Catalog Search Results
1) Unsheltered
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
How could two hardworking people do everything right in life, a woman asks, and end up destitute? Willa Knox and her husband followed all the rules as responsible parents and professionals, and have nothing to show for it but debts and an inherited brick house that is falling apart. The magazine where Willa worked has folded; the college where her husband had tenure has closed. Their dubious shelter is also the only option for a disabled father-in-law...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 9.1 - AR Pts: 15
Lexile measure
1160L
Language
English
Description
New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell looks at why major changes in our society so often happen suddenly and unexpectedly. Ideas, behavior, messages, and products, he argues, often spread like outbreaks of infectious disease. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a few fare-beaters and graffiti artists fuel a subway crime wave, or a satisfied customer fill the empty tables of a new restaurant. These are social epidemics,...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 12.3 - AR Pts: 48
Lexile measure
1460L
Language
English
Description
"A magisterial effort packed with insight and written with clarity and enthusiasm. It's also the deal of the year--the equivalent of a year's college course by an engaging, brilliant professor, all for the price of a book."
Who Hasn't Gazed upon the abandoned temples of Angkor Wat or the jungle-choked cities of the Maya and wondered, could the same fate happen to us? In this riveting book, Jared Diamond--whose Guns, Germs, and Steel revolutionized...
Author
Language
English
Description
Is the world falling apart? Is progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to stop back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the...
Series
Research in social movements conflicts and change volume 31
Research in social movements conflicts and change volume Volume 42
Research in social movements conflicts and change volume 36
Research in social movements conflicts and change volume Volume 42
Research in social movements conflicts and change volume 36
Language
English
Author
Publisher
New Press
Pub. Date
[2006]
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
A book of spiritual ruminations with a progressive political edge, from the Pulitzer Prize-winner who has devoted her life to befriending the earth. Walker has long been a force for sanity in a chaotic world. Here she draws on her deep spiritual grounding, her political conviction and experience, and her literary gifts to offer a series of meditations filled with wisdom, hope, encouragement, and, at times, serenity to a world in need of all these...
Author
Publisher
Little, Brown Spark
Pub. Date
2021.
Language
English
Description
"A bold and paradigm-busting new theory about the complex way ideas, movements, and behaviors spread, and how to efficiently effect change--for readers of Malcolm Gladwell, Richard Thaler, and Cass Sunstein."--Provided by publisher.
11) Early warning
Author
Pub. Date
2015.
Language
English
Description
Family patriarch Walter Langdon has died, and his children have fanned out across the country. The narrative moves year by year from 1953 to 1986, encompassing Cold War blinkeredness, Sixties rebellion, and escalating wealth into the Eighties.
Author
Language
English
Description
"We are addicted to prediction, desperate for certainty about the future. But the complexity of modern life won't provide that: experts in forecasting are reluctant to look more than 400 days out. History doesn't repeat itself, and even genetics won't tell you everything you want to know. Tomorrow remains uncharted territory, but Heffernan demonstrates how we can forge ahead with agility. Drawing on a wide array of people and places, Uncharted traces...
Author
Publisher
Cornell University Press
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
"In All Societies Die, Samuel Cohn asks us to prepare for the inevitable. Our society is going to die. What are you going to do about it? But he also wants us to know that there's still reason for hope. In an immersive and mesmerizing discussion Cohn considers what makes societies (throughout history) collapse. All Societies Die points us to the historical examples of the Byzantine empire, the collapse of Somalia, the rise of Middle Eastern terrorism,...
Author
Publisher
Candlewick Press
Lexile measure
1170L
Language
English
Description
Every generation inherits the problems created by the ones before them, but no generation will inherit as many problems--as many crises--as the current generation of young people. From the devastations of climate change to the horrors of gun violence, from rampant transphobia to the widening wealth gap, from the lack of health care to the lack of housing, the challenges facing the next generation can feel insurmountable. But change, even revolution,...