Social Science Research

An introduction for everyone. In this rich, fascinating—surprisingly accessible—introduction, leading expert Eric Siegel reveals how predictive analytics (aka machine learning) works, and how it affects everyone every day. Rather than a "how to" for hands-on techies, the book serves lay listeners and experts alike by covering new case studies and the latest state-of-the-art techniques.

Merchants of Truth is the groundbreaking and gripping story of the precarious state of the news business told by one of our most eminent journalists. Jill Abramson follows four companies: The New York Times, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, and Vice Media over a decade of disruption and radical adjustment. The new digital reality nearly kills two venerable newspapers with an aging readership while creating two media behemoths with a ballooning and fickle audience of millennials.

Ben Judah is an acclaimed foreign correspondent, but here he turns his reporter's gaze on home, immersing himself in the hidden world of London's immigrants to reveal the city in the eyes of its beggars, bankers, coppers, gangsters, carers and witch-doctors. From the backrooms of its mosques, Tube tunnels and nightclubs to the frontlines of its streets, Judah has supped with oligarchs and spent nights sleeping rough, worked on building sites and talked business with prostitutes; he's heard stories of heartbreaking failure, but also witnessed extraordinary acts of compassion.

The idea that medicine is gender-neutral is a myth. This isn't inflammatory rhetoric; it's simply true. From the way pain is felt, to how heart attacks are diagnosed, to the very role society plays in the health of the body, the medical landscape in place today is one that was designed for, and by, men. This audiobook is about all the ways medicine is not gender-neutral, from research to treatment to diagnosis. Throughout history, flawed mindsets have paved the way for sub-par treatment, and the prevailing attitudes that exist today have had terrible repercussions for women.

How does the brain work? How different is a human brain from other creatures' brains? Is the human brain still evolving? In this fascinating book, Michael O'Shea provides a non-technical introduction to the main issues and findings in current brain research, and gives a sense of how neuroscience addresses questions about the relationship between the brain and the mind.

With each passing day the potential reach of a single false news story — and its ability to negatively impact all of us — grows in both size and scope. Although politicians, activists, and ordinary citizens regularly complain about deceptive or biased news reports, they tend to define fake news as anything with which they happen to disagree, thus compounding the problem even further.

Starting with the publication of their seminal bestseller, Future Shock, Alvin and Heidi Toffler have given millions of listeners new ways to think about personal life in today’s high-speed world with its constantly changing, seemingly random impacts on our businesses, governments, families and daily lives. Now, writing with the same rare grasp and clarity that made their earlier books classics, the Tofflers turn their attention to the revolution in wealth now sweeping the planet. And once again, they provide a penetrating, coherent way to make sense of the seemingly senseless.

Robert P. Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), challenges us to grasp the profound political and cultural consequences of a new reality - that America is no longer a majority white Christian nation.

By one expert's prediction, within 20 years half of Americans will have body implants that tell retailers how they feel about specific products as they browse their local stores. The notion may be outlandish, but it reflects executives' drive to understand shoppers in the aisles with the same obsessive detail that they track us online. In fact, a hidden surveillance revolution is already taking place inside brick-and-mortar stores, where Americans still do most of their buying.

La capital del país es tan grande que puede albergar infinidad de historias ocultas en cada calle, en cada casa. Por ello, Héctor de Mauleón se ha dado a la tarea de capturar algunas de ellas, las más impactantes y entrañables, a través del poder de la crónica. El escritor y periodista sabe que la ciudad cambia, se transforma y corremos el riesgo de no reconocernos en ella.

Grant McCracken, an anthropologist who now trains some of the world's biggest companies and consulting firms, argues that the CCO would keep a finger on the pulse of contemporary cultural trends, from sneakers to slow food to preppies, while developing a systematic understanding of the deep waves of culture in America and the world. The CCOs professionalism would allow the corporation to see coming changes, even when they only exist as the weakest of signals.

In this widely acclaimed memoir ("Riveting, moving...a wonderful book" The New York Times Book Review), Katharine Graham tells her story—one that is extraordinary both for the events it encompasses and for the courage, candor, and dignity of its telling.

Twenty-seven-year-old Nell Stevens was determined to write a novel, but life kept getting in the way. Then came a game-changing opportunity: she won a fellowship that would let her spend three months, all expenses paid, anywhere in the world to research and write a book. Would she choose a glittering metropolis, a romantic village, an exotic paradise? Not exactly. Nell chose Bleaker Island, a snowy, windswept pile of rock in the Falklands. There, in a guesthouse where she would be the only guest, she could finally rid herself of distractions and write.

Exploring the initial stages of psychedelic study in Europe and America, Thomas Hatsis offers a full history of the psychedelic-fueled revolution in healing and consciousness expansion that blossomed in the 1950s - the first “golden age” of psychedelic research. Revealing LSD as a “wonder child” rather than Albert Hofmann’s infamous “problem child”, the author focuses on the extensive studies with LSD that took place in the ’50s.

“What happened to the America I thought I knew?” Brokaw writes. “Have we simply wandered off course, but only temporarily? Or have we allowed ourselves to be so divided that we’re easy prey for hijackers who could steer us onto a path to a crash landing? ... I do have some thoughts, original and inspired by others, for our journey into the heart of a new century.”

Our digestive system plays an unusual role in mind/body health in that unlike most of the body other than the brain and spinal cord, it contains the largest concentration of brain-like cells and neurotransmitters. The “trust your gut” concept is just as important as trusting your brain. This convenient, short-listen audiobook explores how the brain in your head and the brain in your gut can work together to improve your health.

“You don’t write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be rich”, writes Nelson Algren in his only longer work of nonfiction, adding: “A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery.” Nonconformity is about 20th-century America: “Never on the earth of man has he lived so tidily as here amidst such psychological disorder.” In Nonconformity, Algren identifies the essential nature of the writer’s relation to society....

From Derek Hunter - one of the most entertaining political writers today - comes an insightful, alarming look at how progressives have took over academia, pop culture, and journalism in order to declare everything liberal great, and everything great, liberal. Progressives love to attack conservatives as anti-science, wallowing in fake news, and culturally backwards. But who are the real denialists here? There are three institutions in American life run by gatekeepers that have stopped letting in anyone who questions their liberal script: academia, journalism, and pop culture.

A pause-resisting, existential romp through the life and times of the world’s most polarizing punctuation mark. Through her rollicking biography of the semicolon, Watson writes a guide to grammar that explains why we don’t need guides at all and refocuses our attention on the deepest, most primary value of language: true communication.

Long before the current preoccupation with "fake news", American newspapers routinely ran stories that were not quite, strictly speaking, true. Today, a firm boundary between fact and fakery is a hallmark of journalistic practice, yet for many readers and publishers across more than three centuries, this distinction has seemed slippery or even irrelevant.