, devoting special attention to the part played by modern philosophy and science (with their accompanying notions of progress and evolution) in the formation of the industrial and democratic society that we now regard as "normal." He sees history as a descent from Form (or Quality) toward Matter (or Quantity). But following after the Reign of Quantity (modern materialism and the "rise of the masses"), Guénon predicts a reign of "inverted quality" just before the end of the age: the triumph of the "counter-initiation" the kingdom of Antichrist. Although Guénon bases his critique on "abstract" principles, his examples are satisfyingly concrete: his remarks on "the degeneration of coinage" could easily be updated to include the transformation of money into electronically-stored digital information; his treatment of "the significance of metallurgy" as regards its occult dangers points directly to our own well-founded fear of such man-made elements as plutonium; and his chapter on the "cracks in the Great Wall" gives solid metaphysical grounding to our twenty-first century demonology, including the UFO phenomenon. This text is considered the magnum opus among Guénon's works of civilizational criticism, as is Symbols of Sacred Science among his studies on symbols and cosmology, and Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta among his more purely metaphysical works. The Reign of Quantity gives a concise but comprehensive view of the present state of affairs in the world, as it appears from the point of view of the 'ancient wisdom', formerly common both to the East and to the West, but now almost entirely lost sight of. The author indicates with his fabled clarity and directness the precise nature of the modern deviation, and devotes special attention to the development of modern philosophy and science, and to the part played by them, with their accompanying notions of progress and evolution, in the formation of the industrial and democratic society which we now regard as 'normal'. Guénon sees history as a descent from Form (or Quality) toward Matter (or Quantity); but after the Reign of Quantity-modern materialism and the 'rise of the masses'-Guénon predicts a reign of 'inverted quality' just before the end of the age: the triumph of the 'counter-initiation', the kingdom of Antichrist. This text is considered the magnum opus among Guénon's texts of civilizational criticism, as is Symbols of Sacred Science among his studies on symbols and cosmology, and Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta among his more purely metaphysical works.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A potent exploration of the power of blockchains to reshape the future of the internet—and how that affects us all—from influential technology entrepreneur and startup investor Chris Dixon “A must for anyone who wants to better understand the real potential of blockchains and web3.”—Robert Iger, CEO, Disney “A compelling vision of where the internet should go and how to get there.”—Sam Altman, co-founder, OpenAI The internet of today is a far cry from its early promise of a decentralized, democratic network of innovation, connection, and freedom. In the past decade, it has fallen almost entirely under the control of a very small group of companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook. In Read Write Own, tech visionary Chris Dixon argues that the dream of an open network for fostering creativity and entrepreneurship doesn’t have to die and can, in fact, be saved with blockchain networks. He separates this movement, which aims to provide a solid foundation for everything from social networks to artificial intelligence to virtual worlds, from cryptocurrency speculation—a distinction he calls “the computer vs. the casino.”   With lucid and compelling prose—drawing from a twenty-five-year career in the software industry—Dixon shows how the internet has undergone three distinct eras, bringing us to the critical moment we’re in today. The first was the “read” era, in which early networks democratized information. In the “read-write” era, corporate networks democratized publishing. We are now in the midst of the “read-write-own” era, sometimes called web3, in which blockchain networks are granting power and economic benefits to communities of users, not just corporations.   Read Write Own is a must-read for anyone—internet users, business leaders, creators, entrepreneurs—who wants to understand where we’ve been and where we’re going. It provides a vision for a better internet and a playbook to navigate and build the future.

TCP/IP Illustrated, an ongoing series covering the many facets of TCP/IP, brings a highly-effective visual approach to learning about this networking protocol suite. TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 2 contains a thorough explanation of how TCP/IP protocols are implemented. There isn't a more practical or up-to-date bookothis volume is the only one to cover the de facto standard implementation from the 4.4BSD-Lite release, the foundation for TCP/IP implementations run daily on hundreds of thousands of systems worldwide. Combining 500 illustrations with 15,000 lines of real, working code, TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 2 uses a teach-by-example approach to help you master TCP/IP implementation. You will learn about such topics as the relationship between the sockets API and the protocol suite, and the differences between a host implementation and a router. In addition, the book covers the newest features of the 4.4BSD-Lite release, including multicasting, long fat pipe support, window scale, timestamp options, and protection against wrapped sequence numbers, and many other topics. Comprehensive in scope, based on a working standard, and thoroughly illustrated, this book is an indispensable resource for anyone working with TCP/IP.

Privacy is a puzzling concept. From the backyard to the bedroom, everyday life gives rise to an abundance of privacy claims. In the legal sphere, privacy is invoked with respect to issues including abortion, marriage, and sexuality. Yet privacy is surrounded by a mire of theoretical debate. Certain philosophers argue that privacy is neither conceptually nor morally distinct from other interests, while numerous legal scholars point to the apparently disparate interests involved in constitutional and tort privacy law. By arguing that intimacy is the core of privacy, including privacy law, Inness undermines privacy skepticism, providing a strong theoretical foundation for many of our everyday and legal privacy claims, including the controversial constitutional right to privacy.

"He was the most important scholar of privacy since Louis Brandeis."—Jeffrey Rosen In defining privacy as “the claim of individuals…to determine for themselves when, how and to what extent information about them is communicated,” Alan Westin’s 1967 classic Privacy and Freedom laid the philosophical groundwork for the current debates about technology and personal freedom, and is considered a foundational text in the field of privacy law. By arguing that citizens retained control over how their personal data was used, Westin redefined privacy as an individual freedom, taking Justice Louis Brandeis’ 19th century definition of privacy as a legal right and expanding it for use in modern times. Westin’s ideas transformed the meaning of privacy, leading to a spate of privacy laws in the 1970s, as well as prefiguring the arguments over privacy that have come to dominate the internet era. This all new edition of Privacy and Freedom features an introduction by Daniel J. Solove, John Marshall Harlan Research Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School.

Legal Foundations of a Free Society is an updated selection of articles published over three decades dealing with a variety of issues in libertarian rights and legal theory, including the nature and foundations of libertarianism, rights and punishment theory, causation and responsibility, contract theory, and intellectual property. The chapters have been significantly revised and updated and integrated with each other with extensive cross-references, and with an extensive bibliography and index. “… more than 40 years after the first publication of Rothbard’s Ethics of Liberty and characterized by much practical disappointment and increasing theoretical confusion, the publication of Stephan Kinsella’s present work must be considered a most welcome sign of renewed hope and new, refreshing intellectual inspiration. Indeed, with this work, that has been in the making for more than two decades, Kinsella has produced no less than an intellectual landmark, establishing himself as the leading legal theorist and the foremost libertarian thinker of his generation. While following in Rothbard’s footsteps, Kinsella’s work does not merely rehash what has been said or written before. Rather, having absorbed as well all of the relevant literature that has appeared during the last few decades since Rothbard’s passing, Kinsella in the following offers some fresh perspectives and an innovative approach to the age-old quest for justice, and he adds several highly significant refinements and improvements and some centrally important new insights to the theories of personhood, property and contract, most famously some radical criticism and rejection of the idea of ‘intellectual property’ and ‘intellectual property rights.’ … Henceforth, then, all essential studies in the philosophy of law and the field of legal theory will have to take full account of the theories and criticisms expounded by Kinsella.” —From the Foreword, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Gold Medal Winner, Living Now Book Awards 2024 Best Books of 2024, Kirkus Reviews Winner, Independent Press Awards 2024 Honorable Mention, Royal Dragonfly Book Awards 2024 (Religion/Spirituality) Winner, PenCraft Book Awards 2024 (Fiction: Intrigue) Best AI Books of 2024, The Information Winner, American Book Fest (Nonfiction: Cross-Genre) Winner, 2025 American Legacy Book Award (Nonfiction: Cross-Genre) Bostrom’s last book, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (OUP, 2014), sparked a global conversation on AI that continues and widens to this day. That book, which despite its academic style became a New York Times bestseller, focused on what would happen if AI goes wrong. But what if AI goes right? Suppose we succeed in developing superintelligence safely and that we make good use of the almost magical powers this unlocks. We would then achieve full unemployment. More than that, we would transition into a “post-instrumental condition," in which human effort is not needed for any practical purpose. This would be a condition of material abundance. Human nature itself would become fully malleable. In such a solved world, what would be the point of human existence? What could give meaning to our lives? Which old values will we have to sacrifice, and which new values will we be able to realize to wonderful degrees? Deep Utopia—a work that is again years ahead of its time—takes the readers on a journey into some of the most profound questions that arise as we dissolve the limits of our current mode of being. It is a lush, playful, difficult, and human text that interleaves fiction stories and philosophical lectures that show us a glimpse of a different kind of existence–one that might be ours in the not-so-distant future.

This New York Times bestseller and business classic has been fully updated for a world where skilled communication is more important than ever. The book that revolutionized business communications has been updated for today’s workplace. Crucial Conversations provides powerful skills to ensure every conversation―especially difficult ones―leads to the results you want. Written in an engaging and witty style, it teaches readers how to be persuasive rather than abrasive, how to get back to productive dialogue when others blow up or clam up, and it offers powerful skills for mastering high-stakes conversations, regardless of the topic or person. This new edition addresses issues that have arisen in recent years. You’ll learn how to: * Respond when someone initiates aCrucial Conversationwith you * Identify and address the lag time between identifying a problem and discussing it * Communicate more effectively across digital mediums When stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong, you have three choices: Avoid a crucial conversation and suffer the consequences; handle the conversation poorly and suffer the consequences; or apply the lessons and strategies of Crucial Conversations and improve relationships and results. Whether they take place at work or at home, with your coworkers or your spouse, Crucial Conversations have a profound impact on your career, your happiness, and your future. With the skills you learn in this book, you'll never have to worry about the outcome of a Crucial Conversation again.

The New 2018  ebook best selling series has begun!  William D. Danko's True Prosperity ~ Takes More Than Money.~~~ Enter the new title and get your copy today!~~~~~~~~~The bestselling The Millionaire Next Door identifies seven common traits that show up again and again among those who have accumulated wealth. Most of the truly wealthy in this country don't live in Beverly Hills or on Park Avenue-they live next door. This new edition, the first since 1998, includes a new foreword for the twenty-first century by Dr. Thomas J. Stanley.