Social Systems

When tough-on-crime laws passed 30 years ago during an era of drug-fueled violence, they were supported across the political spectrum. The subsequent "war on drugs" sent non-violent offenders to prison for decades and, in some cases, life. As a result, the nation's prison and jail population today is 2.3 million, more than quadruple the number that were incarcerated in 1980. One in 100 adults is behind bars in America.

The nation's top "Obamacare" insurance agent, Robert Welk, has authored Maximizing Obamacare to help you finally understand exactly what you need to do to avoid the vast majority of problems people experienced during open enrollment. The need for this audiobook is underscored by a recent revelation from the federal government that almost one-fourth of those enrolled have incorrectly reported their income.

This book provides the listener with nine foundational values that transform a healthcare organization, outfitting it to succeed in the modern environment of high accountability and value-based medicine. Plagued by traditional leadership paradigms, the healthcare industry continues to deliver status quo results. Transformational thinking must dominate by embracing the values that have been vetted over 25 years in healthcare settings that are described in The Culture Cure.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall, one economic model emerged triumphant. Capitalism - spanning a spectrum from laissez-faire to authoritarian - shapes the market economies of all the wealthiest and fastest-growing nations. The trouble is cracking its shiny veneer. In the US, economic growth is no longer matched by economic development. Wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few, natural resources are exploited for short-term profits, and good jobs are hard to find.

In June 1985, a young Black man named Darryl Hunt was falsely convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the rape and murder of a white copyeditor at the local paper. Many in the community believed him innocent and crusaded for his release even as subsequent trials and appeals reinforced his sentence. Finally, in 2003, the tireless efforts of his attorney combined with an award-winning series of articles by Phoebe Zerwick in the Winston-Salem Journal led to the DNA evidence that exonerated Hunt.

In The Uninnocent, Blake wrestles with the implications of her cousin's break, as well as the broken machinations of America's justice system. As her cousin languished in a cell on death row, where he was assigned for his own protection, Blake struggled to keep her faith in the system she was training to join.

Recent reports show that women make up the fastest-growing population within the United States’ criminal justice system. And yet, despite necessary conversations about incarceration and prison abolition, their stories of abuse, neglect, poverty, and family separation often go untold. Now, through immersive storytelling and expert analysis of women’s lives after prison, anthropologist Jorja Leap explores their journeys into, through, and beyond the jail cell.

A community of rock quarry miners in a village in Uttar Pradesh, India, gave their tiny cluster of thatched roofed houses the name Azad Nagar. Freedomville. But it hasn't always been identified by that auspicious moniker. The miners renamed their village in 2000, after they staged a revolt that overthrew the profit-driven landowners who held their families in debt bondage for generations. But the complex story of Freedomville, the murder that these revolutionaries nearly got away with, and the short-lived freedom its inhabitants created has never before been told until now.

This audiobook exposes the exploitation and entrapment in Canada’s student loan system: a system that cripples or destroys the careers, health, and hopes of thousands, while lining the pockets of banks, collection agencies, and bureaucrats. It's a system where students are driven to abandon school for minimum-wage work, prostitution, or gambling to pay debts. Some have committed suicide to escape unrealistic payment schedules and conditions.

Journalist and Professor Susanne Althoff investigates the obstacles women and nonbinary entrepreneurs - especially those of color - face when launching, funding, and growing their companies, obstacles that persist because the current start-up world was engineered by and for White men. Through interviews with more than a hundred founders across the country and in all industries, Althoff paints a picture of an entrepreneurial system rife with bias and discrimination, where women receive less than three percent of this country's venture capital.

Both a rallying cry and an invaluable resource, One in Five details the national education crisis as it impacts the one in five children who have dyslexia. Micki Boas, mother to two dyslexic sons, wrote this book because too many parents feel isolated and defeated in their efforts to secure an equal chance for their children. After fighting the school system for six years to get the correct diagnoses and proper learning assistance for her sons, Boas realized that parents need to hack the system, cutting through the invisible red tape....

Many White Christians are eager to fight against racism and for racial justice. But what steps can they take to make good, lasting change? How can they get involved without unintentionally doing more harm than good? In this practical and illuminating guide drawn from more than 20 years of cross-cultural work and learning from some of the greatest leaders of color, pastor and racial justice advocate Daniel Hill provides nine practices rooted in Scripture that will position you to be an active supporter of inclusion, equality, and racial justice.

As we notice the ways we need to grow and change, NLP helps us master ourselves before teaching us how to master the communications skills we need to be effective with others. The benefits of knowing and using NLP have been around since the 1970s, and today companies and professionals around the world use it to boost their team’s interpersonal and individual success. By using NLP, whether you’re in the boardroom or the living room, you can learn how to quickly improve yourself and influence others for the better!

In today’s modern world, every political regime, even the most authoritarian or repressive, describes itself as democracy or a democratic people’s republic. The concept of rule by the people and on behalf of the people has come to be accepted as the norm. Very few would overtly espouse the cause of dictatorship, absolute monarchy, or oligarchy as the most desirable political system upon which to base the government of any country.

We live in a culture awash with advice on nutrition and eating. Who do we believe? And what does it really mean to eat healthy? FoodWISE is for anyone who has felt unsure about how to make the "right" food choices. It is for food lovers who want to be more knowledgeable and connected to their food, while also creating meaningful dining experiences around the table. Professor and food fanatic Gigi Berardi shows readers how to buy foods and prepare meals that are W.I.S.E: Whole, Informed, Sustainable, and Experienced with friends and family.

When her daughter desperately needed a lung transplant to survive, Janet Murnaghan rallied against the outdated restrictions in health care that would limit her daughter's options. Transplant laws, restricting access to lungs based on arbitrary age restrictions, meant Sarah's options were limited. The injustice of her daughter's fate spurred Janet to start a public battle against outdated health-care regulations and a battle to save Sarah's life.

In our daily lives, we're surrounded by wires, pipes, utility poles, cell phone towers, and myriad other infrastructure that facilitates almost everything we do. Even though these systems are essential, when was the last time you gave them much thought? In On the Grid, Scott Huler sets out to understand all of the systems that shape our society - from transportation, water, and garbage to the Internet coming through our cable lines.

The importance of stories hasn't gone down one bit as time has moved on. The way they are delivered has unimaginably diversified - the invention of writing definitely shook things up. Now two people didn't even have to be in the same room for a story to be passed between them. Today we have trillions of written words easily available to us just a click away.

You're fed up with the way that your relationship is. You're fed up with your OCPD partner. Their behavior is driving your crazy and hinges on the brink of abusiveness. You feel yourself slipping into the depths of depression. Stop the insanity. Rescue your marriage. Have the right conversations with your OCPD spouse right now.

Andy Lazris, MD, is a practicing primary care physician who experiences the effects of Medicare policy on a daily basis. As a result, he believes that the way we care for our elderly has taken a wrong turn and that Medicare is complicit in creating the very problems it seeks to solve. Aging is not a disease to be cured; it is a life stage to be lived. Lazris argues that aggressive treatments cannot change that fact but only get in the way and decrease quality of life.