The concept is as old as the Devil's Advocate, the eleventh-century Vatican official charged with discrediting candidates for sainthood. Today, red teams are used widely in both the public and the private sector by those seeking to better understand the interests, intentions, and capabilities of institutional rivals. In the right circumstances, red teams can yield impressive results, giving businesses an edge over their competition, poking holes in vital intelligence estimates, and troubleshooting dangerous military missions long before boots are on the ground. But not all red teams are created equal; indeed, some cause more damage than they prevent. Drawing on a fascinating range of case studies, Red Team shows not only how to create and empower red teams, but also what to do with the information they produce. In this vivid, deeply-informed account, national security expert Micah Zenko provides the definitive book on this important strategy -- full of vital insights for decision makers of all kinds.

    How do these individuals make the split-second decisions that save lives? Most studies of decision making, based on artificial tasks assigned in laboratory settings, view people as biased and unskilled. Gary Klein is one of the developers of the naturalistic decision making approach, which views people as inherently skilled and experienced. It documents human strengths and capabilities that so far have been downplayed or ignored.Since 1985, Klein has conducted fieldwork to find out how people tackle challenges in difficult, nonroutine situations. Sources of Power is based on observations of humans acting under such real-life constraints as time pressure, high stakes, personal responsibility, and shifting conditions. The professionals studied include firefighters, critical care nurses, pilots, nuclear power plant operators, battle planners, and chess masters. Each chapter builds on key incidents and examples to make the description of the methodology and phenomena more vivid. In addition to providing information that can be used by professionals in management, psychology, engineering, and other fields, the book presents an overview of the research approach of naturalistic decision making and expands our knowledge of the strengths people bring to difficult tasks.

    Burge details a comprehensive picture of an increasingly significant group--Americans who say they have no religious affiliation.The growth of the nones in American society has been dramatic. In 1972, just 5 percent of Americans claimed "no religion" on the General Social Survey. In 2018, that number rose to 23.7 percent, making the nones as numerous as both evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics. Every indication is that the nones will be the largest religious group in the United States in the next decade.Burge illustrates his precise but accessible descriptions with charts and graphs drawn from over a dozen carefully curated datasets, some tracking changes in American religion over a long period of time, others large enough to allow a statistical deep dive on subgroups such as atheists and agnostics. Burge also draws on data that tracks how individuals move in and out of religion over time, helping readers understand what type of people become nones and what factors lead an individual to return to religion.The Nones gives readers a nuanced, accurate, and meaningful picture of the growing number of Americans who say they have no religious affiliation. Burge explains how this rise happened, who the nones are, and what they mean for the future of American religion.

    When he was arrested, he claimed to act on behalf of the Knights Templar, a militant network sworn to protect Europe from Islam. But Norwegian police could find no evidence such a group existed. Was Breivik a genuine terrorist, driven by far-right ideology, or a deluded madman? Over the next year, this question would draw in police specialists, lawyers, psychiatrists, and experts in the far-right, culminating in a trial that ceased to be simply about guilt or innocence. Instead, the court would confront a more troubling question: how could such brutal acts become possible for a young man brought up in some of the most privileged parts of Oslo? In "Mind of a Madman", journalist Richard Orange draws on his own court reporting, three court psychiatric reports, police interviews, and transcripts from the trial to give the most complete account yet of a shocked society's attempt to understand the killer.

    Mirroring his theory, Minsky boldly casts The Society of Mind as an intellectual puzzle whose pieces are assembled along the way. Each chapter -- on a self-contained page -- corresponds to a piece in the puzzle. As the pages turn, a unified theory of the mind emerges, like a mosaic. Ingenious, amusing, and easy to read, The Society of Mind is an adventure in imagination.

    “Nothing,” he says. I look him in the eye. Nothing? He nods. I ask him about his chronic skin infections, his diabetes. He tears up: “I eat hot chips and fried dim sims and drink three bottles of Coke every afternoon. The truth is I’m addicted to eating. I’m addicted.” He punches his thigh.In Fat City, Karen Hitchcock unpicks the idea of obesity as a disease. In a riveting blend of story and analysis, she explores chemistry, psychology and the impulse to excess to explain the West’s growing obesity epidemic.

    But what if the problem is not that we are all synchronized to the same motions or moments, but rather dispersed into countless different emotional micro-experiences? What if the effect of so-called social media is to calibrate the interactive spectacle so that we never fully feel the same way as other potential allies at the same time? While one person is fuming about economic injustice or climate change denial, another is giggling at a cute cat video. And, two hours late, vice versa. The nebulous indignation which constitutes the very fuel of true social change can be redirected safely around the network, avoiding any dangerous surges of radical activity. In this short and provocative book, Dominic Pettman examines the deliberate deployment of what he calls 'hypermodulation,' as a key strategy encoded into the contemporary media environment. His account challenges the various narratives that portray social media as a sinister space of synchronized attention, in which we are busily “clicking ourselves to death.” This critical reflection on the unprecedented power of the Internet requires us to rethink the potential for infinite distraction that our latest technologies now allow.

    By describing the horrifying realities of future war, the authors offer innovative strategies for implementing future peace.