Future Politics

Age of Discovery explores a world on the brink of a new Renaissance and asks: how do we share more widely the benefits of unprecedented progress? How do we endure the inevitable tumult generated by accelerating change? How do we each thrive through this tangled, uncertain time? From gains in health, education, wealth and technology to crises of conflict, disease and mass migration, the similarities between today's world and that of the 15th century are both striking and prophetic: we have been here before.

Weisman visits an extraordinary range of the world's cultures, religions, nationalities, tribes, and political systems to learn what in their beliefs, histories, liturgies, or current circumstances might suggest that sometimes it's in their own best interest to limit their growth.

Revolting Indolence makes a case for laziness as an aesthetic-political strategy for countering the oppressive logics of cisheteronormative racial capitalism. Focusing on ways in which queer and trans Latinx people demonstrate the unwillingness of their participation in "productivist" ethics and allied respectability politics, Marcos Gonsalez argues that slacking off, lounging, daydreaming, and partying are liberatory practices.

Do you worry that you've lost patience for anything longer than a tweet? If so, you're not alone. Digital-age pundits warn that as our appetite for books dwindles, so too do the virtues in which printed, bound objects once trained us: the willpower to focus on a sustained argument, the curiosity to look beyond the day's news, the willingness to be alone. The shelves of the world's great libraries, though, tell a more complicated story. Examining the wear and tear on the books that they contain, English professor Leah Price finds scant evidence that a golden age of reading ever existed.

Let's take stock of young America. Compared to previous generations, American youth have more schooling (college enrollments have never been higher); more money ($100 a week in disposable income); more leisure time (five hours a day); and more news and information (Internet, The Daily Show, RSS feeds). What do they do with all that time and money? They download, upload, IM, post, chat, and network. (Nine of their top ten sites are for social networking.) They watch television and play video games (2 to 4 hours per day).

What can the United States do to help realize its dream of a peaceful, democratic Middle East? Stephen Kinzer offers a surprising answer in this paradigm-shifting book. Two countries in the region, he argues, are America's logical partners in the 21st century: Turkey and Iran.

Great Britain? is a much-needed antidote to the pervading sense that Britain is going backwards rather than forwards. It is both a clear-eyed and rigorous diagnosis of the problems facing our country – a unique toxicity of huge inequality and stagnant economic growth – and a hopeful case for reclaiming a different future: by building an investment nation of good work, resilient communities and secure homes, a society in which both burdens and prosperity are shared.

Drawing on disparate philosophies and science behind electronic beat-making, lyricism, dance, memory, myth, and cosmology in the African and African Disaporic traditions, this book seeks to demonstrate relationships between rhythm, space, and ways of being as an articulation of futures and alternate realities made present.

The long-awaited audio version of the seminal book by legendary space pioneer, Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill, credited with inspiring the likes of Jeff Bezos, Peter Diamandis, and Dylan Taylor.

The promise of green jobs and a clean energy future has roused the masses. But as Robert Bryce makes clear in this provocative book, that vision needs a major re-vision. We cannotand will notquit using carbon-based fuels at any time in the near future for a simple reason: they provide the horsepower that we crave. The hard reality is that oil, coal, and natural gas are here to stay.

The Theft of a Decade is a contrarian, revelatory analysis of how one generation pulled the rug out from under another and the myriad consequences that has set in store for all of us. The millennial generation was the unfortunate victim of several generations of economic theories that made life harder for them than it was for their grandparents. Then came the crash of 2008, and the boomer generation's reaction to it was brutal: politicians and policymakers made deliberate decisions that favored the interests of the boomer generation over their heirs.

In the face of unprecedented global change, New York Times best-selling author Alec Ross proposes a new social contract to restore the balance of power between government, citizens, and business.

Partly a memoir and partly a recent history of medicine, the definitive account of Michael Milken’s lifetime work to accelerate medicine's evolution from a dark past to a bright future.

Future Imperfect describes and discusses technological revolutions that might happen over the next few decades, their implications, and how to deal with them. Topics range from encryption and surveillance through biotechnology and nanotechnology to life extension, mind drugs, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. One theme of the book is that the future is radically uncertain.

What’s coming next for today’s workforce, and the companies behind them? For those eager and willing to adapt, the possibilities are nearly endless, says author Gerard Szatvanyi. Recent advances in technology have led to new trends, and this global transformation holds tremendous potential. Nearly every industry will be impacted, and organizations that set the right vision could benefit from breaking into new markets and creating specialized niches.

Abolition for the People brings together 30 essays representing a diversity of voices - political prisoners, grassroots organizers, scholars, and relatives of those killed by the anti-Black terrorism of policing and prisons. This collection presents listeners with a moral choice: “Will you continue to be actively complicit in the perpetuation of these systems,” Kaepernick asks in his introduction, “or will you take action to dismantle them for the benefit of a just future?”

In Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils, the award-winning author David Farrier explores the traces we will leave for the very distant future. Modern civilization has created objects and landscapes with the potential to endure through deep time, whether it is plastic polluting the oceans and nuclear waste sealed within the earth or the 30 million miles of roads spanning the planet.

The American public knows the stories of Secret Service heroism, but they don't know about the hidden legacy of problems that have plagued the agency ever since its creation. Gary Byrne says that decades of catastrophic public failures, near misses, and bureaucratic and cultural rot threaten to erode this critical organization from the inside out. Today, as it works to protect President Trump, the Secret Service stands at a crossroads, and the time needed to choose the right course is running out.

The Supreme Court has issued a decision, but that doesn't end the debate. Now that the Supreme Court has ruled, Americans face momentous debates about the nature of marriage and religious liberty. Because the Court has redefined marriage in all 50 states, we have to energetically protect our freedom to live according to conscience and faith as we work to rebuild a strong marriage culture.

The years since the Great Crisis of 2008 have seen slow growth, high unemployment, falling home values, chronic deficits, a deepening disaster in Europe - and a stale argument between two false solutions, “austerity” on one side and “stimulus” on the other. Both sides and practically all analyses of the crisis so far take for granted that the economic growth from the early 1950s until 2000 - interrupted only by the troubled 1970s - represented a normal performance.