Social Change

Not long ago, Naomi Klein had just such an experience—she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were similar enough to her own that many people confused her for the other. For a vertiginous moment, she lost her bearings. And then she got interested, in a reality that seems to be warping and doubling like a digital hall of mirrors. It’s happening in our politics as New Age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers find common cause with fire-breathing far right propagandists (all in the name of protecting “the children”).

Merchants of Doubt has been praised—and attacked—around the world, for reasons easy to understand. This book tells, with “brutal clarity” (Huffington Post), the disquieting story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades.

Hundreds of books have been written about the financial crisis that engulfed the world after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. But what if the bigger financial crisis is ahead of us, not behind us?As John Mauldin and Jonathan Tepper deftly illustrate in this controversial audio book, the crisis was more than a half-century in the making. The Great Financial Crisis, however, was merely Act I.

As this book shows, human beings are wired to care, and we can become more empathic with practice. Empathy increases dopamine, reduces stress, boosts self-esteem, heightens the immune system, and enriches our relationships. Empathy also improves business key performance indicators. This means that leveraging empathy on purpose can lead to better health, happier and more productive workplaces, and a more meaningful life. That's why empathy is our superpower.

Whether you speak from the pulpit, podium, or the front of a classroom, you don't need much more than blank stares and faraway looks to tell you you’re not connecting. Take heart before your audience takes leave! You can convey your message in the powerful, life-changing way it deserves to be told. An insightful, entertaining parable that's an excellent guide for any speaker, Communicating for a Change takes a simple approach to delivering effectively.

Marshall Ganz is one of the world’s leading authorities on democratic leadership, organizing, and action and this book is the culmination of his decades of teaching, research, and practice. In People, Power, Change Ganz offers students, educators, and organizers access to the craft he has learned, adapted, and shared over the last half-century of creating effective collective action. It is not a blueprint, but a road map.

In 2004 Kentaro Toyama, an award-winning computer scientist, moved to India to start a new research group for Microsoft. Its mission: to explore novel technological solutions to the world's persistent social problems. But after a decade of designing technologies for humanitarian causes, Toyama concluded that no technology, however dazzling, could cause social change on its own.

If “change” is the mantra of our moment in history, Social Change 2.0 may be poised to become its bible. Drawing on his three decades in the trenches of large-scale societal transformation, David Gershon—described by the United Nations as a “graceful revolutionary”—offers an original and comprehensive roadmap to bring about fundamental change in our world.

Status signaling isn’t just the province of the immature or insecure but a fundamental human need to secure social standing. It drives our behavior, forms our tastes, determines what we buy, and ultimately shapes who we are. It’s what’s behind “cool” and what drives fashion, music, food, sports, slang, travel, hairstyles, and dog breeds—and even the outsize influence of unpopular things with the “right” audience.

All of us constantly broadcast information to others, even when we don't say a word. Sales professionals broadcast to potential clients in a way that wins new business. Managers broadcast to their teams about projects. Colleagues broadcast to one another about available resources. The messages we choose to broadcast shape others' beliefs in the potential for success and their ability to create positive change.

An "epoch-defining book" (The Guardian) and "this generation’s Silent Spring" (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it - the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress. The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action.

From the vantage point of his eighth decade, Klein revisits the wisdom he relished in his youth with this collection of philosophical gems, adding new ones that strike chords with him at the end of his life. From Epicurus to Emerson and Camus to the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr - whose words provided the title of this audiobook - each pithy extract is annotated with Klein's inimitable charm and insights.

From Notre Dame professor and author of Why Liberalism Failed comes a provocative call for replacing the tyranny of the self-serving liberal elite with conservative leaders aligned with the interests of the working class.

A paradigm-shifting book in the vein of Sapiens that brings a crucial Indigenous perspective to historical and cultural issues of history, education, money, power, and sustainability - and offers a new template for living. As an indigenous person, Tyson Yunkaporta looks at global systems from a unique perspective, one tied to the natural and spiritual world. In considering how contemporary life diverges from the pattern of creation, he raises important questions. How does this affect us? How can we do things differently?

Social justice work, we often assume, is raised voices and raised fists. But what does it look like for those of us who don't feel comfortable battling in the trenches? Sustaining justice work can be particularly challenging for the sensitive, and it requires a deep level of self-awareness. In Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul, writer Dorcas Cheng-Tozun offers six possible pathways for sensitive types.

This book is about mutual aid: why it is so important, what it looks like, and how to do it. It provides a grassroots theory of mutual aid, describes how mutual aid is a crucial part of powerful movements for social justice, and offers concrete tools for organizing, such as how to work in groups, how to foster a collective decision-making process, how to prevent and address conflict, and how to deal with burnout.

Temperatures are rising all over the world, leading to wildfires, droughts, animal extinctions, and ferocious storms - climate change is real. But how did we get to this state, and what can we do next? What if we could work to protect the planet, while also taking action to make life fairer and more equal for the people who live on it? We can - if we're willing to change everything.

In A Change of Affection, Becket Cook shares his testimony as someone who was transformed by the power of the Gospel. His dramatic conversion to Christianity and subsequent seminary training inform his views on homosexuality - personally, biblically, theologically, and culturally - and his compelling audiobook guides listeners through this complex and controversial issue while revealing how to lovingly engage with those who disagree.

Traditionally, an entrepreneur develops a detailed plan, finds money to fund it, and then pursues it to its conclusion. But conditions can change drastically at any point - you can end up locked into a process based on now-obsolete assumptions. The lean startup is all about agility and flexibility. Its mantra is "build, measure, learn": create small, experimental initiatives, get real-world feedback on them quickly, and use that data to identify what works and discard what doesn't. And then test some more.

This book exposes the truth that the climate change hoax is a political movement aimed at eliminating capitalism by spreading alarming disinformation that in order to "save the Earth" from global warming, we must reduce carbon dioxide emissions by switching from hydrocarbon fuels to renewable energies. The Truth About Energy, Global Warming, and Climate Change: Exposing Climate Lies in an Age of Disinformation reveals a science-based understanding of Earth's climate and temperature that Green New Deal proponents are trying to hide.