Social Society

When Özlem Cekic became the first Muslim MP in the Danish Parliament, her email inbox was inundated with hate mail and threats, and her gut reaction was to delete and ignore each abusive message. But eventually, she decided to take a risk. She started replying to each message and inviting the senders to meet and engage in dialogue over coffee. And with time, understanding, and patience, she began to make a difference, both in the lives of those who hated her before even meeting her, and in her own life.

Several years ago, ecologist Lauren E. Oakes set out from California for Alaska's old-growth forests to hunt for a dying tree: the yellow-cedar. With climate change as the culprit, the death of this species meant loss for many Alaskans. Oakes and her research team wanted to chronicle how plants and people could cope with their rapidly changing world. Amidst the standing dead, she discovered the resiliency of forgotten forests, flourishing again in the wake of destruction, and a diverse community of people who persevered to create new relationships with the emerging environment.

The Man Who Quit Money is an account of how one man learned to live, sanely and happily, without earning, receiving, or spending a single cent. Suelo doesn't pay taxes, or accept food stamps or welfare. He lives in caves in the Utah canyonlands, forages wild foods and gourmet discards. He no longer even carries an I.D. Yet he manages to amply fulfill not only the basic human needs - for shelter, food, and warmth - but, to an enviable degree, the universal desires for companionship, purpose, and spiritual engagement.

Global demand for power is doubling every two decades, but electricity remains one of the most difficult forms of energy to supply and do so reliably. Today, some three billion people live in places where per-capita electricity use is less than what's used by an average American refrigerator. How we close the colossal gap between the electricity rich and the electricity poor will determine our success in addressing issues like women's rights, inequality, and climate change.

In this pathbreaking book, New York Times best-selling author Cass Sunstein asks us to rethink freedom. He reveals that freedom of choice isn't nearly enough. To be free, we must also be able to navigate life. Accessible and lively and drawing on perspectives from the humanities, religion, and the arts, as well as social science and the law, On Freedom explores a crucial dimension of the human condition that philosophers and economists have long missed - and reveals what it would take to make freedom real.

People love what's natural: It's the best way to eat, the best way to parent, even the best way to act - naturally, just as nature intended. Appeals to the wisdom of nature are among the most powerful arguments in the history of human thought. Yet Nature (with a capital N) and natural goodness are not objective or scientific. In this groundbreaking book, scholar of religion Alan Levinovitz demonstrates that these beliefs are actually religious and highlights the many dangers of substituting simple myths for complicated realities.

Consider Facebook - it's human contact, only easier to engage with and easier to avoid. Developing technology promises closeness. Sometimes it delivers, but much of our modern life leaves us less connected with people and more connected to simulations of them. In Alone Together, MIT technology and society professor Sherry Turkle explores the power of our new tools and toys to dramatically alter our social lives.

In How to Be an Epicurean, philosopher Catherine Wilson shows that Epicureanism isn't an excuse for having a good time: It's a means to live a good life. Although modern conveniences and scientific progress have significantly improved our quality of life, many of the problems faced by ancient Greeks - love, money, family, politics - remain with us in new forms. To overcome these obstacles, the Epicureans adopted a philosophy that promoted reason, respect for the natural world, and reverence for our fellow humans.

In Great Society, Shlaes offers a powerful companion to her legendary history of the 1930s, The Forgotten Man, and shows that in fact there was scant difference between two presidents we consider opposites: Johnson and Nixon. Just as technocratic military planning by "the Best and the Brightest" made failure in Vietnam inevitable, so planning by a team of the domestic best and brightest guaranteed fiasco at home. At once history and biography, Great Society sketches moving portraits of the characters in this transformative period.

Mary Aiken is the world's leading expert in forensic cyberpsychology - a discipline that combines psychology, criminology, and technology to investigate the intersection where technology and human behavior meet. In this, her first book, Aiken has created a starting point for all future conversations about how the Internet is shaping development and behavior, societal norms and values, children, safety, security, and our perception of the world.

New technologies can inspire us, but the breakneck pace of change can also frighten us. So how do Christians walk by faith through the innovations of Silicon Valley? To build a biblical theology of technology, journalist and tech optimist Tony Reinke examines nine key texts from Scripture to show how the world’s discoveries are divinely orchestrated. With the help of several theologians and inventors throughout history, Reinke dispels 12 common myths in the church and offers 14 ethical convictions to help Christians live by faith in the age of big tech.

Dr. Arline T. Geronimus coined the term “weathering” to describe the effects of systemic oppression—including racism and classism—on the body. In Weathering, based on more than 30 years of research, she argues that health and aging have more to do with how society treats us than how well we take care of ourselves. She explains what happens to human bodies as they attempt to withstand and overcome the challenges and insults that society leverages at them, and details how this process ravages their health. And she proposes solutions.

Lawyer, activist, and former Chatelaine legal columnist Linda Silver Dranoff details her trailblazing journey from a traditional 1950s childhood to the battlegrounds of the courts of law where she and a generation of women lawyers, supporting a larger feminist movement, championed the rights of Canadian women and families.

La normalización de la precariedad, la pobreza y el “low cost” en la vida cotidiana es un fenómeno que se ha extendido a través de distintos medios y en muchos aspectos de nuestra cultura actual.

La libertad es la idea que subyace a las sociedades occidentales, pero de un tiempo a esta parte su significado se ha desplazado: la libertad es la libertad de las empresas para contaminar, la de las grandes tecnológicas para escapar de cualquier control y la de los políticos para mentir y fomentar la crispación. ¿Cómo hemos llegado hasta aquí? ¿De qué libertad estamos hablando? ¿Y de qué libertad deberíamos hablar?

Dive into the profound insights of Vilfredo Pareto in The Mind and Society, a timeless exploration of human behavior and social dynamics. Pareto's keen observations and analytical brilliance illuminate the complex interplay of power, elites, and the intricate web that shapes the mind and structures our societies.

This book predicts the decline of today's professions and describes the people and systems that will replace them. In an Internet society, according to Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind, we will neither need nor want doctors, teachers, accountants, architects, the clergy, consultants, lawyers, and many others to work as they did in the 20th century.

Five decades ago, The Limits to Growth shocked the world by showing that population and industrial growth were pushing humanity toward a cliff. Today the world recognizes that we are now at the cliff edge: Earth has crossed multiple planetary boundaries while widespread inequality is causing deep instabilities in societies. There seems to be no way out. Earth for All is both an antidote to despair and a road map to a better future.

Love is most often associated with happiness, satisfaction, and pleasure. But it has a darker side we ignore at our peril. Love is often an uncomfortable and difficult feeling. The people we love can let us down badly. Since we are inevitably disappointed by love, wouldn't we be better off without it? No, says Carrie Jenkins. Instead, we need a new philosophy of love, one that recognizes that the pain and suffering love causes are a natural, even a good part of what makes love worthwhile. It's time we liberated love.

"The Rise of Street Gangs" gives a unique first-hand account of the rise of the street gang culture across the world, where drive-by shootings and communities under siege have become the new norm. The book not only covers street gangs but also the characters of the gangs, their current evolution and outlook, and how these gangs are on the rise worldwide. "The Rise of Street Gangs" looks at gangs in the United States, Mexico, the Native American Reservation, the slums of Manilla in the Philippines, South Africa, and Australia and the role of gangs during the Black Lives Matter protests.