Jennifer Cassidy
Irish • Politics Lecturer @UniofOxford • PhD: Digital Diplomacy (Oxon) •Cyber, AI, Gender • Former Diplomat (EU, UN)• Brill: Editor-in-Chief • TED Speaker.
Book Recommendations:
Recommended by Jennifer Cassidy
“@anniewestdotcom @lewis_goodall One of the best books ever. I say this as someone who works at Oxford and conducts admissions process too. Such brilliant insight this book holds!” (from X)
by Simon Kuper·You?
Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, David Cameron, George Osborne, Theresa May, Dominic Cummings, Daniel Hannan, Jacob Rees-Mogg: Whitehall is swarming with old Oxonians. They debated each other in tutorials, ran against each other in student elections, and attended the same balls and black tie dinners. They aren't just colleagues - they are peers, rivals, friends. And, when they walked out of the world of student debates onto the national stage, they brought their university politics with them. Eleven of the fifteen postwar British prime ministers went to Oxford. In Chums, Simon Kuper traces how the rarefied and privileged atmosphere of this narrowest of talent pools - and the friendships and worldviews it created - shaped modern Britain.
Recommended by Jennifer Cassidy
“@philippesands @eu_eeas Amazing. Eavan is my mothers favourite poet (she taught poetry for 37 years). Also Eavan work is mandatory to study for all Irish students in their senior cycle. I worked for @dfatirl, so do know of her fathers work. But I have no doubt this book is going to blow my mind also.” (from X)
by A.G. Riddle·You?
by A.G. Riddle·You?
Can humanity survive on a new world? On Eos, the last survivors of the Long Winter face their greatest challenge yet--and race to unravel the deepest secrets of the grid. It's a journey across space and time and into humanity's past and future--with a twist you'll never forget. NOTE: The Lost Colony is a full-length novel (378 pages in print). It is the third and final book in The Long Winter trilogy, which began with Winter World. Don't miss the thrilling conclusion to this Wall Street Journal bestselling trilogy. Selected Praise for A.G. Riddle "...reads like a superior collaboration between Dan Brown and Michael Crichton." --The Guardian on Pandemic "I finished the book fast because I just couldn't wait..." --WIRED GeekDad on Departure "Riddle... keep(s) the focus on his characters... rather than the technological marvels" --Publisher's Weekly on Departure "This is apocalyptic sci-fi at its best." --Daily Mail on The Solar War "Well-constructed and tightly-wound as a fine Swiss watch--DEPARTURE has non-stop action, an engaging plot and, of course, wheels within wheels." --Diana Gabaldon, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Outlander An Extended Look at The Lost Colony The last survivors of the human race escaped a ruined Earth. Their new homeworld--Eos--seemed perfect at first. Warm. Hospitable. Safe from the grid. But everything isn't as it seems. The first colony of settlers--from the Carthage--have disappeared. Their settlement is still there, but everyone is gone. As James digs into the mystery of the lost colony, he discovers a series of spheres, buried on Eos. Are they the key to finding the lost colonists? Or are they responsible for their deaths? Just as James is unraveling the secrets of the spheres, a storm hits Jericho City. Emma, recently elected mayor, struggles to lead her people to safety while James tries to make his way home. In the middle of the chaos, a new danger emerges--a threat no one saw coming. With time running out to save the colonists, James and Emma face their hardest choice yet. About the Author A.G. Riddle's debut novel, The Atlantis Gene, became a global phenomenon, topping best seller charts in the US and abroad. Every year, Amazon compiles a list of the top 100 bestselling Kindle eBooks of the year (by total sales volume). The Atlantis Gene has made Amazon's annual Kindle bestseller list an unprecedented five years in a row--every year since the book's release (2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017). Since then, Riddle has released eight more novels, selling millions of copies in two dozen languages. His books feature a unique mix of science, history, and suspense that has delighted fans of Michael Crichton, Dan Brown, Clive Cussler, and James Rollins and continues to sell year after year. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. NOTE: this novel is available in a variety of formats: as an eBook on Kindle Fire and Kindle eReader, as an Audible audiobook, and in print (paperback and hardcover). It is also enrolled in Kindle Unlimited where subscribers can read for free.
Recommended by Jennifer Cassidy
“@MartinSmithVln @KaterynaZelenko @MFA_Ukraine @DipAcademyUA @IAPonomarenko @olgatokariuk @TheElders @djrothkopf @joncoopertweets @UKRinUN @UKRintheUSA That’s it. That’s the book exactly. I’m enthralled. The story of course but his writing also is just phenomenal. Also wow, what an unbelievable achievement and honour for and to your father. You must be so proud!” (from X)
Winner of the 2016 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction Winner of the 2017 Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize “A monumental achievement…a profoundly personal account of the origins of crimes against humanity and genocide, told with love, anger and precision.” –John le Carré “A narrative, to my knowledge unprecedented. [It] should not be ignored by anyone in the United States or elsewhere.” —Bernard-Henri Levy on the front cover of The New York Times Book Review “Exceptional…has the intrigue, verve and material density of a first-rate thriller.” —The Guardian “Astonishing…An outstanding book…A story of heroes and loss.” —The New Statesman A profound and profoundly important book—a moving personal detective story, an uncovering of secret pasts, and a book that explores the creation and development of world-changing legal concepts that came about as a result of the unprecedented atrocities of Hitler’s Third Reich. East West Street looks at the personal and intellectual evolution of the two men who simultaneously originated the ideas of “genocide” and “crimes against humanity,” both of whom, not knowing the other, studied at the same university with the same professors, in a city little known today that was a major cultural center of Europe, “the little Paris of Ukraine,” a city variously called Lemberg, Lwów, Lvov, or Lviv. The book opens with the author being invited to give a lecture on genocide and crimes against humanity at Lviv University. Sands accepted the invitation with the intent of learning about the extraordinary city with its rich cultural and intellectual life, home to his maternal grandfather, a Galician Jew who had been born there a century before and who’d moved to Vienna at the outbreak of the First World War, married, had a child (the author’s mother), and who then had moved to Paris after the German annexation of Austria in 1938. It was a life that had been shrouded in secrecy, with many questions not to be asked and fewer answers offered if they were. As the author uncovered, clue by clue, the deliberately obscured story of his grandfather’s mysterious life, and of his mother’s journey as a child surviving Nazi occupation, Sands searched further into the history of the city of Lemberg and realized that his own field of humanitarian law had been forged by two men—Rafael Lemkin and Hersch Lauterpacht—each of whom had studied law at Lviv University in the city of his grandfather’s birth, each considered to be the father of the modern human rights movement, and each, at parallel times, forging diametrically opposite, revolutionary concepts of humanitarian law that had changed the world. In this extraordinary and resonant book, Sands looks at who these two very private men were, and at how and why, coming from similar Jewish backgrounds and the same city, studying at the same university, each developed the theory he did, showing how each man dedicated this period of his life to having his legal concept—“genocide” and “crimes against humanity”—as a centerpiece for the prosecution of Nazi war criminals. And the author writes of a third man, Hans Frank, Hitler’s personal lawyer, a Nazi from the earliest days who had destroyed so many lives, friend of Richard Strauss, collector of paintings by Leonardo da Vinci. Frank oversaw the ghetto in Lemberg in Poland in August 1942, in which the entire large Jewish population of the area had been confined on penalty of death. Frank, who was instrumental in the construction of concentration camps nearby and, weeks after becoming governor general of Nazi-occupied Poland, ordered the transfer of 133,000 men, women, and children to the death camps. Sands brilliantly writes of how all three men came together, in October 1945 in Nuremberg—Rafael Lemkin; Hersch Lauterpacht; and in the dock at the Palace of Justice, with the twenty other defendants of the Nazi high command, prisoner number 7, Hans Frank, who had overseen the extermination of more than a million Jews of Galicia and Lemberg, among them, the families of the author’s grandfather as well as those of Lemkin and Lauterpacht. A book that changes the way we look at the world, at our understanding of history and how civilization has tried to cope with mass murder. Powerful; moving; tender; a revelation.
Recommended by Jennifer Cassidy
“Unbelievably enthralled and obsessed with the case of Elizabeth Holmes. Have been meticulously following the trial the past few weeks. If you haven’t listened to the podcasts “Bad Blood” and “The Dropout” it’s a must! Or delve into @JohnCarreyrou book. https://t.co/qkRT4F3Euo” (from X)
by John Carreyrou·You?
by John Carreyrou·You?
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The gripping story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos—one of the biggest corporate frauds in history—a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley, rigorously reported by the prize-winning journalist. With a new Afterword covering her trial and sentencing, bringing the story to a close. “Chilling ... Reads like a thriller ... Carreyrou tells [the Theranos story] virtually to perfection.” —The New York Times Book Review In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the next Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup “unicorn” promised to revolutionize the medical industry with its breakthrough device, which performed the whole range of laboratory tests from a single drop of blood. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at more than $9 billion, putting Holmes’s worth at an estimated $4.5 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn’t work. Erroneous results put patients in danger, leading to misdiagnoses and unnecessary treatments. All the while, Holmes and her partner, Sunny Balwani, worked to silence anyone who voiced misgivings—from journalists to their own employees.
Recommended by Jennifer Cassidy
“@musgrove_janet Of course. She is the actual dream. I can’t describe how brilliant and insightful she is. One key book is “The Origins of Totalitarianism” that is one of her best known. And also “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil”. Hope that helps 🙌🏻” (from X)
by Hannah Arendt·You?
by Hannah Arendt·You?
Hannah Arendt's definitive work on totalitarianism—an essential component of any study of twentieth-century political history. The Origins of Totalitarianism begins with the rise of anti-Semitism in central and western Europe in the 1800s and continues with an examination of European colonial imperialism from 1884 to the outbreak of World War I. Arendt explores the institutions and operations of totalitarian movements, focusing on the two genuine forms of totalitarian government in our time—Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia—which she adroitly recognizes were two sides of the same coin, rather than opposing philosophies of Right and Left. From this vantage point, she discusses the evolution of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in dealing with the nontotalitarian world, the use of terror, and the nature of isolation and loneliness as preconditions for total domination.