Becoming a Marihuana User


Howard S. Becker - 1953
    Sour Diesel. Wax, shatter, and vapes. Marijuana has come a long way since its seedy days in the back parking lots of our culture. So has Howard S. Becker, the eminent sociologist, jazz musician, expert on “deviant” culture, and founding NORML board member. When he published Becoming a Marihuana User more than sixty years ago, hardly anyone paid attention—because most people didn’t smoke pot. Decades of Cheech and Chong films, Grateful Dead shows, and Cannabis Cups later, and it’s clear—marijuana isn’t just an established commodity, it’s an entire culture. And that’s just the thing—Becker totally called it: pot has everything to do with culture. It’s not a blight on culture, but a culture itself—in fact, you’ll see in this book the first use of the term “users,” rather than “abusers” or “addicts.” Come along on this short little study—now a famous timestamp in weed studies—and you will be astonished at how relevant it is to us today.             Becker doesn’t judge, but neither does he holler for legalization, tell you how to grow it in a hollowed-out dresser, or anything else like that for which there are plenty of other books you can buy. Instead, he looks at marijuana with a clear sociological lens—as a substance that some people enjoy, and that some others have decided none of us should. From there he asks: so how do people decide to get high, and what kind of experience do they have as a result of being part of the marijuana world? What he discovers will bother some, especially those who proselytize the irrefutably stunning effects of the latest strain: chemistry isn’t everything—the important thing about pot is how we interact with it. We learn to be high. We learn to like it. And from there, we teach others, passing the pipe in a circle that begins to resemble a bona fide community, defined by shared norms, values, and definitions just like any other community.             All throughout this book, you’ll see the intimate moments when this transformation takes place. You’ll see people doing it for the first time and those with considerable experience. You’ll see the early signs of the truths that have come to define the marijuana experience: that you probably won’t get high at first, that you have to hold the hit in, and that there are other people here who are going to smoke that, too.

American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment


Shane Bauer - 2018
    An award-winning investigative journalist, he used his real name; In American Prison, Bauer weaves a much deeper reckoning with his experiences together with a thoroughly researched history of for-profit prisons in America from their origins in the decades before the Civil War. For, as he soon realized, we can't understand the cruelty of our current system and its place in the larger story of mass incarceration without understanding where it came from. Private prisons became entrenched in the South as part of a systemic effort to keep the African-American labor force in place in the aftermath of slavery, and the echoes of these shameful origins are with us still.

Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In


Bernie Sanders - 2016
    In the book, Sanders shares experiences from the campaign trail and outlines his ideas for continuing a political revolution to fight for a progressive economic, environmental, racial and social justice agenda that creates jobs, raises wages, protects the environment and provides health care for all.

Defending Identity


Natan Sharansky - 2008
    Better to have hostile identities framed by democracy than democrats indifferent to identity.In a vigorous, insightful challenge to the left and right alike, Natan Sharansky, as he has proved repeatedly, is at the leading edge of the issues that frame our times.

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.

Railways and The Raj: How the Age of Steam Transformed India


Christian Wolmar - 2017
    He is their wisest, most detailed historian' Observer India joined the railway age late: the first line was not completed until 1853 but, by 1929, 41,000 miles of track served the country. However, the creation of this vast network was not intended to modernize India for the sake of its people but rather was a means for the colonial power to govern the huge country under its control, serving its British economic and military interests. Despite the dubious intentions behind the construction of the network, the Indian people quickly took to the railways, as the trains allowed them to travel easily for the first time. The Indian Railways network remains one of the largest in the world, serving over 25 million passengers each day.In this expertly told history, Christian Wolmar reveals the full story of India's railways, from its very beginnings to the present day, and examines the chequered role they have played in Indian history and the creation of today's modern state.

All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation


Rebecca Traister - 2016
    It was the year the proportion of American women who were married dropped below fifty percent; and the median age of first marriages, which had remained between twenty and twenty-two years old for nearly a century (1890–1980), had risen dramatically to twenty-seven. But over the course of her vast research and more than a hundred interviews with academics and social scientists and prominent single women, Traister discovered a startling truth: The phenomenon of the single woman in America is not a new one. And historically, when women were given options beyond early heterosexual marriage, the results were massive social change—temperance, abolition, secondary education, and more. Today, only twenty percent of Americans are married by age twenty-nine, compared to nearly sixty percent in 1960.

Tribal: College Football and the Secret Heart of America


Diane Roberts - 2015
    Same as many big time collegiate sports programs. Seems no matter how the team transgresses off the field, if they excel on the field, everyone forgives them. Writer, professor and conflicted Seminole Diane Roberts looks at the problems plaguing her campus in Tallahassee, examining them within the context of college football itself and its significance in American life, and explores how the game shapes our culture.

Color, Communism and Common Sense


Manning Johnson - 2013
    

Dependency and Development in Latin America


Fernando Henrique Cardoso - 1970
    Instead, they found that they had exchanged old forms of political and economic dependence for a new kind of dependency on the international capitalism of multinational corporations. In the much-acclaimed original Spanish edition (Dependencia y Desarrollo en América Latina) and now in the expanded and revised English version, Cardoso and Faletto offer a sophisticated analysis of the economic development of Latin America.The economic dependency of Latin America stems not merely from the domination of the world market over internal national and “enclave” economies, but also from the much more complex interact ion of economic drives, political structures, social movements, and historically conditioned alliances. While heeding the unique histories of individual nations, the authors discern four general stages in Latin America's economic development: the early outward expansion of newly independent nations, the political emergence of the middle sector, the formation of internal markets in response to population growth, and the new dependence on international markets. In a postscript for this edition, Cardoso and Faletto examine the political, social and economic changes of the past ten years in light of their original hypotheses.

Norse Greenland: A Controlled Experiment in Collapse--A Selection from Collapse (Penguin Tracks)


Jared Diamond - 2012
    One island, two unique societies (Norse and Inuit). Only one of these societies would succeed--the other would fail. But how? With his trademark accessibility and comprehensiveness, Diamond documents how environmental damage, climate change, loss of friendly contacts and the rise of hostile ones, and the unique political, economic, and social settings of prehistoric Greenland combine to demonstrate exactly why and how societies choose to fail or succeed. Jared Diamond's latest book, "The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?," is available from Viking.

Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients


Ben Goldacre - 2012
    We like to imagine that it’s based on evidence and the results of fair tests. In reality, those tests are often profoundly flawed. We like to imagine that doctors are familiar with the research literature surrounding a drug, when in reality much of the research is hidden from them by drug companies. We like to imagine that doctors are impartially educated, when in reality much of their education is funded by industry. We like to imagine that regulators let only effective drugs onto the market, when in reality they approve hopeless drugs, with data on side effects casually withheld from doctors and patients.All these problems have been protected from public scrutiny because they’re too complex to capture in a sound bite. But Dr. Ben Goldacre shows that the true scale of this murderous disaster fully reveals itself only when the details are untangled. He believes we should all be able to understand precisely how data manipulation works and how research misconduct on a global scale affects us. In his own words, “the tricks and distortions documented in these pages are beautiful, intricate, and fascinating in their details.” With Goldacre’s characteristic flair and a forensic attention to detail, Bad Pharma reveals a shockingly broken system and calls for something to be done. This is the pharmaceutical industry as it has never been seen before.

The Boys' Club


Michael Warner - 2021
    The Boys' Club is the must-read inside story behind the power and politics of AFL, Australia's biggest sport.Revealing how the fledgling state administrative body evolved into the Australian Football League and its meteoric rise to become one of the richest and most powerful organisations in the land, award-winning investigative journalist Mick Warner delivers a fascinating insight into key figures and their networks.Tracking the rise of the game and the AFL figureheads, The Boys' Club lifts the lid on the scandals, secrets and deal making that have shaped the Australian game.

On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane


Emily Guendelsberger - 2019
    There, the vending machines were stocked with painkillers, and the staff turnover was dizzying. In the new year, she traveled to North Carolina to work at a call center, a place where even bathroom breaks were timed to the second. And finally, Guendelsberger was hired at a San Francisco McDonald's, narrowly escaping revenge-seeking customers who pelted her with condiments.Across three jobs, and in three different parts of the country, Guendelsberger directly took part in the revolution changing the U.S. workplace. On the Clock takes us behind the scenes of the fastest-growing segment of the American workforce to understand the future of work in America--and its present. Until robots pack boxes, resolve billing issues, and make fast food, human beings supervised by AI will continue to get the job done. Guendelsberger shows us how workers went from being the most expensive element of production to the cheapest--and how low-wage jobs have been remade to serve the ideals of efficiency, at the cost of humanity.On the Clock explores the lengths that half of Americans will go to to make a living, offering not only a better understanding of the modern workplace, but also surprising solutions to make work more humane.

Bhagavad Gita for Dummies


Vishnuvarthanan Moorthy - 2013
    The Human (Arjuna) had lot of Questions to Supreme God (Krishna) and he got answers from God for all those. Most of the time to understand those complex words, people giving explanations and interpretation with someone’s life. We are also very comfortable to listen them and read them, but the moment we are back to our normal life, we forget everything. This book is written for you! Considering a common man life like yours! And how to live our life as per the Supreme God’s wordings! What it offers to you:>> All the 18 Chapters of Gita in Plain English>> Interpretations with our Common life examples>> You have funny and logical questions to god; it’s there inside this book>> Guides you to self evaluate, are you ready for it?>> How far you are from your God? Check hereRecommended:>> For the one, who wants to practice and experience Bhagavad Gita in Life>> For the one, who wants to understand Gita in its real essence>> For the one, who wants to understand Hinduism in true meaningYou too have these Views, then Read this Book:>> There can’t be multiple gods in one world>> If my birth is given by god, then why am i not part of God>> Science is a language to explain his creations and not a mode to reach>> Belief and honesty can take me to my Supreme Power>>Why don’t new Living beings born as per Darwin>>How to see others grow in life>>The Richest and Poorest all have Equanimity with happiness and sadnessAnd So on.•Order Bhagavad Gita here for practicing and experiencing it in your life