2023. 5. 9 New Arrivals

In 1993, writer and democracy activist Hwang Sok-yong was sentenced to five years in the Seoul Detention Center upon his return to South Korea from North Korea, the country he had fled with his family as a child at the start of the Korean War.

The Prisoner: A Memoir Author: Hwang Sok-yong, translated by Sora Kim-Russell Publisher: Verso

In 1993, writer and democracy activist Hwang Sok-yong was sentenced to five years in the Seoul Detention Center upon his return to South Korea from North Korea, the country he had fled with his family as a child at the start of the Korean War. Already a dissident writer well-known for his part in the democracy movement of the 1980s, Hwang's imprisonment forced him to consider the many prisons to which he was subject — of thought, of writing, of Cold War nations, of the heart.

In this capacious memoir, Hwang moves between his imprisonment and his life — as a boy in Pyongyang, as a young activist protesting South Korea's military dictatorships, as a soldier in the Vietnam War, as a dissident writer first traveling abroad — and in so doing, narrates the dramatic revolutions and transformations of one life and of Korean society during the 20th century.

Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises Author: Ray Dalio Publisher: Avid Reader Press Ray Dalio, the legendary investor and No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of "Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises" — whose books have sold more than five million copies worldwide — shares his unique template for how debt crises work and principles for dealing with them well. This template allowed his firm, Bridgewater Associates, to antic­ipate 2008’s events and navigate them well while others struggled badly.

As he explained in his No. 1 New York Times best­seller "Principles," Dalio believes that most everything happens over and over again through time so that by studying patterns one can understand the cause-effect relationships behind events and develop principles for dealing with them well. In this three-part research series, he does just that for big debt crises and shares his template in the hopes of reducing the chances of big debt crises hap­pening and helping them be better managed in the future.

The template comes in three parts: The Archetypal Big Debt Cycle (which explains the template); Three Detailed Cases (which examines in depth the 2008 financial crisis, the 1930s Great Depression, and the 1920s infla­tionary depression of Germany’s Weimar Republic); and Compendium of 48 Cases (which is a compendium of charts and brief descriptions of the worst debt crises of the last 100 years)

Whether you’re an investor, a policy maker, or are simply interested in debt, this unconventional perspective from one of the few people who navigated the crisis successfully, "Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises" will help you understand the economy and markets in revealing new ways.

Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a PrimatologistAuthor:Frans de Waal Publisher:W. W. Norton & Company

In "Different," world-renowned primatologist Frans de Waal draws on decades of observation and studies of both human and animal behavior to argue that despite the linkage between gender and biological sex, biology does not automatically support the traditional gender roles in human societies. While humans and other primates do share some behavioral differences, biology offers no justification for existing gender inequalities.

Using chimpanzees and bonobos to illustrate this point — two ape relatives that are genetically equally close to humans — de Waal challenges widely held beliefs about masculinity and femininity, and common assumptions about authority, leadership, cooperation, competition, filial bonds, and sexual behavior. Chimpanzees are male-dominated and violent, while bonobos are female-dominated and peaceful. In both species, political power needs to be distinguished from physical dominance. Power is not limited to the males, and both sexes show true leadership capacities.

"Different" is a fresh and thought-provoking approach to the long-running debate about the balance between nature and nurture, and where sex and gender roles fit in. De Waal peppers his discussion with details from his own life ― a Dutch childhood in a family of six boys, his marriage to a French woman with a different orientation toward gender, and decades of academic turf wars over outdated scientific theories that have proven hard to dislodge from public discourse. He discusses sexual orientation, gender identity, and the limitations of the gender binary, exceptions to which are also found in other primates.

With humor, clarity, and compassion, "Different" seeks to broaden the conversation about human gender dynamics by promoting an inclusive model that embraces differences, rather than negating them.

TONGBANG