Social High

Norco '80 tells the story of how five heavily armed young men - led by an apocalyptic born-again Christian - attempted a bank robbery that turned into one of the most violent criminal events in US history, forever changing the face of American law enforcement. Part action thriller and part courtroom drama, Norco '80 transports the listener back to the Southern California of the 1970s, an era of predatory evangelical gurus, doomsday predictions, megachurches, and soaring crime rates, with the threat of nuclear obliteration looming over it all.

Contrary to what is commonly believed, authoritarian leaders who agree to hold elections are generally able to remain in power longer than autocrats who refuse to allow the populace to vote. In this engaging and provocative audiobook, authors Nic Cheeseman and Brian Klaas expose the limitations of national elections as a means of promoting democratization and reveal the six essential strategies that dictators use to undermine the electoral process in order to guarantee victory for themselves.

The first comprehensive history of Hollywood's high-flying career women during the studio era, Nobody's Girl Friday covers the impact of the executives, producers, editors, writers, agents, designers, directors, and actresses who shaped Hollywood film production and style, led their unions, climbed to the top during the war, and fought the blacklist. Based on a decade of archival research, author J. E. Smyth uncovers a formidable generation working within the American film industry and brings their voices back into the history of Hollywood.

We're Doomed, Now What? addresses the crisis that is our time through a series of brilliant, moving, and original essays on climate change, war, literature, and loss from one of the most provocative and iconoclastic minds of his generation.

Between 1848 and 1899, more gold was removed from the earth than had been mined in the 3,000 preceding years, bringing untold wealth to individuals and nations. But friction between Chinese and white settlers on the goldfields of California, Australia, and South Africa catalyzed a global battle over "the Chinese Question": Would the United States and the British Empire outlaw Chinese immigration?

Politics in the European Union is an accessible and comprehensive introduction to the EU. Unique in its in-depth coverage of the history of the EU, the book explores a wide range of topics, including institutions and policies, making it a complete guide to understanding the complex nature of the EU.

In his 1992 best-selling book The End of History and the Last Man, American political scientist Francis Fukuyama argued that the dominance of liberal democracy marked the end of humanity's political and ideological development. Thirty years later, with populism on the rise and the number of liberal democracies decreasing worldwide, Fukuyama revisits his classic thesis. A series of in-depth interviews between Fukuyama and editor Mathilde Fasting, After the End of History offers a wide-ranging analysis of liberal democracy today.

The greatest challenges facing humankind, according to Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, are poverty and tyranny, both of which hold people back. Arguing for a return to true liberal values, this engaging and accessible book develops, defends, and demonstrates how embracing the ideas first espoused by 18th-century philosophers like Locke, Smith, Voltaire, and Wollstonecraft is good for everyone. In McCloskey's view, liberalism leads to equality, but equality does not necessarily lead to liberalism - and the fixation of the left on inequality is counterproductive.

Isaac Fitzgerald has lived many lives. He's been an altar boy, a bartender, a fat kid, a smuggler, a biker, a prince of New England. But before all that, he was a bomb that exploded his parents' lives—or so he was told. In Dirtbag, Massachusetts, Fitzgerald, with warmth and humor, recounts his ongoing search for forgiveness, a more far-reaching vision of masculinity, and a more expansive definition of family and self.

The time has come to acknowledge that America is weathering the worst mass border migration event in the nation's history. Millions of foreign nationals have overrun the southern border, starting on Inauguration Day in 2021, and millions more will cross over by the end of President Joe Biden's term in 2024. This event is historic by all measures, exceeding even the storied chronicles of Ellis Island, and portends the same permanent change for the nation. Unfortunately, a fog of a fierce partisan information war obscures that it is even happening.

In a fascinating account combining policy expertise with compelling on-the-ground reporting, Susan Crawford reveals how the giant corporations that control cable and Internet access in the United States use their tremendous lobbying power to tilt the playing field against competition, holding back the infrastructure improvements necessary for the country to move forward. And she reveals how cities and towns are fighting monopoly power to bring the next technological revolution to their communities.

In a Philadelphia high school, who doesn’t care about the prom? It’s pretty much the only good thing that happens there, and everyone plans to make the most of it - especially Ash’s best friend, Natalia, who’s the head of the committee and has prom stars in her eyes. Then the faculty advisor is busted for taking the prom money, and Ash finds herself roped into putting together a gala dance. But she has plenty of help - and in making the prom happen, Ash learns some surprising things about making her life happen, too.

More than half a century since Roswell, UFOs have been making headlines again. On December 17, 2017, the New York Times ran a front-page story about a Pentagon program called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. The article hinted, and its sources clearly said in subsequent interviews, that some of the ships in question couldn't be linked to any country. The implication was that they might be linked to other solar systems. The UFO community - those who had been thinking about, seeing, and analyzing UFOs for years - was surprisingly skeptical of the revelation.

For decades, Democratic politicians have frustrated progressives by tinkering around the margins of policy while shying away from truly ambitious change. What happened to bold political vision on the left, and what shrunk the very horizons of possibility? In Thinking like an Economist, Elizabeth Popp Berman tells the story of how a distinctive way of thinking-an "economic style of reasoning" - became dominant in Washington between the 1960s and the 1980s and how it continues to dramatically narrow debates over public policy today.

Nearly a third of students are directly involved in bullying by the time they graduate from high school. A range of strategies have been shown to improve peer interactions and reduce bullying behaviors. Yet many teachers struggle to detect bullying and to respond to it effectively. This book is a much-needed guide to evidence-based methods for prevention and intervention in K-12 classrooms.

Blending history and cutting-edge economic analysis, and writing in lively and jargon-free prose, Saez and Zucman dissect the deliberate choices (and sins of indecision) that have brought us to today: the gradual exemption of capital owners; the surge of a new tax avoidance industry; and the spiral of tax competition among nations. With clarity and concision, they explain how America turned away from the most progressive tax system in history to embrace policies that only serve to compound the wealth of a few.

Though you may not be able to see them with the naked eye, parasites inhabit our everyday lives. From headlice to bird droppings, litterboxes to unfiltered water, you have brushed up against the most common way of life on our planet. In this unique book, John Janovy Jr., one of the world's preeminent experts on parasites, reveals what can humans learn from the most reviled yet misunderstood animals on Earth: lice, tapeworms, flukes, and maggots that can eat a lizard from the inside, and how these lessons help us negotiate our own complicated world.

This thought-provoking anthology offers a close examination of the psychology behind the intricate narrative and compelling characters in author George R.R. Martin's best-selling work, A Song of Ice and Fire, and the popular HBO TV series based upon his books, Game of Thrones. In Martin's richly detailed world, deceit, manipulation, and greed rule the day, and almost everyone fights for power over the realm or simply over their own lives. How do love and hate, good and evil, need and greed, altruism and narcissism drive the very best and very worst human behaviors?

In her literary debut, internationally award-winning writer Courtney Zoffness considers what we inherit from generations past - biologically, culturally, spiritually - and what we pass on to our children.

After 1991, international organizations from the Red Cross to Greenpeace sought to help the victims, yet found themselves stymied by post-Soviet political circumstances they did not understand. International diplomats and scientists allied to the nuclear industry evaded or denied the fact of a wide-scale public health disaster caused by radiation exposure. Efforts to spin the story about Chernobyl were largely successful; the official death toll ranges between 31 and 54 people. In reality, radiation exposure from the disaster caused between 35,000 and 150,000 deaths in Ukraine alone.