Spring 2018 Spring 2018

Spring 2018 Spring 2018 The Square and the Tower/Niall Ferguson Advice Not Given/Mark Epstein Winter/Karl Ove Knausgaard Directorate S/Steve Coll Feel Free/Zadie Smith Political Tribes/Amy Chua Astral Weeks/Ryan H. Walsh A Tokyo Romance/Ian Buruma Getting to Us/Seth Davis Dangerous Mystic/Joel Harrington Meltdown/Chris Clearfield and András Tilcsik On Grand Strategy/John Lewis Gaddis Untitled/Mark Halperin and John Heilemann Empire of Guns/Priya Satia Cake/Maira Kalman and Barbara Scott-Goodman D C-T!/Joana Avillez and Molly Young Cover image: © credit tk T H E SQUA R E AND THE TOWER NIALL FERGUSON isbn: 9780735222915 price: $30.00 on sale: 1/16/2018 T H E SQUA R E AND THE TOWER NIALL FERGUSON A brilliant recasting of the turning points in world history, including the one we’re living through, as a collision between old power hierarchies and new social networks Most history is hierarchical: it’s about emperors, it is through networks that revolutionary ideas presidents, prime ministers and field marshals. It’s can contagiously spread. Just because conspiracy about states, armies and corporations. It’s about theorists like to fantasize about such networks orders from on high. Even history “from below” doesn’t mean they are not real. is often about trade unions and workers’ parties. From the cults of ancient Rome to the But what if that’s simply because hierarchical dynasties of the Renaissance, from the founding institutions create the archives that historians fathers to Facebook, The Square and the Tower tells rely on? What if we are missing the informal, less the story of the rise, fall and rise of networks, well documented social networks that are the true and shows how network theory—concepts such sources of power and drivers of change? as clustering, degrees of separation, weak ties, The 21st century has been hailed as the Age contagions and phase transitions—can transform of Networks. However, in The Square and the Tower, our understanding of both the past and the present. Niall Ferguson argues that networks have always Just as The Ascent of Money put Wall Street into been with us, from the structure of the brain to the historical perspective, so The Square and the Tower food chain, from the family tree to freemasonry. does the same for Silicon Valley. And it offers a bold Throughout history, hierarchies housed in high prediction about which hierarchies will withstand towers have claimed to rule, but often real power this latest wave of network disruption—and which has resided in the networks in the town square will be toppled. below. For it is networks that tend to innovate. And NIALL FERGUSON is one of the world’s most renowned historians. He is the author of Paper and Iron, The House of Rothschild, The Pity of War, The Cash Nexus, Empire, Colossus, The War of the World, The Ascent of Money, High Financier, Civilization, The Great Degeneration, and Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist. He is Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing. His many awards include the Benjamin Franklin Prize for Public Service (2010), the Hayek Prize for Lifetime Achievement (2012) © Dewald Aukema and the Ludwig Erhard Prize for Economic Journalism (2013). ADVICE NOT GIVEN MARK EPSTEIN isbn: 9780399564321 price: $26.00 on sale: 1/16/2018 ADVICE NOT GIVEN MARK EPSTEIN Renowned psychiatrist and author Dr. Mark Epstein presents a how-to guide that refuses a quick fix, rooted in two traditions, Buddhism and Western psychotherapy, devoted to maximizing the human potential for living a better life Our ego, and its accompanying sense of nagging on his own experience, and that of his patients. self-doubt as we work to be bigger, better, and While the ideas of the Eightfold Path are as old as smarter, is one affliction we all share. And, while Buddhism itself, when informed by the sensibility our ego claims to have our best interests at heart, of Western psychotherapy, they become something in its never-ending pursuit of attention and power, more: a roadmap for spiritual and psychological it sabotages the very goals it sets to achieve. In growth, a way of dealing with the problem of the Advice Not Given, Dr. Mark Epstein reveals how ego. Breaking down the wall between East and Buddhism and Western psychotherapy, two West, Epstein offers a rethinking of mindfulness, traditions that developed in entirely different the ability to be with whatever is happening times and places and, until recently, had nothing in the moment, and the benefits to be won of to do with each other, both identify the ego as the teaching people to watch their own minds without limiting factor in our wellbeing, and both come necessarily believing everything they think, ideas to the same conclusion: When we allow the ego to with strong footholds in Buddhism but now for have free reign, we suffer. But when it learns to let the first time within the context of psychotherapy. go, we are free. Our ego is at once our biggest obstacle and our With great insight, and in a deeply personal greatest hope. We can be at its mercy or we can style, Epstein presents to readers a how-to guide, learn to mold it. Completely unique and practical, rooted in two traditions devoted to maximizing Epstein’s advice can be used by all - each in his or the human potential for living a better life. Using her own way - and will provide wise counsel in a the Eightfold Path, eight levels of self-reflection confusing world. After all, as he says, “Our egos can that Buddhists believe lead to enlightenment, as use all the help they can get.” his scaffolding, Epstein looks back productively DR. MARK EPSTEIN is a psychiatrist in private practice in New York City and the author of a number of books about the interface of Buddhism and psychotherapy, including The Trauma of Everyday Life, Thoughts without a Thinker and Going to Pieces without Falling Apart. He received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Harvard University. W I N T E R KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD isbn: 9780399563331 price: $27.00 on sale: 1/23/2018 W I N T E R KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD The second volume in his autobiographical quartet based on the seasons, Winter is an achingly beautiful collection of daily meditations and letters addressed directly to Knaugsaard’s unborn daughter 2 December - It is strange that you exist, but that you don’t know In his inimitably sensitive style, he writes about the anything about what the world looks like. It’s strange that there is moon, water, messiness, owls, birthdays—to name a first time to see the sky, a first time to see the sun, a first time just a handful of his subjects. These oh-so-familiar to feel the air against one’s skin. It’s strange that there is a first objects and ideas he fills with new meaning, taking time to see a face, a tree, a lamp, pajamas, a shoe. In my life nothing for granted or as given. New life is on it almost never happens anymore. But soon it will. In just a few the horizon, but the earth is also in hibernation, months, I will see you for the first time. waiting for the warmer weather to return, and so a contradictory melancholy inflects his gaze. In Winter, we rejoin the great Karl Ove Startling, compassionate, and exquisitely Knausgaard as he waits for the birth of his beautiful, Knausgaard’s writing is like nothing else. daughter. In preparation for her arrival, he takes Somehow, he shows the world as it really is, at once stock of the world, seeing it as if for the first time. mundane and sublime. KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD’s first novel, Out of the World, was the first ever debut novel to win the Norwegian Critics’ Prize and his second, A Time to Every Purpose Under Heaven, was widely acclaimed. A Death in the Family, the first of theMy Struggle cycle of novels, was awarded the prestigious Brage Award. The My Struggle cycle has been ©Sam Barker heralded as a masterpiece wherever it appears. DIRECTORATE S STEVE COLL isbn: 9781594204586 price: $35.00 on sale: 2/6/2018 DIRECTORATE S STEVE COLL Resuming the narrative of his Pulitzer Prize-winning Ghost Wars, bestselling author Steve Coll tells for the first time the epic and enthralling story of America’s intelligence, military, and diplomatic efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 9/11 Prior to 9/11, the United States had been carrying S”. This was a swirling and shadowy struggle of out small-scale covert operations in Afghanistan, historic proportions, which endured over a decade ostensibly in cooperation, although often in direct and across both the Bush and Obama administra- opposition, with I.S.I., the Pakistani intelligence tions, involving multiple secret intelligence agen- agency. While the US was trying to quell extrem- cies, a litany of incongruous strategies and tactics, ists, a highly secretive and compartmentalized and dozens of players, including some of the most wing of I.S.I., known as “Directorate S,” was co- prominent military and political figures. A sprawl- vertly training, arming, and seeking to legitimize ing American tragedy, the war was an open clash of the Taliban, in order to enlarge Pakistan’s sphere arms but also a covert melee of ideas, secrets, and of influence. After 9/11, when fifty-nine countries, subterranean violence. led by the U.

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