American Disruptor

American Disruptor PDF Author: Roland De Wolk
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520383230
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
The rags-to-riches story of Silicon Valley's original disruptor. American Disruptor is the untold story of Leland Stanford – from his birth in a backwoods bar to the founding of the world-class university that became and remains the nucleus of Silicon Valley. The life of this robber baron, politician, and historic influencer is the astonishing tale of how one supremely ambitious man became this country's original "disruptor" – reshaping industry and engineering one of the greatest raids on the public treasury for America’s transcontinental railroad, all while living more opulently than maharajas, kings, and emperors. It is also the saga of how Stanford, once a serial failure, overcame all obstacles to become one of America’s most powerful and wealthiest men, using his high elective office to enrich himself before losing the one thing that mattered most to him—his only child and son. Scandal and intrigue would follow Stanford through his life, and even after his death, when his widow was murdered in a Honolulu hotel—a crime quickly covered up by the almost stillborn university she had saved. Richly detailed and deeply researched, American Disruptor restores Leland Stanford’s rightful place as a revolutionary force and architect of modern America.

American Disruptor

American Disruptor PDF Author: Roland De Wolk
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520383230
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 343

Get Book Here

Book Description
The rags-to-riches story of Silicon Valley's original disruptor. American Disruptor is the untold story of Leland Stanford – from his birth in a backwoods bar to the founding of the world-class university that became and remains the nucleus of Silicon Valley. The life of this robber baron, politician, and historic influencer is the astonishing tale of how one supremely ambitious man became this country's original "disruptor" – reshaping industry and engineering one of the greatest raids on the public treasury for America’s transcontinental railroad, all while living more opulently than maharajas, kings, and emperors. It is also the saga of how Stanford, once a serial failure, overcame all obstacles to become one of America’s most powerful and wealthiest men, using his high elective office to enrich himself before losing the one thing that mattered most to him—his only child and son. Scandal and intrigue would follow Stanford through his life, and even after his death, when his widow was murdered in a Honolulu hotel—a crime quickly covered up by the almost stillborn university she had saved. Richly detailed and deeply researched, American Disruptor restores Leland Stanford’s rightful place as a revolutionary force and architect of modern America.

Hostages No More

Hostages No More PDF Author: Betsy DeVos
Publisher: Center Street
ISBN: 1546002030
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
Now a National Bestseller! From coronavirus lockdowns to critical race theory in the classroom, it has become crystal clear that America’s schools aren’t working for America’s students and parents. No one knows this better than Betsy DeVos. Long before she was tapped by President Trump to serve as secretary of education, DeVos established herself as one of the country’s most influential advocates for education reform, from school choice and charter schools to protecting free speech on campus. She’s unflinching in standing up to the powerful interests who control and benefit from the status quo in education – which is why the unions, the media, and the radical left made her public enemy number one. Now, DeVos is ready to tell her side of the story after years of being vilified by the radical left for championing common-sense, conservative reforms in America’s schools. In Hostages No More, DeVos unleashes her candid thoughts about working in the Trump administration, recounts her battles over the decades to put students first, hits back at “woke” curricula in our schools, and details the reforms America must pursue to fix its long and badly broken education system. And she has stories to tell: DeVos offers blunt insights on the people and politics that stand in the way of fixing our schools. For students, families and concerned citizens, DeVos shares a roadmap for reclaiming education and securing the futures of our kids – and America.

Seeker

Seeker PDF Author: Arwen Elys Dayton
Publisher: Delacorte Press
ISBN: 0385378572
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
“Katniss and Tris would approve.”—TeenVogue.com The night Quin Kincaid takes her Oath, she will become what she has trained to be her entire life. She will become a Seeker. This is her legacy, and it is an honor. As a Seeker, Quin will fight beside her two closest companions, Shinobu and John, to protect the weak and the wronged. Together they will stand for light in a shadowy world. And she'll be with the boy she loves--who's also her best friend. But the night Quin takes her Oath, everything changes. Being a Seeker is not what she thought. Her family is not what she thought. Even the boy she loves is not who she thought. And now it's too late to walk away. "This book will not disappoint."-USAToday.com "Fans of Veronica Roth’s Divergent, Marie Lu’s Legend, and Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games series: your next obsession has arrived."-School Library Journal "In this powerful beginning to a complex family saga...Dayton excels at creating memorable characters."-Publishers Weekly “[A] genre-blending sci-fi, fantasy…[with] action-packed scenes.”—Booklist "Secrets, danger, and romance meet in this unforgettable epic fantasy." —Kami Garcia, #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of Beautiful Creatures & author of Unbreakable "A tightly-woven, action-packed story of survivial and adventure, Seeker is perfect for fans of Game of Thrones." —Tahereh Mafi, author of the New York Times bestselling Shatter Me series

Toxic Bodies

Toxic Bodies PDF Author: Nancy Langston
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300162995
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
In 1941 the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of diethylstilbestrol (DES), the first synthetic chemical to be marketed as an estrogen and one of the first to be identified as a hormone disruptor—a chemical that mimics hormones. Although researchers knew that DES caused cancer and disrupted sexual development, doctors prescribed it for millions of women, initially for menopause and then for miscarriage, while farmers gave cattle the hormone to promote rapid weight gain. Its residues, and those of other chemicals, in the American food supply are changing the internal ecosystems of human, livestock, and wildlife bodies in increasingly troubling ways. In this gripping exploration, Nancy Langston shows how these chemicals have penetrated into every aspect of our bodies and ecosystems, yet the U.S. government has largely failed to regulate them and has skillfully manipulated scientific uncertainty to delay regulation. Personally affected by endocrine disruptors, Langston argues that the FDA needs to institute proper regulation of these commonly produced synthetic chemicals.

Time in Maps

Time in Maps PDF Author: Kären Wigen
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022671862X
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
“As wide-ranging, imaginative, and revealing as the maps they discuss, these essays . . . track how maps—interpreted broadly—convey time as well as space.” —Richard White, Stanford University Maps organize us in space, but they also organize us in time. Looking around the world for the last five hundred years, Time in Maps shows that today’s digital maps are only the latest effort to insert a sense of time into the spatial medium of maps. Historians Kären Wigen and Caroline Winterer have assembled leading scholars to consider how maps from all over the world have depicted time in ingenious and provocative ways. Focusing on maps created in Spanish America, Europe, the United States, and Asia, these essays take us from the Aztecs documenting the founding of Tenochtitlan, to early modern Japanese reconstructing nostalgic landscapes before Western encroachments, to nineteenth-century Americans grappling with the new concept of deep time. The book also features a defense of traditional paper maps by digital mapmaker William Rankin. With more than one hundred color maps and illustrations, Time in Maps will draw the attention of anyone interested in cartographic history.

Fed Up

Fed Up PDF Author: Dale Finley Slongwhite
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813047617
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
One farmworker tells of the soil that would “bite” him, but that was the chemicals burning his skin. Others developed lupus, asthma, diabetes, kidney failure, or suffered myriad symptoms with no clear diagnosis. Some miscarried or had children with genetic defects, while others developed cancer. In Fed Up, Dale Slongwhite collects the nearly inconceivable and chilling oral histories of African American farmworkers whose lives, and the lives of their families, were forever altered by one of the most horrific pesticide exposure incidents in United States’ history. For decades, the farms around Lake Apopka, Florida’s third largest lake, were sprayed with chemicals ranging from the now-banned DDT to toxaphene. Among the most productive farmland in America, the fields were doused with organochlorine pesticides, also known as persistent organic pollutants; the once-clear waters of the lake turned pea green; birds, alligators, and fish died at alarming rates; and still the farmworkers planted, harvested, packed, and shipped produce all over the country, enduring scorching sun, snakes, rats, injuries, substandard housing, low wages, and the endocrine disruptors that crop dusters dropped as they toiled. Eventually, state and federal dollars were allocated to buy out and close farms to attempt land restoration, water clean up, and wildlife rehabilitation. But the farmworkers became statistics, nameless casualties history almost forgot. Here are their stories, told in their own words.

Unruly Saint

Unruly Saint PDF Author: D. L. Mayfield
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishers
ISBN: 1506473598
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
In 1933, in the shadow of the Great Depression, Dorothy Day launched the Catholic Worker Movement, a worldwide crusade for equality. In Unruly Saint, D. L. Mayfield illuminates the ways in which Day found the love of God in, and expressed it for, her neighbors during a time of great upheaval.

Makers and Takers

Makers and Takers PDF Author: Rana Foroohar
Publisher: Crown Currency
ISBN: 0553447254
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
Is Wall Street bad for Main Street America? "A well-told exploration of why our current economy is leaving too many behind." —The New York Times In looking at the forces that shaped the 2016 presidential election, one thing is clear: much of the population believes that our economic system is rigged to enrich the privileged elites at the expense of hard-working Americans. This is a belief held equally on both sides of political spectrum, and it seems only to be gaining momentum. A key reason, says Financial Times columnist Rana Foroohar, is the fact that Wall Street is no longer supporting Main Street businesses that create the jobs for the middle and working class. She draws on in-depth reporting and interviews at the highest rungs of business and government to show how the “financialization of America”—the phenomenon by which finance and its way of thinking have come to dominate every corner of business—is threatening the American Dream. Now updated with new material explaining how our corrupted financial sys­tem propelled Donald Trump to power, Makers and Takers explores the confluence of forces that has led American businesses to favor balance-sheet engineering over the actual kind, greed over growth, and short-term profits over putting people to work. From the cozy relationship between Wall Street and Washington, to a tax code designed to benefit wealthy individuals and corporations, to forty years of bad policy decisions, she shows why so many Americans have lost trust in the sys­tem, and why it matters urgently to us all. Through colorful stories of both “Takers,” those stifling job creation while lining their own pockets, and “Makers,” businesses serving the real economy, Foroohar shows how we can reverse these trends for a better path forward.

Disrupt Aging

Disrupt Aging PDF Author: Jo Ann Jenkins
Publisher: Public Affairs
ISBN: 1610396766
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
This book "sets out to change the current conversation about what it means to get older. In it, Jenkins chronicles her own journey, as well as those of others who are making their mark as disrupters, to show readers how we can all be active, financially unburdened, and happy as we get older. It's [a] ... narrative that touches on all the important issues facing people 50+ today, from caregiving and mindful living to building age-friendly communities and attaining financial freedom"--

The Monsanto Papers

The Monsanto Papers PDF Author: Carey Gillam
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1642830569
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Lee Johnson was a man with simple dreams. All he wanted was a steady job and a nice home for his wife and children, something better than the hard life he knew growing up. He never imagined that he would become the face of a David-and-Goliath showdown against one of the world’s most powerful corporate giants. But a workplace accident left Lee doused in a toxic chemical and facing a deadly cancer that turned his life upside down. In 2018, the world watched as Lee was thrust to the forefront of one the most dramatic legal battles in recent history. The Monsanto Papers is the inside story of Lee Johnson’s landmark lawsuit against Monsanto. For Lee, the case was a race against the clock, with doctors predicting he wouldn’t survive long enough to take the witness stand. For the eclectic band of young, ambitious lawyers representing him, it was a matter of professional pride and personal risk, with millions of dollars and hard-earned reputations on the line. For the public at large, the lawsuit presented a question of corporate accountability. With enough money and influence, could a company endanger its customers, hide evidence, manipulate regulators, and get away with it all—for decades? Readers will be astounded by the depth of corruption uncovered, captivated by the shocking twists, and moved by Lee’s quiet determination to see justice served. With gripping narrative force that reads like fiction, The Monsanto Papers takes readers behind the scenes of a grueling legal battle, pulling back the curtain on the frailties of the American court system and the lengths to which lawyers will go to fight corporate wrongdoing.