Social Systems

If you're a nurse, then you know that staying up to date on clinical pathophysiology is essential to providing the best possible care for your patients. But keeping your knowledge base fresh can be a challenge. That's why we created Gastrointestinal System Nursing Review, a comprehensive study guide that covers all the major GI disease processes.

How has the United States, with more resources than any nation, developed a healthcare system that delivers much poorer results, at near double the cost of any other developed country - such that legendary seer Warren Buffett calls the Medical Industrial Complex "the tapeworm of American economic competitiveness"?

As a writer, activist, and theology student, Lyndsey Medford was used to critiquing unsustainable medical, environmental, economic, and social systems from a theoretical perspective. But when her autoimmune disorder roared out of remission, she discovered that her own body's systems lived at the very real vortex of all those systems' dysfunction.

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.

Joyful. Graceful. Blessed. Strong. Anxious. Depressed. Stigmatized. Stereotyped. What happens when motherhood isn’t what you expected—and when you reach out for support, you are met with judgment and prejudice? Sandra Igwe shares her journey as a young Black mother, coping with sleepless nights, anxiety, and loneliness after the birth of her first daughter. Burdened by cultural expectations of the “good mother” and the “strong Black woman” trope, her mental health struggles became an uphill battle.

They were the political odd couple - the two most powerful men in the country, a pair who "couldn't be more different or more the same." For six years, Matthews was on the inside, watching the evolving relationship between President Reagan and Speaker of the House O’Neill. Drawing not only on his own remarkable knowledge but on extensive interviews with those closest to his subjects, Matthews brings this unlikely friendship to life in his unique voice.

Not since the Great Depression have so many Americans questioned the fundamental tenets of capitalism and expressed openness to a socialist alternative. We Own the Future: Democratic Socialism-American Style offers a road map to making this alternative a reality, giving listeners a practical vision of a future that is more democratic, egalitarian, inclusive, and environmentally sustainable.

Your emotions unleash at any time. The relationships around you often result in devastation. Your life feels like a chaotic mess. Don't let the trauma of your past delegate your future. Your BPD symptoms or traits can set you up for more pain, agony, and failure if you don't control them now. Your BPD experiences, stress, trauma, and diet can set you up for the devastating disability called multiple sclerosis. Take back control of your life today. Your health and your sanity depend on it! We will show you how.

A growing chorus of officials and commentators argues that the Supreme Court has become too political. On this view, the confirmation process is just an exercise in partisan agenda-setting, and the jurists are no more than “politicians in robes” - their ostensibly neutral judicial philosophies mere camouflage for conservative or liberal convictions.

Murderous mafia capos. The police officer who brutalized Abner Louima. A purveyor of child pornography. These are some of the defendants to have come before US District Court Judge Frederic Block to ask for reductions in their prison sentences. All of them have been found guilty and have already served decades in prison, but under the 2018 First Step Act they are entitled to petition for reconsideration and release. In a rare glimpse behind the bench, Judge Block recounts the cases of six incarcerated people who have done heinous things but have nevertheless petitioned him for their release.

America’s Bitter Pill is Steven Brill’s acclaimed book on how the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, was written, how it is being implemented, and, most important, how it is changing—and failing to change—the rampant abuses in the healthcare industry. It’s a fly-on-the-wall account of the titanic fight to pass a 961-page law aimed at fixing America’s largest, most dysfunctional industry. It’s a penetrating chronicle of how the profiteering that Brill first identified in his trailblazing Time magazine cover story continues, despite Obamacare.

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.

Our trial courts conduct hardly any trials, our correctional systems do not correct, and the rise of mandated arbitration has ushered in a shadowy system of privatized "justice". Meanwhile, our legislators can't even follow their own rules for making rules while the rule of law mutates into a perpetual state of emergency. The legal system is becoming an incomprehensible farce. How did this happen? In The Nonsense Factory, Bruce Cannon Gibney shows that over the past 70 years, the legal system has dangerously confused quantity with quality and might with legitimacy.

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.

From the email marketing director of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and the co-founder of Run for Something comes an essential and inspiring guide that encourages and educates young progressives to run for local office, complete with contributions from elected officials and political operatives.

The year 2020 brought a renewed awareness to the deep-rootedness of racism and white supremacy in every facet of American life. Until now, however, there has yet to be a book published for a general audience from the perspective of Black scholars and experts proposing ideas from a policy-oriented standpoint. The Black Agenda: Bold Solutions for a Broken System features Black voices across economics, education, health, climate, and technology, speaking to the question "What's next?" as it pertains to centering Black people in policy matters in our country.

From the bestselling and critically acclaimed author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace comes “an eye-opening, fully humanizing, deeply affecting look at the often-misunderstood juvenile justice system and its inhabitants—young people of earnestness, disappointment, hope, and resilience” (Booklist, starred review).

Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania who also served as a special adviser to the White House on health-care reform, has written a brilliant diagnostic explanation of why health care in America has become such a divisive social issue, how money and medicine have their own American story, and why reform has bedeviled presidents of the left and right for more than one hundred years.

The American child welfare system is bent toward protecting adults, not children. Kids in danger are treated instrumentally to promote the rehabilitation of their parents, the welfare of their communities, and the social justice of their race and tribe. It is time to stop letting efforts to fix the child welfare system get derailed by activists who are concerned with race-matching, blood ties, and the abstract demands of social justice, and start asking the most important question: Where are the emotionally and financially stable, loving, and permanent homes where kids can thrive?

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.