Best of
Society

2014

The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business


Erin Meyer - 2014
    Renowned expert Erin Meyer is your guide through this subtle, sometimes treacherous terrain where people from starkly different backgrounds are expected to work harmoniously together.When you have Americans who precede anything negative with three nice comments; French, Dutch, Israelis, and Germans who get straight to the point (“your presentation was simply awful”); Latin Americans and Asians who are steeped in hierarchy; Scandinavians who think the best boss is just one of the crowd—the result can be, well, sometimes interesting, even funny, but often disastrous.Even with English as a global language, it’s easy to fall into cultural traps that endanger careers and sink deals when, say, a Brazilian manager tries to fathom how his Chinese suppliers really get things done, or an American team leader tries to get a handle on the intra-team dynamics between his Russian and Indian team members.In The Culture Map, Erin Meyer provides a field-tested model for decoding how cultural differences impact international business. She combines a smart analytical framework with practical, actionable advice for succeeding in a global world.

Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice


Sidney Powell - 2014
    Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice is the true story of the strong-arm, illegal, and unethical tactics used by headline-grabbing federal prosecutors in their narcissistic pursuit of power. Its scope reaches from the US Department of Justice to the US Senate, the FBI, and the White House. This true story is a scathing attack on corrupt prosecutors, the judges who turned a blind eye to these injustices, and the president who has promoted them to powerful political positions.Former federal prosecutor under nine US attorneys from both political parties over ten years and three districts, Sidney Powell was lead counsel in 350 criminal appeals for the United States and more than 150 since in private practice. It was from her experience in several of her cases that she felt compelled to write LICENSED TO LIE: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice after seeing a core group of federal prosecutors break all the rules, make up crimes, hide evidence, and send innocent people to prison. The book reads like a legal thriller, but it names the prosecutors who then rose to positions of great power and the judges who turned a blind eye to their abuses of unfettered power. Sidneyis highly sought to comment on current legal issues and government investigations--especially the special investigation lead by Robert Mueller and his chief lieutenant Andrew Weissmann, who is a true villain in LICENSED TO LIE.

Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World


Rutger Bregman - 2014
    A 15-hour workweek. Open borders. Does it sound too good to be true? One of Europe's leading young thinkers shows how we can build an ideal world today. "A more politically radical Malcolm Gladwell."—The New York Times After working all day at jobs we often dislike, we buy things we don't need. Rutger Bregman, a Dutch historian, reminds us it needn't be this way—and in some places it isn't. Rutger Bregman's TED Talk about universal basic income seemed impossibly radical when he delivered it in 2014. A quarter of a million views later, the subject of that video is being seriously considered by leading economists and government leaders the world over. It's just one of the many utopian ideas that Bregman proves is possible today. Utopia for Realists is one of those rare books that takes you by surprise and challenges what you think can happen. From a Canadian city that once completely eradicated poverty, to Richard Nixon's near implementation of a basic income for millions of Americans, Bregman takes us on a journey through history, and beyond the traditional left-right divides, as he champions ideas whose time have come. Every progressive milestone of civilization—from the end of slavery to the beginning of democracy—was once considered a utopian fantasy. Bregman's book, both challenging and bracing, demonstrates that new utopian ideas, like the elimination of poverty and the creation of the fifteen-hour workweek, can become a reality in our lifetime. Being unrealistic and unreasonable can in fact make the impossible inevitable, and it is the only way to build the ideal world.

Trapped: The Terrifying True Story of a Secret World of Abuse


Rosie Lewis - 2014
    Experienced foster carer Rosie accepts the youngster as an emergency placement knowing that her autism will represent a challenge – not only for her but also for the rest of the family.But after several shocking incidents of self-harming, Pica and threats to kill, it soon becomes apparent that Phoebe’s autism may be the least of her problems.Locked for nine years in a secret world of severe abuse, as Phoebe opens up about her horrific past, her foster carer begins to suspect that Phoebe may not be suffering from autism at all.

The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap


Matt Taibbi - 2014
    Crime goes down. The prison population doubles. Fraud by the rich wipes out 40 percent of the world's wealth. The rich get massively richer. No one goes to jail.In search of a solution, journalist Matt Taibbi discovered the Divide, the seam in American life where our two most troubling trends--growing wealth inequality and mass incarceration--come together, driven by a dramatic shift in American citizenship: Our basic rights are now determined by our wealth or poverty. The Divide is what allows massively destructive fraud by the hyperwealthy to go unpunished, while turning poverty itself into a crime--but it's impossible to see until you look at these two alarming trends side by side.

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate


Naomi Klein - 2014
    It's not about carbon—it's about capitalism. The good news is that we can seize this crisis to transform our failed economic system and build something radically better. In her most provocative book yet, Naomi Klein, author of the global bestsellers Shock Doctrine and No Logo, exposes the myths that are clouding climate debate. You have been told the market will save us, when in fact the addiction to profit and growth is digging us in deeper every day. You have been told it's impossible to get off fossil fuels when in fact we know exactly how to do it—it just requires breaking every rule in the 'free-market' playbook. You have also been told that humanity is too greedy and selfish to rise to this challenge. In fact, all around the world, the fight back is already succeeding in ways both surprising and inspiring. It's about changing the world, before the world changes so drastically that no one is safe. Either we leap—or we sink. This Changes Everything is a book that will redefine our era.

Conspiracy


Mark Goodwin - 2014
    During his complacency, the founding precepts of America have been slowly, systematically destroyed by a conspiracy that dates back hundreds of years. The signs can no longer be ignored and Noah is forced to prepare for the cataclysmic period of financial and political upheaval ahead. Watch through the eyes of Noah as the world descends into chaos, a global empire takes shape, ancient writings are fulfilled and the last days fall upon the once great, United States of America. The Days of Noah, Book One: Conspiracy, by Mark Goodwin is a fast paced fiction thriller which looks at how modern conspiracies can play into Biblical prophecy concerning the end times.

The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority


Martin Gurri - 2014
    In the words of economist and scholar Arnold Kling, Martin Gurri saw it coming.Technology has categorically reversed the information balance of power between the public and the elites who manage the great hierarchical institutions of the industrial age government, political parties, the media.The Revolt of the Public tells the story of how insurgencies, enabled by digital devices and a vast information sphere, have mobilized millions of ordinary people around the world.Originally published in 2014, this updated edition of The Revolt of the Public includes an extensive analysis of Donald Trump's improbable rise to the presidency and the electoral triumphs of Brexit and concludes with a speculative look forward, pondering whether the current elite class can bring about a reformation of the democratic process and whether new organizing principles, adapted to a digital world, can arise out of the present political turbulence.

Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change


George Marshall - 2014
    What is the psychological mechanism that allows us to know something is true but act as if it is not? George Marshall’s search for the answers brings him face to face with Nobel Prize–winning psychologists and Texas Tea Party activists; the world’s leading climate scientists and those who denounce them; liberal environmentalists and conservative evangelicals. What he discovers is that our values, assumptions, and prejudices can take on lives of their own, gaining authority as they are shared, dividing people in their wake.With engaging stories and drawing on years of his own research, Marshall argues that the answers do not lie in the things that make us different, but rather in what we share: how our human brains are wired—our evolutionary origins, our perceptions of threats, our cognitive blind spots, our love of storytelling, our fear of death, and our deepest instincts to defend our family and tribe. Once we understand what excites, threatens, and motivates us, we can rethink climate change, for it is not an impossible problem. Rather, we can halt it if we make it our common purpose and common ground. In the end, Don’t Even Think About It is both about climate change and about the qualities that make us human and how we can deal with the greatest challenge we have ever faced.

Harry's Last Stand: How the World My Generation Built is Falling Down, and What We Can Do to Save It


Harry Leslie Smith - 2014
    I want to tell you what the world looks like through my eyes, so that you can help change it…’In November 2013, 91-year-old Yorkshireman, RAF veteran and ex-carpet salesman Harry Leslie Smith’s Guardian article – ‘This year, I will wear a poppy for the last time’ – was shared almost 60,000 times on Facebook and started a huge debate about the state of society.Now he brings his unique perspective to bear on NHS cutbacks, benefits policy, political corruption, food poverty, the cost of education – and much more. From the deprivation of 1930s Barnsley and the terror of war to the creation of our welfare state, Harry has experienced how a great civilisation can rise from the rubble. But at the end of his life, he fears how easily it is being eroded.Harry’s Last Stand is a lyrical, searing modern invective that shows what the past can teach us, and how the future is ours for the taking.Harry Leslie Smith is a survivor of the Great Depression, a second world war RAF veteran and, at 91, an activist for the poor and for the preservation of social democracy. His Guardian articles have been shared over 60,000 times on Facebook and have attracted huge comment and debate. He has authored numerous books about Britain during the Great Depression, the second world war and postwar austerity. He lives outside Toronto, Canada and in Yorkshire.

The Establishment: And How They Get Away with It


Owen Jones - 2014
    In exposing this shadowy and complex system that dominates our lives, Owen Jones sets out on a journey into the heart of our Establishment, from the lobbies of Westminster to the newsrooms, boardrooms and trading rooms of Fleet Street and the City. Exposing the revolving doors that link these worlds, and the vested interests that bind them together, Jones shows how, in claiming to work on our behalf, the people at the top are doing precisely the opposite. In fact, they represent the biggest threat to our democracy today - and it is time they were challenged.Owen Jones may have the face of a baby and the voice of George Formby but he is our generation's Orwell and we must cherish him (Russell Brand)This is the most important book on the real politics of the UK in my lifetime, and the only one you will ever need to read. You will be enlightened and angry (Irvine Welsh)Owen Jones displays a powerful combination of cool analysis and fiery anger in this dissection of the profoundly and sickeningly corrupt state that is present-day Britain. He is a fine writer, and this is a truly necessary book (Philip Pullman)

Hack Attack: How the Truth Caught Up with the World's Most Powerful Man


Nick Davies - 2014
    A royal correspondent for the News of the World was caught listening to the voice-mail messages of staff at Buckingham Palace. He and a private investigator went to prison for three months. But Nick Davies, a journalist at The Guardian, knew it didn’t add up. A source at the News of the World told him that not only was hacking routine, but live phone calls were being listened to; “Trojan” e-mails were being sent; bribes were paid to the police; houses were broken into. Davies spent the next four years uncovering the truth, and in July 2009, he broke the first big story: Rupert Murdoch’s U.K. company had secretly paid $1 million to silence three people whose lawyer proved that the News of the World had hacked into their voice-mail. Davies’s story quoted police sources admitting that there had in fact been thousands of victims. No other newspaper picked up the story, and News International retaliated with all of their resources.     Hack Attack is Davies’s mesmerizing account of his battle to prove the truth, describing how politicians who dared to stand up to Murdoch were punished by his journalists; how the lawyers who sued Murdoch were spied on; how public figures who went to court found their careers threatened. Hack Attack is a blow-by-blow account of the fall of an international media empire, by the lone journalist who dared to fight it.

Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal


Aviva Chomsky - 2014
    With a focus on US policy, she probes how people, especially Mexican and Central Americans, have been assigned this status—and to what ends. Blending history with human drama, Chomsky explores what it means to be undocumented in a legal, social, economic, and historical context. The result is a powerful testament of the complex, contradictory, and ever-shifting nature of status in America.

The Zeitgeist Movement Defined: Realizing a New Train of Thought


TZM Lecture Team - 2014
    The dominant theme is that the current socioeconomic system governing the world at this time has severe structural flaws, born out of primitive economic and sociological assumptions originating in our early history, where the inherent severity of these flaws went largely unnoticed.However, in the early 21st century, these problems have risen prominently, taking the consequential form of increasing social destabilization and ongoing environmental collapse. Yet, this text is not simply about explaining such problems and their root causality - It is also about posing concrete solutions, coupled with a new perspective on social/environmental sustainability and efficiency which, in concert with the tremendous possibility of modern technology and a phenomenon known as ephemeralization, reveals humanity's current capacity to create an abundant, post-scarcity reality.While largely misunderstood as being "utopian" or fantasy, this text walks through, step by step, the train of thought and technical industrial reordering needed to update our global society (and its values) to enable these profound new possibilities. While this text can be read strictly from a passive perspective, it was created also to be used as an awareness or activist tool. The Zeitgeist Movement, which has hundreds of chapters across dozens of countries and is perhaps the largest activist organization of its kind, hopes those interested in this direction will join the movement in global solidarity and assist in the culmination of this new social model, for the benefit of the whole of humanity.

Unspoken Feelings of a Gentleman


Pierre Alex Jeanty - 2014
    This literary piece speaks volumes on love, pain, mistakes, and personal growth. On every page are words from the depths of a mans core that has broken others and been broken, priceless words no longer left unspoken.

The Killing of Wolf Number Ten: The True Story


Thomas McNamee - 2014
    A manhunt. The triumph of justice and of the wolf.The greatest event in Yellowstone history. Greater Yellowstone was the last great truly intact ecosystem in the temperate zones of the earth—until, in the 1920s, U.S. government agents exterminated its top predator, the gray wolf. With traps and rifles, even torching pups in their dens, the killing campaign was entirely successful. The howl of the “evil” wolf was heard no more. The “good” animals—elk, deer, bison—proliferated, until they too had to be “managed.” Two decades later, recognizing that ecosystems lacking their keystone predators tend to unravel, the visionary naturalist Aldo Leopold called for the return of the wolf to Yellowstone. It would take another fifty years for his vision to come true. In the early 1990s, as the movement for Yellowstone wolf restoration gained momentum, rage against it grew apace. When at last, in February 1995, fifteen wolves were trapped in Alberta and brought to acclimation pens in Yellowstone, even then legal and political challenges continued. There was also a lot of talk in the bars about “shoot, shovel, and shut up.” While the wolves’ enemies worked to return them to Canada, the biologists in charge of the project feared that the wolves might well return on their own. Once they were released, two packs remained in the national park, but one bore only one pup and the other none. The other, comprising Wolves Nine and Ten and Nine’s yearling daughter, disappeared. They were in fact heading home. As they emerged from protected federal land, an unemployed ne’er-do-well from Red Lodge, Montana, trained a high-powered rifle on Wolf Number Ten and shot him through the chest. Number Nine dug a den next to the body of her mate, and gave birth to eight pups. The story of their rescue and the manhunt for the killer is the heart of The Killing of Wolf Number Ten. + Read this book, and if you are ever fortunate enough to hear the howling of Yellowstone wolves, you will always think of Wolves Nine and Ten. If you ever see a Yellowstone wolf, chance are it will be carrying their DNA. The restoration of the wolf to Yellowstone is now recognized as one of conservation’s greatest achievements, and Wolves Nine and Ten will always be known as its emblematic heroes.

Hun Sen’s Cambodia


Sebastian Strangio - 2014
    Sebastian Strangio, a journalist based in the capital city of Phnom Penh, now offers an eye-opening appraisal of modern-day Cambodia in the years following its emergence from bitter conflict and bloody upheaval.   In the early 1990s, Cambodia became the focus of the UN’s first great post–Cold War nation-building project, with billions in international aid rolling in to support the fledgling democracy. But since the UN-supervised elections in 1993, the nation has slipped steadily backward into neo-authoritarian rule under Prime Minister Hun Sen. Behind a mirage of democracy, ordinary people have few rights and corruption infuses virtually every facet of everyday life. In this lively and compelling study, the first of its kind, Strangio explores the present state of Cambodian society under Hun Sen’s leadership, painting a vivid portrait of a nation struggling to reconcile the promise of peace and democracy with a violent and tumultuous past.

Dog Love - An Unbreakable Bond: Inspirational Stories of Devotion, Loyalty and Courage


Shelby Cannon - 2014
    Dogs are more than just a pet; they are trusted companions. They help us hunt, guard our homes, look after our livestock and even our children and, over time, do so many useful and wonderful things that it boggles the mind. This compilation of heart-warming dog stories illustrates the pure love of these amazing creatures, including extraordinary instances and first-hand accounts of bravery, friendship, loyalty, devotion and companionship down to their very last breath. There’s a reason we call them man’s best friend. No matter the situation, your dog is happy to see you. You are greeted with the same enthusiasm each and every time you walk in that door. A dog has the ability to live in the present moment. They don’t regret the past or worry about the future. While we often ask so much of them, they require almost nothing in return. You can ask your dog to chase a Frisbee, take a nap on the couch, herd some sheep, or run around a show ring and he’ll do it, happily, for hours on end. He only wants to be fed, and told he’s good, and most of all loved. If a dog has love, he really needs nothing else. In the presence of a dog, somehow, nothing else matters. A dog is handing out pure love, sparing no expense, and asking absolutely nothing in return. Perhaps American Humorist Josh Billings said it best: “A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.”

The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class, 1910-2010


Selina Todd - 2014
    Charting the rise of the working class, through two world wars to their fall in Thatcher's Britain and today, Todd tells their story for the first time, in their own words.Uncovering a huge hidden swathe of Britain's past, The People is the vivid history of a revolutionary century and the people who really made Britain great.

How White Folks Got So Rich: The Untold Story of American White Supremacy (The Architecture of White Supremacy Book 1)


Reclamation Project - 2014
    How White Folks Got So Rich, Kindle edition, is an expanded, digital version of the updated paperback.

Wounded Tiger: A History of Cricket in Pakistan


Peter Oborne - 2014
    Its cricket team evolved in the chaotic aftermath. Initially unrecognised, underfunded and weak, Pakistan's team grew to become a major force in world cricket. Since the early days of the Raj, cricket has been entwined with national identity and Pakistan's successes helped to define its status in the world. Defiant in defence, irresistible in attack, players such as A.H.Kardar, Fazal Mahmood, Wasim Akram and Imran Khan awed their contemporaries and inspired their successors. The story of Pakistan cricket is filled with triumph and tragedy. In recent years, it has been threatened by the same problems affecting Pakistan itself: fallout from the 'war on terror', sectarian violence, corruption, crises in health and education, and a shortage of effective leaders. For twenty years, Pakistan cricket has been stained by the scandalous behaviour of the players involved in match-fixing. Since 2009, the fear of violence has driven Pakistan's international cricket into exile. No one knows when it will return home. But Peter Oborne's narrative is also full of hope. For all its troubles, cricket gives all Pakistanis a chance to excel and express themselves, a sense of identity and a cause for pride in their country. Packed with first-hand recollections, and digging deep into political, social and cultural history, Wounded Tiger is a major study of sport and nationhood.

Miraculous Abundance: One Quarter Acre, Two French Farmers, and Enough Food to Feed the World


Perrine Hervé-Gruyer - 2014
    Neither one had ever farmed before. Charles had been circumnavigating the globe by sail, operating a floating school that taught students about ecology and indigenous cultures. Perrine had been an international lawyer in Japan. Each had returned to France to start a new life. Eventually, Perrine joined Charles in Normandy, and Le Ferme du Bec Hellouin was born. Bec Hellouin has since become a celebrated model of innovative, ecological agriculture in Europe, connected to national and international organizations addressing food security, heralded by celebrity chefs as well as the Slow Food movement, and featured in the inspiring Cesar and COLCOA award-winning documentary film, Demain ("Tomorrow"). Miraculous Abundance is the eloquent tale of the couple's evolution from creating a farm to sustain their family to delving into an experiment in how to grow the most food possible, in the most ecological way possible, and create a farm model that can carry us into a post-carbon future--when oil is no longer moving goods and services, energy is scarcer, and localization is a must. Today, the farm produces a variety of vegetables using a mix of permaculture, bio-intensive, four-season, and natural farming techniques--as well as techniques gleaned from native cultures around the world. It has some animals for eggs and milk, horses for farming, a welcome center, a farm store, a permaculture school, a bread oven for artisan breads, greenhouses, a cidery, and a forge. It has also become the site of research focusing on how small organic farms like theirs might confront Europe's (and the world's) projected food crisis. But in this honest and engaging account of the trials and joys of their uncompromising effort, readers meet two people who are farming the future as much as they are farming their land. They envision farms like theirs someday being the hub for a host of other businesses that can drive rural communities--from bread makers and grain millers to animal care givers and other tradespeople. Market farmers and home gardeners alike will find much in these pages, but so will those who've never picked up a hoe. The couple's account of their quest to design an almost Edenlike farm, hone their practices, and find new ways to feed the world is an inspiring tale. It is also a love letter to a future in which people increasingly live in rural communities that rely on traditional skills, locally created and purveyed goods and services, renewable energy, and greater local governance, but are also connected to the larger world.

Hard Choices: Challenging the Singapore Consensus


Donald Low - 2014
    The consensus that the PAP government has constructed and maintained over five decades is fraying. The assumptions that underpin Singaporean exceptionalism are no longer accepted as easily and readily as before. Among these are the ideas that the country is uniquely vulnerable, that this vulnerability limits its policy and political options, that good governance demands a degree of political consensus that ordinary democratic arrangements cannot produce, and that the country’s success requires a competitive meritocracy accompanied by relatively little income or wealth redistribution. But the policy and political conundrums that Singapore faces today are complex and defy easy answers. Confronted with a political landscape that is likely to become more contested, how should the government respond? What reforms should it pursue? This collection of essays suggests that a far-reaching and radical rethinking of the country's policies and institutions is necessary, even if it weakens the very consensus that enabled Singapore to succeed in its first fifty years.

Shifting Colours


Fiona Sussman - 2014
    EDITION. Set against the tumultuous background of apartheid South Africa, a powerful and moving debut about family, sacrifice, and discovering what it means to belong… Celia Mphephu knows her place in the world. A black servant working in the white suburbs of 1960s Johannesburg, she’s all too aware of her limitations. Nonetheless, she has found herself a comfortable corner: She has a job, can support her faraway family, and is raising her youngest child, Miriam. But as racial tensions explode, Celia’s world shifts. Her employers decide to flee the political turmoil and move to England—and they ask to adopt Miriam and take her with them. Devastated at the prospect of losing her only daughter, yet unable to deny her child a safer and more promising future, Celia agrees, forever defining both their futures. As Celia fights against the shattering violence of her time, Miriam battles the quiet racism of England, struggling to find her place in a land to which she doesn’t belong—until the call of her heritage inexorably draws her back to Africa to discover the truth behind her mother’s choices and uncover a heartbreaking secret from long ago…READERS GUIDE INSIDE

The Quest for a Moral Compass


Kenan Malik - 2014
    It tells the stories of the great philosophers, and breathes life into their ideas, while also challenging many of our most cherished moral beliefs. Engaging and provocative, The Quest for a Moral Compass confronts some of humanity's deepest questions. Where do values come from? Is God necessary for moral guidance? Are there absolute moral truths? It also brings morality down to earth, showing how, throughout history, social needs and political desires have shaped moral thinking. It is a history of the world told through the history of moral thought, and a history of moral thought that casts new light on global history. At a time of great social turbulence and moral uncertainty, there will be few histories more important than this.

Seriously Dangerous Religion: What the Old Testament Really Says and Why It Matters


Iain W. Provan - 2014
    Best-selling authors like Richard Dawkins, Karen Armstrong, and Derrick Jensen are prime examples of those who find the Old Testament to be problematic to modern sensibilities. Iain Provan counters that such easy and popular readings misunderstand the Old Testament. He opposes modern misconceptions of the Old Testament by addressing ten fundamental questions that the biblical text should--and according to Provan does--answer: questions such as "Who is God?" and "Why do evil and suffering mark the world?" By focusing on Genesis and drawing on other Old Testament and extra-biblical sources, Seriously Dangerous Religion constructs a more plausible reading. As it turns out, Provan argues, the Old Testament is far more dangerous than modern critics even suppose. Its dangers are the bold claims it makes upon its readers.

Mommy Man: How I Went from Mild-Mannered Geek to Gay Superdad


Jerry Mahoney - 2014
    Hey, why not? It seemed much more attainable and fulfilling than the alternative coming out of the closet and making peace with the fact that he d never have a family at all. Twenty years later, Jerry is living with his long-term boyfriend, Drew, and they re ready to take the plunge into parenthood. But how? Adoption? Foster parenting? Kidnapping? What they want most of all is a great story to tell their future kid about where he or she came from. Their search leads them to gestational surrogacy, a road less traveled where they ll be borrowing a stranger’s ladyparts for nine months. Thus begins Jerry and Drew s hilarious and unexpected journey to daddyhood. From then on, they re in uncharted waters. They’re forced to face down homophobic baby store clerks, a hospital that doesn t know what to do with them, even members of their own family who think what they’re doing is a little nutty. One thing’s for sure. If this all works out, they re going to have an incredible birth story to tell their kid. With honesty, emotion, and laugh-out-loud humor, Jerry Mahoney ponders what it means to become a Mommy Man . . . and discovers that the answer is as varied and beautiful as the concept of family itself."

Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism


David Harvey - 2014
    I want to know how the economic engine of capitalism works the way it does, and why it might stutter and stall and sometimes appear to be on the verge of collapse. I also want to show why this economic engine should be replaced, and with what." --from the Introduction To modern Western society, capitalism is the air we breathe, and most people rarely think to question it, for good or for ill. But knowing what makes capitalism work--and what makes it fail--is crucial to understanding its long-term health, and the vast implications for the global economy that go along with it. In Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism, the eminent scholar David Harvey, author of A Brief History of Neoliberalism, examines the internal contradictions within the flow of capital that have precipitated recent crises. He contends that while the contradictions have made capitalism flexible and resilient, they also contain the seeds of systemic catastrophe. Many of the contradictions are manageable, but some are fatal: the stress on endless compound growth, the necessity to exploit nature to its limits, and tendency toward universal alienation. Capitalism has always managed to extend the outer limits through "spatial fixes," expanding the geography of the system to cover nations and people formerly outside of its range. Whether it can continue to expand is an open question, but Harvey thinks it unlikely in the medium term future: the limits cannot extend much further, and the recent financial crisis is a harbinger of this. David Harvey has long been recognized as one of the world's most acute critical analysts of the global capitalist system and the injustices that flow from it. In this book, he returns to the foundations of all of his work, dissecting and interrogating the fundamental illogic of our economic system, as well as giving us a look at how human societies are likely to evolve in a post-capitalist world.

Questioning Islam: Tough Questions & Honest Answers About the Muslim Religion


Peter Townsend - 2014
    Among these questions the most important one of all sometimes gets lost: Is Islam true? With his new book author Peter Townsend invites you to accompany him on a journey through the foundational texts of the Muslim religion. In the process the truth-claims of Islam will be respectfully, honestly and impartially evaluated. Along the way the following questions will be asked: - Can the traditional Islamic historical accounts be trusted? - Is the Qur'an a 'Perfect Book, Perfectly Preserved'? - Was Muhammad indeed a 'Beautiful Pattern of Conduct'? The answers to these questions will not be sought from modern commentaries on Islam. Instead Questioning Islam goes straight to the classic sources of Islam namely the Qur'an, hadiths (traditions) and biographies of Muhammad. Questioning Islam is not an attempt to promote any other belief system or ideology. Its focus is simply on asking the hard questions about Islam that are all too often ignored or swept under the carpet. Simply put, if you have ever wondered whether the truth-claims of Islam can withstand critical scrutiny then this book is for you!

The Monocle Guide to Good Business


Monocle - 2014
    The book offers multifaceted perspectives on the world of work today and in the future--from compelling business ideas to inspiring company cultures. Ever since the launch of Monocle in 2007 this highly successful global magazine and media brand has championed a clear and new take on the world of work It has encouraged its readers to start their own businesses, do the thing that makes them feel fulfilled (even if it means ditching a comfortable corporate salary), and find places to build their HQ that deliver a good quality of life too. The magazine's belief in making things (and making them well), using your hands, doing an apprenticeship, and keeping things small and tight has linked perfectly with a community of entrepreneurs who are determined to find their own way in the world --and know that this will allow them to run their lives in new and fresh ways. These developments are also expressed in the maker movement, new shared spaces, and unusual business schools. So it was a natural step for the magazine's team to create The Monocle Guide to Good Business. This guide is not your traditional business book, but it does give advice on how to go from clever fledgling idea to success story and introduces people with inspiring stories. The Monocle Guide to Good Business is also a picture-rich journey for anyone who runs a company, wants to run a company, or wishes their boss had some new ideas It will even tell you why you need an office dog. From the best business neighborhoods to the sturdiest desks, this book will have you planning a new career --or at least fixing your office. It's a book that should be thumbed and used. It's a manual and a manifesto, a guide and a good read.

Blood in the Fields: Ten Years Inside California's Nuestra Familia Gang


Julia Reynolds - 2014
    Born in the prisons of California in the late 1960s, Nuestra Familia expanded to control drug trafficking and extortion operations throughout the northern half of the state, and left a trail of bodies in its wake. Award-winning journalist Julia Reynolds tells the gang’s story from the inside out, following young men and women as they search for a new kind of family, quests that usually lead to murder and betrayal. Blood in the Fields also documents the history of Operation Black Widow, the FBI’s questionable decade-long effort to dismantle the Nuestra Familia, along with its compromised informants and the turf wars it created with local law enforcement agencies. Reynolds used her unprecedented access to gang members, both in and out of prison, as well as undercover wire taps, depositions, and court documents to weave a gripping, comprehensive history of this brutal criminal organization and the lives it destroyed.

Big World, Small Planet: Abundance within Planetary Boundaries


Johan Rockström - 2014
    Friedman, New York Times Big World, Small Planet probes the urgent predicament of our times: how is it possible to create a positive future for both humanity and Earth? We have entered the Anthropocene—the era of massive human impacts on the planet—and the actions of over seven billion residents threaten to destabilize Earth’s natural systems, with cascading consequences for human societies. In this extraordinary book, the authors combine the latest science with compelling storytelling and amazing photography to create a new narrative for humanity’s future. Johan Rockström and Mattias Klum reject the notion that economic growth and human prosperity can only be achieved at the expense of the environment. They contend that we have unprecedented opportunities to navigate a “good Anthropocene.” By embracing a deep mind-shift, humanity can reconnect to Earth, discover universal values, and take on the essential role of planetary steward. With eloquence and profound optimism, Rockström and Klum envision a future of abundance within planetary boundaries—a revolutionary future that is at once necessary, possible, and sustainable for coming generations.

The Crisis of Modernity


Augusto Del Noce - 2014
    The Crisis of Modernity makes available for the first time in English a selection of Del Noce's essays and lectures on the cultural history of the twentieth century. Del Noce maintained that twentieth-century history must be understood specifically as a philosophical history, because Western culture was profoundly affected by the major philosophies of the previous century such as idealism, Marxism, and positivism. Such philosophies became the secular, neo-gnostic surrogate of Christianity for the European educated classes after the French Revolution, and the next century put them to the practical test, bringing to light their ultimate and necessary consequences. One of the first thinkers to recognize the failure of Marxism, Del Noce posited that this failure set the stage for a new secular, technocratic society that had taken up Marx’s historical materialism and atheism while rejecting his revolutionary doctrine. Displaying Del Noce's rare ability to reconstruct intellectual genealogies and to expose the deep metaphysical premises of social and political movements, The Crisis of Modernity presents an original reading of secularization, scientism, the sexual revolution, and the history of modern Western culture.

Citizenship in a Republic


Theodore Roosevelt - 2014
    It popularized the phrase "The Man in the Arena", as a person who is heavily involved in a situation that requires courage, skill, or tenacity, as opposed to someone sitting on the side-lines and watching: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds …” Presidents John F. Kennedy an Richard Nixon quoted from "The Man in the Arena" in their speeches.

The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America


Naomi Murakawa - 2014
    incarceration rate in the second half of the 20th century, and the racial transformation of the prison population from mostly white at mid-century to 65% black and Latino in the present day, is a trend that cannot easily be ignored. Many believe this shift began with the "tough on crime" policies advocated by Republicans and southern Democrats beginning in the late 1960s, which sought longer prison sentences, more frequent use of the death penalty, and the explicit or implicit targeting of politically marginalized people.In The First Civil Right, Naomi Murakawa inverts the conventional wisdom by arguing that the expansion of the federal carceral state--a system that disproportionately imprisons blacks and Latinos--was, in fact, rooted in the civil-rights liberalism of the 1940s and early 1960s, not in the period after.Murakawa traces the development of the modern American prison system through several presidencies, both Republican and Democrat. Responding to calls to end the lawlessness and violence against blacks at the state and local levels, the Truman administration expanded the scope of what was previously a weak federal system. Later administrations from Johnson to Clinton expanded the federal presence even more.Ironically, these steps laid the groundwork for the creation of the vast penal archipelago that now exists in the United States. What began as a liberal initiative to curb the mob violence and police brutality that had deprived racial minorities of their 'first civil right'--physical safety--eventually evolved into the federal correctional system that now deprives them, in unjustly large numbers, of another important right: freedom.The First Civil Right is a groundbreaking analysis of root of the conflicts that lie at the intersection of race and the legal system in America.

The Mindfulness Toolbox: 50 Practical Mindfulness Tips, Tools, and Handouts for Anxiety, Depression, Stress, and Pain


Donald Altman - 2014
    The awareness boosting methods in this guidebook offer participants a means of reappraising and observing negative and anxious thoughts, habits, pain, and stress in fresh ways that produce new insight, positive change, and a sense of hope. Featuring over 40 easy to use, reproducible handouts and expertly crafted, guided scripts -- such as working with the breath, overcoming depression with here and now pleasantness, calming the anxious mind with sense grounding, expanding a client's strength narrative, the stress pause S-T-O-P technique, and meditations for peace, acceptance, and re-envisioning pain -- this book is ideal for clinicians wanting to integrate mindfulness into their work.

The Miracle of the Kurds: A Remarkable Story of Hope Reborn in Northern Iraq


Stephen Mansfield - 2014
    In this riveting account, Mansfield movingly tells the stories of the people who have fashioned one of the greatest economic and cultural resurrections in human history.They are the largest people group in the world without a homeland of their own. Despised and persecuted the world over, they even call themselves "the people without a friend." Saddam Hussein tried to wipe them from the face of the earth, killing several hundred thousand of them in the attempt. Their sufferings have become legend.They are the Kurds, descendants of the ancient Medes best known today from the pages of the Bible -- inhabitants of what the world now calls Northern Iraq. Yet today the Kurds are rebuilding so brilliantly from war and oppression that even their enemies call it "a miracle." Six star hotels stand where bombs once fell, shopping malls and gleaming schools rise where massacres once occurred. National Geographic and Conde Nast have listed modern "Kurdistan" as a "must-see" tourist destination.

Sacrificing Families: Navigating Laws, Labor, and Love Across Borders


Leisy Abrego - 2014
    Their dreams are straightforward: with more money, they can improve their children's lives. But the reality of their experiences is often harsh, and structural barriers—particularly those rooted in immigration policies and gender inequities—prevent many from reaching their economic goals.Sacrificing Families offers a first-hand look at Salvadoran transnational families, how the parents fare in the United States, and the experiences of the children back home. It captures the tragedy of these families' daily living arrangements, but also delves deeper to expose the structural context that creates and sustains patterns of inequality in their well-being. What prevents these parents from migrating with their children? What are these families' experiences with long-term separation? And why do some ultimately fare better than others?As free trade agreements expand and nation-states open doors widely for products and profits while closing them tightly for refugees and migrants, these transnational families are not only becoming more common, but they are living through lengthier separations. Leisy Abrego gives voice to these immigrants and their families and documents the inequalities across their experiences.

Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto


Steve Almond - 2014
    Using a synthesis of memoir, reportage, and cultural critique, Almond asks a series of provocative questions:• Does our addiction to football foster a tolerance for violence, greed, racism, and homophobia?• What does it mean that our society has transmuted the intuitive physical joys of childhood—run, leap, throw, tackle—into a billion-dollar industry?• How did a sport that causes brain damage become such an important emblem for our institutions of higher learning?There has never been a book that exposes the dark underside of America’s favorite game with such searing candor.

Redeeming the Dream: The Case for Marriage Equality


David Boies - 2014
     Redeeming the Dream is the story of how David Boies and Theodore B. Olson—who argued against each other all the way to the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore—joined forces after that titanic battle to forge the unique legal argument that would carry the day. As allies and not foes, they tell the fascinating story of the five-year struggle to win the right for gays to marry, from Proposition 8’s adoption by voters in 2008, to its defeat before the highest court in the land in Hollingsworth v. Perry in 2013.   Boies and Olson guide readers through the legal framing of the case, making crystal clear the constitutional principles of due process and equal protection in support of marriage equality while explaining, with intricacy, the basic human truths they set out to prove when the duo put state-sanctioned discrimination on trial.  Redeeming the Dream offers readers an authoritative, dramatic, and up-close account of the most important civil rights issue—fought and won—since Brown v. Board of Education and Loving v. Virginia.

Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming


McKenzie Funk - 2014
    Funk shows us that the best way to understand the catastrophe of global warming is to see it through the eyes of those who see it most clearly—as a market opportunity.Global warming’s physical impacts can be separated into three broad categories: melt, drought, and deluge. Funk travels to two dozen countries to profile entrepreneurial people who see in each of these forces a potential windfall. The melt is a boon for newly arable, mineral-rich regions of the Arctic, such as Greenland—and for the surprising kings of the manmade snow trade, the Israelis. The process of desalination, vital to Israel’s survival, can produce a snowlike by-product that alpine countries use to prolong their ski season.Drought creates opportunities for private firefighters working for insurance companies in California as well as for fund managers backing south Sudanese warlords who control local farmland. As droughts raise food prices globally, there is no more precious asset.The deluge—the rising seas, surging rivers, and superstorms that will threaten island nations and coastal cities—has been our most distant concern, but after Hurricane Sandy and failure after failure to cut global carbon emissions, it is not so distant. For Dutch architects designing floating cities and American scientists patenting hurricane defenses, the race is on. For low-lying countries like Bangladesh, the coming deluge presents an existential threat.Funk visits the front lines of the melt, the drought, and the deluge to make a human accounting of the booming business of global warming. By letting climate change continue unchecked, we are choosing to adapt to a warming world. Containing the resulting surge will be big business; some will benefit, but much of the planet will suffer. McKenzie Funk has investigated both sides, and what he has found will shock us all. To understand how the world is preparing to warm, Windfall follows the money.

Ghost Horse


Thomas H. McNeely - 2014
    As his father's many secrets begin to unravel, Buddy discovers the real movie: the intersection between life as he sees it and the truth of his own past. In a vivid story of love, friendship, and betrayal, Ghost Horse explores a boy's swiftly changing awareness of himself and the world through the lens of imagination.

Twilight's Last Gleaming


John Michael Greer - 2014
    A giant oil field has been discovered off the Tanzanian coast. Tanzania's a Chinese ally, and the UnitedStates desperately needs this oil to prop up an economy crippled by the collapse of the fracking bubble. A newly-elected US president orders regime change, but the Chinese have plans of their own. The explosion that follows shatters a decades-old balance of global power, brings both nations to the brink of nuclear war, and triggers a crisis back in America that the United States may not survive...Part military-political thriller, part stark warning of an uncomfortably likely future, TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING promises to be one of the year's most controversial novels.

Philosophy of Hinduism


B.R. Ambedkar - 2014
    B. R. Ambedkar was the chief architect of the Indian Constitution. A great statesman and politician, he fought for the rights of the backward classes in India. In this unpublished work, of the early 20th century, he expounds on the Philosophy of Hinduism...

The Social Order of the Underworld: How Prison Gangs Govern the American Penal System


David Skarbek - 2014
    Few people think of gangs as sophisticated organizations (often with elaborate written constitutions) that regulate the prison black market, adjudicate conflicts, and strategically balance the competing demands of inmates, gang members, and correctional officers. Yet as David Skarbek argues, gangs form to create order among outlaws, producing alternative governance institutions to facilitate illegal activity. He uses economics to explore the secret world of the convict culture, inmate hierarchy, and prison gang politics, and to explain why prison gangs form, how formal institutions affect them, and why they have a powerful influence over crime even beyond prison walls. The ramifications of his findings extend far beyond the seemingly irrational and often tragic society of captives. They also illuminate how social and political order can emerge in conditions where the traditional institutions of governance do not exist.

Lost Soul


Theresa Van Spankeren - 2014
    She falls in love with Adam, a servant’s son, and is heartbroken when her family forces her into an arranged marriage. Her husband is neither kind nor merciful, and Julia struggles to keep safe those she cares about. When tragedy strikes, a stranger arrives and offers her a deal that could forever alter her destiny. Agreement would give her what she has been denied and grant her fondest wishes: the freedom to do as she pleases and a reunion with her one true love.There’s only one catch. Accepting would also mean joining the Vampire Resistance to fight the King.This is the revised edition of Lost Soul.

Gotta Find a Home: Conversations with Street People


Dennis Cardiff - 2014
    Documenting their stories will, I hope, introduce them to the public in a non-threatening way. Some panhandlers look intimidating, but that disappears when one sees them laugh. A typical day for me involves taking the bus and walking two blocks to work. I pass Joy’s spot every day. I usually sit and talk with her for twenty to thirty minutes. Chester and Hippo may drop by to chat. Most afternoons, depending on weather, I walk two blocks to the park where the group of panhandlers varies in size from two to twenty or more. They don’t panhandle at the park. Like a soap opera, every day is different; some scenarios will carry over a few days or weeks. People will disappear for weeks or months due illness, rehab programs or incarceration. When I met Joy I was going through an emotional crisis. Meeting her and her friends – worrying about them and whether or not they would be able to eat and find a place to sleep – took my mind off my problems, that then, seemed insignificant. It was truly a life changing experience.

Bettie Page: Queen of Curves


Petra Mason - 2014
    Bunny Yeager has long been credited for capturing Bettie Page’s true nature—her flirtatious and playfully erotic side—in classic pinup images that continue to influence photography and fashion today. This collection, culled from Yeager’s extensive archive, features her most iconic shots of the legendary Bettie as well as never-before-seen images, including many nudes, which by all reports is how Bettie was most comfortable. Yeager was a young pinup photographer in 1955 when she hit the jackpot with her shot of Bettie scantily clad in a Santa hat, which sold instantly to the fledgling Playboy magazine. It was the beginning of a long collaboration between the two women, and Yeager’s photographs of Bettie have now been featured on more magazine covers than those of her contemporary, Marilyn Monroe. This glamorous book gathers more than two hundred lens-fogging photographs of Bettie embodying the naughty girl-next-door eroticism of pin-up culture, with such playful chapters as: "Jungle Land," "Nutty Cheesecake," "Sweet and Savage," and "She Devil." A fun and sexy volume, this is the most comprehensive book on Bettie Page to date.

Courageous Compassion: Confronting Social Injustice God’s Way


Beth Grant - 2014
    A challenge to our pale definition of compassion, the message of this book is bold, necessarily courageous, and disruptively life-transforming. If you let it, your worldview and life will be changed forever.“Courageous compassion has many faces in many places around our globe. But like Jesus, it takes a bold compassion to bless, restore, and empower those whom the powerful view as weaker and less important.”—Dr. Beth GrantLearn from people who enthusiastically feed the hungry, weep over alcoholics, start a hospital, care for hurting children, and powerfully share the Word of God.Combining sound biblical insights with amazing stories of the sexually enslaved who have found freedom, Dr. Beth Grant demonstrates that spiritual darkness is more than a concept. Spiritual light is also a liberating, loving, healing, transforming reality.

Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out


Rick Alan Ross - 2014
    Over the course of three decades, Ross has participated in around five hundred cult interventions, provided expert court testimony, and performed cult-related work all around the world.With the help of current and former cult members, Ross demonstrates many of the tactics the groups use for control and manipulation—and, more importantly, some of the most effective methods he and other experts have used to reverse that programming.As a result, readers will find themselves armed with a greater understanding of the nature of destructive cults and an improved ability to assess and deal with similar situations—either in their own lives or the lives of friends and family members.

The Making of Exile: Sindhi Hindus and the Partition of India


Nandita Bhavnani - 2014
    The Making of Exile hopes to redress this, by turning a spotlight on the specific narratives of the Sindhi Hindu community. Post-Partition, Sindh was relatively free of the inter-communal violence witnessed in Punjab, Bengal and other parts of north India. Consequently, in the first few months of Pakistan's early life, Sindhi Hindus did not migrate and remained the most significant minority in West Pakistan. Starting with the announcement of the Partition of India, The Making of Exile firmly traces the experiences of the community - that went from being a small but powerful minority to becoming the target of communal discrimination, practiced by both the state as well as sections of Pakistani society. This climate of communal antipathy threw into sharp relief the help and sympathy extended to Sindhi Hindus by other Pakistani Muslims, both Sindhi and muhajir. Finally, it was when they became victims of the Karachi pogrom of January 1948 that Sindhi Hindus felt compelled to migrate to India.The second segment of the book examines the resettlement of the community in India - their first brush with squalid refugee camps, their struggle to make sense of rapidly changing governmental policies and the spirit of determination and enterprise with which they rehabilitated themselves in their new homeland. Yet, not all Sindhi Hindus chose to migrate and the specific challenges of those who stayed on in Sindh, as well as the difficulties faced by Sindhi Muslims after the formation of Pakistan, have been sensitively documented in the final chapters. Weaving in a variety of narratives - diary entries and memoirs, press reportage, letters to editors and, advertisements, legends and poetry, dozens of interviews and a wealth of academic literature - Nandita Bhavnani's The Making of Exile is one of the most comprehensive and multifaceted studies of the Sindhi experience of Partition.

Networks of Rebellion


Paul Staniland - 2014
    Cohesive insurgent groups produce more effective war-fighting forces and are more credible negotiators; organizational cohesion shapes both the duration of wars and their ultimate resolution. In Networks of Rebellion, Paul Staniland explains why insurgent leaders differ so radically in their ability to build strong organizations and why the cohesion of armed groups changes over time during conflicts. He outlines a new way of thinking about the sources and structure of insurgent groups, distinguishing among integrated, vanguard, parochial, and fragmented groups.Staniland compares insurgent groups, their differing social bases, and how the nature of the coalitions and networks within which these armed groups were built has determined their discipline and internal control. He examines insurgent groups in Afghanistan, 1975 to the present day, Kashmir (1988-2003), Sri Lanka from the 1970s to the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in 2009, and several communist uprisings in Southeast Asia during the Cold War. The initial organization of an insurgent group depends on the position of its leaders in prewar political networks. These social bases shape what leaders can and cannot do when they build a new insurgent group. Counterinsurgency, insurgent strategy, and international intervention can cause organizational change. During war, insurgent groups are embedded in social ties that determine they how they organize, fight, and negotiate; as these ties shift, organizational structure changes as well.

Blood on the Altar: The Coming War Between Christian vs. Christian


Thomas Horn - 2014
    According to a 2014 Pew Research Center report, this hostility now includes the United States, which elevated from the lowest category of government restrictions on Christian expressions as of mid-2009 to an advanced category in only the last three years. This trend may point to one of the most overlooked aspects of Bible prophecya war that ultimately pits born-again believers against religious Christians. NOW, FOR THE FIRST TIME, IN BLOOD ON THE ALTAR YOU WILL Read the Global developments that indicate Antichrist is on Earth and preparing to emerge, Become acquainted with the government report on how true believers will be driven underground, Understand how Religious Christians are set to join Antichrist in persecuting those born-again, Discover how university experiments prove a Lucifer Effect is concealed within all humanity, Learn how scientists have isolated the Evil Gene that will transform the armies of the Beast, Grasp the social implications involving technology that will be used for the final battle, Hear the new theory of the Image of the Beast that has powerful implications about man, Walk with the authors as they disclose the occult organizations devising psychotronic weapons, Realize what Jesus meant by the Days of Noah and its connection to new genetic horrors, Uncover how the Mark of the Beast will change those who receive it into murderers, In Blood on the Altar: The Coming War Between Christian vs. Christian, leading national and international researchers, scholars, authors, and speakers share urgent information and specialized knowledge ab

Loathe Thy Neighbour (Leading Britain's Conversation)


James O'Brien - 2014
    It feeds a whole industry of commentators, pundits and politicians who take great delight in whipping us all into a frenzy, speaking for the ‘ordinary people’. But, when ugly prejudices are being fed by professionals grown fat on the fear and fury of their consumers, it is time to stop and ask whether the faceless group of immigrants really exists – or whether it just appeals to our basest fears.In this lively polemic, James O’Brien brings some common sense back into the discussion. Some people want to be frightened. They thrive on anger and division and upset. But many people don’t, and it is they who are most let down – most insulted – by the immigration debate. We don’t need to buy into this myth. There is no such thing as ‘immigrants’. There is no ‘they’. There is only ‘we’.

The Big Reset: War on Gold and the Financial Endgame


Willem Middelkoop - 2014
    Probably even before 2020, the world’s financial system will need to find a different anchor. The dollar has been at the center of the monetary system since the Second World War, but decades of money printing have caused a gradual but relentless dollar devaluation. In a desperate attempt to maintain this dollar system, the United States has waged a secret war on gold since the 1960s. China and Russia have pierced through the American smokescreen around gold and the dollar and are no longer willing to continue lending to the United States. Both countries have been accumulating enormous amounts of gold, positioning themselves for the next phase of the global financial system. There are only two options: a financial reset planned well in advance, or a hastily implemented one on the back of a dollar crisis. The United States, realizing the dollar will lose its prominent role, seems to be planning a monetary reset that will surprise many. It will be designed to keep the United States in the driving seat, but will include strong roles for the Euro and China’s Renminbi. And it is likely gold will be reintroduced as one of the pillars of this next phase of the global financial system. Insiders claim gold could be revalued up to $7,000 per troy ounce during this process.

John Locke: 7 Works


John Locke - 2014
    Locke is regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and known as the "Father of Classical Liberalism”His work greatly affected the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the United States Declaration of IndependenceThis collection includes the following 7 classical works by Locke:•Two Treatises on Government: Book I - Of Government•Two Treatises on Government: Book II - Of Civil Government•The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina•A Letter Concerning Toleration•An Essay Concerning Human Understanding•Some Thoughts Concerning Education•Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and the Raising the Value of MoneyLinks to free audiobook versions of the following 4 works are also included:•Two Treatises on Government: Book I - Of Government•Two Treatises on Government: Book II - Of Civil Government•A Letter Concerning Toleration•An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Chemtrails, HAARP, and the Full Spectrum Dominance of Planet Earth


Elana Freeland - 2014
    This Space Age is replacing resource wars and redefines planet earth as a "battlespace" in accordance with the military doctrine of "Full-Spectrum Dominance."This book examines how chemtrails and ionospheric heaters like the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Project (HAARP) in Alaska service a full-spectrum dominance. This "Revolution in Military Affairs" needs an atmospheric medium to assure wireless access to the bodies and brains of anyone on Earth—from heat-seeking missiles to a form of mind control.How sinister are these technologies? Are we being prepared for a "global village" lockdown? The recent release of NSA records have reminded Americans that "eyes in the sky" are tracking us as supercomputers record the phone calls, e-mails, internet posts, and even the brain frequencies of millions.Elana M. Freeland's startling book sifts through the confusion surrounding chemtrails-versus-contrails and how extreme weather is being "geo-engineered" to enrich disaster capitalists and intimidate nations.A deconstruction of Bernard J. Eastlund's HAARP patent points to other covert agendas, such as a global Smart Grid infrastructure that enables access to every body and brain on Earth, a "Transhumanist" future that erases lines between human and machine, and Nanobiological hybrids armed with microprocessers that infest and harm human bodies.

The Art of Insight in Science and Engineering: Mastering Complexity


Sanjoy Mahajan - 2014
    Precision can overwhelm us with information, whereas insight connects seemingly disparate pieces of information into a simple picture. Unlike computers, humans depend on insight. Based on the author's fifteen years of teaching at MIT, Cambridge University, and Olin College, The Art of Insight in Science and Engineering shows us how to build insight and find understanding, giving readers tools to help them solve any problem in science and engineering.To master complexity, we can organize it or discard it. The Art of Insight in Science and Engineering first teaches the tools for organizing complexity, then distinguishes the two paths for discarding complexity: with and without loss of information. Questions and problems throughout the text help readers master and apply these groups of tools. Armed with this three-part toolchest, and without complicated mathematics, readers can estimate the flight range of birds and planes and the strength of chemical bonds, understand the physics of pianos and xylophones, and explain why skies are blue and sunsets are red.The Art of Insight in Science and Engineering will appear in print and online under a Creative Commons Noncommercial Share Alike license.

Seeing Things as They Are: Selected Journalism and Other Writings


George Orwell - 2014
    Selected by leading expert Peter Davison.Famous for his novels and essays, Orwell remains one of our very best journalists and commentators. Confronting social, political and moral dilemmas head-on, he was fearless in his writing: a champion of free speech, a defender against social injustice and a sharp-eyed chronicler of the age. But his work is also timeless, as pieces on immigration, Scottish independence and a Royal Commission on the Press attest. Seeing Things As They Are, compiled by renowned Orwell scholar Peter Davison, brings together in one volume many of Orwell’s articles and essays for journals and newspapers, his broadcasts for the BBC, and his book, theatre and film reviews. Little escaped Orwell’s attention: he writes about the Spanish Civil War, public schools and poltergeists, and reviews books from Brave New World to Mein Kampf. Almost half of his popular ‘As I Please’ weekly columns, written while literary editor of the Tribune during the 1940s, are collected here, ranging over topics as diverse as the purchase of rose bushes from Woolworth’s to the Warsaw Uprising. Whether political, poetic, polemic or personal, this is surprising, witty and intelligent writing to delight in. A mix of well-known and intriguing, less familiar pieces, this engaging collection illuminates our understanding of Orwell’s work as a whole.

Did God Really Command Genocide?: Coming to Terms with the Justice of God


Paul Copan - 2014
    Even Christians have a hard time stomaching such a thought, and many avoid reading those difficult Old Testament passages that make us squeamish. Instead, we quickly jump to the enemy-loving, forgiving Jesus of the New Testament. And yet, the question doesn't go away. Did God really command genocide? Is the command to "utterly destroy" morally unjustifiable? Is it literal? Are the issues more complex and nuanced than we realize?In the tradition of his popular Is God a Moral Monster?, Paul Copan teams up with Matthew Flannagan to tackle some of the most confusing and uncomfortable passages of Scripture. Together they help the Christian and nonbeliever alike understand the biblical, theological, philosophical, and ethical implications of Old Testament warfare passages. Pastors, youth pastors, campus ministers, apologetics readers, and laypeople will find that this book both enlightens and equips them for serious discussion of troubling spiritual questions.

The Rise of the Nones: Understanding and Reaching the Religiously Unaffiliated


James Emery White - 2014
    In America, this is 20 percent of the population. Exactly who are the unaffiliated? What caused this seismic shift in our culture? Are our churches poised to reach these people? James Emery White lends his prophetic voice to one of the most important conversations the church needs to be having today. He calls churches to examine their current methods of evangelism, which often result only in transfer growth--Christians moving from one church to another--rather than in reaching the "nones." The pastor of a megachurch that is currently experiencing 70 percent of its growth from the unchurched, White knows how to reach this growing demographic, and here he shares his ministry strategies with concerned pastors and church leaders.

Teach a Woman to Fish: Overcoming Poverty Around the Globe


Ritu Sharma - 2014
    Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime." But teach a woman to fish, and everyone eats for a lifetime. In this firsthand account, Ritu Sharma shares how women can, and are, overcoming the forces that keep them in poverty. She chronicles her travels through four countries—Sri Lanka, Burkina Faso, Honduras, and Nicaragua—and the intimate interactions she had with the women living there. Sharma's story not only details her experiences, but also looks at the broader systems that prevent women from leaving poverty behind. From lack of property rights and government corruption to the scarcity of basic infrastructure like roads, these women are restricted by the external limitations placed upon them. Sharma draws from her experiences to frame a larger exploration of how Americans can be instrumental in helping women break free of restrictive systems and begin to facilitate women's upward mobility. Written in her engaging personal voice, Teach a Woman to Fish provides an insider's look at women in poverty, how Washington works, and how change really happens—from the United States to the rest of the world.

Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom


Jacob T. Levy - 2014
    The same is true for centralized state action against such groups. This wide-ranging book argues that, both normatively and historically, liberalpolitical thought rests on a deep tension between a rationalist suspicion of intermediate and local group power, and a pluralism favorable toward intermediate group life, and preserving the bulk of its suspicion for the centralizing state.The book studies this tension using tools from the history of political thought, normative political philosophy, law, and social theory. In the process, it retells the history of liberal thought and practice in a way that moves from the birth of intermediacy in the High Middle Ages to the BritishPluralists of the twentieth century. In particular it restores centrality to the tradition of ancient constitutionalism and to Montesquieu, arguing that social contract theory's contributions to the development of liberal thought have been mistaken for the whole tradition.It discusses the real threats to freedom posed both by local group life and by state centralization, the ways in which those threats aggravate each other. Though the state and intermediate groups can check and balance each other in ways that protect freedom, they may also aggravate each other'sworst tendencies. Likewise, the elements of liberal thought concerned with the threats from each cannot necessarily be combined into a single satisfactory theory of freedom. While the book frequently reconstructs and defends pluralism, it ultimately argues that the tension is irreconcilable and notsusceptible of harmonization or synthesis; it must be lived with, not overcome.

The Law of Blood: Thinking and Acting as a Nazi


Johann Chapoutot - 2014
    What could drive people to fight, kill, and destroy with such ruthless ambition? Observers and historians have offered countless explanations since the 1930s. According to Johann Chapoutot, we need to understand better how the Nazis explained it themselves. We need a clearer view, in particular, of how they were steeped in and spread the idea that history gave them no choice: it was either kill or die.Chapoutot, one of France's leading historians, spent years immersing himself in the texts and images that reflected and shaped the mental world of Nazi ideologues, and that the Nazis disseminated to the German public. The party had no official ur-text of ideology, values, and history. But a clear narrative emerges from the myriad works of intellectuals, apparatchiks, journalists, and movie-makers that Chapoutot explores.The story went like this: In the ancient world, the Nordic-German race lived in harmony with the laws of nature. But since Late Antiquity, corrupt foreign norms and values--Jewish values in particular--had alienated Germany from itself and from all that was natural. The time had come, under the Nazis, to return to the fundamental law of blood. Germany must fight, conquer, and procreate, or perish. History did not concern itself with right and wrong, only brute necessity. A remarkable work of scholarship and insight, The Law of Blood recreates the chilling ideas and outlook that would cost millions their lives.

Here We Stand: Women Changing the World


Helena Earnshaw - 2014
    A fascinating and unique anthology about contemporary women campaigners and how they were changed by the process of changing the world.

Forward Together: A Moral Message for the Nation


William J. Barber II - 2014
    Forward Together: A Moral Message for the Nation shares the theological foundation for the Moral Monday movement, serving as a proclamation of a new American movement seeking equal treatment and opportunity for all regardless of economic status, sexual preference, belief, race, geography, and any other discriminatory bases. The book will also serve as a model for other movements across the country and around the world using North Carolina as a case study, providing useful, practical tips about grassroots organizing and transformative leadership.

Freedom from Speech


Greg Lukianoff - 2014
    While the legal protections of the First Amendment remain strong, the culture is obsessed with punishing individuals for allegedly offensive utterances. And academia – already an institution in which free speech is in decline – has grown still more intolerant, with high-profile “disinvitation” efforts against well-known speakers and demands for professors to provide “trigger warnings” in class.In this Broadside, Greg Lukianoff argues that the threats to free speech go well beyond political correctness or liberal groupthink. As global populations increasingly expect not just physical comfort but also intellectual comfort, threats to freedom of speech are only going to become more intense. To fight back, we must understand this trend and see how students and average citizens alike are increasingly demanding freedom from speech.

The Concise Untold History of the United States


Oliver Stone - 2014
    It achieves what history, at its best, ought to do: presents a mountain of previously unknown facts that makes you question and re-examine many of your long-held assumptions about the most influential events” (Glenn Greenwald).In November 2012, Showtime debuted a ten-part documentary series based on Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick’s The Untold History of the United States. The book and documentary looked back at human events that, at the time, went underreported, but also crucially shaped America’s unique and complex history over the twentieth century.From the atomic bombing of Japan to the Cold War and fall of Communism, this concise version of the larger book is adapted for the general reader. Complete with poignant photos, arresting illustrations, and little-known documents, The Concise Untold History of the United States covers the rise of the American empire and national security state from the late nineteenth century through the Obama administration, putting it all together to show how deeply rooted the seemingly aberrant policies of the Bush-Cheney administration are in the nation’s past and why it has proven so difficult for Obama to change course. In this concise and indispensible guide, Kuznick and Stone (who Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Garry Wills has called America’s own “Dostoevsky behind a camera”) challenge prevailing orthodoxies to reveal the dark truth about the rise and fall of American imperialism

The Long View: Some Thoughts About One of Life's Most Important Lessons


Matthew Kelly - 2014
    In doing so, he demonstrates what he has revealed to us again and again through his work: He has taken the time to think on life’s biggest questions so that he can present his findings to us in ways that make sense in our everyday experience of life and at the same time stir our souls.Do you take the long view? Do you take the short view? Do you even know? Are you aware when you are taking the long view or the short view? How would your life be different if you became a student of the long view?At a time when instant gratification no longer seems fast enough, The Long View invites us to step back from the endless hustle of our busy lives and question whether we are on the right path.

How Women Can Succeed in the Workplace (Despite Having "Female Brains")


Valerie Alexander - 2014
     How Women Can Succeed in the Workplace (Despite Having “Female Brains”), takes a frank and honest approach to examining what women are doing to hold ourselves back, and how we can compete on a playing field designed by men to reward their achievements. Using relevant studies in evolutionary biology, anthropology and sociology, as well as examples from her life as a securities lawyer, investment banker, Internet executive and screenwriter, Valerie Alexander explains the evolution of the “gendered” brain and the corporate structure, showcasing and dissecting areas where women’s natural tendencies prevent us from succeeding in male-designed workplaces. How Women Can Succeed in the Workplace tackles a difficult subject with candor, humor and confidence -- and two of those traits are actually welcome in the workplace!

Reinventing American Health Care: How the Affordable Care Act will Improve our Terribly Complex, Blatantly Unjust, Outrageously Expensive, Grossly Inefficient, Error Prone System


Ezekiel J. Emanuel - 2014
    It was the most extensive reform of America’s health care system since at least the creation of Medicare in 1965, and maybe ever. The ACA was controversial and highly political, and the law faced legal challenges reaching all the way to the Supreme Court; it even precipitated a government shutdown. It was a signature piece of legislation for President Obama’s first term, and also a ball and chain for his second.Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania who also served as a special adviser to the White House on health care reform, has written a brilliant diagnostic explanation of why health care in America has become such a divisive social issue, how money and medicine have their own—quite distinct—American story, and why reform has bedeviled presidents of the left and right for more than one hundred years.Emanuel also explains exactly how the ACA reforms are reshaping the health care system now. He forecasts the future, identifying six mega trends in health that will determine the market for health care to 2020 and beyond. His predictions are bold, provocative, and uniquely well-informed. Health care—one of America’s largest employment sectors, with an economy the size of the GDP of France—has never had a more comprehensive or authoritative interpreter.

Not Tonight: Migraine and the Politics of Gender and Health


Joanna Kempner - 2014
    Vomiting. Hours and days spent lying in the dark. Migraine is an extraordinarily common, disabling, and painful disorder that affects over 36 million Americans and costs the US economy at least $32 billion per year. Nevertheless, it is frequently dismissed, ignored, and delegitimized. In Not Tonight, Joanna Kempner argues that this general dismissal of migraine can be traced back to the gendered social values embedded in the way we talk about, understand, and make policies for people in pain. Because the symptoms that accompany headache disorders—like head pain, visual auras, and sensitivity to sound—lack an objective marker of distress that can confirm their existence, doctors rely on the perceived moral character of their patients to gauge how serious their complaints are. Kempner shows how this problem plays out in the history of migraine, from nineteenth-century formulations of migraine as a disorder of upper-class intellectual men and hysterical women to the influential concept of “migraine personality” in the 1940s, in which women with migraine were described as uptight neurotics who withheld sex, to contemporary depictions of people with highly sensitive “migraine brains.” Not Tonight casts new light on how cultural beliefs about gender, pain, and the distinction between mind and body influence not only whose suffering we legitimate, but which remedies are marketed, how medicine is practiced, and how knowledge about disease is produced.

Where Bears Roam the Streets


Jeff Parker - 2014
    But Russia squirms under the pressure of any attempt to pin it down. In the midst of social and financial upheaval, the more Parker sought answers the more the questions kept coming: What was Russia? How did it work? How did people live? How could they eat kholodetz (meat jelly)? Did love mean something different to them than it meant to us? Why did so many women leave the country to marry strangers? What good did knowing Pushkin by heart do them? Why did the police keep robbing him?The four years at the heart of this book focus largely on the period between 2008 and 2012 and the revealing friendship Parker made with a young barkeep and draft dodger named Igor. The book became the story of Igor, as a metaphor for Russia, in crisis. While Igor is not the model Perestroika generation man nor some kind of Putin-era everyman, he is, like The Big Lebowski, a man for his time and place. What Parker has created is the story of Igor as refracting mirror for the story of Russia, told with intelligence, humour and no small amount of misadventure.

Raising Race Questions: Whiteness and Inquiry in Education


Ali Michael - 2014
    Even just asking questions about race can be scary, because we are afraid of what our questions might reveal about our ignorance or bias. Raising Race Questions invites teachers to use inquiry as a way to develop sustained engagement with challenging racial questions and to do so in community so that they learn how common their questions actually are. It lays out both a process for getting to questions that lead to growth and change, as well as a vision for where engagement with race questions might lead. Race questions are not meant to lead us into a quagmire of guilt, discomfort, or isolation. Sustained race inquiry is meant to lead to antiracist classrooms, positive racial identities, and a restoration of the wholeness of spirit and community that racism undermines.Book Features: New insights on race and equity in education, including the idea that a multicultural curriculum is not sufficient for building an antiracist classroom. Case studies of expert and experienced White teachers who still have questions about race. Approaches for talking about race in the K-12 classroom. Strategies for facilitating race conversations among adults. A variety of different resources useful in the teacher inquiry groups described in the book. Research with teachers, not on teachers, including written responses from each teacher whose classroom is featured in the book.

Life as Activism: June Jordan's Writings from The Progressive


June Jordan - 2014
    Jordan (1936-2002) was a poet and UC Berkeley professor who is celebrated as a great human rights activist and social critic. Through her work, she taught a concept of "life as activism," based on inclusiveness, consistency, honesty, and identification with the oppressed. Far from being a purely idealistic and unsustainable approach to life, Jordan demonstrated that "life as activism" can be a way of engaging with the world that is accessible to all people who are committed to social justice. The writings collected here can be read as a road map to such a life of activism. These columns provide a critical study of important issues from the end of the twentieth century, as well as a clear illustration of the intersections of many forms of injustice and oppression, celebrating a movement away from single-issue politics to a far-reaching activism. The publisher hopes that through this collection Jordan's work will become more widely known.

Making Conflict Work: Navigating Disagreement Up and Down Your Organization


Peter T. Coleman - 2014
    In Making Conflict Work, Peter Coleman and Robert Ferguson’s leading experts in the field of conflict resolution address the key role of power in workplace tension. Whether you’re butting heads with your boss or addressing a direct report’s complaint, your relative position of power affects how you approach conflict.Coleman and Ferguson explain how power dynamics function, with step-by-step guidance to determining your standing in a conflict and identifying and applying the strategies that will lead to the best resolution. Drawing on the authors’ years of research and consulting experience, the book gives readers effective strategies for negotiating disputes at all levels of an organization.Making Conflict Work includes self-assessment exercises and action plans to guide managers, mediators, consultants, and attorneys through any conflict. This powerful approach can turn workplace tensions into catalysts for creativity, innovation, and meaningful change.

The Five Dharma Types: Vedic Wisdom for Discovering Your Purpose and Destiny


Simon Chokoisky - 2014
     Built on a deep body of Vedic knowledge, the ancient system of social structure and spiritual duty known as Dharma has modern applications for people seeking their life’s purpose. Author Simon Chokoisky explains the five Dharma archetypes--Warrior, Educator, Merchant, Laborer, and Outsider--and how your life’s purpose goes hand-in-hand with your Dharma type. Providing tests to determine your type, he outlines the benefits, challenges, emotional and learning styles, and social, interpersonal, and health dynamics associated with each type. Chokoisky reveals how the Dharma types function as an operating system for your identity, helping you map your life and play to your innate strengths, whether in choosing a prosperous career or field of study or in facing health challenges and meeting fitness goals. By accepting and understanding the nature of your type, you begin to align with your true purpose and, regardless of fate, find joy and meaning in life.

Forbidden Game: Golf and the Chinese Dream


Dan Washburn - 2014
    But, with “the rich man’s game” about to appear in the Olympics for the first time in 112 years, they also began to spend unprecedented sums on their own national golf team.Through the lives of three men intimately involved in China’s bizarre golf scene, award-winning journalist Dan Washburn paints an arresting portrait of a country of contradictions. A villager named Wang sees his life transformed when a top-secret golf resort springs up next to his farm — despite the building of golf courses being illegal. Western executive Martin, whose firm manages the construction of golf courses, is always looking over his shoulder for Beijing’s “golf police.” And for security guard Zhou, making it as a professional golfer could be his way into China’s new middle class.Using the unique lens of The Forbidden Game, Washburn gleans rich insights into the politics and people of one of the most powerful and enigmatic nations on earth.

The Whitlam Mob


Mungo MacCallum - 2014
    He portrays the Whitlam government’s key figures – from Gough and Margaret to Lionel Murphy, Bill Hayden and Jim Cairns – as well as “the other mob” in opposition – Billy McMahon, John Gorton, Malcolm Fraser and many more.The Whitlam Mob addresses some crucial questions: What was the night of the long prawns? Who was the playboy of the parliament? And who was “the toe-cutter”?This is Mungo at his best: vivid and barbed, nostalgic but always clear-eyed.Mungo MacCallum’s books include The Good, the Bad and the Unlikely: Australia’s Prime Ministers, The Mad Marathon and The Man Who Laughs. For more than four decades, he has been one of Australia’s most influential and entertaining political journalists.

The Lost World of Ladakh: Photographic journeys through Indian Himalaya 1931-1934 (AHP:31)


Rupert Wilmot, Roger Bates, Nicky Harman - 2014
    Rangdol, President of Tserkarmo Monastery, Ladakh, IndiaA superb collection of 150 black-and-white photographs of 1930s Ladakh, capturing its final days as a hub of trade routes between Tibet and Kashmir, India and Yarkand. These portraits of people, landscapes and Buddhist ceremonies taken by amateur photographer Rupert Wilmot, are notable for their careful composition, fine detail and engaging informality. They have been meticulously researched and captioned by Nicky Harman and Roger Bates, respectively, niece and nephew of Rupert Wilmot, and include maps, an introduction and a bibliography. Of considerable historical and ethnographic interest.Claude Rupert Trench Wilmot (1897-1961) was a British army officer stationed in India during the 1930s, and a talented amateur photographer. Nicky Harman translates Chinese literature, and was formerly a lecturer at Imperial College London.Roger Bates digitized the photographs. A retired engineer, he has many years of experience working in digital photography.What other writers have said about The Lost World of Ladakh:“A wonderfully elegaic set of photographs recording a lost world: an almost mediaeval Ladakh untouched by modernity and still living at the hub of the old trans-Himalayan trade routes, a timeless Central Asia where soot writing boards, itinerant monks, arcane astrologers, masked dancers and elaborate turquoise headdresses were ‎still common. ‎These skillfully restored photographs make me ache to cross again the snowy heights of the Zoji-la and to re-visit this most fascinating region to see what is left.”William Dalrymple, author of Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-42“Rupert Wilmot’s pictures are a delight. The monastery images include a spectacular set of the religious dance-drama at Hemis. There is also a visual record of the trades that lifted so many of Ladakh's villagers above the poverty level: the bustle in Leh Bazaar, the interior of a serai, and caravans of sheep, donkeys and ponies. Perhaps the book’s most outstanding feature is the series of portraits of Wilmot’s fellow-travellers and other Ladakhis, most of them in relaxed and cheerful mode, rather than posing stiffly.” Dr Janet Rizvi, writer and historian of Ladakh, Kashmir and the western Himalaya “These illustrations, superb as photographs in their own right, capture in visual form the essence of Ladakhi life as it was in the 1930s. While the Ladakh pictured here is in many ways gone, its legacy lives on in the distinctive culture of present-day Ladakh, which cannot be fully appreciated without a knowledge of its history. In this book we have a unique and vital contribution to that history.”Dr Philip Denwood, Emeritus Reader in Tibetan Studies, SOAS, University of LondonPrice for printed book: $28.00/£24.74. Published by Asian Highlands Perspectives, print copies available here: ¬http://www.lulu.com/shop/roger-bates-...

The Spirit of Spinoza: Healing the Mind


Neal Grossman - 2014
    This intellectual self-help book provides important insights from Spinoza's system of thought in a format accessible to the general reader, as well as to those already familiar with his philosophy. By applying his method to our personal lives, we may free ourselves from bondage to our lower emotions and habitual behaviors and thus begin to enjoy the "continuous, supreme, and unending happiness" promised by Spinoza. "Those of us who came of age in the twentieth century were taught that we must adopt a crazy-making strategy of compartmentalizing our lives, putting our rational, scientific side into one corner and our psychological/spiritual side in another. The precarious state of our world is evidence enough that this approach to life is a destructive dead end. You are holding an effective alternative in your hand. "The Spirit of Spinoza" is a brilliant treatise that has been field-tested by Professor Neal Grossman in his own life and that of his students over decades. This book is a masterstroke by a master teacher about a master philosopher. It is also delightfully dangerous, for it has the power to shift one's life onto a new axis, where it becomes possible to blend knowledge and wisdom into an experience that can best be described, quite simply, as waking up." - Larry Dossey, MD, author of "One Mind: How Our Individual Mind Is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why It Matters"

World Press Photo 2014


World Press Photo Foundation - 2014
    Universally recognized as the definitive competition for photographic reporting, it draws submissions from photojournalists, newspapers, and magazines throughout the world.Publishing the results of the most recent competition, this book contains the most haunting and inspiring photographs from 2013—some 150 pictures selected from more than 100,000 images submitted. These prize-winning works capture the most powerful, moving, and sometimes disturbing moments of the year.

The Teachings of Confucius


Daniel Willey - 2014
    The philosophy of Confucius emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice and sincerity. His followers competed successfully with many other schools during the Hundred Schools of Thought era only to be suppressed in favor of the Legalists during the Qin Dynasty. Following the victory of Han over Chu after the collapse of Qin, Confucius's thoughts received official sanction and were further developed into a system known as Confucianism.

Chinese Cultural Literacy in Ancient Times / 中国古代文化常识


王力 - 2014
    The content revised adds many relevant pictures and some of them on culture relic are so amazing.全书分礼俗、宗法、饮食、衣饰等十四个方面。修订的内容中增加了一部分与文稿相配合的图片,某些关键文物的照片解析力之高也是惊人的。

Good Times, Bad Times: The Welfare Myth of Them and Us


John Hills - 2014
    Much of that debate is dominated by the myth that the population is divided into those who benefit from the welfare state and those who pay into it.  But this groundbreaking book, written by a top UK social policy expert, uses extensive research and survey evidence to challenge that view. It shows that our complex and ever-changing lives mean that all of us rely on the welfare state throughout our lifetimes, not just a small welfare-dependent minority. Using everyday life stories and engaging graphics, John Hills clearly demonstrates how the facts are far removed from the popular misconceptions.

Ordinary Magic: Resilience in Development


Ann S. Masten - 2014
    Ann S. Masten explores what allows certain individuals to thrive and adapt despite adverse circumstances, such as poverty, chronic family problems, or exposure to trauma. Coverage encompasses the neurobiology of resilience as well as the role of major contexts of development: families, schools, and culture. Identifying key protective factors in early childhood and beyond, Masten provides a cogent framework for designing programs to promote resilience. Complex concepts are carefully defined and illustrated with real-world examples.

A Line in the Tar Sands: Struggles for Environmental Justice


Stephen D'Arcy - 2014
    Tar sands “development” comes with an enormous environmental and human cost. But tar sands opponents—fighting a powerful international industry—are likened to terrorists; government environmental scientists are muzzled; and public hearings are concealed and rushed. Yet, despite the formidable political and economic power behind the tar sands, many opponents are actively building international networks of resistance, challenging pipeline plans while resisting threats to Indigenous sovereignty and democratic participation. Including leading voices involved in the struggle against the tar sands, A Line in the Tar Sands offers a critical analysis of the impact of the tar sands and the challenges opponents face in their efforts to organize effective resistance. Contributors include Angela Carter, Bill McKibben, Brian Tokar, Christine Leclerc, Clayton Thomas-Muller, Crystal Lameman, Dave Vasey, Emily Coats, Eriel Deranger, Greg Albo, Jeremy Brecher, Jess Worth, Jesse Cardinal, Joshua Kahn Russell, Lilian Yap, Linda Capato, Macdonald Stainsby, Martin Lukacs, Matt Leonard, Melina Laboucan-Massimo, Naomi Klein, Rae Breaux, Randolph Haluza-DeLay, Rex Weyler, Ryan Katz-Rosene, Sâkihitowin Awâsis, Sonia Grant, Stephen D’Arcy, Toban Black, Tony Weis, Tyler McCreary, Winona LaDuke, and Yves Engler.

We Are Better Than This: How Government Should Spend Our Money


Edward D. Kleinbard - 2014
    Author Edward D. Kleinbard explains how the public's preoccupation with tax policy alone has obscured any understanding of government's ability to complement the private sector through investment and insuranceprograms that enhance the general welfare and prosperity of our society at large.He argues that when we choose how government should spend and tax, we open a window into our fiscal soul, because those choices are the means by which we express the values we cherish and the regard in which we hold our fellow citizens. Though these values are being diminished by short-sighteddecisions to starve government, strategic government spending can directly make citizens happier, healthier, and even wealthier.Expertly combining the latest economic research with his insider knowledge of the budget process into a simple yet compelling narrative, he unmasks the tax mythologies and false arguments that too often dominate contemporary discourse about budget policies. Large quantities of comparative data aresuccinctly distilled to situate the United States among its peer countries, so that readers can judge for themselves whether contemporary budget choices really reflect our aspirational fiscal soul.Kleinbard's presentation takes a multi-disciplinary approach, drawing on economics, finance, law, political science and moral philosophy. He uniquely weaves economic research and moral philosophy together by emphasizing our welfare, not just our national income, and by contrasting the actual beliefsof Adam Smith, a great moral philosopher, with the cartoon version of the man presented by proponents of the most extreme forms of private market triumphalism.

The Hobbit Party: The Vision of Freedom that Tolkien Got, and the West Forgot


Jay W. Richards - 2014
    There is a growing concern among many that the West is sliding into political, economic, and moral bankruptcy. In his beloved novels of Middle-Earth, J.R.R. Tolkien has drawn us a map to freedom.Scholar Joseph Pearce, who himself has written articles and chapters on the political significance of Tolkien s work, testified in his book "Literary Giants, Literary Catholics," If much has been written on the religious significance of "The Lord of the Rings," less has been written on its political significance and the little that has been written is often erroneous in its conclusions and ignorant of Tolkien s intentions . Much more work is needed in this area, not least because Tolkien stated, implicitly at least, that the political significance of the work was second only to the religious in its importance.Several books ably explore how Tolkien's Catholic faith informed his fiction. None until now have centered on how his passion for liberty and limited government also shaped his work, or how this passion grew directly from his theological vision of man and creation. "The Hobbit Party" fills this void.The few existing pieces that do focus on the subject are mostly written by scholars with little or no formal training in literary analysis, and even less training in political economy. Witt and Richards bring to "The Hobbit Party" a combined expertise in literary studies, political theory, economics, philosophy, and theology."

Information Doesn't Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age


Cory Doctorow - 2014
    Can small artists still thrive in the Internet era? Can giant record labels avoid alienating their audiences? This is a book about the pitfalls and the opportunities that creative industries (and individuals) are confronting today — about how the old models have failed or found new footing, and about what might soon replace them. An essential read for anyone with a stake in the future of the arts, Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free offers a vivid guide to the ways creativity and the Internet interact today, and to what might be coming next.

On Liberty


Shami Chakrabarti - 2014
    The West's response to 9/11 has morphed into a period of exception. Governments have decided that the rule of law and human rights are often too costly. In On Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti - who joined Liberty, the UK's leading civil rights organization, on 10 September 2001 - explores why our fundamental rights and freedoms are indispensable. She shows, too, the unprecedented pressures those rights are under today. Drawing on her own work in high-profile campaigns, from privacy laws to anti-terror legislation, Chakrabarti shows the threats to our democratic institutions and why our rights are paramount in upholding democracy.

The Nonviolence Handbook: A Guide for Practical Action


Michael N. Nagler - 2014
    In this short and powerful book, renowned peace activist Michael Nagler challenges this assertion, demonstrating that nonviolence succeeds through aggressively strategic and sustained action. It demands greater courage and discipline than violence.Distilling the core theories of nonviolence and drawing deeply from the lives of leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., this action-oriented handbook offers both guidance for nonviolent resistance and advice for building constructive movements capable of restructuring the very bedrock of society. Nagler also includes stories of successful nonviolent resistance that have been ignored by the mass media. The book features a list of resources that offer pathways to immediate action and engagement with the peace movement worldwide.

Don't Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party


Lily Geismer - 2014
    Focusing on the suburbs along the high-tech corridor of Route 128 around Boston, Lily Geismer challenges conventional scholarly assessments of Massachusetts exceptionalism, the decline of liberalism, and suburban politics in the wake of the rise of the New Right and the Reagan Revolution in the 1970s and 1980s. Although only a small portion of the population, knowledge professionals in Massachusetts and elsewhere have come to wield tremendous political leverage and power. By probing the possibilities and limitations of these suburban liberals, this rich and nuanced account shows that--far from being an exception to national trends--the suburbs of Massachusetts offer a model for understanding national political realignment and suburban politics in the second half of the twentieth century.

Lines of Descent: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Emergence of Identity


Kwame Anthony Appiah - 2014
    E. B. Du Bois never felt so at home as when he was a student at the University of Berlin. But Du Bois was also American to his core, scarred but not crippled by the racial humiliations of his homeland. In Lines of Descent, Kwame Anthony Appiah traces the twin lineages of Du Bois’ American experience and German apprenticeship, showing how they shaped the great African-American scholar’s ideas of race and social identity.At Harvard, Du Bois studied with such luminaries as William James and George Santayana, scholars whose contributions were largely intellectual. But arriving in Berlin in 1892, Du Bois came under the tutelage of academics who were also public men. The economist Adolf Wagner had been an advisor to Otto von Bismarck. Heinrich von Treitschke, the historian, served in the Reichstag, and the economist Gustav von Schmoller was a member of the Prussian state council. These scholars united the rigorous study of history with political activism and represented a model of real-world engagement that would strongly influence Du Bois in the years to come.With its romantic notions of human brotherhood and self-realization, German culture held a potent allure for Du Bois. Germany, he said, was the first place white people had treated him as an equal. But the prevalence of anti-Semitism allowed Du Bois no illusions that the Kaiserreich was free of racism. His challenge, says Appiah, was to take the best of German intellectual life without its parochialism—to steal the fire without getting burned.

Not as the World Gives: The Way of Creative Justice


Stratford Caldecott - 2014
    Not As the World Gives, drawing on the Church's two millennia of reflection on the Gospel, especially in the encyclicals from Rerum Novarum to Centesimus Annus, shows us the nature of society by showing us ourselves. We are beings created to give and receive -- called to "walk towards the true freedom that Christ taught us in the Beatitudes," as Pope Francis expressed it. There is no peace without justice, but neither can there be justice without love. Far from being an impractical dream, Catholic social doctrine can transform the way we work, the way we govern, and the way we treat the natural world. What emerges from this sequel to the author's The Radiance of Being is a vision of integration and wholeness, a society both divine and human, and a "humanism open to the absolute."

Poison Spring: The Secret History of Pollution and the EPA


E.G. Vallianatos - 2014
    They may not be printed in the menu, but many are in your food.These are a few of the literally millions of pounds of approved synthetic substances dumped into the environment every day, not just in the US but around the world. They seep into our water supply, are carried thousands of miles by wind and rain from the site of application, remain potent long after they are deposited, and constitute, in the words of one scientist, “biologic death bombs with a delayed time fuse and which may prove to be, in the long run, as dangerous to the existence of mankind as the arsenal of atom bombs.” All of these poisons are sanctioned--or in some cases, ignored--by the EPA.For twenty-five years E.G. Vallianatos saw the EPA from the inside, with rising dismay over how pressure from politicians and threats from huge corporations were turning it from the public's watchdog into a "polluter's protection agency." Based on his own experience, the testimony of colleagues, and hundreds of documents Vallianatos collected inside the EPA, Poison Spring reveals how the agency has continually reinforced the chemical-industrial complex.Writing with acclaimed environmental journalist McKay Jenkins, E.G. Vallianatos provides a devastating exposé of how the agency created to protect Americans and our environment has betrayed its mission. Half a century after after Rachel Carson's Silent Spring awakened us to the dangers of pesticides, we are poisoning our lands and waters with more toxic chemicals than ever.

Anna Howard Shaw: The Work of Woman Suffrage


Trisha Franzen - 2014
    Challenging traditional gender boundaries throughout her life, she put herself through college, worked as an ordained minister and a doctor, and built a tightly-knit family with her secretary and longtime companion Lucy E. Anthony.Drawing on unprecedented research, Franzen shows how these circumstances and choices both impacted Shaw's role in the woman suffrage movement and set her apart from her native-born, middle- and upper-class colleagues. Franzen also rehabilitates Shaw's years as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, arguing that Shaw's much-belittled tenure actually marked a renaissance of both NAWSA and the suffrage movement as a whole.Anna Howard Shaw: The Work of Woman Suffrage presents a clear and compelling portrait of a woman whose significance has too long been misinterpreted and misunderstood.

Mutuality Matters How You Can Create More Opportunity, Adventure & Friendship With Others


Kare Anderson - 2014
    Be the glue that sticks the right teams together to solve problems or seize opportunities sooner and better together. Discover the key behaviors that enable you to accomplish greater things with others than you can on your own -- and savor success together.In this book you’ll learn: Over 40 specific ways to forge mutually beneficial relationships, as an individual or an organization How to speak, write, move and appear to pull others closer and be frequently-quoted Ways to turn friction and even attacks into opportunities to attract more allies and elevate the behavior of those around you How to find and recruit the unexpected allies, and craft the optimal situation for your message to gain credibility, clout and media coverage This once “phobically shy” stutterer-turned Emmy-winning NBC and Wall Street Journal reporter and TED@IBM and TEDx presenter knows, first-hand, what it feels like to be ignored, patronized and belittled. Those experiences motivated her to translate behavioral research into ways to bring out others’ better side to use best talents together.

Intellectual Privacy: Rethinking Civil Liberties in the Digital Age


Neil Richards - 2014
    Courts all over the world have struggled with how to reconcile the problems of media gossip with our commitment to free and open public debate for over a century. The rise of the Internet has made this problem more urgent. We live in an age of corporate and government surveillance of our lives. And our free speech culture has created an anything-goes environment on the web, where offensive and hurtful speech about others is rife. How should we think about the problems of privacy and free speech? In Intellectual Privacy, Neil Richards offers a different solution, one that ensures that our ideas and values keep pace with our technologies. Because of the importance of free speech to free and open societies, he argues that when privacy and free speech truly conflict, free speech should almost always win. Only when disclosures of truly horrible information are made (such as sex tapes) should privacy be able to trump our commitment to free expression. But in sharp contrast to conventional wisdom, Richards argues that speech and privacy are only rarely in conflict. America's obsession with celebrity culture has blinded us to more important aspects of how privacy and speech fit together. Celebrity gossip might be a price we pay for a free press, but the privacy of ordinary people need not be. True invasions of privacy like peeping toms or electronic surveillance will rarely merit protection as free speech. And critically, Richards shows how most of the law we enact to protect online privacy pose no serious burden to public debate, and how protecting the privacy of our data is not censorship. More fundamentally, Richards shows how privacy and free speech are often essential to each other. He explains the importance of 'intellectual privacy, ' protection from surveillance or interference when we are engaged in the processes of generating ideas - thinking, reading, and speaking with confidantes before our ideas are ready for public consumption. In our digital age, in which we increasingly communicate, read, and think with the help of technologies that track us, increased protection for intellectual privacy has become an imperative. What we must do, then, is to worry less about barring tabloid gossip, and worry much more about corporate and government surveillance into the minds, conversations, reading habits, and political beliefs of ordinary people. A timely and provocative book on a subject that affects us all, Intellectual Privacy will radically reshape the debate about privacy and free speech in our digital age.

The Hope of the Family: A Dialogue with Cardinal Gerhard Müller


Gerhard Ludwig Müller - 2014
    "Young people don't want to get married, they don't get married, or they live together. Marriage is in crisis, and so the family is in crisis." The main problem with the family in the Church today, contends Cardinal Gerhard MUller, is not the small number of civilly remarried divorced Catholics who want to received Holy Communion. It is the large number of Catholics who live together before marriage, who marry civilly, or who do not even bother with marriage, as if these choices were sound options for Catholic living. It is also a failure of many who marry "in the Church" to understand marriage as part of their Christian discipleship.In this engaging conversation, Cardinal MUller, one of Pope Francis' top advisers in the Vatican, addresses the challenges facing marriage and family life today. The loss of faith in many traditionally Christian societies has led to a crisis. In turn, cohabitation, civil marriage, and divorce and civil remarriage, further undermine faith because they harm the family as the "domestic Church" and the place of initial evangelization. The solution: the Church must undertake a robust new evangelization of the family: sharing the fullness of truth about marriage and family in Christ, encouraging families to worship and pray together, and helping them witness by their lives to the joy of the gospel.Cardinal MUller stresses mercy and compassion in pastoral minstry with struggling Catholics, but he does so without contradicting the teaching of Jesus about divorce and remarriage and minimizing the power of grace to transform lives. In this way he proclaims hope for the family rooted in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.