Systems Science

There is no shortage of democracy, at least in name, and yet it is in crisis everywhere we look. From a cabal of plutocrats in the White House to gerrymandering and dark-money campaign contributions, it is clear that the principle of government by and for the people is not living up to its promise. The problems lie deeper than any one election cycle. As Astra Taylor demonstrates, real democracy - fully inclusive and completely egalitarian - has in fact never existed. In a tone that is both philosophical and anecdotal, Taylor invites us to reexamine the term.

It's been over a year since the System came to Earth, bringing blood and monsters in equal measure. Having left Whitehorse, John and his team travel down to British Columbia, running into new dangers from aliens and humans alike. Faced with new challenges and new enemies, John and his friends seek to free human settlements from Galactic control in North America.

House Gracefall wasn’t anything like what Derek had imagined it would be. Instead of rage and anger at the loss of one of their young masters, House Gracefall showed humility and even apologized. Despite one noble house exemplifying honor and nobility, another awaited to reinforce the negative stereotypes that Derek had been anticipating all along. Somehow, out of all that, Derek made a new friend, a new business partner, and learned some secrets, while Silvi got her first taste of the real world of cooking and loved it.

Since 1980, the number of people in US prisons has increased more than 450 percent. Despite a crime rate that has been falling steadily for decades, California has led the way in this explosion, with what a state analyst called "the biggest prison building project in the history of the world". Golden Gulag provides the first detailed explanation for that buildup by looking at how political and economic forces conjoined to produce the prison boom.

Among the estimated 100 billion solar systems in the known universe, evolving life is surely abundant. That evolution is a process of "becoming" in each case. Since Newton, we have turned to physics to assess reality. But physics alone cannot tell us where we came from, how we arrived, and why our world has evolved past the point of unicellular organisms to an extremely complex biosphere.

Millions of Americans have lost confidence in our political and economic system. After years of stagnant wages, volatile job markets, and an unwillingness by those in power to deal with profound threats such as climate change, there is a mounting sense that the system is fixed, serving only those select few with enough money to secure a controlling stake. With the characteristic clarity and passion that has made him a central civil voice, Robert B. Reich shows how wealth and power have interacted to install an elite oligarchy, eviscerate the middle class, and undermine democracy.

A system can describe what we see (the solar system), operate a computer (Windows 10), or be made on a page (the 14 engineered lines of a sonnet). In this book, Clifford Siskin shows that system is best understood as a genre - a form that works physically in the world to mediate our efforts to understand it. Indeed, many Enlightenment authors published works they called "system" to compete with the essay and the treatise.

A magnificently reported and soulfully crafted exploration of the human immune system - the key to health and wellness, life and death. An epic, first-of-its-kind audiobook, entwining leading-edge scientific discovery with the intimate stories of four individual lives, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist.

This book is a three-part journey into the rabbit hole we call the nature of reality. Its ultimate destination is a plausible, living validation of transcendence. Each of its three parts is like a turn of a spiral, exploring recurring ideas through the prisms of religious myth, truth, and belief, respectively. With each turn, the book seeks to convey a more nuanced and complete understanding of the many facets of transcendence.

The world ends in a slew of blue notification boxes, bringing with it a game-like existence including monsters and Classes. Now, John has to make his way from Kluane National Park in the Yukon to Whitehorse through monster infested forests. But, that's not enough; because he'll need to help rebuild civilization itself around the System, aliens and monsters. And, as always, humanity will be its own greatest enemy.

Quinn can barely handle her own life. When the Library of Everywhere discovers her compatible magical signature, suddenly, she is the sole existing potential librarian. Now, it's not only the weight of her world on her shoulders—Quinn must connect with the library system before the universe itself disintegrates. Once she's settled, it should be quiet, peaceful work—just as soon as she battles a few engorged bookworms, repairs hundreds of years of damage, and figures out why there's been no librarian for the last several centuries.

Increasingly, cracks are appearing in the capacity of communities, ecosystems, and landscapes to provide the goods and services that sustain our planet's well-being. The response from most quarters has been for "more of the same" that created the situation in the first place: more control, more intensification, and greater efficiency. "Resilience thinking" offers a different way of understanding the world and a new approach to managing resources. It embraces human and natural systems as complex entities continually adapting through cycles of change.

It’s not easy being a System Traveler. Well, the traveling part is hard, at least. But once Derek got his feet under him, he hit the ground running, saving an entire area from a massive dungeon overflow in the process. He even found some companions to help ease the massive hole inside him formed from spending decades alone in the void.

Written by a cult survivor and renowned expert on cults and totalitarianism, Terror, Love and Brainwashing draws on the author's 25 years of study and research to explain how almost anyone, given the right set of circumstances, can be radically manipulated to engage in otherwise incomprehensible and often dangerous acts.

Gary doesn’t have all that much going for him. He’s a teenage boy who lives in a Tier-3 town that’s barely hanging on, and his family’s just a rung above dirt poor. Which is why he’s taken the very dangerous step of becoming an errand boy for the savage Underdogs gang. He doesn’t like what they do, but if he tries to get out, he’s pretty sure he’ll get very dead.

We harbor roughly the same number of microbes as we have cells. This complex ecosystem is crucial to our health, affecting many processes including immunity, child development, and bone density regulation. Research in this area has exploded, and in this audiobook, we highlight some of the most exciting work on how the microbiome develops, its influence on brain and behavior, and implications in both contributing to and treating various disorders.

As Reeves shows, the growing separation between the upper middle class and everyone else can be seen in family structure, neighborhoods, attitudes, and lifestyle. Those at the top of the income ladder are becoming more effective at passing on their status to their children, reducing overall social mobility. The result is not just an economic divide but a fracturing of American society along class lines. Upper-middle-class children become upper-middle-class adults.

In an instant, life as it was known is gone, replaced by a System called The Connection. It doesn't come quietly as earthquakes rock the planet, the chosen survivors falling unconscious as the Connection takes their bodies and Adapts them. Lochlan Brady and his family were on their way home from a camping weekend when the Connection appears. He awakens with a new Adapted body, finding his wife missing. Now Loch must survive and thrive in this new world with his two teenage daughters, Harper and Piper. All Loch wants to do is protect his daughters and find his wife.

The galaxy, the multiverse, and the history of astronomy are explored in this engaging compilation of cosmological "tales" by multiple award-winning science writer Marcia Bartusiak. In 32 concise and engrossing essays, the author provides a deeper understanding of the nature of the universe and those who strive to uncover its mysteries. Bartusiak shares the back stories for many momentous astronomical discoveries, including the contributions of such pioneers as Beatrice Tinsley and her groundbreaking research in galactic evolution.

Corporate flameout Ned Altimer dreams of leaving his world behind. So, when Earthblood Online splashes onto the VRMMO scene, he dives in and never looks back. His advantages are twofold: exclusive access to the game’s three-day Head Start period, and a ridiculously handsome talking axe named Frank who has knowledge of the game’s deepest secrets...if the magnificent Frank ever feels like sharing them.