basic books apr 2026 (5 Ergebnisse)

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - One of the world's greatest bassists lays down the heart of Black music, revealing how its rhythmic structures and the long history of the African diaspora made it the world's most popular form. "Arevelatory new book."New York Times Why do Bob Marley, John Coltrane, Aretha Franklin, and Nina Simone move us the way they do What drives the worried notes of the Delta blues What makes Beyoncé's triumph Cowboy Carter inescapably great As Melvin Gibbs shows in How Black Music Took Over the World, it is the musical inheritance of Africa. Beginning with two rhythmic building blocks he calls the cell and the frame, Gibbs shows how those tools can transport listeners to "a realm where sounds become vehicles for human movement." Reforged in the African diaspora in the Americas, they are played today on church organs, electric guitars, computers, telephones, or a simple gourd. Kool & the Gang called Black musicians the "scientists of sound"and Gibbs shows how they discovered the world's music. Gibbs's vantage is unique. A world-class musician fluent in many genres, Gibbs is as comfortable in an old-school Times Square record shop as he is breaking down mathematics and music theory with university professors. Imbued with his own journey and a sharp eye for the sins and triumphs of history, How Black Music Took Over the World is an unforgettable revelation of one of humanity's greatest achievements.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - How humanity's long pursuit of ever-larger numbers broke the boundaries of mathematics and propelled us into the Information Age "A charming tour"Jordan Ellenburg, author of Shape What if, every time you wanted to write down 1,000,000, you had to draw a picture of a god And what if that number were the biggest you had a symbol for If you were doing math in ancient Egypt, those were the rules: anything bigger broke math. As mathematician Richard Elwes shows in Huge Numbers, this is the strange story of math. Even today, writing down some numbers is beyond us: try it with all the zeroes in a googolplex, or an outrageous alien number like TREE(3). Safer not to try: even harnessing every particle in the universe, you wouldn't come close. But this book is no mere bestiary of numerical monsters. It shows how, by hunting down and studying ever-bigger numbers, arithmetic has reshaped human thought and made our modern era of science and computation possible. Where many math books celebrate abstract algebra or ineffable infinities, Huge Numbers is both more practical and far weirder. It reveals a world where most numbers remain out of reach until we discover how to chase them down and tame them, and so remake our world again.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - An Instant New York Times Bestseller From an award-winning journalist, the authoritativeand explosiveinside story of Justice Samuel Alito and his powerful role in shaping the Supreme Court. "Riveting." Mike Lee, U.S. Senator Justice Samuel Alito, the unflinching author of the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, is so influential that many now refer to the "Alito Court." But his powerful role, long overlooked, has aroused the ire of activists outraged by the emergence of a cohesive conservative majority on the court. In this first comprehensive study of Alito, Mollie Hemingway explains how his common sense and prosecutorial experience, combined with fearless intellectual rigor, have shaped the man and the jurist. Through the lens of Alito's judicial career, Hemingway provides a fresh perspective on the political, social, and legal battles that have unsettled the Supreme Court and the nation. From menacing mobs encamped outside the justices' homes to senators bellowing violent threats on the steps of the court itself, Alito offers a captivating insider account of the Supreme Court under unprecedented attack in a polarized age. Few would have predicted that the modest and reserved judge who joined the high court with little fanfare two decades ago would lead the originalists to their astonishing ascendancy, but Hemingway's compelling portrait reveals an intellect and character that make such leadership seem inevitable.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - A history of police unions that reveals how American law enforcement built a political movement that made cops untouchable. "A tour de force . Read it now." Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Abolition Geography In America today, police enjoy unmatched power. On the streets, officers employ violence at their own discretion. Behind closed doors, they are even more powerful. In city halls, police strong-arm local leaders and nullify attempts at public oversight. And in state legislatures and Washington, DC, police lobbyists and union leaders zealously uphold a bipartisan consensus against even mild reform. Yet as recently as fifty years ago, police still served at the pleasure of democratically elected politicians, not the other way around. In Blue Power, Stuart Schrader narrates the rise of a bottom-up movement of rank-and-file officers who lifted policing above the law. Organizers launched their campaign in the 1960s, courting a public backlash to urban uprisings and civil rights. City by city, county by county, they formed unions and other organizations and won control over working conditions, impunity from oversight, and insulation from lean budgets. By the 2000s, this movement had triumphed nationally, shoring up the power of the police to overrule the public interest in the name of law and order. Through deep archival detective work,Blue Power reveals how police forced American democracy to back the blue.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - A bold new history of Europe, from ancient Greece to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. "A true tour de force." Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads What do we talk about when we talk about Europe Is it defined by geography Or is it politics, or shared culture In Europe, award-winning historian Roderick Beaton tells the story of Europe as never beforeas the history of an idea, and a collective identity. Since its dramatic birth in ancient Greece, "Europe" has been defined, and redefined, by its people. Through this powerful lens, and with the narrative drive and scope of a novelist, Beaton deftly surveys Europe's major historical developments: the rise and fall of Rome; the explosion of Christianity; the intellectual ferment of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment; the arrival of Europeans in the Americas; the violent upheavals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and the uncertainties of the present. Throughout, original sources allow the voices of the past, from Tacitus to Thatcher, to speak for themselves. Grappling with the multilayered identities that have always come with being European, Europe places the Europe of today in a long arc of history stretching back more than 2,500 years.