https://arab.news/pnzk5
Author: Sheilagh Ogilvie
How do societies tackle epidemic disease? In “Controlling Contagion,” Sheilagh Ogilvie answers this question by exploring seven centuries of pandemics, from the Black Death to COVID-19.
For most of history, infectious diseases have killed many more people than famine or war, and in 2019 they still caused one death in four.
Author: Stephen Witt
“The Thinking Machine” is the story of how Nvidia evolved to supplying hundred-million-dollar supercomputers.
It is a biography that dives into the rise of Nvidia and its CEO, Jensen Huang, focusing on their pivotal role in the AI revolution.
The book highlights Huang’s bold vision, particularly his early bet on AI over a decade ago, which transformed Nvidia from a maker of video game components into a powerhouse supplying massive supercomputers for AI applications like hyper-realistic avatars, autonomous robots, and self-driving cars.
It explores Huang’s leadership style—described as single-minded and relentless—and his ability to defy Wall Street skepticism to push a radical computing vision, making him one of the wealthiest and most influential figures in Silicon Valley.
Through unprecedented access to Huang, his friends, his investors, and his employees, Stephen Witt documents for the first time the company’s epic rise and its single-minded and ferocious leader, now one of Silicon Valley’s most influential figures.
Witt is an American journalist and author known for his narrative-driven, deeply reported works on technology, culture, and innovation.
Witt’s style is noted for its clarity, wit, and ability to make dense topics accessible without sacrificing depth.
Author: Laurence D. Hurst
If we start with the presumption that evolution is a constantly improving process, some aspects of our evolution just do not make sense. We have a high rate of genetic diseases, for example, and much of our DNA seems to be pointless.
In “The Evolution of Imperfection,” Laurence Hurst explores our apparently rotten genetic luck.
Hurst, a leading authority on evolution and genetics, argues that our evolutionary imperfections proceed directly from two features: the difficulties of pregnancy and the fact that historically there are relatively few of us.
In pregnancy, natural selection can favor chromosomes that kill embryos in species (including ours) that continuously receive resources from the mother. Most fertilized eggs don’t make it, and incompatibilities between the fetus and mother can lead to lethal disorders of pregnancy.
The historically small population size enhances the role of chance, which in turn leads to both accumulation of unnecessary DNA and more mutation.
JEDDAH: Kuwaiti Palestinian writer Shahd Alshammari’s new speculative memoir “Confetti and Ashes” is a bold departure from her previous work “Head Above Water,” which was longlisted for the Barbellion Prize in 2022.
Alshammari’s layered meditation on the disabled body as both a site of loss as well as endurance is propelled forward by sharp observations and a quiet brilliance that had me turning pages well into the night.
Her first memoir, “Head Above Water,” offered an unflinching look at navigating multiple sclerosis as an Arab woman teaching literature in Kuwait. Her latest, however, ventures into a realm where memory and personal narrative intersect with poetry, imagination, and otherworldly presences.
The voices of ghosts and Zari, her qareen — the jinn-companion assigned to each person in Islamic belief — transform Alshammari’s personal narrative. It becomes a dialogue, a captivating dance between the seen and unseen worlds.
This inclusion shakes up the conventional memoir structure to broaden the scope beyond Western frameworks of storytelling. It also offers readers a visceral look at the ways living with disability and chronic illness can disrupt and reshape an individual’s perspective and worldview.
The dreamlike and omniscient voice of the qareen also mirrors the disorientation and internal struggles that come with living with chronic illness and disability.
Alshammari astutely draws parallels between the disabled body and the female body in the social and cultural context of Kuwait. In a world of able-bodied norms, she reflects on their intersecting experiences of marginalization, scrutiny, and resistance.
She rejects predictable storytelling, and not just in her writing, but also in life. Her body rebels, yet she defies societal stigmas — including concerns voiced from other women with MS.
She explores holistic wellness practices and eventually takes up squash, expanding her social circle and pushing her limits to build her mental and physical endurance.
In capturing her dual journeys of illness and wellness, the author invites readers to reflect on the disabled body not as a burden, but as a site of poetic possibility.
In “Confetti and Ashes,” Alshammari presents a profound reclamation of the self and cements herself as a vital voice in reimagining the female disabled experience.
Whales are the majestic giants of the ocean, yet much of their world remains a mystery to us. The routes of their vast oceanic migrations are largely elusive, as are the intricacies of their behavior and social dynamics.
This narrative biography takes you out beyond our shorelines and into the depths, providing an up-close exploration of the life of the whale.
Written by internationally acclaimed expert Asha de Vos, “Whale: The Illustrated Biography” blends engaging profiles of the best-known species with stunning illustrations to tell the story of these magnificent creatures in all their diversity and complexity.
The ways that statisticians and governments measure the economy were developed in the 1940s, when the urgent economic problems were entirely different from those of today.
In “The Measure of Progress,” Diane Coyle argues that the framework underpinning today’s economic statistics is so outdated that it functions as a distorting lens, or even a set of blinkers.
When policymakers rely on such an antiquated conceptual tool, how can they measure, understand, and respond with any precision to what is happening in today’s digital economy?
