In Beyond Civilization, Daniel Quinn thinks the unthinkable. We all know there's no one right way to build a bicycle, no one right way to design an automobile, no one right way to make a pair of shoes, but we're convinced that there must be only one right way to live — and the one we have is it, no matter what.
Beyond Civilization makes practical sense of the vision of Daniel Quinn's best-selling novel Ishmael. Examining...

"The trauma that our world experienced in recent years--as result of both the pandemic and societal tensions that threaten to overwhelm us-has been unprecedented and is not going away anytime soon. It is clear that existing political and economic systems are not enough to bring the change that the world needs. In this book, Rainn Wilson explores the possibility and hope for a spiritual revolution, a 'Soul Boom' in order to address today's greatest...

Elegantly tracing the intellectual history of computer science, Foer puts the DNA of the very idea of "tech" under the microscope. Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, he argues, are breaking laws intended protect intellectual property and privacy. This is not the path towards freedom and prosperity, but the total automation and homogenization of our social, political, and intellectual lives. Today's corporate giants want access to every facet of...

"In his international bestsellers Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, Jared Diamond transformed our understanding of what makes civilizations rise and fall. Now, in his third book in this monumental trilogy, he reveals how successful nations recover from crises while adopting selective changes -- a coping mechanism more commonly associated with individuals recovering from personal crises. Diamond compares how six countries have survived recent upheavals...

"Race. A four-letter word. The greatest social divide in American life, a half-century ago and today. During that time, the U.S. has seen the most dramatic demographic and cultural shifts in its history, what can be called the colorization of America. But the same nation that elected its first Black president on a wave of hope--another four-letter word--is still plunged into endless culture wars. How do Americans see race now? How has that changed--and...

"The dramatic history of America's tropical paradise. The history of Hawaii may be said to be the story of arrivals--from the eruption of volcanoes on the ocean floor 18,000 feet below, the first hardy seeds that over millennia found their way to the islands, and the confused birds blown from their migratory routes, to the early Polynesian adventurers who sailed across the Pacific in double canoes, the Spanish galleons en route to the Philippines,...

This book is a call to action for those seeking to live extraordinary lives and bring about transformational change. When National Geographic Chairman Jean Case set out to investigate the core qualities of great change makers, past and present, from inventors to revolutionaries, she found five surprising traits all had in common. They weren't wealth, privilege, or even genius. It was that all of these exceptional men and women chose to make a "big...

In this riveting work of narrative nonfiction, Jonathan Darman tells the story of two giants of American politics, Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan, and shows how, from 1963 to 1966, these two men--the same age, and driven by the same heroic ambitions--changed American politics forever. The liberal and the conservative. The deal-making arm twister and the cool communicator. The Texas rancher and the Hollywood star. Opposites in politics and style,...

"Whenever we envision a world without war, without prisons, without capitalism, we are producing speculative fiction. Organizers and activists envision, and try to create, such worlds all the time. Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown have brought twenty of them together in the first anthology of short stories to explore the connections between radical speculative fiction and movements for social change. The visionary tales of Octavia's Brood...

"America is undergoing a massive experiment: It is moving, in fits and starts, toward a multiracial democracy, something few societies have ever done. But the prospect of change has sparked an authoritarian backlash that threatens the very foundations of our political system. Why is democracy under assault here, and not in other wealthy, diversifying nations? And what can we do to save it? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt offer...