Social Systems

In this best-selling expose of national policy gone wrong, America's foremost historian of education, Diane Ravitch, renounces her support for reform policies implemented over the past decade that she says are wrecking America's cherished tradition of public education.

Whether or not you have children, you know that education is vital to the prosperity and future of our society. Yet our current system simply doesn't work. Parents feel increasingly powerless, and nearly half of Americans give our schools a grade of "C". Now, in his new book, Ron Paul attacks the problem head-on and provides a focused solution that centers on strong support for home schooling and the application of free market principles to the American education system.

One of the most unique aspects of anarchism as a political philosophy is that it seeks to abolish the state. But what exactly is “the state”? The State is like a vast operating system for ordering and controlling relations among human society, the economy, and the natural world, analogous to a digital operating system. Anyone concerned with entrenched power, income inequality, lack of digital privacy, climate change, the response to COVID-19, or military-style policing will find eye-opening insights into how states operate and build more power for themselves—at our expense.

Physician burnout annually costs the medical industry—run by insurance companies, administrators, and electronic record systems—$5 billion. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, 70 percent of physicians said they would not recommend a medical career to their families. It’s time for change. In Determined, academic physician and certified coach Dr. Jimmy Turner lays out an evidence-based framework to help doctors understand why they are so burned out in the first place.

Classroom Management Success in 7 Days or Less provides teachers with a framework of fundamental preventive techniques and details a stepped process for responding to students who have difficulty following instructions. If you’re a teacher facing hard-to-reach, tough groups of students who talk over you and won’t do as you ask, the ideas in this audiobook will help you put in place a simple system for gaining respect, building positive teacher-student bonds, dealing with incidents, and creating a calm, responsive classroom. All in seven days or less!

In The Diaspora of Belonging, author Jay Sharma explores the history of systemic racism, structural oppression, and state-sanctioned discrimination and injustice as it relates to urban settings. Drawing on 12 unique cities across the country, Sharma demonstrates how calculated decisions regarding our cities are, and how those in power have weaponized the built environment for decades. Explore the connections between justice and design, economics and identity, and segregation and community. Let it challenge and inspire you to make our cities better places for us all.

Have you noticed that on some days, everything seems to go so smoothly? Those times when everybody shares the same deadline and all of a sudden everything gets done. What’s going on here? What’s different in these scenarios? At the core of each situation is a replicable occurrence, a behavior pattern, or a trend you can understand and utilize. In fact, with just a little bit of heightened awareness and increased focus on your situation, you can pinpoint these exact patterns and recreate them at will.

Being highly sensitive and empathic means you easily feel all the pain and suffering, in the world around you. Without tools, this can feel like a curse. Fortunately, you are not alone - and there is a solution! Empathic Mastery is a no-BS-tell-it-like-it-is guide, written for empaths, by an empath who’s cracked the code on how to go from psychic overwhelm and distress, to calm, confident, and able to use your abilities for good. Learn how to recognize what’s yours, and what isn’t, how to release the toxic energy you absorb, and so much more!

Two centuries ago, London school reformer Joseph Lancaster swept into New York City to revolutionize its public schools. In Mr. Lancaster's System, Adam Laats tells the story of how this abusive, scheming reformer fooled the world into believing his system could provide free high-quality education for poor children. The system never worked as promised, but thanks to real work done by students, teachers, and families, Lancaster's failed reforms eventually led to the creation of the modern public school system.

Over the last 30 years, the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies has grown from a small group of disaffected conservative law students into an organization with extraordinary influence over American law and politics. Although the organization is unknown to the average citizen, this group of intellectuals has managed to monopolize the selection of federal judges, take over the Department of Justice, and control legal policy in the White House.

In this disquieting cyber thriller, Joseph Menn takes readers into the murky hacker underground, traveling the globe from San Francisco to Costa Rica and London to Russia. His guides are California surfer and computer whiz Barrett Lyon and a fearless British high-tech agent. Through these heroes, Menn shows the evolution of cyber-crime from small-time thieving to sophisticated, organized gangs, who began by attacking corporate websites but increasingly steal financial data from consumers.

Anywhere But Here is a powerful exposé of Britain’s broken asylum system and how it fails us all. Each year tens of thousands of people risk their lives to cross the Channel in small boats hoping to find safety in Britain. Yet the very system designed to protect them has all but collapsed. With unique and unparalleled access, award-winning journalist and former Home Office insider Nicola Kelly takes us behind the scenes of the small boats crisis for the first time.

In a world where hunger persists amid abundance and climate change threatens our very existence, Shannon Dobbs presents a groundbreaking solution to our broken food system. This isn't just another book about the problem—it's a comprehensive guide to fixing it. Dobbs, an Army veteran turned food system innovator, unveils the revolutionary Nexus and Nodes model. This scalable approach bridges the gap between food waste and food insecurity, turning challenges into opportunities for community empowerment and environmental healing.

The man who answered the door was naked and covered with blood. His name was Larry Singleton and police in Tampa, Florida, soon discovered he had brutally murdered prostitute Roxanne Hayes and much worse. He was the mad chopper, who years before had cut off the arms off 15-year-old Mary Vincent outside Modesto, California. Mary survived and testified against him at his trial for killing Hayes.

Jury duty happens to everyone. When the call came to Graham Burnett, a young historian, he had a shock in store. A Trial by Jury is his startling account of how performing this familiar civic duty challenged him in ways he never thought possible and turned into one of the most consuming experiences of his life.

E. Fuller Torrey's audiobook provides an inside perspective on the birth of the federal mental health program. On staff at the National Institute of Mental Health when the program was being developed and implemented, Torrey draws on his own first-hand account of the creation and launch of the program, extensive research, one-on-one interviews with people involved, and recently unearthed audiotapes of interviews with major figures involved in the legislation. As such, this book provides historical material previously unavailable to the public.

At a time when Steve Jobs was only a teenager and Mark Zuckerberg wasn't even born, a group of visionary engineers and designers - some of them only high school students - in the late 1960s and 1970s created a computer system called PLATO, which was not only years but light-years ahead in experimenting with how people would learn, engage, communicate, and play through connected computers.

Punishment Without Crime offers an urgent new interpretation of inequality and injustice in America by examining the paradigmatic American offense: the lowly misdemeanor. Based on extensive original research, legal scholar Alexandra Natapoff reveals the inner workings of a massive petty offense system that produces over 13 million cases each year.

In Unscrewed, Friedman reveals that the anxiety and fear women in our country feel around issues of their sexuality are not, in fact, their fault but instead are side effects of our toxic culture. Dubbed the "era of fauxpowerment", that culture gives women the illusion of sexual power, with no actual power to support it. Exploring where media, religion, politics, and education overlap with feminist issues, Unscrewed breaks down the causes and signs of fauxpowerment then gives listeners tools to take it on themselves.

With the gravitas of Joan Biskupic and the irreverence of Elie Mystal, Leah Litman brings her signature wit to the question of what’s gone wrong at One First Street. In Lawless, she argues that the Supreme Court is no longer practicing law; it’s running on vibes. By “vibes,” Litman means legal-ish claims that repackage the politics of conservative grievance and dress them up in robes. Major decisions adopt the language and posture of the law, while in fact displaying a commitment to protecting a single minority: the religious conservatives and Republican officials.