The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter
Requirements: .ePUB reader, 2 mb
Overview: A mind-expanding and myth-destroying exploration of notions of white race―not merely a skin color but also a signal of power, prestige, and beauty to be withheld and granted selectively

Ever since the Enlightenment, race theory and its inevitable partner, racism, have followed a crooked road, constructed by dominant peoples to justify their domination of others. Filling a huge gap in historical literature that long focused on the non-white, eminent historian Nell Irvin Painter guides us through more than two thousand years of Western civilization, tracing not only the invention of the idea of race but also the frequent worship of “whiteness” for economic, social, scientific, and political ends.

Our story begins in Greek and Roman antiquity, where the concept of race did not exist, only geography and the opportunity to conquer and enslave others. Not until the eighteenth century did an obsession with whiteness flourish, with the German invention of the notion of Caucasian beauty. This theory made northern Europeans into “Saxons,” “Anglo-Saxons,” and “Teutons,” envisioned as uniquely handsome natural rulers.

Here was a worldview congenial to northern Europeans bent on empire. There followed an explosion of theories of race, now focusing on racial temperament as well as skin color. Spread by such intellectuals as Madame de Stael and Thomas Carlyle, white race theory soon reached North America with a vengeance. Its chief spokesman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, did the most to label Anglo-Saxons―icons of beauty and virtue―as the only true Americans. It was an ideal that excluded not only blacks but also all ethnic groups not of Protestant, northern European background. The Irish and Native Americans were out and, later, so were the Chinese, Jews, Italians, Slavs, and Greeks―all deemed racially alien. Did immigrations threaten the very existence of America? Americans were assumed to be white, but who among poor immigrants could become truly American? A tortured and convoluted series of scientific explorations developed―theories intended to keep Anglo-Saxons at the top: the ever-popular measurement of skulls, the powerful eugenics movement, and highly biased intelligence tests―all designed to keep working people out and down.

As Painter reveals, power―supported by economics, science, and politics―continued to drive exclusionary notions of whiteness until, deep into the twentieth century, political realities enlarged the category of truly American.

A story filled with towering historical figures, The History of White People forcefully reminds us that the concept of one white race is a recent invention. The meaning, importance, and realty of this all-too-human thesis of race have buckled under the weight of a long and rich unfolding of events.
Genre: Non-Fiction > Educational


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Covert City: The Cold War and the Making of Miami by Vince Houghton, Eric Driggs
Requirements: .M4A/.M4B reader, 235 MB
Overview: Secret operations, corruption, crime, and a city teeming with spies: why Miami was as crucial to winning the Cold War as Washington, DC, or Moscow. The Cuban Missile Crisis was perhaps the most dramatic and dangerous period of the Cold War. What's less well known is that the city of Miami, mere miles away, was a pivotal, though less well known, part of Cold War history. With its population of Communist exiles from Cuba, its strategic value for military operations, and its lax business laws, Miami was an ideal environment for espionage. Covert City tells the history of how the entire city of Miami was constructed in the image of the US-Cuba rivalry. From the Bay of Pigs invasion to the death of Fidel Castro, the book shows how Miami is a hub for money and cocaine but also secrets and ideologies. Cuban exiles built criminal and political organizations in the city, leading Washington to set up a CIA station there, codenamed JMWAVE. It monitored gang activities, plotted secret operations against Castro, and became a base for surveilling Latin American neighbors. The money and infrastructure built for the CIA was integral to the development of Miami. Covert City is a sweeping and entertaining history, full of stunning experimental operations and colorful characters—a story of a place like no other.
Genre: Audiobooks > Non-Fiction


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Unsupervised Domain Adaptation: Recent Advances and Future Perspectives by Jingjing Li, Lei Zhu, Zhekai Du
Requirements: .ePUB, .PDF reader, 37.8 MB
Overview: Unsupervised domain adaptation (UDA) is a challenging problem in Machine Learning where the model is trained on a source domain with labeled data and tested on a target domain with unlabeled data. In recent years, UDA has received significant attention from the research community due to its applicability in various real-world scenarios. This book provides a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art UDA methods and explores new variants of UDA that have the potential to advance the field. Domain adaptation refers to the Machine Learning techniques that enable models trained on data from a source domain to perform well on a different but related target domain. This chapter provides the necessary background on transfer learning and its relationship to domain adaptation. We define the domain adaptation problem and discuss the categorization of domain adaptation techniques into supervised, semi-supervised, and unsupervised paradigms. The rest of the book will focus specifically on unsupervised domain adaptation. We motivate the need for unsupervised domain adaptation, discuss its advantages over other paradigms, and provide a high-level overview of the common approaches and techniques. This book summarizes their latest advances in unsupervised domain adaptation. The extensive technical coverage offers both consolidating perspectives on fundamental theory as well as exposure to latest advancements driving progress in the field. It is our hope that this book can serve as an accessible guide for new researchers as well as an insightful reference for experienced academics pursuing advancements in this rapidly evolving field. The passion and insights gathered here may seed innovative ideas that lead to breakthroughs in unsupervised domain adaptation.
Genre: Non-Fiction > Tech & Devices


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Fresh Kill (Hunters of Ironport Book 2) by Lou Wilham
Requirements: .ePUB reader, 1.5MB | Retail
Overview: Staked through the heart and you're to blame.

Still overworked—a little less underappreciated—Eric Marcelino stumbles through an Ironport he doesn't recognize. The city has gone eerily quiet. There hasn't been a vampire attack in weeks and Eric is starting to wonder what the vampires are planning.

Tony McMahon's boyfriend is perfect. Kind. Caring. Hot. Except his sister hates him, and well . . . he might be a vampire. But that's okay, because Tony has a plan. Sort of.

Change is good, or that's what Hunter Delacroix has always heard anyway. So then why does moving into the dorms on Moondale University campus feel like a surrender? And why does every glance from Eric feel like a betrayal?

Ironport is quiet, but maybe it's just the calm before the storm. With broken hearts, grief, and a little existential dread hanging over all of their heads Eric's team might find themselves six feet under instead of the vampires. This is gonna suck.
Genre: Fiction > Romance


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