BUSTING THE BANKERS’ CLUB

“Finance,” writes Epstein, “is an essential and highly productive part of our economic system; but the financial system can also be a source of stagnation, instability, inequality, and crisis.” The essential inequities in the system have been laid bare at several points, but especially in the financial crisis of 2007-2008, when many corporations and financial …

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WHO OWNS THIS SENTENCE?

“Most copyrights of commercial value now belong not to artists, but to corporations,” write Princeton literature professor Bellos, author of Is That a Fish in Your Ear?, and lawyer Montagu. A case in point is the catalog of Bruce Springsteen, which he sold for $550 million to the Sony Music Group at the end of …

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HER ADVENTURES IN TEMPTATION

It’s not Miss Myrtle Allen’s fault that she’s not married yet. She’s had at least 27 proposals, but none of those men understand Babbage’s Table of Logarithms or are likely to tolerate her supposedly “difficult to deal with” self. Her brother the Viscount is on the verge of giving her an ultimatum when an opportunity …

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MADNESS

NBC News reporter Hylton documents the history of Crownsville Hospital in Maryland, founded in 1911 as the Hospital for the Negro Insane. Getting to the story was not easy: The archives were incomplete because “the state had destroyed or lost most of the files preceding the year 1960, and others they had allowed to become …

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AMIL AND THE AFTER

After leaving their beloved home in Mirpur Khas, which is now part of the newly created Pakistan, 12-year-old twins Amil and Nisha are living in Bombay with their doctor father, paternal grandmother, and beloved family cook. While Amil (whose late mother was Muslim and father is Hindu) is grateful for their newfound safety, he’s haunted …

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BLACK WOMEN TAUGHT US

Jackson, a political science professor and columnist for Teen Vogue, presents these 11 essays as “love letters” to influential Black women “who built our movements and taught us how to love ourselves whole.” The author links their personal history with a vital tradition of intellectualism and activism spanning nearly two centuries. Jackson considers celebrated figures …

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LIVING IN TWO WORLDS by MALCOLM CHESTER

“Live your life with purpose and meaning and celebrate your achievements today. This is just the first step in our journey and with a clear purpose, you’ll achieve many more milestones.” In the realm of contemporary fiction, few books dare to traverse the boundary between the physical world and the spiritual realm as boldly as …

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THE MAKING OF A KING

Hardman, the well-known chronicler of the House of Windsor (Queen of Our Times, Her Majesty, etc.), predictably opens with a review of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign and of the extravagant funeral that followed her death. Then the author moves on to Charles’ early command of the royal household, coronation, and initial acts and decisions. For …

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THE SURVIVORS OF THE CLOTILDA

Of the 10.7 million Africans displaced to the Americas between the 16th and late 19th centuries, 103 landed in Alabama in July 1860 on the Clotilda. Infamous as the last slave ship to arrive in the U.S., the Clotilda has been the subject of several recent histories and a documentary, which, along with rich archival …

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EMILY WILDE’S MAP OF THE OTHERLANDS

Emily Wilde has refused the marriage proposal of her former academic rival, Wendell Bambleby, because she would be mad to marry a deposed faerie king disguised as a human. But she has devoted herself to finding a door into his kingdom, which would allow him to take back the realm stolen from him by his …

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