Social Science Power

Militaries with state-of-the-art information technology sometimes bog down in confusing conflicts. To understand why, it is important to understand the micro-foundations of military power in the information age - and this is exactly what Jon R. Lindsay's Information Technology and Military Power gives us. As Lindsay shows, digital systems now mediate almost every effort to gather, store, display, analyze, and communicate information in military organizations. He highlights how personnel now struggle with their own information systems, as much as with the enemy.

No one understands these problems (and people) better than Krakauer. He has spent years getting to know the most influential players in the industry and this fascinating book is what he’s learned. But most importantly, Krakauer equips listeners with the crucial tools to sniff out when the press is lying or misleading the people of America in the future—so together, we can bypass them altogether.

Though the Constitution was ratified in 1788, its impact on our lives is as recent as today's news. Informed by the latest scholarship and exploring the major themes that have shaped American constitutional history: federalism, the balance of powers, property, representation, equality, rights, and security, this book places constitutional history within the context of American political and social history. As our nation's circumstances have changed, so has our Constitution.

This book is an exhilaration search-and-destroy mission on the higher slopes of our political culture. By turns comic and deeply serious, it is the most acute assessment so far of the Kennedy phenomenon.

In Bomb Power, Garry Wills reveals how the atomic bomb transformed our nation down to its deepest constitutional roots - by dramatically increasing the power of the modern presidency and redefining the government as a national security state---in ways still felt today. A masterful reckoning from one of America's preeminent historians, Bomb Power draws a direct line from the Manhattan Project to the usurpations of George W. Bush.

You were born with massive reservoirs of strength, confidence, and creativity. But oppressive structures that keep you “in your place” - that is, silent, weak, and complacent - have cut you off you from your natural gifts and pitted women against one another. Following the timeless wisdom of the heroine's journey, Becoming Heroines invites you to recover your inner power and unleash it as a force for change in the world.

An innovation expert illuminates why your power to make a difference is no longer bound by your status. In The Power of Onlyness, Nilofer Merchant, one of the world's top-ranked business thinkers, reveals that we have now reached an unprecedented moment of opportunity for your ideas to "make a dent" on the world.

Weak, corrupt, and politically unstable, the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are dismissed as isolated and irrelevant to the outside world. But are they? This hard-hitting book argues that Central Asia is in reality a globalization leader with more extensive involvement in economics, politics, and security dynamics beyond its borders than any other world region. Yet Central Asia's international activities are mostly hidden from view, with disturbing implications for world security.

In an age of unprecedented prosperity and opportunity, there are still many who feel that something is missing in their lives: "I've achieved success and am on the fast track in my career, I'm respected by my peers, I have a great family and all the toys and perks that I could possibly want. Why don't I feel a stronger sense of fulfillment? Why does life feel so empty?" In What Matters Most, best-selling author and speaker Hyrum W. Smith outlines compelling reasons for this dissatisfaction.

Exploring the use of privilege and power by people who identify as White or Black to address the perennial challenge of our time, this book challenges listeners to do the deep introspective work to examine privilege and harness power to fight back against white supremacy. As people from different backgrounds seek to discover ways to eradicate racism while understanding their own biases, When White Supremacy Knocks, Fight Back provides practical guidance that everyone can use to make their voices and actions create the change that they want to see.

Witchcraft has made a comeback in popular culture, especially among feminists. A growing subculture of BIPOC witches, led by Afro-Caribbean immigrants, Indigenous Americans, and other witches of color, is reclaiming their ancestral traditions and contributing their voices to the feminist witchcraft of today.

American freedom is typically associated with the fight of the oppressed for a better world. But for centuries, whenever the federal government intervened on behalf of nonwhite people, many white Americans fought back in the name of freedom—their freedom to dominate others. In Freedom’s Dominion, historian Jefferson Cowie traces this complex saga by focusing on a quintessentially American place: Barbour County, Alabama, the ancestral home of political firebrand George Wallace.

In the autumn of 1992, two young women students at Melbourne University went to the police claiming that they had been indecently assaulted at a party. The man they accused was the head of their co-ed residential college. The controversial book that Helen Garner wrote about the resulting Ormond College sexual harassment case caused a social media storm. Prominent feminists were outraged at Garner's perceived support for the man involved, but many saw her approach a necessary and much welcome nuance towards the power dynamic between men and women.

This groundbreaking feminist classic dismantles the way we view rape in our culture and replaces it with a genuine understanding and respect for female sexual pleasure.

The AOC Generation examines the resurgent young left - including groups like Justice Democrats, the Democratic Socialists of America and Brand New Congress - and documents how and why they got active and energized in political organizing, the success and limitations of their approaches - and through their stories, it tells the history and the future of a generation.

An acclaimed chronicler of the Civil Rights Movement, Peniel Joseph presents this sweeping overview of a key component of the struggle for racial equality: the Black Power movement. This is the story of the men and women who sacrificed so much to begin a more vocal and radical push for social change in the 1960s and 1970s.

The downfall of Bo Xilai in China was more than a darkly thrilling mystery. It revealed a cataclysmic internal power struggle between Communist Party factions, one that reached all the way to China’s new president Xi Jinping. The scandalous story of the corruption of the Bo Xilai family - the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood; Bo’s secret lovers; the secret maneuverings of Bo’s supporters; the hasty trial and sentencing of Gu Kailai, Bo’s wife - was just the first rumble of a seismic power struggle that continues to rock the very foundation of China’s all-powerful Communist Party.

The United States of America has been the most powerful country in the world for more than 70 years, but recently the US National Security Strategy declared that the return of great power competition with Russia and China is the greatest threat to US national security. Further, many analysts predict that America's autocratic rivals will have at least some success in disrupting - and, in the longer term, possibly even displacing - US global leadership. Brilliant and engagingly written, The Return of Great Power Rivalry argues that this conventional wisdom is wrong.

At the close of World War I, Hitler was an impoverished young artist who scrapped by through selling souvenir paintings, but within a few years, his powerful oratory brought him to the forefront of the Nazi party in Munich and helped make the party much more popular. A smattering of followers in the hundreds quickly became a party of thousands. At the head of it all was a man whose fiery orations denounced Jews, communists, and other "traitors" for bringing upon the German nation the Treaty of Versailles, which had led to hyperinflation and a wrecked economy.

Over the past 30 years, while the United States has turned either a blind or dismissive eye, Iran has emerged as a nation every bit as capable of altering America's destiny as traditional superpowers Russia and China. Indeed, one of this audiobook's central arguments is that, in some ways, Iran's grip on America's future is even tighter.