Book picks similar to
The Critical Mass in Collective Action by Gerald Marwell
interesting-syllabi-books
non-dutch
science
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Walk With The Wind: The Endless Circle
Tom Savage - 2015
Experience the incredible exploits of this young elk as he grows to become a great leader of his kind. His life is one of challenge and near tragedy as he struggles to survive the often violent life that is nature. Under the guidance of great bulls and mysterious spirit guides, this brave young bull grows to understand the never-ending circle of life and the oneness that he and all living things share. Enter the brutally honest world that is nature, and walk the journey of this courageous young bull as by his grandeur he brings all four-legged ones to a great oneness with their most feared enemy, man. You will laugh and cry as this young elk grows to become that which you an I hope someday to be.
The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World
Jeremy Rifkin - 2011
The price of gas and food are climbing, unemployment remains high, the housing market has tanked, consumer and government debt is soaring, and the recovery is slowing. Facing the prospect of a second collapse of the global economy, humanity is desperate for a sustainable economic game plan to take us into the future.Here, Jeremy Rifkin explores how Internet technology and renewable energy are merging to create a powerful "Third Industrial Revolution." He asks us to imagine hundreds of millions of people producing their own green energy in their homes, offices, and factories, and sharing it with each other in an "energy internet," just like we now create and share information online.Rifkin describes how the five-pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution will create thousands of businesses, millions of jobs, and usher in a fundamental reordering of human relationships, from hierarchical to lateral power, that will impact the way we conduct commerce, govern society, educate our children, and engage in civic life.Rifkin's vision is already gaining traction in the international community. The European Union Parliament has issued a formal declaration calling for its implementation, and other nations in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, are quickly preparing their own initiatives for transitioning into the new economic paradigm.The Third Industrial Revolution is an insider's account of the next great economic era, including a look into the personalities and players -- heads of state, global CEOs, social entrepreneurs, and NGOs -- who are pioneering its implementation around the world.
Queuing for Beginners: The Story of Daily Life From Breakfast to Bedtime
Joe Moran - 2007
We spend our days catching buses and trains, tapping away at computers, shopping, queuing, lying on sofas... But we know almost nothing about these activities. Exploring the history of these subjects as they come up during a typical day, starting with breakfast and ending with bedtime, Joe Moran shows that they conceal all kinds of hidden histories and meanings. By looking closely at the normally unobserved, he tells a story about social and cultural change in Britain and the Western world, in particular since the Second World War. And along the way connections become apparent between what seem unrelated phenomena - pubs and the weather forecast, or sandwiches and commuting, or smoking and gossip.Drawing on his academic research on everyday life, but writing with wit and lucidity for a popular audience, Joe Moran shows that we know less about ourselves than we think...
The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge
Peter L. Berger - 1966
In it, Berger and Luckmann reformulate the task of the sociological subdicipline that, since Max Scheler, has been known as the sociology of knowledge.
The Reason Revolution: Atheism, Secular Humanism, and the Collapse of Religion
Dan Dana - 2014
It focuses squarely on the inherent irrationality of religion, and reveals its utter irreconcilability with science. Offering several "reconciliation theories" to people of faith, it forces every reader to make a choice.Contents The Reason Revolution in historical context Questioning belief Reasons for skepticism Secular humanism as an alternative worldview Political implications of atheism The collapse of religion Hopeful predictions Reconciliation theories Comments by clergyCall to action
Conformity: The Power of Social Influences
Cass R. Sunstein - 2019
Sunstein reveals the appeal and the danger of conformityWe live in an era of tribalism, polarization, and intense social division--separating people along lines of religion, political conviction, race, ethnicity, and sometimes gender. How did this happen? In Conformity, Cass R. Sunstein argues that the key to making sense of living in this fractured world lies in understanding the idea of conformity--what it is and how it works--as well as the countervailing force of dissent.An understanding of conformity sheds new light on many issues confronting us today: the role of social media, the rise of fake news, the growth of authoritarianism, the success of Donald Trump, the functions of free speech, debates over immigration and the Supreme Court, and much more.Lacking information of our own and seeking the good opinion of others, we often follow the crowd, but Sunstein shows that when individuals suppress their own instincts about what is true and what is right, it can lead to significant social harm. While dissenters tend to be seen as selfish individualists, dissent is actually an important means of correcting the natural human tendency toward conformity and has enormous social benefits in reducing extremism, encouraging critical thinking, and protecting freedom itself.Sunstein concludes that while much of the time it is in the individual's interest to follow the crowd, it is in the social interest for individuals to say and do what they think is best. A well-functioning democracy depends on it.
The Little Known
Janice Daugharty - 2010
A segregated town. A stolen fortune. A coming-of-age story full of hope and forgiveness When twelve-year-old Knot Crews, an African American boy growing up in the segregated south Georgia town of Statenville, discovers a bag of bank-robbed cash in an alley, he is nearly overcome with happiness and terror. All that money-a hundred thousand dollars-could be the ticket to everything he's ever wanted, but he knows he can't spend it, not only because his conscience won't let him, but for fear of being caught. He decides to do what he can for his needy neighbors, both black and white, and begins mailing them hundred dollar bills anonymously, but it irks Knot daily to discover that most of them squander it and don't use the money as he had intended, and that the money doesn't change their lives for the better. It turns out that the weight of Knot's world can't be lifted by cold hard cash alone. Set during the turbulent 1960's, The Little Known is a coming-of-age story full of hope and forgive "
The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men
Christina Hoff Sommers - 2000
The author who aroused a storm of debate with Who Stole Feminism? takes sexual politics to a new level in a book that demonstrates how feminist ideals and politically correct practices are putting American boys at risk.
Dead Men Tell Tales: The Memoir of a Police Surgeon
B. Umadathan - 2021
Umadathan.Popularly known as the 'Sherlock Holmes of Kerala', Dr Umadathan revisits some of his strangest and most interesting cases, like the Chacko murder masterminded by Sukumara Kurup; the sensational Polakkulam case; and the baffling Panoor Soman case.Chilling, shocking and, at times, downright bizarre, Dead Men Tell Tales is unputdownable.
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Max Weber - 1904
In this brilliant study (his best-known and most controversial), he opposes the Marxist concept of dialectical materialism and its view that change takes place through "the struggle of opposites." Instead, he relates the rise of a capitalist economy to the Puritan determination to work out anxiety over salvation or damnation by performing good deeds — an effort that ultimately discouraged belief in predestination and encouraged capitalism. Weber's classic study has long been required reading in college and advanced high school social studies classrooms.
How May I Help You?: An Immigrant's Journey from MBA to Minimum Wage
Deepak Singh - 2017
Armed with an MBA from India, Singh can get only a minimum-wage job in an electronics store. Every day he confronts unfamiliar American mores, from strange idioms to deeply entrenched racism. Telling stories through the unique lens of an initially credulous outsider who is “fresh off the plane,” Singh learns about the struggles of his colleagues: Ron, a middle-aged African-American man trying to keep his life intact despite health concerns; Jackie, a young African-American woman diligently attending school after work; and Cindy, whose matter-of-fact attitude helps Deepak adapt to his job and his new life. How May I Help You? is an incisive take on life in the United States and a reminder that the stories of low-wage employees can bring candor and humanity to debates about work, race, and immigration.
The Twilight of American Culture
Morris Berman - 2000
Whether examining the corruption at the heart of modern politics, the "Rambification" of popular entertainment, or the collapse of our school systems, Morris Berman suspects that there is little we can do as a society to arrest the onset of corporate Mass Mind culture. Citing writers as diverse as de Toqueville and DeLillo, he cogently argues that cultural preservation is a matter of individual conscience, and discusses how classical learning might triumph over political correctness with the rise of a "a new monastic individual"—a person who, much like the medieval monk, is willing to retreat from conventional society in order to preserve its literary and historical treasures. "Brilliantly observant, deeply thoughtful ....lucidly argued."—Christian Science Monitor
W. E. B. Du Bois's Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America
Whitney Battle-Baptiste - 2018
E. B. Du Bois offered a view into the lives of black Americans, conveying a literal and figurative representation of "the color line." From advances in education to the lingering effects of slavery, these prophetic infographics--beautiful in design and powerful in content--make visible a wide spectrum of black experience.W. E. B. Du Bois's Data Portraits collects the complete set of graphics in full color for the first time, making their insights and innovations available to a contemporary imagination. As Maria Popova wrote, these data portraits shaped how "Du Bois himself thought about sociology, informing the ideas with which he set the world ablaze three years later in The Souls of Black Folk."
We Have Never Been Modern
Bruno Latour - 1991
But if we were to let go of this fond conviction, Bruno Latour asks, what would the world look like? His book, an anthropology of science, shows us how much of modernity is actually a matter of faith.What does it mean to be modern? What difference does the scientific method make? The difference, Latour explains, is in our careful distinctions between nature and society, between human and thing, distinctions that our benighted ancestors, in their world of alchemy, astrology, and phrenology, never made. But alongside this purifying practice that defines modernity, there exists another seemingly contrary one: the construction of systems that mix politics, science, technology, and nature. The ozone debate is such a hybrid, in Latour’s analysis, as are global warming, deforestation, even the idea of black holes. As these hybrids proliferate, the prospect of keeping nature and culture in their separate mental chambers becomes overwhelming—and rather than try, Latour suggests, we should rethink our distinctions, rethink the definition and constitution of modernity itself. His book offers a new explanation of science that finally recognizes the connections between nature and culture—and so, between our culture and others, past and present.Nothing short of a reworking of our mental landscape, We Have Never Been Modern blurs the boundaries among science, the humanities, and the social sciences to enhance understanding on all sides. A summation of the work of one of the most influential and provocative interpreters of science, it aims at saving what is good and valuable in modernity and replacing the rest with a broader, fairer, and finer sense of possibility.
The Second Intelligent Species: How Humans Will Become as Irrelevant as Cockroaches
Marshall Brain - 2015
We currently see no evidence of any kind indicating that extraterrestrials exist outside of our solar system. But at this moment, millions of engineers, scientists, corporations, universities and entrepreneurs are racing to create the second intelligent species right here on planet earth. And we can see the second intelligent species coming from all directions in the form of self-driving cars, automated call centers, chess-playing and Jeopardy-playing computers that beat all human players, airport kiosks, restaurant tablet systems, etc. The frightening thing is that these robots will soon be eliminating human jobs in startling numbers. The first wave of unemployed workers is likely to be a million truck drivers who are replaced by self-driving trucks. Pilots will be eliminated soon as well. Then, as new computer vision systems come online, we will see tens of millions of workers in retail stores, fast food restaurants and construction sites replaced by robots. Unless we take steps now to change the economy, we will soon have tens of millions of workers who are unemployed and seeking welfare because they will have no other choice. Marshall Brain's new book "The Second Intelligent Species: How Humans Will Become as Irrelevant as Cockroaches" explores how the future will unfold as the second intelligent species emerges. The book answers questions like: - How will new computer vision systems affect the job market? - How many people will become unemployed by the second intelligent species? - What will happen to millions of newly unemployed workers? - How can modern society and modern economies cope with run-away unemployment caused by robots? - What will happen when the first sentient, conscious computer appears? - What moral and ethical principles will guide the second intelligent species? - Why do we see no extraterrestrials in our universe? "The Second Intelligent Species" offers a unique and fascinating look at the future of the human race, and the choices we will need to make to avoid massive unemployment and poverty worldwide as intelligent machines start eliminating millions of jobs.