Social Systems

In Disunited Nations, geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan presents a series of counterintuitive arguments about the future of a world where trade agreements are coming apart and international institutions are losing their power. Germany will decline as the most powerful country in Europe, with France taking its place. Every country should prepare for the collapse of China, not North Korea. We are already seeing, as Zeihan predicts, a shift in outlook on the Middle East: it is no longer Iran that is the region’s most dangerous threat, but Saudi Arabia.

In this book, Katrina Hazzard-Donald explores African Americans' experience and practice of the herbal, healing folk belief tradition known as Hoodoo. Working against conventional scholarship, Hazzard-Donald argues that Hoodoo emerged first in three distinct regions she calls "regional Hoodoo clusters" and that after the turn of the 19th century, Hoodoo took on a national rather than regional profile.

"Conquer the GED Social Studies Exam: Your Essential Guide to History, Civics, Economics, and Geography" is designed to equip learners with the foundational knowledge and critical thinking skills needed to excel in the GED Social Studies section. Covering essential topics such as U.S. and world history, civics and government, economics, and geography, this guide provides in-depth explanations and real-world applications. Each chapter emphasizes understanding key concepts, from the Constitution and the principles of democracy to economic systems and the structure of the U.S. government. ...

Interference is the true history of the most important and consequential decisions, obstacles, and quandaries Mueller and his team faced when investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. For the first time, Mueller’s only deputy, his most senior counselor who served on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, and the lead prosecutor looking into obstruction of justice and Russian interference, have come together to tell a highly relevant and compelling account of what it was like to carry out their investigation of election interference.

A soaring bridge is an obvious infrastructural feat, but so are the mostly hidden reservoirs, transformers, sewers, cables, and pipes that deliver water, energy, and information to wherever we need it. When these systems work well, they hide in plain sight. Engineer and materials scientist Deb Chachra takes listeners on a fascinating tour of these essential utilities, revealing how they work, what it takes to keep them running, just how much we rely on them—but also whom they work well for, and who pays the costs.

If initiative overload and fragmentation are keeping your best plans from becoming reality, it’s time to lead with coherence. Using the right drivers as your foundation, you’ll bring people and ideas together—and implement the kind of lasting change that maximizes results. The key to success is the Coherence Framework, a dynamic, customizable road map.

In this best-selling expose of national policy gone wrong, America's foremost historian of education, Diane Ravitch, renounces her support for reform policies implemented over the past decade that she says are wrecking America's cherished tradition of public education.

Each day, our world becomes a little smaller. Technology probes deeper, looking within our bodies, tracking our every move, and becoming mandatory for people to conduct regular business. We learn each day the new questions we are not allowed to ask, the new rules we are required to follow, and with each crisis the facade of freedom is removed. While our past saw us controlled through indirect measures like propaganda and finance, the new world system seeks to integrate biology and technology, and to use the latter to remake the nature of man into something new, something that can be ...

We can encounter chaos in every system around us - even the smallest and simplest ones. Any system can fall into chaos, which prevents us to accurately predict its behavior. Even a small change in the initial conditions can lead to unexpectedly large-scale consequences. Therefore, we can often enter in panic, blame actors for events they are not responsible for, and our sense of security in the world can generally decrease.

In a world where hunger persists amid abundance and climate change threatens our very existence, Shannon Dobbs presents a groundbreaking solution to our broken food system. This isn't just another book about the problem—it's a comprehensive guide to fixing it. Dobbs, an Army veteran turned food system innovator, unveils the revolutionary Nexus and Nodes model. This scalable approach bridges the gap between food waste and food insecurity, turning challenges into opportunities for community empowerment and environmental healing.

The Nazis did not really lose World War II. They made it appear that way in order to divert attention from the alliance between the Fourth Reich and the race of aliens known as the Reptilians - an ancient galactic civilization obsessed with conquest and domination. After the German surrender in 1945, the Nazi-Reptilian alliance infiltrated the US military-industrial complex.

On March 16, 2018, just 26 hours before his scheduled retirement from the organization he had served with distinction for more than two decades, Andrew G. McCabe was fired from his position as deputy director of the FBI. President Donald Trump celebrated on Twitter: "Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI - A great day for Democracy." In The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump, Andrew G. McCabe offers a dramatic and candid account of his career and an impassioned defense of the FBI.

Preet Bharara has spent much of his life examining our legal system, pushing to make it better, and prosecuting those looking to subvert it. Bharara believes in our system and knows it must be protected, but to do so, he argues, we must also acknowledge and allow for flaws both in our justice system and in human nature. Bharara uses the many illustrative anecdotes and case histories from his storied, formidable career - the successes as well as the failures - to shed light on the realities of the legal system and the consequences of taking action.

Despite being immensely popular - and immensely lucrative - education is grossly overrated. In this explosive book, Bryan Caplan argues that the primary function of education is not to enhance students' skill but to certify their intelligence, work ethic, and conformity - in other words, to signal the qualities of a good employee.

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.

This book provides basic information about sociology and is an excellent resource for beginners or those seeking general knowledge about the subject matter. It is divided into three parts. Part one introduces the concept of sociology, explores micro-sociologist and macro-sociologist types, and explains the differences between quantitative and qualitative methodologies used in research. Part two focuses on specific areas of interest for sociological research including cults, family, religion, education, race, gender, age, sexual orientation, health, gangs, crime, and immigration. Part three ...

Dorothy A. Brown became a tax lawyer to get away from race. As a young black girl growing up in the South Bronx, she’d seen how racism limited the lives of her family and neighbors. Her law school classes offered a refreshing contrast: Tax law was about numbers, and the only color that mattered was green. But when Brown sat down to prepare tax returns for her parents, she found something strange: James and Dottie Brown, a plumber and a nurse, seemed to be paying an unusually high percentage of their income in taxes. When Brown became a law professor, she set out to understand why.

Earth is not well. The promise of starting life anew somewhere far, far away—no climate change, no war, no Twitter—beckons, and settling the stars finally seems within our grasp. Or is it? Critically acclaimed, bestselling authors Kelly and Zach Weinersmith set out to write the essential guide to a glorious future of space settlements, but after years of research, they aren’t so sure it’s a good idea.

Recent elections in the advanced Western democracies have undermined the basic foundations of political systems that had previously beaten back all challenges - from both the left and the right. The election of Donald Trump to the US presidency, only months after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, signaled a dramatic shift in the politics of the rich democracies. In Anti-System Politics, Jonathan Hopkin traces the evolution of this shift and argues that it is a long-term result of abandoning the post-war model of egalitarian capitalism in the 1970s.

Escaping the Housing Trap is the must-have resource for everyone with a stake in the future of housing in America-and that means everyone. Listeners will find discussions of housing as an investment and how the country's neighborhoods are being transformed by the introduction of large amounts of investment; explorations of housing as shelter, including discussions of zoning policy and NIMBYism; and a comprehensive overview of the Strong Towns approach to solving the American housing crisis.