Society

A vibrant collection of oil paintings and stories by President George W. Bush honoring the sacrifice and courage of America’s military veterans.  With Forewords by former First Lady Laura Bush and General Peter Pace, 16th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  Growing out of President Bush’s own outreach and the ongoing work of the George W. Bush Institute’s Military Service Initiative, Portraits of Courage brings together sixty-six full-color portraits and a four-panel mural painted by President Bush of members of the United States military ...

You’re in your fifties and sixties and have saved nothing or not nearly enough to retire. You don’t want to be blamed or shamed about it. Too late for that. What you want to know is whether there’s anything you can do now to intercept the precarious financial path you’re on. Are there actions you can take (or not take) to have a shot at a decent retirement? Fifty-five, Unemployed, and Faking Normal culls wisdom from boomers navigating the path ahead. It invites you to ...

What are the jobs of the future? How many will there be? And who will have them? We might imagine—and hope—that today’s industrial revolution will unfold like the last: even as some jobs are eliminated, more will be created to deal with the new innovations of a new era. In Rise of the Robots, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Martin Ford argues that this is absolutely not the case. As technology continues to accelerate and machines begin taking care of themselves, fewer people will be necessary. Artificial ...

From the groundbreaking author team behind the bestselling Winner-Take-All Politics, a timely and topical work that examines what’s good for American business and what’s good for Americans—and why those interests are misaligned. In Winner-Take-All Politics, Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson explained how political elites have enabled and propelled plutocracy. Now in American Amnesia, they trace the economic and political history of the United States over the last century and show how a viable mixed economy has long been the dominant engine of America’s prosperity. ...

A New York Times Bestseller A field guide to the twenty-first century, written by one of its most celebrated observers. We all sense it—something big is going on. You feel it in your workplace. You feel it when you talk to your kids. You can’t miss it when you read the newspapers or watch the news. Our lives are being transformed in so many realms all at once—and it is dizzying. In Thank You for Being Late, a work unlike anything he has attempted before, ...

From the New York Times–bestselling author of How We Got to Now and Where Good Ideas Come From, a look at the world-changing innovations we made while keeping ourselves entertained. This lushly illustrated history of popular entertainment takes a long-zoom approach, contending that the pursuit of novelty and wonder is a powerful driver of world-shaping technological change. Steven Johnson argues that, throughout history, the cutting edge of innovation lies wherever people are working the hardest to keep themselves and others amused. Johnson’s storytelling is just as delightful as the inventions he ...

When Bernie Sanders began his race for the presidency, it was considered by the political establishment and the media to be a “fringe” campaign, something not to be taken seriously. After all, he was just an independent senator from a small state with little name recognition. His campaign had no money, no political organization, and it was taking on the entire Democratic Party establishment. By the time Sanders’s campaign came to a close, however, it was clear that the pundits had gotten it wrong. Bernie ...

“Over a fourteen-year period from 1999 to 2013, one hedge fund carried out out an investment strategy utilizing hundreds of millions of trades, virtually all of which lasted less than 12 months, and characterized the vast majority of the resulting $34 billion in trading profits as long-term capital gains … resulting in estimated tax avoidance of more than $6 billion.”– Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, United States Senate, 2014 This publicly recorded statement exposes the shocking truth about how Wall Street, and the billionaire class, have ...

How filling life with play—whether soccer or lawn mowing, counting sheep or tossing Angry Birds—forges a new path for creativity and joy in our impatient age.  Life is no game. It’s demanding, boring, and rarely fun. But what if we’ve got games wrong? Playing anything—whether an instrument, a sport, or a video game—takes hard work and makes absurd demands. Where’s the fun in that? In Play Anything, acclaimed philosopher and award-winning game designer Ian Bogost reveals that play isn’t a mindless escape from boring reality. ...

In a not too distant future, an Executive Order will facilitate the erection of a forty-foot concrete wall between the United States and Mexico. To build said wall, “tiny hands” will use Worker Re-Education Centers, or WRECs, filled with illegal immigrants detained by the local authorities. The centers are advertised as an opportunity for thousands to learn English and earn their American Citizenship while contributing to the protection and safety of America. In fact, many immigrants choose to work on Drumpf Wall in an attempt ...

Maureen Dowd’s incendiary takes and takedowns from 2016–the most bizarre, disruptive and divisive Presidential race in modern history. Trapped between two candidates with the highest recorded unfavorables, Americans are plunged into The Year of Voting Dangerously. In this perilous and shocking campaign season, The New York Times columnist traces the psychologies and pathologies in one of the nastiest and most significant battles of the sexes ever. Dowd has covered Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton since the ’90s. She was with the real estate mogul when he ...

The most important book yet from the author of the international bestseller The Shock Doctrine, a brilliant explanation of why the climate crisis challenges us to abandon the core “free market” ideology of our time, restructure the global economy, and remake our political systems. In short, either we embrace radical change ourselves or radical changes will be visited upon our physical world. The status quo is no longer an option. In This Changes Everything Naomi Klein argues that climate change isn’t just another issue to ...

A groundbreaking exploration of how cyberspace is changing the way we think, feel, and behave.  Mary Aiken is the world’s leading expert in forensic cyberpsychology—a discipline that combines psychology, criminology, and technology to investigate the intersection where technology and human behavior meet. In this, her first book, Aiken has created a starting point for all future conversations about how the Internet is shaping development and behavior, societal norms and values, children, safety, security, and our perception of the world. Cyberspace is an environment full of ...