Systems Science

Our current democratic capitalist system is close to imploding. This book is the first to reveal the secret financial system dominating capitalism today and shows how we can create accountability to restore our democracy.

Fie abides by one rule: Look after your own. Her Crow caste of undertakers and mercy-killers takes more abuse than coin, but when they’re called to collect royal dead, she’s hoping they’ll find the payout of a lifetime. When Crown Prince Jasimir turns out to have faked his death, Fie’s ready to cut her losses - and perhaps his throat. But he offers a wager that she can’t refuse: Protect him from a ruthless queen, and he’ll protect the Crows when he reigns.

More than any other institution in the country, Georgia State has overturned the assumption that poorer students are doomed to fail. Won't Lose This Dream describes how the architects of Georgia State's success harnessed the power of evolving data technologies, a "moneyball" strategy that helped them recognize and remove the obstacles that have held poor students back. Veteran journalist Andrew Gumbel uncovers the human stories behind these innovations, tracing real students as they realize lifelong dreams of graduating from college.

When The New Press, the Center for American Progress, and the Formerly Incarcerated and Convicted Peoples and Family Movement issued a call for innovative reform ideas, over 300 currently and formerly incarcerated individuals responded. What We Know collects two dozen of their best suggestions, each of which proposes a policy solution derived from their own lived experience.

In The End of Power, award-winning columnist and former Foreign Policy editor Moisés Naím illuminates the struggle between once-dominant megaplayers and the new micropowers challenging them in every field of human endeavor. Drawing on provocative, original research and a lifetime of experience in global affairs, Naím explains how the end of power is reconfiguring our world.

China's strategic capabilities and doctrine have historically differed from the United States' and Russia's. China has continued to modernize and expand its arsenal despite its policy of no first use, while the United States and Russia have decreased deployed weapons stocks. This volume brings together an international group of distinguished scholars to provide a fresh assessment of China's strategic military capabilities, doctrines, and political perceptions in light of rapidly advancing technologies.

Congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein identify two overriding problems that have led Congress—and the United States—to the brink of institutional collapse. But they offer a panoply of useful ideas and reforms, endorsing some solutions, like greater public participation and institutional restructuring, while debunking others, like independent or third-party candidates. Above all, they call on the media as well as the public to focus on the true causes of dysfunction rather than just throwing the bums out every election cycle.

"Resistance is futile." The greatest threat the Federation has ever faced is the half organic, half mechanical Borg. Now more dangerous than ever, the Borg threatens the Federation's past, present, and future. Read by Gates McFadden, "Beverly Crusher" on Star Trek, The Next Generation!

The Kobayashi Maru is the test given to cadets at the Starfleet Academy - a simulated no-win situation in space. Now, the Starfleet officers share with each other the painful, often fierce lessons of their Kobayashi Maru as each man struggles to tap his inner strength and to overcome the most desperate situation of their careers! Featuring a dramatic reading by James Doohan and enhanced with sound effects and an original score!

Quinn may have retrieved the necessary power and books for the Library to open, but her to-do list is still three miles long. Armed with Librarian assistants, Quinn must replenish the Library's catalog, open the other six branches of the Library, and figure out what is going on with the Library and its manifestation.

John de Lancie, in his role as "Q," headlines a Star Trek cast and crew (directed by Jonathan Frakes!) in this fully dramatized adventure of the future and the adventures of the heroic Starfleet officer who must save the Federation!

Big Data teaches you to build big data systems using an architecture designed specifically to capture and analyze web-scale data. This book presents the Lambda Architecture, a scalable, easy-to-understand approach that can be built and run by a small team. You'll explore the theory of big data systems and how to implement them in practice. In addition to discovering a general framework for processing big data, you'll learn specific technologies like Hadoop, Storm, and NoSQL databases.

In the final year of the Trump presidency, America’s borders were within reach of being completely secure as the daily arrests had dwindled to the lowest numbers in United States Border Patrol history. Nations south of our border, which once violated America’s sovereignty and blatantly disrespected it, now adhered to our strong president who forced those nations to heel and show America respect. On January 20, 2021, everything changed.

Hear it before you see the film! The wedding celebration for Will Riker and Deanna Troi is interrupted when Captain Picard and crew are called to Romulus for an emergency diplomatic mission. They face a threat that could lead to the destruction of the planet Earth, and Picard comes face to face with a man who may prove to be his most dangerous adversary yet...and a surprisingly personal nemesis.

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!

We have entered an age of disruption. Financial collapse, climate change, resource depletion, and a growing gap between rich and poor are but a few of the signs. Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer ask, why do we collectively create results nobody wants? Meeting the challenges of this century requires updating our economic logic and operating system from an obsolete “ego-system” focused entirely on the well-being of oneself to an eco-system awareness that emphasizes the well-being of the whole.

The past collides with the present as the true story of the historical Kahless sparks a battle for control of the entire Klingon Empire. Yet even if Worf and Picard can prevent a civil war, the revelations contained by the scroll ensure that the Klingon Empire - and the rest of the galaxy - will never be the same.

The Devil's Heart is a legendary object of unsurpassed power and mystery. Worlds that believe in magic consider it Darkness's mightiest talisman; and worlds of science consider it a lost artifact of some ancient and forgotten race. Some say the Heart enables its possessor to control people's minds and to amass wealth enough for a dozen lifetimes, while others think it capable of raising the dead, perhaps even changing the flow of time itself. But to all, the location of this fabled object has remained a mystery, until now.

The System Apocalypse has brought the clothing industry, and just about everything else, to a grinding halt. Now Lana Pearson intends to kickstart the local industry into gear to help Vancouver self-sustain itself. Key to her strategy are special teams of non-combat classes.

Ian Millhiser, Vox's Supreme Court correspondent, tells the story of what the six very conservative Republicans Supreme Court justices are likely to do with their power. The Agenda exposes a radically altered Supreme Court whose powers extend far beyond transforming any individual right - its agenda is to shape the very nature of America's government, redefining who gets to have legal rights, who is beyond the reach of the law, and who chooses the people who make our laws.