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Epidemics and Society
A “brilliant and sobering” (Paul Kennedy, Wall Street Journal) look at the history and human costs of pandemic outbreaks
As seen on 60 Minutes
The World Economic Forum #1 book to read for context on the coronavirus outbreak
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A Seasonal History of Plants and People
Fashion and Duration
From Botany Bay to Kew, The Natural Historian Who Shaped the World
Car Design in the Motor City, 1950-2020
How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace
Stories
The Photographer of Enchantment
The End of the Great Acceleration—and Why It’s Good for the Planet, the Economy, and Our Lives
North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, 700–1800
Books Your Dad Will Love
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How the Sea Fed Civilization
Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age
A Maritime History of World War II
The Hero Who Didn't Want to Be One
Life of a Colossus
Urbanism Since 1850
The Art, Armor, and Ambition of Maximilian I
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From the Blog
FICTION: I Live in the Slums by Can Xue
May 19, 2020
I live in the slums. I didn’t settle firmly on one place to live. I could stay anywhere as long as it had a stove. This area produces coal: all the homes used coal to keep fires burning at night. I just lay in a corner of the kitchen stove to keep warm. I was afraid of the cold at night.
Read moreFICTION: Leaving Baghdad by Sinan Antoon
May 18, 2020
II put my bag next to Roy’s big bag close to the front door and went to the hotel restaurant, a small room with four tables and a door that led to the kitchen. Abed, the waiter, saw me from inside the kitchen and we exchanged greetings. I sat down at a table on the right, turned my cup over, took a Lipton teabag from the plate in the middle of the table, and put it in the cup. If it had been real tea, from a teapot and flavored with cardamom, the breakfast would have been perfect. In America I had stopped drinking tea, especially after I moved out of my family’s house and switched to coffee. Two minutes later Abed arrived, carrying a tray with a small bowl of clotted cream, another with date syrup, and a blue plastic basket holding two loaves of sammun bread. He put the tray on the table in front of me, then went back to the kitchen to fetch the hot water for the tea. He hadn’t said much, except for the first day we had breakfast, a week earlier. He asked me at the time about my traveling companions.
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