Pines and Plains Libraries

Named one of "The five best books to understand AI" by The Economist The impact AI will have is profound, but the economic framework for understanding it is surprisingly simple. Artificial intelligence seems to do the impossible, magically bringing machines to life-driving cars, trading stocks, and teaching children. But facing the sea change that AI brings can be paralyzing. How should companies set strategies, governments design policies, and people...

If you want to land a job in tech, you need to know how to code. That much is obvious. A skill that is equally as important-but often overlooked-is knowing how to market yourself to potential employers, especially if you're new to the industry. Do you know how to land interviews and deliver a compelling case for why you should be hired? Bobby Davis Jr. has helped place hundreds of aspiring coders into high-paying tech jobs. In Breaking the Code,...

Explores the world of the millions of female Chinese migrant workers who have left their homes in rural towns to find jobs in China's cities, as revealed through a two-year study of the lives of two young women.

It has been ten years since Abby Williams left home and scrubbed away all visible evidence of her small-town roots. Now working as an environmental lawyer in Chicago, she has a thriving career, a modern apartment, and her pick of meaningless one-night stands.But when a new case takes her back home to Barrens, Indiana, the life Abby painstakingly created begins to crack. Tasked with investigating Optimal Plastics, the towns most high-profile company...

Genghis Khan - the greatest conqueror of all time, who at his peak ruled an empire that stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Caspian Sea. His conquests are the stuff of legend, his tomb a forgotten mystery. Until now. When Dirk Pitt is nearly killed rescuing an oil survey team from a freak wave on Russia's Lake Baikal, it appears a simple act of nature. But when the survey team is abducted and Pitt's research vessel nearly sunk, it's obvious there's...

A new economic war for critical minerals has begun, and The War Below is an urgent dispatch from its front lines. To build electric vehicles, solar panels, cell phones, and millions of other devices means the world must dig more mines to extract lithium, copper, and other vital building blocks. But mines are deeply unpopular, even as they have a role to play in fighting climate change and powering crucial technologies. These tensions have sparked...

A decade after taking a shot at Bonnie and Clyde during one of their notorious armed robberies, a Depression teen-turned-soldier escapes death during the Battle of the Bulge and marries a beautiful young woman with whom he seeks his fortune along the Texas-Louisiana oil coast.

In this essential book written by a rural native and Silicon Valley veteran, Microsoft's Chief technology officer tackles one of the most critical issues facing society today: the future of artificial intelligence and how it can be realistically used to promote growth, even in a shifting employment landscape. There are two prevailing stories about AI: for heartland low- and middle-skill workers, a dystopian tale of steadily increasing job destruction;...

It’s February 1976, and Odessa, Texas, stands on the cusp of the next great oil boom. While the town’s men embrace the coming prosperity, its women intimately know and fear the violence that always seems to follow. In the early hours of the morning after Valentine’s Day, fourteen-year-old Gloria Ramírez appears on the front porch of Mary Rose Whitehead’s ranch house, broken and barely alive. The teenager had been viciously attacked in a nearby...

A New York City chef who is also a novelist recounts his experiences in the restaurant business, and exposes abuses of power, sexual promiscuity, drug use, and other secrets of life behind kitchen doors.