Social Change

Merci Suarez knew that sixth grade would be different, but she had no idea just how different. For starters, Merci has never been like the other kids at her private school in Florida, because she and her older brother, Roli, are scholarship students. They don’t have a big house or a fancy boat, and they have to do extra community service to make up for their free tuition.

It is not your imagination: water crises are more frequent. Our twentieth-century systems for providing the water that grows food, sustains cities, and supports healthy ecosystems are failing to meet the demands of growing population and the challenges brought on by climate change. But the grim news reports—of empty reservoirs, withering crops, failing ecosystems—need not be cause for despair, argues award-winning author David Sedlak.

Even as climate change dominates the headlines, many of us still think about it in the future tense—we imagine that as global warming worsens over the coming decades, millions of people will scatter around the world, fleeing famine and rising seas. What we often don’t realize is that the consequences of climate change are already visible, right here in the United States. In communities across the country, climate disasters are pushing thousands of people away from their homes.

In The Environmentalist’s Dilemma, award-winning journalist Arno Kopecky zeroes in on the core predicament of our times: The planet may be dying, but humanity’s doing better than ever. To acknowledge both sides of this paradox is to enter a realm of difficult decisions: Should we take down the government or try to change it from the inside? Is it okay to compare climate change to Hitler? Is hope naive or indispensable? How do you tackle collective delusion? Should we still have kids? And can we take them to Disneyland?

The first two editions of Finnish Lessons described how a small Nordic nation built a school system that provided access to a world-class education for all of its young people. Now available in 30 languages, this Grawemeyer Award-winning book continues to influence education policies and school practices around the globe. In this third edition, Pasi Sahlberg updates the story of how Finland sustains its exemplary educational performance, including how it responds to turbulent changes at home and throughout the world.

Artist, poet, and performer Jezz Chung (they/them) focuses on cultural change through personal transformation. In This Way to Change, Jezz shares contemporary poetry, accessible prose, and healing practices from different therapeutic modalities to explore subjects like healing your inner child, nourishing friendships, decolonizing your thinking, deconstructing binaries, and intentional community-making.

A riveting audiobook about the dramatic changes that will transform the world as we know it. Americans are anxious about the future - the world's and their own. Rosenberg explains the enormous political, economic, and spiritual changes that are underway in the world's most important countries. He answers why these changes are happening, what they mean, and provides insights from exclusive interviews with world leaders.

When your work is inextricable from your identity, your community, and your own liberation, you need a unique praxis of care to sustain it—and for mission-driven activists, organizers, and changemakers working under oppressive systems, making space to center vital needs like rest, self-care, and healthy boundaries isn’t as simple as clocking out. Practicing Liberation reorients collective justice work toward a model that transforms the effects of injustice, harm, and oppressive systems into resilience, joy, and community care.

The different ways that social change happens, from unleashing to nudging to social cascades. How does social change happen? When do social movements take off? Sexual harassment was once something that women had to endure; now a movement has risen up against it. White nationalist sentiments, on the other hand, were largely kept out of mainstream discourse; now there is no shortage of media outlets for them. In this book, with the help of behavioral economics, psychology and other fields, Cass Sunstein casts a bright new light on how change happens.

On November 8, 2018, the people of Paradise, California, awoke to a mottled gray sky and gusty winds. Soon the Camp Fire was upon them, gobbling an acre a second. Less than two hours after the fire ignited, the town was engulfed in flames, the residents trapped in their homes and cars. By the next morning, eighty-five people were dead.

People who are trying to solve tough economic, social, or environmental problems often find themselves frustratingly stuck. They cannot solve their problems in their current context; the larger system within which they are operating is too unstable or unfair or unsustainable. They cannot transform this system on their own or by working only with their friends or colleagues; the system is too complex to be grasped or shifted by any one person or organization or sector.

Getting heard is a tricky business: It’s what you say and how you show up, filtered through your audience’s assumptions and biases—and maybe even your own. For women, people of color, immigrants, and queer folks, there’s often a dissonance between how you speak and how we collectively think powerful people should speak: like the wealthy white men who’ve historically been in charge. But, fortunately, the sound of power is changing.

Invisible to Invaluable is a celebration of what midlife women do, who we are and what we are capable of. It's a rallying cry for us to change the world for the better. With personal stories, exciting research and insights from a cast of inspirational women, Jane Evans and Carol Russell's manifesto blows open the ageism that's sidelined midlife women at work and in society, and sets out an empowering vision for a world where we can unlock our full potential.

As a leader of the Black Lives Matter movement, Shaun King has become one of the most recognizable and powerful voices on the front lines of civil rights in our time. In Make Change, King offers an inspiring look at the moments that have shaped his life and considers the ways social movements can grow and evolve in this hyper-connected era. He shares stories from his efforts leading the Raise the Age campaign and his work fighting police brutality, while providing a road map for how to stay sane, safe, and motivated even in the worst of political climates.

In their runaway best seller Game Change, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann captured the full drama of Barack Obama’s improbable, dazzling victory over the Clintons, John McCain, and Sarah Palin. With the same masterly reporting, unparalleled access, and narrative skill, Double Down picks up the story in the Oval Office, where the president is beset by crises both inherited and unforeseen - facing defiance from his political foes, disenchantment from the voters, disdain from the nation’s powerful money machers, and dysfunction within the West Wing.

While most programs on public speaking focus on a polished presentation and overcoming fear, Larsen's holistic blend of spirit and logic goes far beyond the standard format, making Transformational Speaking a must listen for even the most seasoned speechmakers. With her uniquely inspirational approach, Larsen reaches out to those who want to make a genuine difference in our world by changing minds through changing hearts.

Renowned investor and climate champion Tom Steyer has been on the forefront of the climate war for well over a decade, leveraging his investment expertise, business knowledge, and community-organizing skills to support sustainable climate solutions. In this accessible book, he explains how capitalism is an effective tool for scaling climate progress, offers his candid take on fossil fuel enablers, and explains why immediate action on the climate front will be an investment in our economy and our key to a healthy and viable future.

In Burn It Down, veteran reporter Maureen Ryan does just that. She draws on decades of experience to connect the dots and illuminate the deeper forces sustaining Hollywood’s corrosive culture. Fresh reporting sheds light on problematic situations at companies like Lucasfilm and shows like Lost, Saturday Night Live, The Goldbergs, Sleepy Hollow, Curb Your Enthusiasm and more.

What is anger? Who is allowed to be angry? How can we manage our anger? How can we use it? It might seem like a day doesn’t go by without some troubling explosion of anger, whether we’re shouting at the kids, or the TV, or the driver ahead who’s slowing us down. In this audiobook, the first of its kind, Dr. Ryan Martin draws on 20 years plus of research, as well as his own childhood experience of an angry parent, to take an all-round view on this often-challenging emotion.

There is one human mentioned in the Quran more than any other: Moses. Why is it that the Jewish prophet dominates the Islamic scripture? Because he is the role model for Muhammad, Islam's own prophet. Because Islam, just like Christianity, is deeply intertwined with Judaism-although surprisingly little attention has been given to this fascinating connection between the two religions. Author and journalist Mustafa Akyol takes listeners on a theological and historical walk through that much-neglected side of the Abrahamic triangle: the Judeo-Islamic tradition.