Social Science Books
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Zeitoun
Eggers, Dave
(Paperback)
List Price: $16.00 Our Price: $6.49
The true story of one family, caught between America’s two biggest policy disasters: the war on terror and the response to Hurricane Katrina.Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun run a house-painting business in New Orleans. In August of 2005, as Hurricane Katrina approaches, Kathy evacuates with their four young children, leaving Zeitoun to watch over the business. In the days following the storm he travels the city by canoe, feeding abandoned animals and helping elderly neighbors. Then, on September 6th, police officers armed with M-16s arrest Zeitoun in his home. Told with eloquence and compassion, Zeitoun is a riveting account of one family’s unthinkable struggle with forces beyond wind and water.
Your Happiness Was Hacked: Why Tech Is Winning the Battle to Control Your Brain - and How to Fight Back
Wadhwa, Vivek
(Hardcover)
List Price: $24.95 Our Price: $9.79
Technology: your master, or your friend? Do you feel ruled by your smartphone and enslaved by your e-mail or social-network activities? Digital technology is making us miserable, say bestselling authors and former tech executives Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever. We've become a tribe of tech addicts--and it's not entirely our fault.Taking advantage of vulnerabilities in human brain function, tech companies entice us to overdose on technology interaction. This damages our lives, work, families, and friendships. Swipe-driven dating apps train us to evaluate people like products, diminishing our relationships. At work, we e-mail on average 77 times a day, ruining our concentration. At home, light from our screens is contributing to epidemic sleep deprivation.But we can reclaim our lives without dismissing technology. The authors explain how to avoid getting hooked on tech and how to define and control the roles that tech is playing and could play in our lives. And they provide a guide to technological and personal tools for regaining control. This readable book turns personal observation into a handy action guide to adapting to our new reality of omnipresent technology.
You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters
Murphy, Kate
(Hardcover)
List Price: $26.00 Our Price: $11.89
At work, we’re taught to lead the conversation.On social media, we shape our personal narratives.At parties, we talk over one another. So do our politicians.We’re not listening.And no one is listening to us.Despite living in a world where technology allows constant digital communication and opportunities to connect, it seems no one is really listening or even knows how. And it’s making us lonelier, more isolated, and less tolerant than ever before. A listener by trade, New York Times contributor Kate Murphy wanted to know how we got here.In this always illuminating and often humorous deep dive, Murphy explains why we’re not listening, what it’s doing to us, and how we can reverse the trend. She makes accessible the psychology, neuroscience, and sociology of listening while also introducing us to some of the best listeners out there (including a CIA agent, focus group moderator, bartender, radio producer, and top furniture salesman). Equal parts cultural observation, scientific exploration, and rousing call to action that's full of practical advice, You're Not Listening is to listening what Susan Cain's Quiet was to introversion. It’s time to stop talking and start listening.
You May Also Like: Taste in an Age of Endless Choice
Vanderbilt, Tom
(Paperback)
List Price: $16.95 Our Price: $5.99
Why do we get so embarrassed when a colleague wears the same shirt? Why do we eat the same thing for breakfast every day, but seek out novelty at lunch and dinner? How has streaming changed the way Netflix makes recommendations? Why do people think the music of their youth is the best? How can you spot a fake review on Yelp?Our preferences and opinions are constantly being shaped by countless forces – especially in the digital age with its nonstop procession of “thumbs up” and “likes” and “stars.” Tom Vanderbilt, bestselling author of Traffic, explains why we like the things we like, why we hate the things we hate, and what all this tell us about ourselves.With a voracious curiosity, Vanderbilt stalks the elusive beast of taste, probing research in psychology, marketing, and neuroscience to answer myriad complex and fascinating questions. If you’ve ever wondered how Netflix recommends movies or why books often see a sudden decline in Amazon ratings after they win a major prize, Tom Vanderbilt has answers to these questions and many more that you’ve probably never thought to ask.
You Don't Have to Like Me: Essays on Growing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding Feminism
Nugent, Alida
(Paperback)
List Price: $16.00 Our Price: $4.39
Alida Nugent's self-deprecating 'everygirl' approach continues to win the internet-savvy writer and blogger new fans. Now, she takes on one of today's hottest cultural topics: feminism. Nugent is a proud feminist - and she's not afraid to say it. From the 'scarlet F' thrust upon you if you declare yourself a feminist at a party to how to handle judgmental Boots staff when you pop in for the morning-after pill, You Don't Have to Like Me skewers a range of cultural issues, and confirms Nugent as a star on the rise.
You Are a Mogul: How to Do the Impossible, Do It Yourself, and Do It Now
Pham, Tiffany
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.00 Sale: $3.51
Traditionally, the word "mogul" has been attributed to men. But Tiffany Pham has redefined it--now, when you Google the word, the top search result is the company she founded: Mogul. The platform enables millions of women, across 196 countries, to connect, share information, and access knowledge.So how did a young woman--who arrived in the United States without speaking a word of English--turn a dream of connecting women into a fulfilling career and highly profitable company that has changed so many lives?Tiffany chronicles her path to becoming one of the most successful entrepreneurs of her generation, and offers specific, actionable advice that covers everything from overcoming self-doubt, to pursuing side-hustles, to crushing it at life and work by over-delivering, all while remaining your authentic self. You will learn how to negotiate job promotions, secure and balance multiple career roles, hire and manage teams, and become a mogul yourself. The book also features strategies and insights from ten of the most powerful moguls worldwide, including Nina Garcia, Star Jones, and Rebecca Minkoff.You Are A Mogul addresses the new reality that few of us will work for one company for our entire career and that there is no one straightforward formula for a "good life"--personally or professionally. To succeed, we have to be agile, flexible, and strategic. You Are A Mogul is an indispensable road map to the kind of life and career that is demanding and challenging--but also exciting and full of opportunities, if you know where to look.
You and I Eat the Same: On the Countless Ways Food and Cooking Connect Us to One Another (MAD Dispatches, Volume 1)
Ying, Chris
(Softcover)
List Price: $19.95 Sale: $2.46
Good food is the common ground shared by all of us, and immigration is fundamental to good food. In nineteen thoughtful and engaging essays and stories, You and I Eat the Same explores the ways in which cooking and eating connect us across cultural and political borders, making the case that we should think about cuisine as a collective human effort in which we all benefit from the movement of people, ingredients, and ideas.
Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit
Silko, Leslie Marmon
(Paperback)
List Price: $13.00 Our Price: $6.25
A passionate weaving of past and present, this collection of 22 essays illuminates the Native American experience. "There is no one writing in America who more deserves our attention and respect."--Larry McMurtry. 205 pages.
A Year by the Sea
Anderson, Joan
(Paperback)
List Price: $12.95 Our Price: $5.49
Life is a work in progress, as unfinished and ever-changing as the sandy shoreline along the beach. A Year by the Sea is the entrancing story of how one woman emerged from a stagnant period, finding the energy to renew her marriage and the courage to persevere in the living of an unfettered life.
X vs. Y: A Culture War, A Love Story
Epstein, Eve
(Paperback)
List Price: $18.95 Our Price: $7.59
Seen through the eyes of siblings 14 years apart in age, X vs. Y is a smart, funny, stylish, and visually driven anthology that compiles and compares their two generational cultures. It's a story told through lists, infographics, essays, anecdotes, and images, with chapters devoted to fashion, TV, music, technology, dating, books, and movies. Through musings on topics such as leg warmers, Clueless, Sassy magazine, and MTV, along with mixtapes and TV characters, X vs. Y paints a portrait of two intricately entwined generations.
X Saves the World: How Generation X Got the Shaft but Can Still Keep Everything from Sucking
Gordinier, Jeff
(Softcover)
List Price: $15.00 Our Price: $5.99
In this simultaneously hilarious and incisive "manifesto for a generation that's never had much use for manifestos," Gordinier suggests that for the first time since the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" breakthrough of the early 1990s, Gen X has what it takes to rescue American culture from a state of collapse. Over the past twenty years, the so-called "slackers" have irrevocably changed countless elements of our culture - from the way we watch movies to the way we make sense of a cracked political process to the way the whole world does business.
X
Klosterman, Chuck
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.00 Our Price: $9.45
Chuck Klosterman has created an incomparable body of work in books, magazines, newspapers, and on the Web. His writing spans the realms of culture and sports, while also addressing interpersonal issues, social quandaries, and ethical boundaries. Klosterman has written nine previous books, helped found and establish Grantland, served as the New York Times Magazine Ethicist, worked on film and television productions, and contributed profiles and essays to outlets such as GQ, Esquire, Billboard, The A.V. Club, and The Guardian.Chuck Klosterman's tenth book (aka Chuck Klosterman X) collects his most intriguing of those pieces, accompanied by fresh introductions and new footnotes throughout. Klosterman presents many of the articles in their original form, featuring previously unpublished passages and digressions. Subjects include Breaking Bad, Lou Reed, zombies, KISS, Jimmy Page, Stephen Malkmus, steroids, Mountain Dew, Chinese Democracy, The Beatles, Jonathan Franzen, Taylor Swift, Tim Tebow, Kobe Bryant, Usain Bolt, Eddie Van Halen, Charlie Brown, the Cleveland Browns, and many more cultural figures and pop phenomena. This is a tour of the past decade from one of the sharpest and most prolific observers of our unusual times.
The Wrong Way to Save Your Life
Stielstra, Megan
(Paperback)
List Price: $15.99 Our Price: $3.89
From an important new American writer comes this powerful collection of personal essays on fear, creativity, art, faith, academia, the Internet, and justice.In this poignant and inciting collection of literary essays, Megan Stielstra tells stories to ward off fears both personal and universal as she grapples toward a better way to live. In her titular piece “The Wrong Way To Save Your Life,” she answers the question of what has value in our lives - a question no longer rhetorical when the apartment above her family’s goes up in flames. “Here is My Heart” sheds light on Megan’s close relationship with her father, whose continued insistence on climbing mountains despite a series of heart attacks leads the author to dissect deer hearts in a poetic attempt to interrogate her own feelings about mortality. Whether she's imagining the implications of open-carry laws on college campuses, recounting the story of going underwater on the mortgage of her first home, or revealing the unexpected pains and joys of marriage and motherhood, Stielstra's work informs, impels, enlightens, and embraces us all. The result is something beautiful - this story, her courage, and, potentially, our own.Intellectually fierce and viscerally intimate, Megan Stielstra's voice is witty, wise, warm, and above all, achingly human.
The Wrong Kind of Women: Inside Our Revolution to Dismantle the Gods of Hollywood
Jones, Naomi McDougall
(Hardcover)
List Price: $26.95 Our Price: $9.79
A brutally honest look at the systemic exclusion of women in film - an industry with massive cultural influence - and how, in response, women are making space in cinema for their voices to be heard.Generation after generation, women have faced the devastating reality that Hollywood is a system built to keep them out. The films created by that system influence everything from our worldviews to our brain chemistry. When women’s voices are excluded from the medium, the impact on society is immense. Actor, screenwriter, and award-winning independent filmmaker Naomi McDougall Jones takes us inside the cutthroat, scandal-laden film industry, where only 5% of top studio films are directed by women and less than 20% of leading characters in mainstream films are female. Jones calls on all of us to act radically to build a different kind of future for cinema - not only for the women being actively hurt inside the industry but for those outside it, whose lives, purchasing decisions, and sense of selves are shaped by the stories told.Informed by the journey of her own career; by interviews with others throughout the film industry; and by cold, hard data, Jones deconstructs the casual, commonplace sexism rampant in Hollywood that has kept women out of key roles for decades. Next, she shows us the growing women-driven revolution in filmmaking - sparked by streaming services, crumbling distribution models, direct-to-audience access via innovative online platforms, and outside advocacy groups - which has enabled women to build careers outside the traditional studio system. Finally, she makes a business case for financing and producing films by female filmmakers.
Written in Bones (2nd Edition)
Bahn, Paul (Edt)
(Softcover)
List Price: $24.95 Our Price: $10.79
Human remains have much to tell us about how our ancestors lived and died, what they believed, and the rituals that were important to them. In Written in Bones, a team of international forensic anthropologists and archaeologists examines important case studies of human remains found at archaeological sites around the world. Comprehensive text and color photographs describe how the remains were analyzed using modern scientific techniques and how the data were assembled to create authentic pictures of ancient cultures.
Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took On New York's Master Builder and Transformed the American City
Flint, Anthony
(Paperback)
List Price: $15.00 Our Price: $4.89
The rivalry of Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses, a struggle for the soul of a city, is one of the most dramatic and consequential in modern American history. To a young Jane Jacobs, Greenwich Village, with its winding cobblestone streets and diverse makeup, was everything a city neighborhood should be. But consummate power broker Robert Moses, the father of many of New York’s most monumental development projects, thought neighborhoods like Greenwich Village were badly in need of “urban renewal.” Standing up against government plans for the city, Jacobs marshaled popular support and political power against Moses, whether to block traffic through her beloved Washington Square Park or to prevent the construction of the Lower Manhattan Expressway, an elevated superhighway that would have destroyed centuries-old streetscapes and displaced thousands of families. By confronting Moses and his vision, Jacobs forever changed the way Americans understood the city. Her story reminds us of the power we have as individuals to confront and defy reckless authority.
A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond
Susskind, Daniel
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.00 Our Price: $10.79
From an Oxford economist, a visionary account of how technology will transform the world of work, and what we should do about itFrom mechanical looms to the combustion engine to the first computers, new technologies have always provoked panic about workers being replaced by machines. For centuries, such fears have been misplaced, and many economists maintain that they remain so today. But as Daniel Susskind demonstrates, this time really is different. Breakthroughs in artificial intelligence mean that all kinds of jobs are increasingly at risk.Drawing on almost a decade of research in the field, Susskind argues that machines no longer need to think like us in order to outperform us, as was once widely believed. As a result, more and more tasks that used to be far beyond the capability of computers – from diagnosing illnesses to drafting legal contracts, from writing news reports to composing music – are coming within their reach. The threat of technological unemployment is now real.This is not necessarily a bad thing, Susskind emphasizes. Technological progress could bring about unprecedented prosperity, solving one of humanity’s oldest problems: how to make sure that everyone has enough to live on. The challenges will be to distribute this prosperity fairly, to constrain the burgeoning power of Big Tech, and to provide meaning in a world where work is no longer the center of our lives. Perceptive, pragmatic, and ultimately hopeful, A World Without Work shows the way.
The World Without Us
Weisman, Alan
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.00 Our Price: $6.25
In The World Without Us, Alan Weisman offers an utterly original approach to questions of humanity’s impact on the planet: he asks us to envision our Earth, without us. In this far-reaching narrative, Weisman explains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish without human presence; which everyday items may become immortalized as fossils; how copper pipes and wiring would be crushed into mere seams of reddish rock; why some of our earliest buildings might be the last architecture left; and how plastic, bronze sculpture, radio waves, and some man-made molecules may be our most lasting gifts to the universe. The World Without Us reveals how, just days after humans disappear, floods in New York’s subways would start eroding the city’s foundations, and how, as the world’s cities crumble, asphalt jungles would give way to real ones. It describes the distinct ways that organic and chemically treated farms would revert to wild, how billions more birds would flourish, and how cockroaches in unheated cities would perish without us. Drawing on the expertise of engineers, atmospheric scientists, art conservators, zoologists, oil refiners, marine biologists, astrophysicists, religious leaders from rabbis to the Dali Lama, and paleontologists - who describe a prehuman world inhabited by megafauna like giant sloths that stood taller than mammoths - Weisman illustrates what the planet might be like today, if not for us.
World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech
Foer, Franklin
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.00 Our Price: $10.55
Franklin Foer reveals the existential threat posed by big tech, and in his brilliant polemic gives us the toolkit to fight their pervasive influence. Over the past few decades there has been a revolution in terms of who controls knowledge and information. This rapid change has imperiled the way we think. Without pausing to consider the cost, the world has rushed to embrace the products and services of four titanic corporations. We shop with Amazon; socialize on Facebook; turn to Apple for entertainment; and rely on Google for information. These firms sell their efficiency and purport to make the world a better place, but what they have done instead is to enable an intoxicating level of daily convenience. As these companies have expanded, marketing themselves as champions of individuality and pluralism, their algorithms have pressed us into conformity and laid waste to privacy. They have produced an unstable and narrow culture of misinformation, and put us on a path to a world without private contemplation, autonomous thought, or solitary introspection - a world without mind. In order to restore our inner lives, we must avoid being coopted by these gigantic companies, and understand the ideas that underpin their success. Elegantly tracing the intellectual history of computer science - from Descartes and the enlightenment to Alan Turing to Stuart Brand and the hippie origins of today's Silicon Valley - Foer exposes the dark underpinnings of our most idealistic dreams for technology. The corporate ambitions of Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, he argues, are trampling longstanding liberal values, especially intellectual property and privacy. This is a nascent stage in the total automation and homogenization of social, political, and intellectual life. By reclaiming our private authority over how we intellectually engage with the world, we have the power to stem the tide.At stake is nothing less than who we are, and what we will become. There have been monopolists in the past but today's corporate giants have far more nefarious aims. They’re monopolists who want access to every facet of our identities and influence over every corner of our decision-making. Until now few have grasped the sheer scale of the threat. Foer explains not just the looming existential crisis but the imperative of resistance.
The World Split Open
Rosen, Ruth
(Paperback)
List Price: $20.00 Our Price: $6.79
Historian and journalist Ruth Rosen chronicles the history of the American women's movement from its beginnings in the 1960s to the present. ...reveals fascinating but little-known information including how the FBI hired hundreds of women to infiltrate the movement. Using extensive archival research and interviews, Rosen challenges readers to understand the impact of the women's movement and to see why the revolution is far from over.
The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America
Butler, Isaac
(Paperback)
List Price: $20.00 Our Price: $4.39
When Tony Kushner's Angels in America hit Broadway in 1993, it won the Pulitzer Prize, swept the Tonys, launched a score of major careers, and changed the way gay lives were represented in popular culture. Mike Nichols's 2003 HBO adaptation starring Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, and Mary-Louise Parker was itself a tour de force, winning Golden Globes and eleven Emmys, and introducing the play to an even wider public. This generation-defining classic continues to shock, move, and inspire viewers worldwide.Now, on the 25th anniversary of that Broadway premiere, Isaac Butler and Dan Kois offer the definitive account of Angels in America in the most fitting way possible: through oral history, the vibrant conversation and debate of actors (including Streep, Parker, Nathan Lane, and Jeffrey Wright), directors, producers, crew, and Kushner himself. Their intimate storytelling reveals the on- and offstage turmoil of the play's birth - a hard-won miracle beset by artistic roadblocks, technical disasters, and disputes both legal and creative. And historians and critics help to situate the play in the arc of American culture, from the staunch activism of the AIDS crisis through civil rights triumphs to our current era, whose politics are a dark echo of the Reagan '80s.Expanded from a popular Slate cover story and built from nearly 250 interviews, The World Only Spins Forward is both a rollicking theater saga and an uplifting testament to one of the great works of American art of the past century, from its gritty San Francisco premiere to its starry, much-anticipated Broadway revival in 2018.
World on Fire
Chua, Amy
(Paperback)
List Price: $14.00 Our Price: $6.79
Examines the actual impact of globalization on every region of the world.
A World of Three Zeros: The New Economics of Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, and Zero Net Carbon Emissions
Yunus, Muhammad
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.00 Our Price: $4.89
A winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and bestselling author of Banker to the Poor offers his vision of an emerging new economic system that can save humankind and the planet.Muhammad Yunus, who created microcredit, invented social business, and earned a Nobel Peace Prize for his work in alleviating poverty, is one of today's most trenchant social critics. Now he declares it's time to admit that the capitalist engine is broken--that in its current form it inevitably leads to rampant inequality, massive unemployment, and environmental destruction. We need a new economic system that unleashes altruism as a creative force just as powerful as self-interest.Is this a pipe dream? Not at all. In the last decade, thousands of people and organizations have already embraced Yunus's vision of a new form of capitalism, launching innovative social businesses designed to serve human needs rather than accumulate wealth. They are bringing solar energy to millions of homes in Bangladesh; turning thousands of unemployed young people into entrepreneurs through equity investments; financing female-owned businesses in cities across the United States; bringing mobility, shelter, and other services to the rural poor in France; and creating a global support network to help young entrepreneurs launch their start-ups.In A World of Three Zeros, Yunus describes the new civilization emerging from the economic experiments his work has helped to inspire. He explains how global companies like McCain, Renault, Essilor, and Danone got involved with this new economic model through their own social action groups, describes the ingenious new financial tools now funding social businesses, and sketches the legal and regulatory changes needed to jumpstart the next wave of socially driven innovations. And he invites young people, business and political leaders, and ordinary citizens to join the movement and help create the better world we all dream of.
The World In 2050
Smith, Laurence C.
(Paperback)
List Price: $16.00 Our Price: $4.39
The world's population is exploding, wild species are vanishing, and our environment is degrading. What kind of world are we leaving for our children and grandchildren? Just who will flourish - and who will fail - in our evolving world? Combining the lessons of geography and history with state-of-the-art model projections and analytical data, Guggenheim fellow Laurence C. Smith predicts how the eight nations of the Arctic Rim (including the United States) will become increasingly powerful while the nations around the equator struggle for survival. Like Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist, The World in 2050 is as credible as it is controversial, projecting the looming benefits as well as the problems of climate change.
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