Health Sociology

In The Geography of Genius, acclaimed travel writer Weiner sets out to examine the connection between our surroundings and our most innovative ideas. He explores the history of places, like Vienna of 1900, Renaissance Florence, ancient Athens, Song Dynasty Hangzhou, and Silicon Valley, to show how certain urban settings are conducive to ingenuity.

Nurturing Our Humanity offers a new perspective on our personal and social options in today's world, showing how we can build societies that support our great human capacities for consciousness, caring, and creativity. It brings together findings—largely overlooked—from the natural and social sciences debunking the popular idea that we are hard-wired for selfishness, war, rape, and greed. Its groundbreaking new approach reveals connections between disturbing trends like climate change denial and regressions to strongman rule.

Most of what we know about how ideas spread comes from best-selling authors who give us a compelling picture of a world, in which "influencers" are king, "sticky" ideas "go viral", and good behavior is "nudged" forward. The problem is that the world they describe is a world where information spreads, but beliefs and behaviors stay the same. When it comes to lasting change in what we think or the way we live, the dynamics are different: beliefs and behaviors are not transmitted from person to person in the simple way that a virus is.

Growing up gifted and working-class poor in the foothills of the Ozarks, Monica and Darci became fast friends. The girls bonded over a shared love of reading and learning, even as they navigated the challenges of their declining town and tumultuous family lives—broken marriages, alcohol abuse, and shuttered stores and factories. They pored over the giant map in their middle school classroom, tracing their fingers over the world that awaited them, vowing to escape. In the end, Monica left Clinton for college and fulfilled her dreams; Darci did not.

The national best seller that defines a new economic class and shows how it is key to the future of our cities. The Rise of the Creative Class gives us a provocative new way to think about why we live as we do today - and where we might be headed. Weaving storytelling with masses of new and updated research, Richard Florida traces the fundamental theme that runs through a host of seemingly unrelated changes in American society: the growing role of creativity in our economy.

The search for hope is most urgent at the patient's bedside. The Anatomy of Hope takes us there, bringing us into the lives of people at pivotal moments when they reach for and find hope, or when it eludes their grasp. Through these intimate portraits, we learn how to distinguish true hope from false, why some people feel they are undeserving of it, and whether we should ever abandon our search.

Tribalism is one of the most complex and ancient evolutionary forces; it gave us the capacity for cooperation and competition, and allowed us to navigate increasingly complex social landscapes. It is so powerful that it can predict our behavior even better than race, class, gender, or religion. But in our vast modern world, has this blessing become a curse? Our Tribal Future explores a central paradox of our species: how altruism, community, kindness, and genocide are all driven by the same core adaptation.

For centuries, we’ve relied on polling or small-scale lab experiments to study human behavior. Today, a new approach is possible. As we live more of our lives online, researchers can finally observe us directly, in vast numbers, and without filters. Data scientists have become the new demographers.

Popular progressive radio host and New York Times best-selling author Thom Hartmann reveals how and why attempts to establish affordable universal healthcare in the United States have been thwarted and what we can do to finally make it a reality.

We hear it all the time: “Sorry, it was just an accident.” And we’ve been deeply conditioned to just accept that explanation and move on. But as Jessie Singer argues convincingly: There are no such things as accidents. The vast majority of mishaps are not random but predictable and preventable. Singer uncovers just how the term accident itself protects those in power and leaves the most vulnerable in harm’s way, preventing investigations, pushing off debts, blaming the victims, diluting anger, and even sparking empathy for the perpetrators. to account.

What really drives success and failure? Can I trust you? It's the question that strikes at the heart of human existence. Whether we're talking about business partnerships, romantic relationships, child-parent bonds, or the brave new world of virtual interaction, trust, when correctly placed, is what makes our world spin and lives flourish. Renowned psychologist David DeSteno brings together the latest research from diverse fields, including psychology, economics, biology, and robotics, to create a compelling narrative about the forces that have shaped the human mind's propensities to trust.

Wendy Mitchell had a busy job with the British National Health Service, raised her two daughters alone, and spent her weekends running and climbing mountains. Then, slowly, a mist settled deep inside the mind she once knew so well, blurring the world around her. She didn’t know it then, but dementia was starting to take hold. In 2014, at age 58, she was diagnosed with young-onset Alzheimer’s. In this groundbreaking book, Mitchell shares the heartrending story of her cognitive decline and how she has fought to stave it off.

This compassionate, personal, and illuminating work of nonfiction draws on the author's celebrated work as a director of socially conscious theater to connect listeners with the power of an ancient artistic tradition. For years Bryan Doerries has been producing ancient tragedies for current and returned servicemen and women, addicts, tornado and hurricane victims, and a wide range of other at-risk people in society.

Every year, millions of Americans are overcharged and underserved while the health-care industry makes record profits. We know something is wrong, but the layers of bureaucracy designed to discourage complaints make pushing back seem impossible. Never Pay the First Bill is the guerilla guide to health care the American people and employers need. Drawing on 15 years of investigating the health-care industry, reporter Marshall Allen shows how companies and individuals have managed to force medical providers to play fair and shows how you can, too.

In Palaces for the People, Eric Klinenberg suggests a way forward. He believes that the future of democratic societies rests not simply on shared values but on shared spaces: the libraries, synagogues, and parks where crucial, sometimes life-saving connections, are formed. These are places where people gather, making friends across group lines and strengthening the entire community. Klinenberg calls this the “social infrastructure”: When it is strong, neighborhoods flourish; when it is neglected, as it has been in recent years, families and individuals must fend for themselves.

2020 will go down alongside 1914, 1929, and 1968 as one of the most consequential years in history. This riveting and affecting book is the first attempt to capture the full human experience of that fateful time. At the heart of 2020 are seven vivid profiles of ordinary New Yorkers—including an elementary school principal, a bar manager, a subway custodian, and a local political aide—whose experiences illuminate how Americans, and people across the globe, reckoned with 2020.

In Rule Makers, Rule Breakers celebrated cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand takes us on an epic journey through human cultures, offering a startling new view of the world and ourselves. With a mix of brilliantly conceived studies and surprising on-the-ground discoveries, she shows that much of the diversity in the way we think and act derives from a key difference - how tightly or loosely we adhere to social norms.

Why do we think, feel, and act in ways we wish we did not? For decades, New York Times best-selling author Dr. David A. Kessler has studied this question with regard to tobacco, food, and drugs. Over the course of these investigations, he identified one underlying mechanism common to a broad range of human suffering. This phenomenon - capture - is the process by which our attention is hijacked and our brains commandeered by forces outside our control.

This audiobook explains why emotions are contagious, how health behaviors spread, why the rich get richer, even how we find and choose our partners. Intriguing and entertaining, Connected overturns the notion of the individual and provides a revolutionary paradigm - that social networks influence our ideas, emotions, health, relationships, behavior, politics, and much more. It will change the way we think about every aspect of our lives.

Psychologists often paint a picture of human mating as visceral, instinctual. But that's not the whole story. In courtship and display, sexual competition and rivalry, we are also guided by what Glenn Geher and Scott Barry Kaufman call Mating Intelligence - a range of mental abilities that have evolved to help us find the right partner. Mating Intelligence is at work in our efforts to form, maintain, and end relationships. It guides us in flirtation, foreplay, copulation, finding and choosing a mate, and many other behaviors.