Sweden - The Untold Story

Sweden - The Untold Story PDF Author: Claudia Wallin
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781724866011
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Sweden has long been viewed as a beacon for democratic government and progressive social policies. In this witty and insightful book, journalist and writer Claudia Wallin takes a fascinating look at the Swedish model of government, its commitment to transparency and openness, and its deep-seated aversion to politicians, judges and public servants enjoying any special privileges or advantages. Welcome to the Swedish reality of members of Parliament commuting by bus, living in studio apartments in the capital and working from 10-square-metre offices. No one in public life earns an obscene multiple-digit salary. At the local level, Swedish councillors are not even paid, nor do they have the right to an office - they work from home. Cabinet ministers do not live in luxury either: elected by the Financial Times as the best European Finance Minister of 2011, Anders Borg lived in a 25-square-metre state-owned apartment in Stockholm during the week. Politicians who dare pay for a taxi ride with taxpayers' money, instead of riding the train, end up on news headlines. And in some cases, are forced to step down. Without official cars or private drivers, Swedish politicians travel in crowded buses and trains, just like the citizens they represent. Without any right to parliamentary immunity, they can be tried like any other citizen. With no private secretaries at the door or private bathrooms and breakfast bars, their bare-bones parliamentary offices are spartan and tiny like a public clerk's office. Claudia Wallin also focuses on how the triple pillars of the Swedish system - transparency (Sweden has the world's oldest transparency law), social equality and a well-educated population - combine to create a high degree of social trust. In virtually every area of public life, incidences of corruption or profiting from public office are relatively rare and, when transgressions occur, politicians and officials are swiftly brought to account, aided by an ever-vigilant media. Not even celebrities are immune. Under suspicion of tax fraud, the legendary Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman was once arrested inside a theatre and taken to a police station. In little over 100 years, Sweden has transformed itself from an impoverished, agricultural society into one of the wealthiest, most socially just and least corrupt countries in the world, where nobody is above anybody else. The Swedish experience demonstrates perhaps more than any other how change is possible. Sweden - The Untold Story is a best-seller in Brazil, where it was originally published.

Sweden - The Untold Story

Sweden - The Untold Story PDF Author: Claudia Wallin
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781724866011
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Get Book Here

Book Description
Sweden has long been viewed as a beacon for democratic government and progressive social policies. In this witty and insightful book, journalist and writer Claudia Wallin takes a fascinating look at the Swedish model of government, its commitment to transparency and openness, and its deep-seated aversion to politicians, judges and public servants enjoying any special privileges or advantages. Welcome to the Swedish reality of members of Parliament commuting by bus, living in studio apartments in the capital and working from 10-square-metre offices. No one in public life earns an obscene multiple-digit salary. At the local level, Swedish councillors are not even paid, nor do they have the right to an office - they work from home. Cabinet ministers do not live in luxury either: elected by the Financial Times as the best European Finance Minister of 2011, Anders Borg lived in a 25-square-metre state-owned apartment in Stockholm during the week. Politicians who dare pay for a taxi ride with taxpayers' money, instead of riding the train, end up on news headlines. And in some cases, are forced to step down. Without official cars or private drivers, Swedish politicians travel in crowded buses and trains, just like the citizens they represent. Without any right to parliamentary immunity, they can be tried like any other citizen. With no private secretaries at the door or private bathrooms and breakfast bars, their bare-bones parliamentary offices are spartan and tiny like a public clerk's office. Claudia Wallin also focuses on how the triple pillars of the Swedish system - transparency (Sweden has the world's oldest transparency law), social equality and a well-educated population - combine to create a high degree of social trust. In virtually every area of public life, incidences of corruption or profiting from public office are relatively rare and, when transgressions occur, politicians and officials are swiftly brought to account, aided by an ever-vigilant media. Not even celebrities are immune. Under suspicion of tax fraud, the legendary Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman was once arrested inside a theatre and taken to a police station. In little over 100 years, Sweden has transformed itself from an impoverished, agricultural society into one of the wealthiest, most socially just and least corrupt countries in the world, where nobody is above anybody else. The Swedish experience demonstrates perhaps more than any other how change is possible. Sweden - The Untold Story is a best-seller in Brazil, where it was originally published.

Africans in New Sweden

Africans in New Sweden PDF Author: Abdullah R. Muhammad
Publisher: Cedar Tree Publishing
ISBN: 9781892142566
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description


The Untold Story of the Talking Book

The Untold Story of the Talking Book PDF Author: Matthew Rubery
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674974530
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
A history of audiobooks, from entertainment & rehabilitation for blinded World War I soldiers to a twenty-first-century competitive industry. Histories of the book often move straight from the codex to the digital screen. Left out of that familiar account are nearly 150 years of audio recordings. Recounting the fascinating history of audio-recorded literature, Matthew Rubery traces the path of innovation from Edison’s recitation of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” for his tinfoil phonograph in 1877, to the first novel-length talking books made for blinded World War I veterans, to today’s billion-dollar audiobook industry. The Untold Story of the Talking Book focuses on the social impact of audiobooks, not just the technological history, in telling a story of surprising and impassioned conflicts: from controversies over which books the Library of Congress selected to become talking books—yes to Kipling, no to Flaubert—to debates about what defines a reader. Delving into the vexed relationship between spoken and printed texts, Rubery argues that storytelling can be just as engaging with the ears as with the eyes, and that audiobooks deserve to be taken seriously. They are not mere derivatives of printed books but their own form of entertainment. We have come a long way from the era of sound recorded on wax cylinders, when people imagined one day hearing entire novels on mini-phonographs tucked inside their hats. Rubery tells the untold story of this incredible evolution and, in doing so, breaks from convention by treating audiobooks as a distinctively modern art form that has profoundly influenced the way we read. Praise for The Untold Story of the Talking Book “If audiobooks are relatively new to your world, you might wonder where they came from and where they’re going. And for general fans of the intersection of culture and technology, The Untold Story of the Talking Book is a fascinating read.” —Neil Steinberg, Chicago Sun-Times “[Rubery] explores 150 years of the audio format with an imminently accessible style, touching upon a wide range of interconnected topics . . . Through careful investigation of the co-development of formats within the publishing industry, Rubery shines a light on overlooked pioneers of audio . . . Rubery’s work succeeds in providing evidence to ‘move beyond the reductive debate’ on whether audiobooks really count as reading, and establishes the format’s rightful place in the literary family.” —Mary Burkey, Booklist (starred review)

Liberty Lady

Liberty Lady PDF Author: Pat DiGeorge
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780998257013
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 514

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Book Description
LIBERTY LADY is the true story of a WWII bomber and its crew forced to land in neutral Sweden during the Eighth Air Force's first large-scale daylight bombing raid on Berlin. 1st Lt. Herman Allen was interned and began working for his country's espionage agency, the OSS, with instructions to befriend a businessman suspected of selling secrets to the Germans. Soon Herman fell in love with a beautiful Swedish-American secretary working for the OSS, their courtship unfolding amid the glamour and intrigue of wartime Stockholm. As Swedish newspapers trumpeted one of the biggest spy scandals of the war, two of the main protagonists walked down the aisle in a storybook wedding presided over by the nephew of the King of Sweden.

The Spotify Play

The Spotify Play PDF Author: Sven Carlsson
Publisher: Diversion Books
ISBN: 1635767458
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Two journalists chronicle the David versus many Goliaths story of the streaming music giant’s rise to success. The American edition of the revelatory Swedish book Spotify Untold, the basis of the new Netflix Original series The Playlist, out now! Steve Jobs tried to stop this moment from ever happening. Google and Microsoft made bids to preempt it. The music industry blocked it time and again. Yet, on a summer’s eve in 2011, the whiz kid CEO of a Swedish start-up celebrated his company’s US launch. In the midst of the Apple-Android tech war and a music label crusade against piracy and illegal downloading, Spotify redrew the battle lines, sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley, and got the hardline executives at Universal, Sony, and Warner to sign with its “free-mium” platform. In The Spotify Play, now adapted into an upcoming Netflix Original series, Swedish investigative tech journalists Sven Carlsson and Jonas Leijonhufvud, who covered the company from its inception, draw upon hundreds of interviews, previously untapped sources, and in-depth reporting on figures like Mark Zuckerberg, Sean Parker, Steve Jobs, Taylor Swift, Jay-Z, Pony Ma Huateng, and Jimmy Iovine. They have captured the riveting David vs. Goliath story of a disruptive innovator who played the industry giants in a quest to revolutionize the consumption of sound, building today’s largest online source of audio, with more than 50 million songs, one million-plus podcasts, and over 300 million users. Praise for The Spotify Play “Two excellent Swedish journalists recount the historic rise of the company that changed modern music not just as a riveting business tale, but as a lesson in tech geopolitics. Spotify’s Daniel Ek shows why Silicon Valley does not always win.” —David Kirkpatrick, New York Times–bestselling author of The Facebook Effect “An outsider-to-kingmaker narrative that should be read by every gun-shy entrepreneur too spooked by Silicon Valley’s giants to go head-to-head with them. . . . Carlsson and Leijonhufvud have tracked Mr. Ek’s career since the early days, and their expertise shows. The Spotify Play is . . . a revealing character study of an inventor who proved that the willingness to fight for an idea can indeed pay off—and that you don’t have to be a pirate to have fun doing it.” —Wall Street Journal

Shriek: An Afterword

Shriek: An Afterword PDF Author: Jeff VanderMeer
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 0374721173
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
From the author of Borne and Annihilation comes the paperback reissue of his cult classic Shriek: An Afterword. An epic yet personal look at several decades of life, love, and death in the imaginary city of Ambergris—previously chronicled in Jeff VanderMeer’s acclaimed City of Saints and Madmen—Shriek: An Afterword relates the scandalous, heartbreaking, and horrifying secret history of two squabbling siblings and their confidantes, protectors, and enemies. Narrated with flamboyant intensity and under increasingly urgent conditions by the ex-society figure Janice Shriek, this afterword presents a vivid gallery of characters and events, emphasizing the adventures of Janice’s brother Duncan, a historian obsessed with a doomed love affair and a secret that may kill or transform him; a war between rival publishing houses that will change Ambergris forever; and the gray caps, a marginalized people armed with advanced fungal technologies, who have been waiting underground for their chance to mold the future of the city. After reading this introduction to the Family Shriek—part academic treatise, part tell-all biography—you’ll never look at history in quite the same way.

Whiskey Breakfast

Whiskey Breakfast PDF Author: Richard C. Lindberg
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452932654
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
A poignant, multigenerational tale of the Swedish-American experience for two disparate Chicago families

'We Are Going to Pick Potatoes'

'We Are Going to Pick Potatoes' PDF Author: Irene Levin Berman
Publisher: Hamilton Books
ISBN: 0761850120
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Irene Levin Berman was born, raised, and educated in Norway. Her first conscious recollection of life goes back to 1942, when as a young child she escaped to Sweden, a neutral country during World War II, to avoid annihilation. Germany had invaded Norway and the persecution of two thousand Norwegian Jews had begun. Seven members of her father's family were among the seven hundred and seventy-one unfortunate persons who were deported and sent to Auschwitz. In 2005, Irene was forced to examine the label of being a Holocaust survivor. Her strong dual identity as a Norwegian and a Jew led her to explore previously unopened doors in her mind. This is not a narrative of the Holocaust alone, but the remembrance of growing up Jewish in Norway during and after WWII. In addition to the richness of both her Norwegian and Jewish cultures, she ultimately acquired yet another identity as an American.

Marie-Antoinette and Count Fersen

Marie-Antoinette and Count Fersen PDF Author: Evelyn Farr
Publisher: Peter Owen Publishers
ISBN: 9780720610017
Category : France
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In this definitive new edition of her acclaimed study Evelyn Farr draws on fresh evidence from archive sources - including decoded secret correspondence - to peel back the layers of misinformation obscuring the Queen's great love affair and to reveal its impact on the destiny of the French Royal Family.--Publisher.

Finding Atlantis

Finding Atlantis PDF Author: David King
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 1400047536
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
The Untold Story of One Man's Quest for a Lost World In 1679, Renaissance man Olof Rudbeck stunned the world. He proposed that an ancient lost civilization once thrived in the far north of his native Sweden: the fabled Atlantis. Rudbeck would spend the last thirty years of his life hunting for the evidence that would prove this extraordinary theory. Chasing down clues to that lost golden age, Rudbeck combined the reasoning of Sherlock Holmes with the daring of Indiana Jones. He excavated what he thought was the acropolis of Atlantis, retraced the journeys of classical heroes, opened countless burial mounds, and consulted rich collections of manuscripts and artifacts. He eventually published his findings in a 2,500-page tome titled Atlantica, a remarkable work replete with heroic quests, exotic lands, and fabulous creatures. Three hundred years later, the story of Rudbeck’s adventures appears in English for the first time. It is a thrilling narrative of discovery as well as a cautionary tale about the dangerous dance of genius and madness.