Book picks similar to
The Facts of Life: Science and the Abortion Controversy by Harold J. Morowitz
politics
krause-list
med
science-technology
Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz - 2017
This staggering amount of information—unprecedented in history—can tell us a great deal about who we are—the fears, desires, and behaviors that drive us, and the conscious and unconscious decisions we make. From the profound to the mundane, we can gain astonishing knowledge about the human psyche that less than twenty years ago, seemed unfathomable.Everybody Lies offers fascinating, surprising, and sometimes laugh-out-loud insights into everything from economics to ethics to sports to race to sex, gender and more, all drawn from the world of big data. What percentage of white voters didn’t vote for Barack Obama because he’s black? Does where you go to school effect how successful you are in life? Do parents secretly favor boy children over girls? Do violent films affect the crime rate? Can you beat the stock market? How regularly do we lie about our sex lives and who’s more self-conscious about sex, men or women?Investigating these questions and a host of others, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz offers revelations that can help us understand ourselves and our lives better. Drawing on studies and experiments on how we really live and think, he demonstrates in fascinating and often funny ways the extent to which all the world is indeed a lab. With conclusions ranging from strange-but-true to thought-provoking to disturbing, he explores the power of this digital truth serum and its deeper potential—revealing biases deeply embedded within us, information we can use to change our culture, and the questions we’re afraid to ask that might be essential to our health—both emotional and physical. All of us are touched by big data everyday, and its influence is multiplying. Everybody Lies challenges us to think differently about how we see it and the world.
In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History
Mitch Landrieu - 2018
A passionate, personal, urgent book from the man who sparked a national debate."There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence for it." When Mitch Landrieu addressed the people of New Orleans in May 2017 about his decision to take down four Confederate monuments, including the statue of Robert E. Lee, he struck a nerve nationally, and his speech has now been heard or seen by millions across the country. In his first book, Mayor Landrieu discusses his personal journey on race as well as the path he took to making the decision to remove the monuments, tackles the broader history of slavery, race and institutional inequities that still bedevil America, and traces his personal relationship to this history. His father, as state senator and mayor, was a huge force in the integration of New Orleans in the 1960s and 19070s. Landrieu grew up with a progressive education in one of the nation's most racially divided cities, but even he had to relearn Southern history as it really happened.Equal parts unblinking memoir, history, and prescription for finally confronting America's most painful legacy, In the Shadow of Statues will contribute strongly to the national conversation about race in the age of Donald Trump, at a time when racism is resurgent with seemingly tacit approval from the highest levels of government and when too many Americans have a misplaced nostalgia for a time and place that never existed.
Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy
Christopher L. Hayes - 2012
In the wake of the Fail Decade, Americans have historically low levels of trust in their institutions; the social contract between ordinary citizens and elites lies in tatters.How did we get here? With Twilight of the Elites, Christopher Hayes offers a radically novel answer. Since the 1960s, as the meritocracy elevated a more diverse group of men and women into power, they learned to embrace the accelerating inequality that had placed them near the very top. Their ascension heightened social distance and spawned a new American elite--one more prone to failure and corruption than any that came before it.Mixing deft political analysis, timely social commentary, and deep historical understanding, Twilight of the Elites describes how the society we have come to inhabit – utterly forgiving at the top and relentlessly punitive at the bottom – produces leaders who are out of touch with the people they have been trusted to govern. Hayes argues that the public's failure to trust the federal government, corporate America, and the media has led to a crisis of authority that threatens to engulf not just our politics but our day-to-day lives.Upending well-worn ideological and partisan categories, Hayes entirely reorients our perspective on our times. Twilight of the Elites is the defining work of social criticism for the post-bailout age.
The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness
Steven Levy - 2006
A technology columnist for Newsweek goes inside Apple Computer and into the heads of millions of music lovers to show how CEO Steve Jobs and his team of engineers, programmers, and designers created a product that has become a business and cultural blockbuster.
The Rants, Raves and Crazy Days of an ER Nurse: Funny, True Life Stories of Medical Humor from the Emergency Room
Dani Jacobs - 2015
Welcome to the ER. This book is not about life and death struggles. This book is the polar opposite. It is about the absolute, over the top insanity that I have witnessed during my time in the ER. This book is the untold, unseen, and unshared rants and raves of an ER nurse, who has been slowly being driven mad by his patients. I want you, the reader to step into my scrubs, see this bizarre world through my eyes, and understand that once you stop laughing in the ER, it's time to quit. This book is the stupid stories that I still don’t believe. It’s the codes gone crazy. It’s the “I can’t believe you said that.” It’s a testament to everything an ER nurse puts up with on a day in and day out basis that most people don’t know exists. It makes Scrubs, E.R., House, and all the other medical shows look like fairy tales. As an ER nurse, I want to let the world know that when we pull that curtain and leave the room, we are laughing because let’s face it, it’s funny. Please from this moment forward stop and close this book if you think you are about to read about nursing at it’s finest. This is not Florence Nightingale’s kind of nursing; this is the grit, spit, vomit and s#!t that comes with the job I love/hate so much.
Seriously Curious: The Facts and Figures that Turn Our World Upside Down
Tom Standage - 2018
Subjects both topical and timeless, profound and peculiar, are explained with The Economist's trademark wit and verve. The Economist Explains and its online sister, the Daily Chart, are the two most popular blogs on The Economist's website. Together, these online giants provide answers to the kinds of questions, quirky and serious, that may be puzzling anyone interested in the world around them. Want to know why exorcisms are on the rise in France or how porn consumption changed during a false alarm missile strike warning in Hawaii? We have the answers They are sometimes surprising, often intriguing, and always enlightening.
Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America
Matt Taibbi - 2010
The stunning rise, fall, and rescue of Wall Street in the bubble-and-bailout era was the coming-out party for the network of looters who sit at the nexus of American political and economic power. The grifter class—made up of the largest players in the financial industry and the politicians who do their bidding—has been growing in power for a generation, transferring wealth upward through increasingly complex financial mechanisms and political maneuvers. The crisis was only one terrifying manifestation of how they’ve hijacked America’s political and economic life.Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi here unravels the whole fiendish story, digging beyond the headlines to get into the deeper roots and wider implications of the rise of the grifters. He traces the movement’s origins to the cult of Ayn Rand and her most influential—and possibly weirdest—acolyte, Alan Greenspan, and offers fresh reporting on the backroom deals that decided the winners and losers in the government bailouts. He uncovers the hidden commodities bubble that transferred billions of dollars to Wall Street while creating food shortages around the world, and he shows how finance dominates politics, from the story of investment bankers auctioning off America’s infrastructure to an inside account of the high-stakes battle for health-care reform—a battle the true reformers lost. Finally, he tells the story of Goldman Sachs, the “vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.” Taibbi has combined deep sources, trailblazing reportage, and provocative analysis to create the most lucid, emotionally galvanizing, and scathingly funny account yet written of the ongoing political and financial crisis in America. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the labyrinthine inner workings of politics and finance in this country, and the profound consequences for us all.
Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population
Matthew Connelly - 2008
The author argues that though this most ambitious of social engineering projects was promoted as a way to lift people out of poverty and even to save the planet, it became a means to plan other people's families.
The Glass Cage: How Our Computers Are Changing Us
Nicholas Carr - 2014
Even as they bring ease to our lives, these programs are stealing something essential from us.Drawing on psychological and neurological studies that underscore how tightly people’s happiness and satisfaction are tied to performing hard work in the real world, Carr reveals something we already suspect: shifting our attention to computer screens can leave us disengaged and discontented.From nineteenth-century textile mills to the cockpits of modern jets, from the frozen hunting grounds of Inuit tribes to the sterile landscapes of GPS maps, The Glass Cage explores the impact of automation from a deeply human perspective, examining the personal as well as the economic consequences of our growing dependence on computers.With a characteristic blend of history and philosophy, poetry and science, Carr takes us on a journey from the work and early theory of Adam Smith and Alfred North Whitehead to the latest research into human attention, memory, and happiness, culminating in a moving meditation on how we can use technology to expand the human experience.
Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe
Niall Ferguson - 2021
Immensely readable' Douglas Alexander, Financial TimesA compelling history of catastrophes and their consequences, from 'the most brilliant British historian of his generation' (The Times)Disasters are inherently hard to predict. But when catastrophe strikes, we ought to be better prepared than the Romans were when Vesuvius erupted or medieval Italians when the Black Death struck. We have science on our side, after all. Yet the responses of many developed countries to a new pathogen from China were badly bungled. Why?While populist rulers certainly performed poorly in the face of the pandemic, Niall Ferguson argues that more profound pathologies were at work - pathologies already visible in our responses to earlier disasters.Drawing from multiple disciplines, including economics and network science, Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe offers not just a history but a general theory of disaster. As Ferguson shows, governments must learn to become less bureaucratic if we are to avoid the impending doom of irreversible decline.'Insightful, productively provocative and downright brilliant' New York Times'Stimulating, thought-provoking ... Readers will find much to relish' Martin Bentham, Evening Standard
On Giants' Shoulders: Great Scientists and Their Discoveries From Archimedes to DNA
Melvyn Bragg - 1998
Exploring their impact and legacy with leading scientists of today including Stephen Jay Gould, Oliver Sacks, Lewis Wolpert, Susan Greenfield, Roger Penrose and Richard Dawkins, Melvyn Bragg illuminates the core issues of science past and present, and conveys the excitement and importance of the scientific quest.
Jews Don't Count
David Baddiel - 2021
People fighting the good fight against homophobia, disablism, transphobia and, particularly, racism. People, possibly, like you.It is the comedian and writer David Baddiel’s contention that one type of racism has been left out of this fight. In his unique combination of reasoning, polemic, personal experience and jokes, Baddiel argues that those who think of themselves as on the right side of history have often ignored the history of anti-Semitism. He outlines why and how, in a time of intensely heightened awareness of minorities, Jews don’t count as a real minority.
The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It . . . Every Time
Maria Konnikova - 2015
How do they do it? Why are they successful? And what keeps us falling for it, over and over again? These are the questions that journalist and psychologist Maria Konnikova tackles in her mesmerizing new book. From multimillion-dollar Ponzi schemes to small-time frauds, Konnikova pulls together a selection of fascinating stories to demonstrate what all cons share in common, drawing on scientific, dramatic, and psychological perspectives. Insightful and gripping, the book brings readers into the world of the con, examining the relationship between artist and victim. The Confidence Game asks not only why we believe con artists, but also examines the very act of believing and how our sense of truth can be manipulated by those around us.
More from Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources—and What Happens Next
Andrew McAfee - 2019
Throughout history, the only way for humanity to grow was by degrading the Earth: chopping down forests, fouling the air and water, and endlessly digging out resources. Since the first Earth Day in 1970, the reigning argument has been that taking better care of the planet means radically changing course: reducing our consumption, tightening our belts, learning to share and reuse, restraining growth. Is that argument correct? Absolutely not. In More from Less, McAfee argues that to solve our ecological problems we don’t need to make radical changes. Instead, we need to do more of what we’re already doing: growing technologically sophisticated market-based economies around the world. How can he possibly make this claim? Because of the evidence. America—a large, high-tech country that accounts for about 25% of the global economy—is now generally using less of most resources year after year, even as its economy and population continue to grow. What’s more, the US is polluting the air and water less, emitting fewer greenhouse gases, and replenishing endangered animal populations. And, as McAfee shows, America is not alone. Other countries are also transforming themselves in fundamental ways. What has made this turnabout possible? One thing, primarily: the collaboration between technology and capitalism, although good governance and public awareness have also been critical. McAfee does warn of issues that haven’t been solved, like global warming, overfishing, and communities left behind as capitalism and tech progress race forward. But overall, More from Less is a revelatory, paradigm-shifting account of how we’ve stumbled into an unexpectedly better balance with nature—one that holds out the promise of more abundant and greener centuries ahead.
The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - 2021
Anthony Fauci is a hero. He is anything but. As director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Dr. Anthony Fauci dispenses $6.1 billion in annual taxpayer-provided funding for scientific research, allowing him to dictate the subject, content, and outcome of scientific health research across the globe. Fauci uses the financial clout at his disposal to wield extraordinary influence over hospitals, universities, journals, and thousands of influential doctors and scientists—whose careers and institutions he has the power to ruin, advance, or reward. During more than a year of painstaking and meticulous research, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unearthed a shocking story that obliterates media spin on Dr. Fauci . . . and that will alarm every American—Democrat or Republican—who cares about democracy, our Constitution, and the future of our children’s health. The Real Anthony Fauci reveals how “America’s Doctor” launched his career during the early AIDS crisis by partnering with pharmaceutical companies to sabotage safe and effective off-patent therapeutic treatments for AIDS. Fauci orchestrated fraudulent studies, and then pressured US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulators into approving a deadly chemotherapy treatment he had good reason to know was worthless against AIDS. Fauci repeatedly violated federal laws to allow his Pharma partners to use impoverished and dark-skinned children as lab rats in deadly experiments with toxic AIDS and cancer chemotherapies. In early 2000, Fauci shook hands with Bill Gates in the library of Gates’ $147 million Seattle mansion, cementing a partnership that would aim to control an increasingly profitable $60 billion global vaccine enterprise with unlimited growth potential. Through funding leverage and carefully cultivated personal relationships with heads of state and leading media and social media institutions, the Pharma-Fauci-Gates alliance exercises dominion over global health policy. The Real Anthony Fauci details how Fauci, Gates, and their cohorts use their control of media outlets, scientific journals, key government and quasi-governmental agencies, global intelligence agencies, and influential scientists and physicians to flood the public with fearful propaganda about COVID-19 virulence and pathogenesis, and to muzzle debate and ruthlessly censor dissent.