Showing titles in Social

Former Internet entrepreneur Andrew Keen was among the earliest to write about the dangers that the Internet poses to our culture and society. His 2007 book The Cult of the Amateur was critical in helping advance the conversation around the Internet, which has now morphed from a tool providing efficiencies and opportunities for consumers and business to an elemental force that is profoundly reshaping our societies and our world.

In his 18 years as an opinion columnist for The New York Times, Herbert championed the working poor and the middle class. After filing his last column in 2011, he set off on a journey across the country to report on Americans who were being left behind in an economy that has never fully recovered from the Great Recession. The portraits of those he encountered fuel his new book, Losing Our Way.

This is the inspiring autobiography of Helen Keller, blind and deaf since childhood, who experiences the wonder and joys of discovery of the world around her and of literature.

Marijuana, once considered worthy of condemnation, has in recent years become a "medicine", legalized fully in four states, with others expected to follow. But the dangers are clear. According to Bennett's research, more Americans are admitted to treatment facilities for marijuana use than for any other illegal drug. Studies have shown a link between marijuana use and abnormal brain structure and development.

In the past half-century, women have revolutionised the way they work and live. But men’s lives have changed remarkably little. Why? Is it because men don’t want to change? Or is it because, every day in various ways, they are told they shouldn’t? In Men at Work, Annabel Crabb deploys political observation, workplace research and her characteristic humour and intelligence to argue that gender equity cannot be achieved until men are as free to leave the workplace (when their lives demand it) as women are to enter it.

A collection of 19 essays on the constitutional, moral, philosophical, and practical aspects of the U.S. government's failed War on Drugs. For Vance, the fundamental issue in drug regulation is individual rights. He does not at all deny that these drugs can cause great harm; but the issue of regulation is not to be settled by balancing the benefits and harms of open access to drugs against the benefits and harms of their regulation or prohibition.

Demographic trends—longer lifespans and declining birthrates—mean that this popular program now pays more in benefits than it collects in revenue. Without reforms, eighty-three million Americans will face an immediate benefit cut of twenty percent in 2034. How did we get here and what is the solution? In Fixing Social Security, R. Douglas Arnold explores the historical role that Social Security has played in American politics, why Congress has done nothing to fix its insolvency problem for three decades, and what legislators can do to save it.

In den Jahren 2020 und 2021, der Zeit der Covid-19-Pandemie, ereignete sich ein bemerkenswertes Schauspiel. Während der weitaus größte Teil der Menschen Empathie mit den Schwachen und besonders Gefährdeten zeigte, entpflichtete sich eine Minderheit davon und rebellierte gegen die staatlichen Maßnahmen zum Schutz der Gesundheit aller Bürger. Für Richard David Precht ein Anlass, darüber nachzudenken, was eigentlich die Pflicht des Fürsorge- und Vorsorgestaates gegenüber seinen Bürgern ist und was die Pflicht seiner Bürger.

In austerity Britain, disabled people have become the favourite target. From social care to the benefits system, politicians and media alike have made the case that Britain's 12 million disabled people are a drain on the public purse. In Crippled, leading commentator Frances Ryan exposes the disturbing reality, telling the story of those most affected by this devastating regime. This includes a paralysed man forced to crawl down the stairs because the council wouldn't provide accessible housing and the young girl with bipolar forced to turn to sex work to survive.

Medea Benjamin researches the sinister nature of the relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia. In seven succinct chapters followed by a meditation on prospects for change, Benjamin shines a light on one of the most perplexing elements of American foreign policy. Why, over a period of decades and across various presidential administrations, has the US consistently supported a regime shown time and again to be one of the most powerful forces working against American interests?

From education to work to dating, this inspirational, honest and provocative book recognises and celebrates the strides black women have already made, while providing practical advice for those who want to do the same and forge a better, visible future. Illustrated with stories from best friends Elizabeth Uviebinené and Yomi Adegoke’s own lives, and using interviews with dozens of the most successful black women in Britain.

What explains the growing class divide between the well-educated and everybody else? Noted author Brink Lindsey, a senior scholar at the Kauffman Foundation, argues that it's because economic expansion is creating an increasingly complex world in which only a minority with the right knowledge and skills - the right "human capital" - reap the majority of the economic rewards. The complexity of today's economy is not only making these lucky elites richer - it is also making them smarter.

A heartwarming debut memoir about finding meaning in the face of loss. Garrison is a proficient writer with an inspiring story, but his self-awareness and insight into disability give weight to his memoir. His sly sense of humor, meanwhile, provides a good balance to his heavier material.

The implausible truth: Over one billion people in the world are hungry and over one billion are overweight. Far from complete opposites, hunger and obesity are in fact different manifestations of the same problem: It's increasingly difficult to find and eat nutritious food. By examining the global industrial food system using the deceptively simple template of a classic American dinner, We the Eaters not only outlines the root causes for this bizarre and troubling dichotomy, but also provides a blueprint of actionable solutions.

Deep within the forbidding land encircled by the Washington Beltway lives the tribe known as Homo politicus. Their ways are strange, even repulsive, to civilized human beings; their arcane rites often impenetrable; their language coded and obscure. Violating their complex taboos can lead to sudden, harsh, and irrevocable punishment. Normal Americans have long feared Homo politicus, with good reason.

The American dream of equal opportunity is in peril. America's economic inequality is shocking, poverty threatens to become a heritable condition, and our healthcare system is crumbling despite ever increasing costs. In this thought-provoking book, Edward D. Kleinbard demonstrates how the failure to acknowledge the force of brute luck in our material lives exacerbates these crises leading to warped policy choices that impede genuine equality of opportunity for many Americans.

Colonists brought a different view of nature, one that saw its resources as commodities to be bought and sold. Over the course of centuries, this conflict of ideologies would continue, one that persists today in courtroom debates surrounding Indigenous rights, on frontlines protesting pipeline projects, and in the hearts and minds of people advocating that "water is life". So when a water protector proclaims "water is life", they speak not just in slogan form, but as part of an ancient philosophy that dates back millennia.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Matthew 22:37-39 In his groundbreaking book, The Politically Homeless Christian, Aaron Schafer explores what the Bible says about how we are called to engage with the world politically, what we are instructed to look for in leaders, and how we can bring the love of God to a broken and fallen world through the way we approach politics. How can Christians live out God's greatest two ...

A new generation of Americans has declared that another world is possible. And yet, the stubborn problems of inequality, climate change, and declining health seem as intractable as ever. Where might different answers lie? Intrepid journalist Natasha Hakimi Zapata has traveled around the world, from Costa Rica to Uganda, and Estonia to Singapore, uncovering how different countries solve the problems that plague the United States.

Just as the industrial capitalism of the 19th century gave way to corporate capitalism in the 20th, recent decades have witnessed corporate capitalism evolving into a new phase, which Ehrenreich calls "Third Wave Capitalism." Third Wave Capitalism is marked by apparent contradictions: Rapid growth in productivity and lagging wages; fabulous wealth for the one percent and the persistence of high levels of poverty; increases in the standard of living and increases in mental illness, and much more.