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Reviewer's Choice
Where Next, Columbus? A Native Punk Mixtape
Thomas Michael Swensen
University of Oklahoma Press
www.oupress.com
9780806196640, $29.95
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Where-Next-Columbus-Directions-American-ebook/dp/B0FR78N56X
Where Next, Columbus? A Native Punk Mixtape explores how Native America and punk politics intersect, providing an unusual history that presents the evolution of hardcore, thrash, metal, and punk in the Indigenous Americas. The set list runs across the Western Hemisphere as it traverses punk culture's presence in different nations, drawing many unusual connections between punk's ideology and definitions of power and the experiences and outlook of Native peoples long struggling with challenges to independence and identity. Those with some familiarity with punk's concepts, from DIY to biting humor's commentary, will find these elements expanded in new directions as Thomas Michael Swensen documents the historical progression of Native punk writers, artists, and movements in circles not usually given a voice. College-level collections interested in punk ideology or contemporary and traditional Native development will find Where Next, Columbus? A Native Punk Mixtape especially recommendable to discussion groups about any of these subjects.
The AI Studies Shelf
The AI Security Imperative
James Blake
Networlding Publishing
https://networlding.com
9781959993452, $15.00 Paperback/$1.50 eBook
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/AI-Security-Imperative-Managing-Emerging/dp/1959993453
The AI Security Imperative: A Leader's Guide to Managing Emerging Risks focuses on all kinds of threats to cyber-security, from phishing and AI-powered cyber attacks to disinformation networks, digital surveillance, challenges to AI decision-making, and reputational threats. Each topic shifts in nature when influenced by AI's potential, as James Blake outlines in chapters that address incidents, potential usage, and opportunities to employ AI to thwart many of these threats: "AI provides another important method in establishing this with an opportunity to expand surveillance, information gathering, and targeting, which can be hugely important."
Blake uses risk assessment logic and techniques to link AI to better practices and bigger-picture thinking. These embrace not just business interests and concerns, but social and political game-changing efforts: "Those in power have increasing opportunities to use AI within the context of international crises - they can shape political opinion on events through the skillful use of social media. This has direct implications for the business sector, its strategies, and potentially opportunities and risks that have shaped fortunes since 2015."
Special assessments and insights focus on the use of AI for better or for worse, considering how the usual purposes and approaches of different interests are affected by adding AI into the picture: "AI is an essential driver in the growth and spread of disinformation, particularly in tactical developments, which will likely increase risks to organizations worldwide. This is because AI provides the means for a wider group of threat actors to have the technology available."
The result is an important assessment that should not be limited to business interests alone, but disseminated and discussed in political groups, classrooms holding students of computer, political, and social science, concerned citizens, and libraries interested in a book that goes beyond the scope of most on the topics of security and AI applications. Packed with historical and social references, The AI Security Imperative draws important connections between leaders, security assessments, AI applications, and many different impacts of AI at all levels of business and society. It should be considered a "must" for any thinking leader and readers interested in how AI might work for and against humans in the future.
The Social Issues Shelf
Beyond Bedrails and Bingo
Dave Devereaux
https://davedevereaux.squarespace.com
Layton Road Press
9798994220009, $17.95 Paperback/$24.95 Hardcover/$9.99 eBook
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Bedrails-Bingo-Americas-Nursing/dp/B0GXGBD6MT
Beyond Bedrails and Bingo: Myths, Truths, and the Future of America's Nursing Homes explores nursing homes in a manner few other books have addressed, considering the stigma and disrespect associated with them, the hidden truths about Medicare and Medicaid and how nursing homes are financed, and why nursing home standards, eligibility, values, and culture seem so broken. While Dave Devereaux doesn't let nursing homes off the hook of accountability, he does explain and explore why so many are viewed as detrimental and disasters. During the course of an open, honest examination that stems from decades as a nursing home administrator, Devereaux considers connections between money and organizational behavior, myths and realities, emerging trends in nursing home care, and more.
Few will know much of the information in this book. It could only be generated from an insider's long-term experience, and from a level of administration that ordinary workers aren't privy to. Take mattresses, for one example ... a touchy subject: "Caregivers are the first line of defense in assessing mattress integrity, and this is evident the instant a bed is stripped. When mattress integrity isn't maintained, people work harder to compensate for the problem and patient care progress is sustained or improved. Or they don't, and patients suffer while their health degrades. When basics like a comfortable mattress aren't provided, it sows distrust among hardworking nursing home staff. This further threatens the home's credibility. If this cycle goes unbroken, workers break. If workers break, the nursing home breaks."
Funding, reimbursement, patient litigation, and issues of law and aides are all considered in an eye-opening inspection that draws connections between nursing home processes and the systems that support or deter them. All this information is key to understanding nursing homes - and is why all health libraries and individuals considering nursing homes need to read this book. Broader in its coverage than most, Beyond Bedrails and Bingo considers the culture of American care and how it is limited, buffeted, or expanded by perception, regulations, and human affairs. Libraries need to consider Beyond Bedrails and Bingo an essential addition as they stock quality books on healthcare, legal regulations, and consumer information.
The Cookbook Shelf
How to Make Food Your Kids Will Actually Eat
Anouska Emily Mauree
Hamlyn
c/o Octopus
https://www.octopusbooks.co.uk
9780600639602, $19.99
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Emilys-Cooking-Actually-snacktivities-lunchboxes/dp/0600639606
How to Make Food Your Kids Will Actually Eat: Over 100 Snactivities, Lunchboxes and Food Hacks comes from internet website EmilysCooking and surveys recipes for all meals of the day. These blend international influences with kid-friendly, kid-tested flavors. Each recipe is easy to fix, good for lunchboxes or meals the entire family can enjoy, and provides variety many won't see in any other cookbook directed to kids' interests. Recipes ranging from Pancake Muffins to Chicken Tortilla Samosas made from leftovers are accompanied by step-by-step and finished dish color photos, making for an exceptionally attractive, kid-appealing collection.
Chillies
Sophie Dupuis-Gaulier
Mitchell Beazley
c/o Octopus
https://www.octopusbooks.co.uk
9781846016738, $29.99
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Chillies-Sophie-Dupuis-Gaulier/dp/1846016738
Chillies: Recipes, Profiles & Inspiration is more than a cookbook, combining a history that blends botanical and culinary insights into the choices for using chillies in different ways. It features some twenty varieties of the pepper, categorizing them by heat level to make it easy for cooks to choose the type amenable to their palates and recipes, and accompanies nearly a hundred recipes with a timeline of culinary discovery that will intrigue and delight food historians. The result, with its lovely presentation and color photos, is as suitable for gift-giving as for a home cook's explorations.
The Fantasy/SciFi Shelf
Baen Books
www.baen.com
Baen's titles are packed with action, strong characters, and involving sci-fi scenarios that will attract readers seeking memorable stories.
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Apogee-Ballistic-Travis-S-Taylor/dp/1668073188
Travis S. Taylor's Apogee (9781668073186, $28.00) is the second book in the Ballistic series, and takes place two years after the Battle for the International Space Station. The world is still recovering and rebuilding from that confrontation when Marcus Dorman, who has been part of the rebuilding process, moves to link human minds with technology in a further bid for control over reality itself. Vivid action, high-tech possibilities, and the fate of a universe where one man is changing everything accompanies a setup for a final war over a deadly upgrade.
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Twin-Star-Mike-Kupari/dp/1668073242
Mike Kupari's Twin Star: From High Society to High Frontier (9781668073247, $18.00) tells of well-off young Eddy Lancaster, who is enjoying a leisurely life when his adventurous uncle sends him and his twin sister on a quest away from their homeworld which might involve contact with an alien race. His sister Effie, who is dedicated to science, sees this as an opportunity to cement her worth beyond her upbringing by making a new scientific discovery in another star system that holds a dangerous secret. Young adult and adult readers alike will appreciate how vividly the story moves into new opportunities and possibilities, and how unpredictable the plot's evolution as Effie and Eddy confront their dreams, lives, and futures together. Both are involving, creative productions that should reach a wide audience.
James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief
Diane C. Donovan, Editor
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