Social Science Books
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The Zero Marginal Cost Society
Rifkin, Jeremy
(Softcover)
List Price: $18.00 Our Price: $7.45
In The Zero Marginal Cost Society, New York Times bestselling author Jeremy Rifkin describes how the emerging Internet of Things is speeding us to an era of nearly free goods and services, precipitating the meteoric rise of a global Collaborative Commons and the eclipse of capitalism. Rifkin uncovers a paradox at the heart of capitalism that has propelled it to greatness but is now taking it to its death--the inherent entrepreneurial dynamism of competitive markets that drives productivity up and marginal costs down, enabling businesses to reduce the price of their goods and services in order to win over consumers and market share. (Marginal cost is the cost of producing additional units of a good or service, if fixed costs are not counted.) While economists have always welcomed a reduction in marginal cost, they never anticipated the possibility of a technological revolution that might bring marginal costs to near zero, making goods and services priceless, nearly free, and abundant, and no longer subject to market forces. Now, a formidable new technology infrastructure--the Internet of things (IoT)--is emerging with the potential of pushing large segments of economic life to near zero marginal cost in the years ahead. Rifkin describes how the Communication Internet is converging with a nascent Energy Internet and Logistics Internet to create a new technology platform that connects everything and everyone. Billions of sensors are being attached to natural resources, production lines, the electricity grid, logistics networks, recycling flows, and implanted in homes, offices, stores, vehicles, and even human beings, feeding Big Data into an IoT global neural network. Prosumers can connect to the network and use Big Data, analytics, and algorithms to accelerate efficiency, dramatically increase productivity, and lower the marginal cost of producing and sharing a wide range of products and services to near zero, just like they now do with information goods. The plummeting of marginal costs is spawning a hybrid economy--part capitalist market and part Collaborative Commons--with far reaching implications for society, according to Rifkin. Hundreds of millions of people are already transferring parts of their economic lives to the global Collaborative Commons. Prosumers are plugging into the fledgling IoT and making and sharing their own information, entertainment, green energy, and 3D-printed products at near zero marginal cost. They are also sharing cars, homes, clothes and other items via social media sites, rentals, redistribution clubs, and cooperatives at low or near zero marginal cost. Students are enrolling in free massive open online courses (MOOCs) that operate at near zero marginal cost. Social entrepreneurs are even bypassing the banking establishment and using crowdfunding to finance startup businesses as well as creating alternative currencies in the fledgling sharing economy. In this new world, social capital is as important as financial capital, access trumps ownership, sustainability supersedes consumerism, cooperation ousts competition, and "exchange value" in the capitalist marketplace is increasingly replaced by "sharable value" on the Collaborative Commons. Rifkin concludes that capitalism will remain with us, albeit in an increasingly streamlined role, primarily as an aggregator of network services and solutions, allowing it to flourish as a powerful niche player in the coming era. We are, however, says Rifkin, entering a world beyond markets where we are learning how to live together in an increasingly interdependent global Collaborative Commons.
Zeitoun
Eggers, Dave
(Paperback)
List Price: $16.00 Our Price: $6.59
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: $9.89
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 May Also Like: Taste in an Age of Endless Choice
Vanderbilt, Tom
(Paperback)
List Price: $16.95 Our Price: $6.09
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: $4.49
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: $3.61
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: $2.56
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: $6.35
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: $5.59
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: $7.69
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: $6.09
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: $9.55
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: $3.99
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: $9.89
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: $10.89
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: $4.99
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.
Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice
Oshinsky, David M.
(Paperback)
List Price: $15.95 Our Price: $6.89
Prisons in the deep South, with chain gangs, shotguns, and bloodhounds, have been immortalized in movies, blues music, and fiction. Mississippi's Parchman State Penitentiary was the grandfather of them all, a hellhole where conditions were brutal. This epic history fills the gap between slavery and the civil rights era, showing how Parchman and Jim Crow justice proved that there could be something worse than slavery.
A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond
Susskind, Daniel
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.00 Our Price: $10.89
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: $6.35
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: $10.65
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: $6.89
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: $3.39
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.
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: $4.99
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: $4.49
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.
A World Apart
Rathbone, Cristina
(Paperback)
List Price: $16.00 Our Price: $6.09
“Life in a women’s prison is full of surprises,” writes Cristina Rathbone in her landmark account of life at MCI-Framingham. And so it is. After two intense court battles with prison officials, Rathbone gained unprecedented access to the otherwise invisible women of the oldest running women’s prison in America. The picture that emerges is both astounding and enraging. Women reveal the agonies of separation from family, and the prevalence of depression, and of sexual predation, and institutional malaise behind bars. But they also share their more personal hopes and concerns. There is horror in prison for sure, but Rathbone insists there is also humor and romance and downright bloody-mindedness. Getting beyond the political to the personal, A World Apart is both a triumph of empathy and a searing indictment of a system that has overlooked the plight of women in prison for far too long. At the center of the book is Denise, a mother serving five years for a first-time, nonviolent drug offense. Denise’s son is nine and obsessed with Beanie Babies when she first arrives in prison. He is fourteen and in prison himself by the time she is finally released. As Denise struggles to reconcile life in prison with the realities of her son’s excessive freedom on the outside, we meet women like Julie, who gets through her time by distracting herself with flirtatious, often salacious relationships with male correctional officers; Louise, who keeps herself going by selling makeup and personalized food packages on the prison black market; Chris, whose mental illness leads her to kill herself in prison; and Susan, who, after thirteen years of intermittent incarceration, has come to think of MCI-Framingham as home. Fearlessly truthful and revelatory, A World Apart is a major work of investigative journalism and social justice.
The World According to Star Wars
Sunstein, Cass R.
(Hardcover)
List Price: $21.99 Our Price: $8.19
There’s Santa Claus, Shakespeare, Mickey Mouse, the Bible, and then there’s Star Wars. Nothing quite compares to sitting down with a young child and hearing the sound of John Williams’s score as those beloved golden letters fill the screen. In this fun, erudite, and often moving book, Cass R. Sunstein explores the lessons of Star Wars as they relate to childhood, fathers, the Dark Side, rebellion, and redemption. As it turns out, Star Wars also has a lot to teach us about constitutional law, economics, and political uprisings.In rich detail, Sunstein tells the story of the films’ wildly unanticipated success and explores why some things succeed while others fail. Ultimately, Sunstein argues, Star Wars is about freedom of choice and our never-ending ability to make the right decision when the chips are down. Written with buoyant prose and considerable heart, The World According to Star Wars shines a bright new light on the most beloved story of our time.
The World According to Star Wars (Revised and Updated)
Sunstein, Cass R.
(Paperback)
List Price: $15.99 Our Price: $7.69
In this fun, erudite, and moving book, Cass R. Sunstein explores the lessons of Star Wars as they relate to childhood, fathers, the Dark Side, rebellion, and redemption, along with constitutional law, economics, and political uprisings. Sunstein tells the story of the films' wildly unanticipated success and what it has to say about why some things succeed while others fail. The World According to Star Wars shines a bright new light on the most beloved story of our time.
The Working Poor: Invisible in America
Shipler, David K.
(Paperback)
List Price: $14.00 Our Price: $6.59
As David K. Shipler makes clear in this study, the invisible poor are engaged in the activity most respected in American ideology - hard, honest work. But their version of the American Dream is a nightmare: low paying, dead-end jobs; the profound failure of government to improve upon decaying housing, health care, and education; the failure of families to break the patterns of child abuse and substance abuse. Shipler exposes the interlocking, problems by taking us into the sorrowful, infuriating, courageous lives of the poor - white and black, Asian and Latino, citizens and immigrants. We encounter them every day, for they do jobs essential to the American economy. We meet drifting farm workers in North Carolina, exploited garment workers in New Hampshire, illegal immigrants trapped in the steaming kitchens of Los Angeles restaurants, addicts who struggle into productive work from the cruel streets of the nation's capital - each life another aspect of a confounding, far-reaching urgent national crises. And unlike most works on poverty, this one delves into the calculations of some employers as well - their razor-thin profits, their anxieties about competition from abroad, their frustrations in finding qualified workers.
Work with Me
Annis, Barbara
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.00 Our Price: $6.89
Work with Me is the timely collaboration of two of the world’s foremost authorities on gender relations - Barbara Annis and John Gray. Here they team up to resolve the most stressful and confusing challenges facing men and women at work, revealing, for the first time, survey results of over 100,000 in-depth interviews of men and women executives in over 60 Fortune 500 companies. Readers will discover the 8 Gender Blind Spots: the false assumptions and opinions men and women have of each other, and in many ways, believe of themselves. Also unveiled are the biology and social influences that compel men and women to think and act as they do, and direct how they communicate, solve problems, make decisions, resolve conflict, lead others, and deal with stress, enabling them to achieve greater success and satisfaction in their professional and personal lives. Work with Me is the definitive work-life relational guide, filled with “ah-ha!” moments and discoveries that will remove the blind spots and enable men and women to work and succeed together.
Work Mate Marry Love: How Machines Shape Our Human Destiny
Spar, Debora L.
(Hardcover)
List Price: $38.00 Our Price: $14.69
A crucial guide to life before - and after - Tinder, IVF, and robots.What will happen to our notions of marriage and parenthood as reproductive technologies increasingly allow for newfangled ways of creating babies? What will happen to our understanding of gender as medical advances enable individuals to transition from one set of sexual characteristics to another, or to remain happily perched in between? What will happen to love and sex and romance as our relationships migrate from the real world to the Internet? Can people fall in love with robots? Will they? In short, what will happen to our most basic notions of humanity as we entangle our lives and emotions with the machines we have created?In Work Mate Marry Love, Harvard Business School professor and former Barnard College president Debora L. Spar offers an incisive and provocative account of how technology has transformed our intimate lives in the past, and how it will do so again in the future. Surveying the course of history, she shows how marriage as we understand it resulted from the rise of agriculture, and that the nuclear family emerged with the industrial revolution. In their day, the street light, the car, and later the pill all upended courtship and sex. Now, as we enter an era of artificial intelligence and robots, how will our deepest feelings and attachments evolve?In the past, the prevailing modes of production produced a world dominated by heterosexual, mostly-monogamous, two-parent families. In the future, however, these patterns are almost certain to be reshaped, creating entirely new norms for sex and romance, and for the construction of families and the raising of children. Steering clear of both techno-euphoria and alarmism, Spar offers a bold and inclusive vision of how our lives might be changed for the better.
Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language
Montell, Amanda
(Hardcover)
List Price: $26.99 Our Price: $10.89
A brash, enlightening, and wildly entertaining feminist look at gendered language and the way it shapes us.The word bitch conjures many images, but it is most often meant to describe an unpleasant woman. Even before its usage to mean “a female canine,” bitch didn’t refer to women at all - it originated as a gender-neutral word for “genitalia.” A perfectly innocuous word devolving into an insult directed at females is the case for tons more terms, including hussy, which simply meant “housewife”; and slut, which meant “an untidy person” and was also used to describe men. These are just a few of history’s many English slurs hurled at women.Amanda Montell, reporter and feminist linguist, deconstructs language - from insults, cursing, gossip, and catcalling to grammar and pronunciation patterns - to reveal the ways it has been used for centuries to keep women and other marginalized genders from power. Ever wonder why so many people are annoyed when women speak with vocal fry or use like as filler? Or why certain gender-neutral terms stick and others don’t? Or where stereotypes of how women and men speak come from in the first place?Montell effortlessly moves between history, science, and popular culture to explore these questions - and how we can use the answers to affect real social change. Montell’s irresistible humor shines through, making linguistics not only approachable but downright hilarious and profound. Wordslut gets to the heart of our language, marvels at its elasticity, and sheds much-needed light on the biases that shadow women in our culture and our consciousness.
Woodstock: The 1969 Rock & Roll Revolution
Assante, Ernesto
(Hardcover)
List Price: $34.99 Our Price: $10.49
Woodstock: The 1969 Rock and Roll Revolution celebrates the fascinating story of how the music event came to be and the people that made it part of history.How can you explain the Woodstock Festival, 50 years after the event, to those who were not fortunate enough to take part? The concert that changed the history of rock music and an entire generation cannot be reduced to the photos. Half a million young people come to Bethel, New York, from every corner of the world to experience three days of music together.This event, now legendary, resounds with the psychedelic notes of Santana and the sublime guitar of Pete Townshend of The Who, the rich voices of Joan Baez and Janis Joplin, and the many other artists who appeared one after another on the stage. Yet, it was perhaps the guitar of Jimi Hendrix as he played his version of the American national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” as Woodstock screamed its impetuous, revolutionary protest against the war in Vietnam, that became the symbol of an epochal dissent.In Woodstock, journalist and music critic Ernesto Assante presents those unforgettable days through exclusive interviews and photos he has recorded throughout his entire career. Michael Lang, Carlos Santana, Joe Cocker, Grace Slick, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Bob Weir, Roger Daltrey, Graham Nash, will all take us to Bethel to re-live and give thanks to the extraordinary figures that made Woodstock a legend that still echoes today.
Women's Work: A Reckoning with Home and Help
Stack, Megan K.
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.95 Our Price: $8.19
From National Book Award finalist Megan K. Stack, a stunning memoir of raising her children abroad with the help of Chinese and Indian women who are also working mothersWhen Megan Stack was living in Beijing, she left her prestigious job as a foreign correspondent to have her first child and work from home writing a book. She quickly realized that caring for a baby and keeping up with the housework while her husband went to the office each day was consuming the time she needed to write. This dilemma was resolved in the manner of many upper-class families and large corporations: she availed herself of cheap Chinese labor. The housekeeper Stack hired was a migrant from the countryside, a mother who had left her daughter in a precarious situation to earn desperately needed cash in the capital. As Stack's family grew and her husband's job took them to Delhi, a series of Chinese and Indian women cooked, cleaned, and babysat in her home. Stack grew increasingly aware of the brutal realities of their lives: domestic abuse, alcoholism, unplanned pregnancies. Hiring poor women had given her the ability to work while raising her children, but what ethical compromise had she made?Determined to confront the truth, Stack traveled to her employees' homes, met their parents and children, and turned a journalistic eye on the tradeoffs they'd been forced to make as working mothers seeking upward mobility—and on the cost to the children who were left behind.Women's Work is an unforgettable story of four women as well as an electrifying meditation on the evasions of marriage, motherhood, feminism, and privilege.
Women's Reality
Schaef, Anne Wilson
(Softcover)
List Price: $13.95 Our Price: $6.59
In this pivotal work, the bestselling author of Co-Dependence provides the understanding women need to enhance self-awareness and clarifies what it means to be a woman living in a male-dominated society, which is often at odds with the way women feel.
Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey
Schlissel, Lillian
(Paperback)
List Price: $16.95 Our Price: $6.59
More than a quarter of a million Americans crossed the continental United States between 1840 and 1870, going west in one of the greatest migrations of modern times. The frontiersmen have become an integral part of our history and folklore, but the westering experiences of American women are equally central to an accurate picture of what life was like on the frontier.Through the diaries, letters, and reminiscences of women who participated in this migration, Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey gives us primary source material on the lives of these women, who kept campfires burning with buffalo chips and dried weeds, gave birth to and cared for children along primitive and dangerous roads, drove teams of oxen, picked berries, milked cows, and cooked meals in the middle of a wilderness that was a far cry from the homes they had left back east. Still (and often under the disapproving eyes of their husbands) they found time to write brave letters home or to jot a few weary lines at night into the diaries that continue to enthrall us.In her new foreword, Professor Mary Clearman Blew explores the enduring fascination with this subject among both historians and the general public, and places Schlissel's groundbreaking work into an intriguing historical and cultural context.
The Women Who Made New York
Scelfo, Julie
(Hardcover)
List Price: $24.00 Our Price: $4.99
Read any history of New York City and you will read about men. You will read about men who were political leaders and men who were activists and cultural tastemakers. These men have been lauded for generations for creating the most exciting and influential city in the world.But that's not the whole story.The Women Who Made New York reveals the untold stories of the phenomenal women who made New York City the cultural epicenter of the world. Many were revolutionaries and activists, like Zora Neale Hurston and Audre Lorde. Others were icons and iconoclasts, like Fran Lebowitz and Grace Jones. There were also women who led quieter private lives but were just as influential, such as Emily Warren Roebling, who completed the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge when her engineer husband became too ill to work.Paired with striking, contemporary illustrations by artist Hallie Heald, The Women Who Made New York offers a visual sensation--one that reinvigorates not just New York City's history but its very identity.
Women Rowing North: Navigating Life's Currents and Flourishing As We Age
Pipher, Mary
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.00 Our Price: $10.65
Women growing older contend with ageism, misogyny, and loss. Yet as Mary Pipher shows, most older women are deeply happy and filled with gratitude for the gifts of life. Their struggles help them grow into the authentic, empathetic, and wise people they have always wanted to be.In Women Rowing North, Pipher offers a timely examination of the cultural and developmental issues women face as they age. Drawing on her own experience as daughter, sister, mother, grandmother, caregiver, clinical psychologist, and cultural anthropologist, she explores ways women can cultivate resilient responses to the challenges they face. "If we can keep our wits about us, think clearly, and manage our emotions skillfully," Pipher writes, "we will experience a joyous time of our lives. If we have planned carefully and packed properly, if we have good maps and guides, the journey can be transcendent."
Women Rowing North
Pipher, Mary
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.00 Our Price: $5.59
Women growing older contend with ageism, misogyny, and loss. Yet as Mary Pipher shows, most older women are deeply happy and filled with gratitude for the gifts of life. Their struggles help them grow into the authentic, empathetic, and wise people they have always wanted to be.In Women Rowing North, Pipher offers a timely examination of the cultural and developmental issues women face as they age. Drawing on her own experience as daughter, sister, mother, grandmother, caregiver, clinical psychologist, and cultural anthropologist, she explores ways women can cultivate resilient responses to the challenges they face. “If we can keep our wits about us, think clearly, and manage our emotions skillfully,” Pipher writes, “we will experience a joyous time of our lives. If we have planned carefully and packed properly, if we have good maps and guides, the journey can be transcendent.”
Women of Westminster: The MPs who Changed Politics
Reeves, Rachel
(Paperback)
List Price: $14.00 Our Price: $5.59
In 1919 Nancy Astor was elected as the Member of Parliament for Plymouth Sutton, becoming the first woman MP to take her seat in the House of Commons. Her achievement was all the more remarkable given that women (and even then only some women) had only been entitled to vote for just over a year. In the past 100 years, a total of 491 women have been elected to Parliament. Yet it was not until 2016 that the total number of women ever elected surpassed the number of male MPs in a single parliament.The achievements of these political pioneers have been remarkable - Britain has now had two female Prime Ministers and women MPs have made significant strides in fighting for gender equality - from the earliest suffrage campaigns, to Barbara Castle's fight for equal pay, to Harriet Harman's recent legislation on the gender pay gap. Yet the stories of so many women MPs have too often been overlooked in political histories. In this book, Rachel Reeves brings forgotten MPs out of the shadows and looks at the many battles fought by the Women of Westminster, from 1919 to 2019.
Women of Sand and Myrrh
Al-Shaykh, Hanan
(Paperback)
List Price: $15.95 Our Price: $4.75
A powerful and moving novel, by the Arab world's leading woman novelist, about four women coping with the insular, oppressive society of an unnamed desert state.
Women Chefs of New York
Arumugam, Nadia
(Hardcover)
List Price: $35.00 Our Price: $16.59
Women Chefs of New York is a colorful showcase of twenty-five leading female culinary talents in the restaurant capital of the world. In a fiercely competitive, male-dominated field, these women have risen to the top, and their stories--and their recipes--make it abundantly clear why. Food writer Nadia Arumugam braves the sharp knives and the sputtering pans of oil for intimate interviews, revealing the chefs' habits, quirks, food likes, and dislikes, their proudest achievements, and their aspirations. Each chef contributes four signature recipes--appetizers, entrees, and desserts--to recreate the experience of a meal from their celebrated kitchens. This gorgeous full-color cookbook includes portraits of these inspiring women, inviting interior shots of their restaurants, and mouthwatering pictures of the featured dishes, styled by the chefs themselves--all captured by celebrated food photographer Alice Gao.Women Chefs of New York features all-stars such as Amanda Freitag, Jody Williams, April Bloomfield (The Spotted Pig, The Breslin), Gabrielle Hamilton (Prune), Christina Tosi (Momofuku Milk Bar), and Alex Raij (La Vara, Txikito, El Quinto) as well as up-and-coming players like Zahra Tangorra (Brucie), Ann Redding (Uncle Boons), and Sawako Ockochi (Shalom Japan). It's the ultimate gift for any cook or foodie--man or woman--interested in the food that's dazzling discerning palates in NYC now.
Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion
Christ, Carol P. (Edt)
(Softcover)
List Price: $15.95 Our Price: $7.45
The classic anthology on feminist spirituality. Now with an updated preface in which the editors discuss its initial reception and continuing impact.
Woman's Consciousness, Man's World (Radical Thinkers)
Rowbotham, Sheila
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.95 Our Price: $7.19
A groundbreaking contribution to debates on women's oppression and consciousness, and the connections between socialism and feminism, this foundational text shows how the roles women adopt within the capitalist economy have shaped ideas about family and sexuality. Examining feminist consciousness from various vantage points - social, sexual, cultural and economic - Sheila Rowbotham identifies the conditions under which it developed, and how the formation of a new "way of seeing" for women can lead to collective solidarity.
Woman Power: Transform Your Man, Your Marriage, Your Life
Schlessinger, Laura
(Softcover)
List Price: $13.95 Our Price: $6.59
The immediate feedback to Dr. Laura Schlessinger's seventh bestseller, The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands, affirmed that Dr. Laura helped hundreds of thousands of readers make good marriages even better and saved many from the brink of divorce. Now, due to overwhelming response from her readers and listeners who wanted to know more about the special power women have to transform their husbands, their marriages, and their lives, Dr. Laura has written Woman Power. Through a series of provocative chapters and Q&As, Dr. Laura guides women on how to assess what is valuable and what is vulnerable in their marriages, and stimulates women to think about what is really important about being a woman, a wife, and a mother. In addition, readers will find inspirational stories and tips, thought-provoking essays, and plenty of room for entries, thoughts, and journals. There are even fascinating Q&As for husbands and wives to do together! Woman Power is the perfect companion book for the woman who wants to ensure herself - and her man! - the marital happiness and satisfaction everyone dreams of.
A Woman on the Edge of Time: A Son Investigates His Trailblazing Mother's Young Suicide
Gavron, Jeremy
(Hardcover)
List Price: $24.95 Our Price: $7.89
A son's search for his mother, a feminist pioneer--and a casualty of her time In London, 1965, a brilliant young woman--a prescient advocate for women's rights--has just gassed herself to death, leaving behind a suicide note, two young sons, and a soon-to-be-published book: The Captive Wife. No one had ever imagined that Hannah Gavron might take her own life. Beautiful, sophisticated, and swept up in the progressive '60s, she was a promising academic and the wife of a rising entrepreneur. But there was another side to Hannah, as Jeremy Gavron reveals in this searching portrait of his mother. Gavron--who was just four when his mother killed herself--attempts to piece her life together from letters, diaries, photos, and the memories of old acquaintances. Ultimately, he not only uncovers Hannah's struggle to carve out her place in a man's world; he examines the suffocating constrictions placed on every ambitious woman in the mid-twentieth century.
A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women: Essays on Art, Sex, and the Mind
Hustvedt, Siri
(Paperback)
List Price: $18.00 Our Price: $8.49
In a trilogy of works brought together in a single volume, Siri Hustvedt demonstrates the striking range and depth of her knowledge in both the humanities and the sciences. Armed with passionate curiosity, a sense of humor, and insights from many disciplines she repeatedly upends received ideas and cultural truisms.“A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women” (which provided the title of this book) examines particular artworks but also human perception itself, including the biases that influence how we judge art, literature, and the world. Picasso, de Kooning, Louise Bourgeois, Anselm Kiefer, Susan Sontag, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Karl Ove Knausgaard all come under Hustvedt’s intense scrutiny. “The Delusions of Certainty” exposes how the age-old, unresolved mind-body problem has shaped and often distorted and confused contemporary thought in neuroscience, psychiatry, genetics, artificial intelligence, and evolutionary psychology. “What Are We? Lectures on the Human Condition” includes a powerful reading of Kierkegaard, a trenchant analysis of suicide, and penetrating reflections on the mysteries of hysteria, synesthesia, memory and space, and the philosophical dilemmas of fiction.
The Wizard of Us: Transformational Lessons from Oz
Houston, Jean
(Paperback)
List Price: $16.00 Our Price: $3.15
More than magic can be found in Oz. Answer the call to transform yourself and your world. The beloved story The wizard of Oz has the power to reveal the Hero's Journey that awaits each of us. Through a mythic lens, discover how Dorothy's adventure in a magical land inspires our lives today, offering valuable tools to guide us through our challenging times. Where you will learn to thrive rather than merely to survive.Through interpreting the deeper messages within The Wizard of Oz, visionary leader and teacher Jean Houston leads you along the Hero's Journey that awaits each of us. On this profound adventure of self-discovery and awakened potential, Houston's lessons propel you into greater self-understanding and a connection to the larger world story as you explore Oz like never before.
Witness to the Revolution: Radicals, Resisters, Vets, Hippies, and the Year America Lost Its Mind and Found Its Soul
Bingham, Clara
(Paperback)
List Price: $22.00 Our Price: $8.99
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