Social Systems

Unfunc Your Gut encapsulates Dr. Peter Kozlowski, MD's heart-centered, patient-first approach in the groundbreaking field of functional medicine. In simple terms, he offers a research-based fusion of medical insights with mental, emotional, and spiritual wisdom acquired through his own addiction recovery and healing journey. Doc Koz guides us off the internet to seek and find real answers to "what's going on with my health?" and empowers us with practical strategies to achieve authentic balance of body, mind, and spirit.

Dr. Michael Baden has been involved in some of the most high-profile civil rights and police brutality cases in United States history, from the government's 1976 re-investigation of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., to the 2014 death of Michael Brown, whose case sparked the initial Ferguson protests that grew into the Black Lives Matter movement. The playbook hasn't changed since 1979, when Dr. Baden was demoted from his job as New York City's Chief Medical Examiner after ruling that the death of a Black man in police custody was a homicide.

In Justice on the Brink, legendary journalist Linda Greenhouse gives us unique insight into a court under stress, providing the context and brilliant analysis readers of her work in The New York Times have come to expect. In a thrilling narrative, she recounts the twelve months when the court turned its back on its legacy and traditions, abandoning any effort to stay above and separate from politics.

At a time when Steve Jobs was only a teenager and Mark Zuckerberg wasn't even born, a group of visionary engineers and designers - some of them only high school students - in the late 1960s and 1970s created a computer system called PLATO, which was not only years but light-years ahead in experimenting with how people would learn, engage, communicate, and play through connected computers.

At the dawn of the 21st century, British society is still shaped by a private education system devised to gentrify the Victorian middle classes and produce gentlemen to run the Empire. Yet it is not on the political agenda. It is rarely the subject of public debate, and we remain blind to its psychological implications. Can we afford to go on ignoring this issue? Will we continue to sacrifice the welfare of our children to satisfy our antiquated social aspirations?

In The Referral of a Lifetime, author Tim Templeton frames a powerful plan for cultivating clients and customers in a fable about businesswoman Susie McCumber, who feels increasingly like a failure. A friend refers her to the mysterious Mr. Highground, who introduces her to four successful people. They show her how they transformed their businesses and their lives by determining how others view them and how they view themselves.

The US tax code is a total write-off. Overstuffed with loopholes and special interest provisions, it works for no one - except tax lawyers, accountants, and corporations, that is - certainly not me and you. Not for the first time, we have to tear it up and start over. That happened in 1922, and again in 1954, and again in 1986. There's a pattern here; we reach this point every 32 years. Which means the next complete re-write of the tax code is due in 2018. Can we write a new tax code that is fair and simple? In fact, we can.

Every day, innocent men across America are thrown into prison, betrayed by a faulty justice system, and robbed of their lives - either by decades-long sentences or the death penalty itself. Injustice tarnishes our legal process from start to finish. From the racial discrimination and violence used by backwards law enforcement officers, to a prison culture that breeds inmate conflict, there is opportunity for error at every turn.

Here is a visionary analysis of how the politics of fear, secrecy, cronyism, and blind faith have combined with the public sphere's degradation to create an environment dangerously hostile to reason. Never has there been a worse time for us to lose the capacity to face the reality of our long-term challenges, from national security to the economy, from issues of health and social welfare to the environment. As The Assault on Reason explains, we have precious little time to waste.

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon? by award-winning writer Yong Zhao offers an entertaining, provocative insider's account of the Chinese school system, revealing the secrets that make it both "the best and worst" in the world.

Al Franken reveals the alarming story of how Bush (barely) beat Kerry with his campaign of "fear, smear, and queers", and then claimed a nonexistent mandate; Republicans decided that Terri Schiavo would make "a great political issue"; Conservatives sought to undermine Social Security by using a strategy borrowed from...Vladimir Lenin; and more.

In the past thirty years alone, more than 2,800 innocent American prisoners—their combined sentences surpassing 25,000 years—have been exonerated and freed after being condemned for crimes they did not commit. Terrifyingly, this number represents only a fraction of the actual number of persons wrongfully accused and convicted over the same period.

The Hindu religious complex may be summed up in one word: Dharma. It alludes to that continuous entity at the heart of the world's revolutions, keeping it in place; the thing that governs the path of change by not participating in it—by being constant. This book introduces the reader to the notion of dharma, its practical expression in a Hindu society, and provides a brief examination of the numerous types of dharma that are vital to Hindu thinking and practice.

Americans in the twenty-first century are becoming increasingly untethered from both reality and the essential principles and traditions that have shaped the nation’s historic success. A big part of why America isn’t working is because far too many Americans neither know nor care how it’s supposed to work.

Best-selling author Ted Stewart explains how the Supreme Court and its nine appointed members now stand at a crucial point in their power to hand down momentous and far-ranging decisions. Today's Court affects every major area of American life, from health care to civil rights, from abortion to marriage. This fascinating book reveals the complex history of the Court as told through seven pivotal decisions.

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!

Hyperpartisanship has gridlocked the American government. Congress' approval ratings are at record lows, and both Democrats and Republicans are disgusted by the government's inability to get anything done. In It's Even Worse Than It Looks, Congressional scholars Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein present a grim picture of how party polarization and tribal politics have led Congress - and the United States - to the brink of institutional failure.

Polyvagal Theory (PVT) has had a tremendous impact on the mental health field, shedding light on how the nervous system predictably moves between different states in response to changing situations. School consultant Debra Em Wilson introduces PVT to educators and shows how using PVT-guided strategies can help create optimal learning environments. When school staff understand the role of the nervous system in learning, they can better help students develop the skills leading to increased resilience, adaptability, and flexibility.

America’s criminal justice system perpetuates profound social and racial harms. But despite growing recognition of its destructiveness, the vast machinery of the carceral state remains very much intact. How can its damage be undone? In this pathbreaking reader, three of the nation’s leading advocates for change provide us with tools to move from critique to action and from despair to hope. Dismantling Mass Incarceration surveys various approaches to confronting the carceral state, exploring a wide range of bold but practical interventions.

The United States has the world’s highest rate of incarceration, a form of punishment that ruins lives and makes a return to prison more likely. With the authority of a prominent legal scholar and the practical insights gained through on-the-ground work on criminal-justice reform, Rachel Barkow explains how dangerous it is to base criminal-justice policy on the whims of the electorate, which puts judges, sheriffs, and politicians in office.