Richard Sennett’s insights into the danger of the cult of individualism remain thoroughly relevant to our world today. In a new epilogue, he extends his analysis to the new “public” realm of social media, questioning how public culture has fared since the digital revolution.

    This methodology revealed distinct cyclical patterns that were used to provide the foundation for his forecasting. The wonderful advances in science add to the mix, but are tools to use, not answers that should automatically be accepted as we see with the climate agenda. The lesson in weather, in history, in anything, is that the foundation you stand on today is built from yesterday to reach for tomorrow. The book examines the clash between that philosophy and one that minimizes lessons of the past, or ignores them, and uses climate and weather to simply further an agenda that has very little to do with either. An uncurious media is a willing accomplice in advancing the missive to the population, The Climate Chronicles reveals that clash in an effort to get the reader to search beyond what they are told. As such its a must read for those seeking not an agenda driven answer, but the right answer, wherever it may lead them. Bastardi's goal is not to get you to blindly accept what he says, but to dig in and examine for yourself. The book shows, given the implications of not doing so, more is at stake than just tomorrows weather.

    As scholar and cultural critic Tricia Rose argues, hip hop, in fact, has become one of the primary ways we talk about race in the United States. But hip hop is in crisis. For years, the most commercially successful hip hop has become increasingly saturated with caricatures of black gangstas, thugs, pimps, and hos. This both represents and feeds a problem in black American culture. Or does it? In The Hip-Hop Wars, Rose explores the most crucial issues underlying the polarized claims on each side of the debate: Does hip hop cause violence, or merely reflect a violent ghetto culture? Is hip hop sexist, or are its detractors simply anti-sex? Does the portrayal of black culture in hip hop undermine black advancement? A potent exploration of a divisive and important subject, The Hip Hop Wars concludes with a call for the regalvanization of the progressive and creative heart of hip hop. What Rose calls for is not a sanitized vision of the form, but one that more accurately reflects a much richer space of culture, politics, anger, and yes, sex, than the current ubiquitous images in sound and video currently provide.