Orem Library

All leaders are constrained by geography. Their choices are limited by mountains, rivers, seas and concrete. Yes, to understand world events you need to understand people, ideas and movements - but if you don't know geography, you'll never have the full picture. To understand Putin's actions, for example, it is essential to consider that, to be a world power, Russia must have a navy. And if its ports freeze for six months each year then it must have...

Since the earliest known marker denoting the edge of one land and the beginning of the next-a stone column inscribed with Sumerian cuneiform-borders have been imagined, mapped, moved, and fought over. In The Edge of the Plain, James Crawford skillfully blends history, travel writing, and reportage to trace these borderlines throughout history and across the globe.

The year is 1998. The Soviet Union is dissolved, the Cold War is over, and Bunny Glenn is a lonely American teenager in Azerbaijan with her Foreign Service family. Through Bunny's bemused eyes, we watch global interests flock to her temporary backyard for Caspian oil and pipeline access, hearing rumbles of the expansion of the American security state and the buildup to the War on Terror. We follow Bunny from adolescence to middle age--from Baku to...

Friedman discusses how the key to understanding the 21st century is understanding that the planet's three largest forces--Moore's law (technology), the market (globalization) and Mother Nature (climate change and biodiversity loss)--are accelerating all at once. And these accelerations are transforming the five key realms: the workplace, politics, geopolitics, ethics, and community. Friedman posits that we should purposely "be late"--we should pause...

"In 2012, a New York auction catalogue made an unusual offering: "a superb Tyrannosaurus skeleton." In fact, Lot 49135 consisted of a nearly complete T. bataar, a close cousin to T. rex, the most famous animal that ever lived. The fossils now on display in Manhattan had been unearthed in Mongolia, some 6,000 miles away. At 8 feet high and 24 feet long, the specimen was spectacular, and the final gavel signaled a winning bid of well over $1 million....

"Friedman zooms in on the region that has, for five hundred years, been the cultural hotbed of the world--Europe--and examines the most basic and fascinating building block of the region: culture. Analyzing the fault lines that have existed for centuries--and which have led to two world wars and dozens more conflicts--Friedman walks us through the 'flashpoints' that are still smoldering beneath the surface and are on course to erupt again"--