The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science


Will Storr - 2013
    Why don't facts work? Why, that is, did the obviously intelligent man beside him sincerely believe in Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden and a six-thousand-year-old Earth, in spite of the evidence against them? It was the start of a journey that would lead Storr all over the world--from Texas to Warsaw to the Outer Hebrides--meeting an extraordinary cast of modern heretics whom he tries his best to understand. He goes on a tour of Holocaust sites with David Irving and a band of neo-Nazis; experiences his own murder during past-life regression hypnosis; discusses the looming One World Government with iconic climate skeptic Lord Monckton; and investigates the tragic life and death of a woman who believed her parents were high priests in a baby-eating cult. Using a unique mix of highly personal memoir, investigative journalism, and the latest research from neuroscience and experimental psychology, Storr reveals how the stories we tell ourselves about the world invisibly shape our beliefs, and how the neurological "hero maker" inside us all can so easily lead to self-deception, toxic partisanship, and science denial.

Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now


Jaron Lanier - 2018
    In Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now Jaron Lanier draws on his insider's expertise to explain precisely how social media works and why its cruel and dangerous effects are at the heart of its current business model and design. As well as offering ten simple arguments for liberating yourself from its addictive hold, his witty and urgent manifesto outlines a vision for an alternative that provides all the benefits of social media without the harm. nicer person in the process.

Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour


Kate Fox - 2004
    She puts the English national character under her anthropological microscope, and finds a strange and fascinating culture, governed by complex sets of unspoken rules and byzantine codes of behaviour. The rules of weather-speak. The ironic-gnome rule. The reflex apology rule. The paranoid-pantomime rule. Class indicators and class anxiety tests. The money-talk taboo and many more ...Through a mixture of anthropological analysis and her own unorthodox experiments (using herself as a reluctant guinea-pig), Kate Fox discovers what these unwritten behaviour codes tell us about Englishness.

Blackout: How Black America Can Make Its Second Escape from the Democrat Plantation


Candace Owens - 2020
    What do you have to lose? This question, posed by then-presidential candidate Donald Trump to potential black voters, was mocked and dismissed by the mainstream media. But for Candace Owens and many others, it was a wake-up call. A staunch Democrat for all of her life, she began to question the left’s policies toward black Americans, and investigate the harm they inflict on the community. In Blackout, social media star and conservative commentator Owens addresses the many ways that liberal policies and ideals are actually harmful to African Americans and hinder their ability to rise above poverty, live independent and successful lives, and be an active part of the American Dream. Weaving in her personal story that brought her from the projects to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, she demonstrates how she overcame her setbacks and challenges despite the cultural expectation that she should embrace a victim mentality. Owens argues that government assistance is a double-edged sword, that the left dismisses the faith so important to the black community, that Democratic permissiveness toward abortion disproportionately affects the black babies, that the #MeToo movement hurts black men, and much more. Well-researched and intelligently argued, Blackout lays bare the myth that all black people should vote Democrat—and shows why turning to the right will leave them happier, more successful, and more self-sufficient.

Civil Disobedience


Henry David Thoreau - 1849
    In it, Thoreau argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that they have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated in part by his disgust with slavery and the Mexican–American War (1846–1848).

The Good, the Bad and the Ridiculous


Khushwant Singh - 2013
    This book will appeal not only to admirers of Khushwant Singhs writing but also to anyone Interested in the history, politics and socio economic scenario of twentieth century India.People profiled in this book include Jawaharlal Nehru, Krishna Menon, Indira Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi, Amrita Sher Gil, Begum Para, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, M. S. Golwalkar, Mother Teresa, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Dhirendra Brahmachari, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, General Tikka Khan, Phoolan Devi, Giani Zail Singh and Bhagat Puran Singh.About the AuthorKhushwant singh is one of Indias best known and most widely read authors and columnists. He was founder-editor of Yojana and editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India, National Heraldand the Hindustan Times. His first book, The Mark of Vishnu and Other Stories, was published in 1950 and he has published several acclaimed and bestselling books of fiction and non-fiction in the six decades since. He has also translated the work of major Punjabi and Urdu poets and writers, as well as the Japji and the Rehras: The Morning and Evening Prayers of the Sikhs.

The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century


Amia Srinivasan - 2021
    Yet consent is a blunt tool. To grasp sex in all its complexity—its deep ambivalences, its relationship to gender, class, race and power—we need to move beyond yes and no, wanted and unwanted.We do not know the future of sex—but perhaps we could imagine it. Amia Srinivasan’s stunning debut helps us do just that. She traces the meaning of sex in our world, animated by the hope of a different world. She reaches back into an older feminist tradition that was unafraid to think of sex as a political phenomenon. She discusses a range of fraught relationships—between discrimination and preference, pornography and freedom, rape and racial injustice, punishment and accountability, students and teachers, pleasure and power, capitalism and liberation.The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century is a provocation and a promise, transforming many of our most urgent political debates and asking what it might mean to be free.

The New Reagan Revolution: How Ronald Reagan's Principles Can Restore America's Greatness


Michael Reagan - 2011
    In his famous 1976 speech at the Republican National Convention, Ronald Reagan helped define a way forward and strengthened the Republican Party. As we stand at a crossroad once again, we are fortunate to have a blueprint for restoring America's greatness. Reagan has given us the principles to succeed. This book is not merely a diagnosis of our nation's ills but a prescription to heal our nation, rooted in the words and principles of Ronald Reagan. In these pages, Michael Reagan shares the plan his father developed over years of study, observation, and reflection. It is the plan he announced to the nation, straight from his heart, one summer evening during America's two hundredth year. It is the plan he put into action during his eight years in office as one of the most effective presidents of the twentieth century, and it is the plan we can use today to help return America to its former greatness, soundness, and prosperity.

Patronising Bastards: How the Elites Betrayed Britain


Quentin Letts - 2017
    Western capitalism's elites are bemused: Brexit, Trump, and maybe more eruptions to follow. But their rulers were so good to them! Hillary Clinton called the ingrates 'a basket of deplorables', Bob Geldof flicked them a V sign, Tony Blair thought voters too thick to understand the question. Wigged judges stared down their legalistic noses at a surging, pongy populous.These people who know best, these snooterati with their faux-liberal ways, are the 'Patronising Bastards'. Their downfall is largely of their own making - their Sybaritic excesses, an obsession with political correctness, the prolonged rape of reason and rite. You'll find these self-indulgent show-ponys not just in politics and the cloistered old institutions but also in high fashion, football, among the clean-eating foodies and at the Baftas and Oscars, where celebritydom hires PR smoothies to massage reputations and mislead, distort, twist. Political columnist and bestselling author Quentin Letts identifies these condescending creeps and their networks, their methods and their dubious morals. Letts kebabs them like mutton. It's baaaahd. It's juicy.Richard Branson, Emma Thompson, Shami Chakrabarti, Jean-Claude Juncker and any head waiter who calls you 'young man' - this one's for you!

Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire


Akala - 2018
    In this unique book he takes his own experiences and widens them out to look at the social, historical and political factors that have left us where we are today.Covering everything from the police, education and identity to politics, sexual objectification and the far right, Natives speaks directly to British denial and squeamishness when it comes to confronting issues of race and class that are at the heart of the legacy of Britain's racialised empire.

Among the Thugs


Bill Buford - 1990
    They like lager (in huge quantities), the Queen, football clubs (especially Manchester United), and themselves. Their dislike encompasses the rest of the known universe, and England's soccer thugs express it in ways that range from mere vandalism to riots that terrorize entire cities. Now Bill Buford, editor of the prestigious journal Granta, enters this alternate society and records both its savageries and its sinister allure with the social imagination of a George Orwell and the raw personal engagement of a Hunter Thompson.

A Collection of Essays


George Orwell - 1941
    In this selection of essays, he ranges from reflections on his boyhood schooling and the profession of writing to his views on the Spanish Civil War and British imperialism. The pieces collected here include the relatively unfamiliar and the more celebrated, making it an ideal compilation for both new and dedicated readers of Orwell's work.

Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren't Fair (and What We Can Do About It)


William Poundstone - 2008
    presidential elections have been won by the second most popular candidate. The reason was a "spoiler"--a minor candidate who takes enough votes away from the most popular candidate to tip the election to someone else. The spoiler effect is more than a glitch. It is a consequence of one of the most surprising intellectual discoveries of the twentieth century: the "impossibility theorem" of Nobel laureate economist Kenneth Arrow. The impossibility theorem asserts that voting is fundamentally unfair--a finding that has not been lost on today's political consultants. Armed with polls, focus groups, and smear campaigns, political strategists are exploiting the mathematical faults of the simple majority vote. In recent election cycles, this has led to such unlikely tactics as Republicans funding ballot drives for Green spoilers and Democrats paying for right-wing candidates' radio ads. Gaming the Vote shows that there is a solution to the spoiler problem that will satisfy both right and left. A systemcalled range voting, already widely used on the Internet, is the fairest voting method of all, according to computer studies. Despite these findings, range voting remains controversial, and Gaming the Vote assesses the obstacles confronting any attempt to change the American electoral system. The latest of several books by William Poundstone on the theme of how important scientific ideas have affected the real world, Gaming the Vote is a wry exposé of how the political system really works, and a call to action.

Playbook 2012: Inside the Circus--Romney, Santorum and the GOP Race (Politico Inside Election 2012)


Mike Allen - 2012
    The second edition, Inside the Circus, pulls back the curtain on the pursuit of the Republican nomination, as operatives jockey for position and strategists vie to fashion a message that can win over all factions of the fractious GOP.   Over the course of a long winter and into the spring, the contest for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination gathered steam and bubbled over with drama. At times it seemed more like a soap opera or reality show than a political campaign. Inside the Circus, the latest real-time digital dispatch from acclaimed political correspondent Mike Allen and award-winning journalist and author Evan Thomas, chronicles each turn in this endlessly surprising race with reporting straight from the campaign war rooms of Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and the other GOP contenders.   What was the thinking inside the Romney brain trust as what was once expected to be an easy ride to the nomination turned into what some have called a “long slog”? How did Newt Gingrich throw the preternaturally poised Romney off his game in South Carolina—and who convinced the former Massachusetts governor it was time to start punching back? Why were the other campaigns caught flat-footed by the rise of Rick Santorum and what does his unlikely ascent mean for the prospect of a brokered convention? From the Iowa caucuses to Super Tuesday and beyond, Allen and Thomas answer all the questions the headlines, polls, and delegate counts can’t address. The stakes are high, the plotlines are still unfolding, and Inside the Circus is your fly-on-the-wall guide to the most fascinating Republican presidential race in recent memory.

Moyers on America: A Journalist and His Times


Bill Moyers - 2004
    His essays and commentaries, such as the recent “Shivers Down the Spine,” “A Time for Anger,” and “Journalism Under Fire,” are argued over and passed along as soon as they appear in print or on the Internet. Identifying what he sees as a political system increasingly at the mercy of a corporate ruling class, Moyers urges a reengagement with the spirit of community that makes the work of democracy possible. Not only a trenchant critique of what is wrong, Moyers on America is also a call to arms for the progressive promise of the people of America, in whom his faith is strong.