LETRAS

En un pueblo perdido de la provincia de Buenos Aires, muchas cosas están a punto de extinguirse. Durante la crisis económica de 2001 que desembocó en el corralito bancario, un grupo de vecinos se propone reunir el dinero necesario para llevar a cabo un proyecto que podría ser una salida de ña decadencia y la pobreza. Pero en medio de la incautación general de los ahorros, sufren una estafa particular que los decide a recuperar lo perdido. En esta novela Eduardo Sacheri narra la historia de la merecida revancha de los perdedores, consumada en una noche legendaria y secreta que quedará en el recuerdo.

Nostalgia, la obra que consagró a Mircea Cărtărescu como la voz más potente de las actuales letras rumanas, constituye una auténtica revolución literaria. El volumen, de una calidad prodigiosa, se abre con «El Ruletista», que narra la improbable historia de un hombre al que nunca le ha sonreído la suerte, pero que, sorprendentemente, hace fortuna participando en letales sesiones de ruleta rusa. En «El Mendébil», un mesías impúber de aires proustianos pierde sus poderes mágicos con el advenimiento de su propia sexualidad, y se ve perseguido por una legión de jóvenes acólitos. En «Los gemelos», Cărtărescu se entrega a la bizarra exploración de la ira juvenil, hasta desembocar en la pieza central del libro, «REM», que narra la historia de Nana, una mujer de mediana edad, enamorada de un estudiante de instituto en una Bucarest pesadillesca, enciclopédica, que se eleva a la categoría de ciudad universal.

The untold story of the mysterious family dynasty at the center of China’s Huawei. On December 1, 2018, Meng Wanzhou, daughter of Ren Zhengfei, founder and CEO of China’s most powerful company, Huawei Technologies, was detained at the request of U.S. authorities as she prepared to board a flight out of Vancouver, Canada. The detention of Huawei’s female scion set the U.S.-China trade skirmish on fire— and, for the first time, revealed the Ren family’s prominence in Beijing’s power structure. In The Listening State, acclaimed Washington Post reporter Eva Dou exposes the untold story of the rise of Ren Zhengfei and the mysterious family dynasty at the center of Huawei, whose connections to state apparatus reveal a deeper truth about China’s surveillance web and its global ambitions. Through its technologies, Huawei has helped solidify and enforce China’s growing police state, in which outspoken entrepreneurs like Jack Ma have been silenced, tycoons have disappeared, and executives must put patriotism above profit.

AN OPEN FIELD PUBLICATION FROM MARIA SHRIVER Most of us assume that the key to overcoming anxiety is to think our way out of it. And for a while, it works. Meditation and mental exercises offer us relief, but there is always something—a work deadline, a family emergency, a particularly distressing newsbreak—that disrupts our sense of peace and sends us right back inside the same anxious spiral we’ve been trying to climb out of. Is there a way to reduce our anxiety, not just in the moment, but in every moment after that? After a lifetime of struggling with anxiety, Martha Beck studied just about everything there was to know about how to calm down. What she realized is that the analytical part of our brain—so valued in Western culture—is the same structure responsible for amping up anxiety. In other words, we cannot logic our way to relief. In Beyond Anxiety, she reveals that to find calm, we must activate an entirely different part of our brain, one responsible for curiosity, wonder, and, most of all, creativity.

In November 2022, OpenAI released GPT-4 in a chatbot form to the public. In just two months, it claimed 100 million users—the fastest app to ever reach this benchmark. Since then, AI has become an all-consuming topic, popping up on the news, in ads, on your messenger apps, and in conversations with friends and family. But as AI becomes ubiquitous and grows at an ever-increasing pace, what does it mean for the financial markets? In MoneyGPT, Wall Street veteran and former advisor to the Department of Defense James Rickards paints a comprehensive picture of the danger AI poses to the global financial order, and the insidious ways in which AI will threaten national security. Rickards shows how, while AI is touted to increase efficiency and lower costs, its global implementation in the financial world will actually cause chaos, as selling begets selling and bank runs happen at lightning speed. AI further benefits malicious actors, Rickards argues, because without human empathy or instinct to intervene, threats like total nuclear war that once felt extreme are now more likely. And throughout all this, we must remain vigilant on the question of whose values will be promoted in the age of AI. As Rickards predicts, these systems will fail when we rely on them the most.

Whether it’s anxiety about going to the doctor, boiling rage when we’re stuck in traffic, or devastation after a painful break-up, our lives are filled with situations that send us spiraling. But as difficult as our emotions can be, they are also a superpower. Far from being “good” or “bad,” emotions are information. When they’re activated in the right ways and at the right time, they function like an immune system, alerting us to our surroundings, telling us how to react to a situation, and helping us make the right choices.