Hilarious history

 

Mint condition. PB. 153pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

A revised and expanded edition of the bestselling parody that includes thirty-pages of new text, photos, and contemporary subjects—a clever and fresh historical chronicle.

The Sun is now friends with Earth and 7 other planets

Pluto: Not cool.

What if Facebook had emerged with the Big Bang, and every historical event took place online? Imagine how we’d we see history if . . .

On April 15, 1865, Abraham Lincoln updated his status: "Taking the missus to the theater"

God and Stephen Hawking trolled each other in a comment war over the creation of the universe?

Alexander the Great "checked into" all the countries he conquered

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin "Liked" each other's cryptic statuses

Irreverent and clever, The History of the World According to Facebook goes back through time, from the beginning of the world to the present, to cover all the major events and eras of human history, such as the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and the Information Age. Wylie Overstreet brings the book up to date with three-dozen pages of additional material on contemporary figures and topics, from Caitlin Jenner to Deflategate to MAGA and Trump.

Filled with hundreds of actual figures from across the centuries and thousands of invented statuses, comments, and actions lampooning Facebook users’ penchant for oversharing, abbreviation, self-importance, and lazy jargon, The History of the World According to Facebook defies all attempts at taking the multi-billion user social media platform SRSLY. It is the funniest parody of history and the dawn of man since, well, the dawn of man.

About the Author

Wylie Overstreet, 26, has worked for Architectural Digest and GOOD Magazine, and has written satire for the website CoolMaterial.com.

He lives in Los Angeles.

Romance and more in the age of swipe

 

Mint condition. PB. 306pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Sex, dates and relationships are just a swipe away. Millions of encounters are happening all over the globe every minute because of the smartphone.

Goodbye computers, adieu boozy watering holes – with smartphone app dating, the ‘bar’ is open 24/7, with no cover charge required.

If your thumbs can do the chat dance, you will flourish in The Age of Swipe. In Swipe - The Game has Changed, author Michael Jarosky documents a year of his swipe encounters.

Raw and 100% real, this explosive account covers everything from his rock star week of sexual adventures to awkward dating disasters and heartbreak.

From chat notification hello to handshake goodbye, become a fly on his wall and learn the game again with new rules and strategies.

From Sydney to New York and London to Tokyo, the game has changed. Seduction techniques in bars and exchange of endless emails via traditional internet dating are now ancient strategies.

Swipe not only delivers Jarosky’s unforgettable journey through the world of swipe dating, but also relays the ‘MISBAC Strategy’ so both men and women are equipped with up-to-date techniques to make new friends, indulge in sexual adventures, experience quality dates, and find lasting relationships in The Age of Swipe.

A book about our future

 

Mint condition. PB. 264pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

We are in the middle of the greatest technological revolution in history.

Its epicentre lies in Silicon Valley, but its impacts are felt in all corners of the earth.

It could give all of us a better quality of life and new, more cooperative ways of living.

Or it could further entrench inequality, with even more of the world's wealth in the hands of a few.

This book offers a bold vision for ensuring that we achieve the former. A world that is fairer, less violent and most radical of all, more joyous.

Tim Dunlop spells out his ideas for reclaiming common ground systematically, arguing the case for more public ownership of essential assets, more public space, a transparent media system, and an education that prepares us for the future, not the past.

His vision for democracy and society is practical and inspiring, based on ideas about what we are doing well and what we must do better.

His is a vision for handing political power back to we-the-people so that we can stop playing defence and start changing the ground on which decisions about our lives are made.

Welcome to the future of everything....

SOLD Examining our lives online

 

SOLD

Very good condition. PB. 319pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

A New York Times Bestseller

An audacious, irreverent investigation of human behavior—and a first look at a revolution in the making

Our personal data has been used to spy on us, hire and fire us, and sell us stuff we don’t need. In Dataclysm, Christian Rudder uses it to show us who we truly are.

For centuries, we’ve relied on polling or small-scale lab experiments to study human behavior. Today, a new approach is possible. As we live more of our lives online, researchers can finally observe us directly, in vast numbers, and without filters. Data scientists have become the new demographers.

In this daring and original book, Rudder explains how Facebook “likes” can predict, with surprising accuracy, a person’s sexual orientation and even intelligence; how attractive women receive exponentially more interview requests; and why you must have haters to be hot.

He charts the rise and fall of America’s most reviled word through Google Search and examines the new dynamics of collaborative rage on Twitter.

He shows how people express themselves, both privately and publicly. What is the least Asian thing you can say? Do people bathe more in Vermont or New Jersey? What do black women think about Simon & Garfunkel? (Hint: they don’t think about Simon & Garfunkel.)

Rudder also traces human migration over time, showing how groups of people move from certain small towns to the same big cities across the globe. And he grapples with the challenge of maintaining privacy in a world where these explorations are possible.

Visually arresting and full of wit and insight, Dataclysm is a new way of seeing ourselves—a brilliant alchemy, in which math is made human and numbers become the narrative of our time.