Social Change

The Mobile Wave argues that the changes brought by mobile computing are so big and widespread that it’s impossible for us to see it all, even though we are all immersed in it. Saylor explains that the current generation of mobile smart phones and tablet computers has set the stage to become the universal computing platform for the world. In the hands of billions of people and accessible anywhere and anytime, mobile computers are poised to become an appendage of the human being and an essential tool for modern life.

A pioneer in the field of behavioral science delivers a groundbreaking work that shows how finding your purpose in life leads to better health and overall happiness. Your life is a boat. You need a rudder. But it doesn't matter how much wind is in your sails if you're not steering toward a harbor - an ultimate purpose in your life. While the greatest philosophers have pondered purpose for centuries, today it has been shown to have a concrete impact on our health.

Drought-hit regions bleeding those who for whom a rural life has become untenable. Coastlines diminishing year on year. Wildfires and hurricanes leaving widening swaths of destruction. The culprit, most of us accept, is climate change, but not enough of us are confronting one of its biggest, and most present, consequences: a total reshaping of the earth’s human geography. As Gaia Vince points out early in Nomad Century, global migration has doubled in the past decade, on track to see literal billions displaced in the coming decades.

It's easy to get discouraged by the headlines. It can often feel as if God has left the building, like we are on our own. We want to believe God's promises to us, and we search for signs of his continuing restoration of the world in which we live. Now, with passion and heart, two leading experts on Christianity and culture cut through the chaos and uncertainty to show listeners how God is powerfully active and intensely engaged in fulfilling his promise to restore all things unto himself.

Harvard Medical School has followed 824 subjects - men and women, some rich, some poor - from their teens to old age. Harvard's George Vaillant now uses these studies - the most complete ever done anywhere in the world - and the subjects' individual histories to illustrate the factors involved in reaching a happy, healthy old age. He explains precisely why some people turn out to be more resilient than others, the complicated effects of marriage and divorce, negative personality changes, and how to live a more fulfilling, satisfying and rewarding life in the later years.

Based on hundreds of interviews with the people who lived the story, Game Change is a reportorial tour de force that reads like a fast-paced novel. Character driven and dialogue rich, replete with extravagantly detailed scenes, this is the occasion-ally shocking, often hilarious, ultimately definitive account of the campaign of a lifetime.

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.

Are we deranged? The acclaimed Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh argues that future generations may well think so. How else to explain our imaginative failure in the face of global warming? In his first major book of nonfiction since In an Antique Land, Ghosh examines our inability - at the level of literature, history, and politics - to grasp the scale and violence of climate change.

How can we summon a moment of lift for human beings - and especially for women? Because, when you lift up women, you lift up humanity. For the last 20 years, Melinda Gates has been on a mission to find solutions for people with the most urgent needs, wherever they live. Throughout this journey, one thing has become increasingly clear to her: If you want to lift society up, you need to stop keeping women down.

In the 60,000 years since people began colonizing the continents, a recurring feature of human civilization has been mobility - the ever-constant search for resources and stability. Seismic global events - wars and genocides, revolutions and pandemics - have only accelerated the process. The map of humanity isn’t settled - not now, not ever.

"Regime change" did not begin with the administration of George W. Bush, but has been an integral part of U.S. foreign policy for more than one hundred years. Starting with the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 and continuing through the Spanish-American War and the Cold War and into our own time, the United States has not hesitated to overthrow governments that stood in the way of its political and economic goals.

In this revelatory, unnerving, and ultimately hopeful book, Bremmer details how domestic and international conflicts leave us unprepared for a trio of looming crises—global health emergencies, transformative climate change, and the AI revolution. Today, Americans cannot reach consensus on any significant political issue, and US and Chinese leaders behave as if they’re locked in a new Cold War. We are squandering opportunities to meet the challenges that will soon confront us all.

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.

Explaining power and privilege and the links between individual safety and community safety, Cristien Storm shows listeners how to set emotional boundaries that build vibrant social movements and a better world for all.

As we grapple with news stories about our country’s racial fault lines, our challenge is not just to learn about the past, but also to cope with the “belief grief” that unlearning requires. If you are on the emotional journey of reckoning with the past, such as the massacre of Black Americans in Tulsa, the killing of Native American children in compulsory “residential schools” designed to destroy their culture, and the incarceration of Japanese Americans, you are not alone.

Why is it so hard to change problem behavior - in our kids, our colleagues, and even ourselves? Conventional methods often backfire, creating a downward spiral of resentment and frustration, and a missed opportunity for growth. What if the thinking behind these old methods is wrong? What if people don’t misbehave because they want to, but because they lack the skills to do better? Or as renowned psychologist J. Stuart Ablon asks, what if changing problem behavior is a matter of skill, not will?

If you've felt alienated and alone in recent years, you're in good company. Whether it's a rift in your family, polarization at your workplace or just a sense that society isn't as connected as it once was, many of us feel painful chasms in our connections. Internationally-recognized curiosity expert and bridge builder Scott Shigeoka knows that there’s only one cure: Deep Curiosity.

We spend a shocking 43 percent of our day doing things without thinking about them. That means that almost half of our actions aren’t conscious choices, but the result of our non-conscious mind nudging our body to act along learned behaviors. How we respond to the people around us; the way we conduct ourselves in a meeting; what we buy; when and how we exercise, eat, and drink - a truly remarkable number of things we do every day, regardless of their complexity, operate outside of our awareness.

In 1994, an idealistic first-year teacher in Long Beach, California, named Erin Gruwell confronted a room of “unteachable, at-risk” students. She had intercepted a note with an ugly racial caricature and angrily declared that this was precisely the sort of thing that led to the Holocaust. She was met by uncomprehending looks - none of her students had heard of one of the defining moments of the 20th century. So she rebooted her entire curriculum, using treasured books such as Anne Frank’s diary as her guide to combat intolerance and misunderstanding.

We live in a world of stuff. We dispose of most of it in as little as six months after we receive it. The byproducts of our quest to consume are creating an environmental crisis. Aja Barber wants to change this - and you can, too. In Consumed, Barber calls for change within an industry that regularly overreaches with abandon, creating real imbalances in the environment and the lives of those who do the work - often in unsafe conditions for very low pay - and the billionaires who receive the most profit.