Media Studies Politics

Hoodoo is a bold spiritual tradition that helps enhance your wellbeing and solve everyday problems. This practical, do-it-yourself guide shows you how to use spells, rites, recipes, mojos, and curios to enrich your life and be ready for whatever comes your way. 365 Days of Hoodoo, by renowned Hoodoo author Stephanie Rose Bird, starts by providing the basics of Hoodoo, and then gradually builds your knowledge day after day.

Monsters are central to how we think about the human condition. Join award-winning historian of science Dr. Surekha Davies as she reveals how people have defined the human in relation to everything from apes to zombies, and how they invented race, gender, and nations along the way. With rich, evocative storytelling that braids together ancient gods and generative AI, Frankenstein's monster and E.T., Humans: A Monstrous History shows how monster-making is about control: it defines who gets to count as normal.

The consequences of adopting the cynical but popular worldview are many, including needless pessimism, missed investment opportunities, and - surprisingly - even poorer health. Yet An Embarrassment of Riches provides a powerful antidote. Green begins with a robust survey of the many ways our lives are becoming longer, easier, safer, healthier and more prosperous. He then embarks on a wide-ranging exploration of the ideas and the many men and women - both living and dead - who are still enriching our lives today.

Banned Books explores why some of the world's most important literary classics and seminal non-fiction titles were once deemed too controversial for the public—whether for challenging racial or sexual norms, satirizing public figures, or simply being deemed unfit for young audiences. From the banning of All Quiet on the Western Front and the repeated suppression of On the Origin of the Species, to the uproar provoked by Lady Chatterley's Lover, entries offer a fascinating chronological account of censorship.

Our children's first digital footprints are made before they can walk-even before they are born - as parents use fertility apps to aid conception, post ultrasound images, and share their baby's hospital mug shot. Then, in rapid succession come terabytes of baby pictures stored in the cloud, digital baby monitors with built-in artificial intelligence, and real-time updates from daycare. Unwittingly, parents, teachers, and other trusted adults are compiling digital dossiers for children that could be available to everyone - friends, employers, law enforcement - forever.

As a deafblind woman with partial vision in one eye and bilateral hearing aids, Elsa Sjunneson lives at the crossroads of blindness and sight, hearing and deafness—much to the confusion of the world around her. And she knows how wrong our one-size-fits-all definitions of disability can be. Part memoir, part cultural criticism, part history of the deafblind experience, Being Seen explores how our cultural concept of disability is more myth than fact, and the damage it does to us all.

The American Revolution was a home-front war that brought scarcity, bloodshed, and danger into the life of every American, and Carol Berkin shows us that women played a vital role throughout the struggle. Berkin takes us into the ordinary moments of extraordinary lives. We see women boycotting British goods in the years before independence, writing propaganda that radicalized their neighbors, raising funds for the army, and helping finance the fledgling government. We see how they managed farms, plantations, and businesses while their men went into battle.

Five mysterious billionaires summoned Douglas Rushkoff to a desert resort for a private talk. The topic? How to survive The Event: the societal catastrophe they know is coming. Rushkoff came to understand that these men were under the influence of The Mindset, a Silicon Valley-style certainty that they can break the laws of physics, economics, and morality to escape a disaster of their own making—as long as they have enough money and the right technology.

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard had a major influence in the development of 20th-century existentialist and postmodernist philosophies. Many go as far as to call him the “Father of Existentialism”. Kierkegaard regarded himself as a religious poet above everything else. His Christian writings emphasized Lutheran pietism and explored sin, guilt, suffering, and responsibility for oneself. In his writings, Kierkegaard proposed that everyone passed through three stages of life on the way to “[B]ecoming a true self”. The phases he proposed are the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious.

Offering a nuanced and transformative take on immigration, multiculturalism, and America's role on the global stage, The Newcomers follows and reflects on the lives of 22 immigrant teenagers throughout the course of their 2015-2016 school year at Denver's South High School. Unfamiliar with American culture or the English language, the students range from the ages of 14 to 19 and come from nations struggling with drought, famine, or war.

In western post-Christian society, humans are thought of less like precious image bearers and more like commodities. The canary in the coal mine of this ideological shift is often women and children, which manifests itself in the seemingly built-in disdain towards motherhood and children for their lack of production of economically valuable goods. However, the risk of this utilitarian approach to human life is not just outside the church, but within those spaces as well.

In many areas, we, as women, have earned the equality we've been fighting for. We've broken through glass ceilings and achieved great success. We've shown that we can prosper by our own means. And we've become influential, respected leaders. Yet many of us find ourselves unhappy, anxious, and overwhelmed. Where's the pot of gold at the end of our "I can do it just like a man" rainbow?The problem is that while we can be as successful as men, we don't get there through a masculine approach.

Melding the long-term history of technology with the latest headlines and findings of computer science and social science, The Efficiency Paradox questions our ingrained assumptions about efficiency, persuasively showing how relying on the algorithms of digital platforms can in fact lead to wasted efforts, missed opportunities, and above all an inability to break out of established patterns. Edward Tenner offers a smarter way of thinking about efficiency, revealing what we and our institutions can learn from the random and unexpected.

In 2018, the Marvel Cinematic Universe finally delivered on something fans had long been waiting for: a feature film with a solo Black superhero. Black Panther introduced viewers to the stunning world of Wakanda and to T'Challa, a young man stepping into his role as king and taking up the mantle of the Black Panther title from his late father. Why Wakanda Matters gives this iconic film the in-depth analysis it deserves under the lens of the latest psychological concepts - as well as delving into the lasting cultural impact of this unforgettable story.

In Burn It Down, veteran reporter Maureen Ryan does just that. She draws on decades of experience to connect the dots and illuminate the deeper forces sustaining Hollywood’s corrosive culture. Fresh reporting sheds light on problematic situations at companies like Lucasfilm and shows like Lost, Saturday Night Live, The Goldbergs, Sleepy Hollow, Curb Your Enthusiasm and more.

Let's take stock of young America. Compared to previous generations, American youth have more schooling (college enrollments have never been higher); more money ($100 a week in disposable income); more leisure time (five hours a day); and more news and information (Internet, The Daily Show, RSS feeds). What do they do with all that time and money? They download, upload, IM, post, chat, and network. (Nine of their top ten sites are for social networking.) They watch television and play video games (2 to 4 hours per day).

Legal scholar and architect Sara C. Bronin examines how zoning became such a prevailing force and reveals its impact. Outdated zoning codes have maintained racial segregation, prioritized cars over people, and enabled great ecological harm. But, as Bronin argues, once we recognize the power of zoning, we can harness it to create the communities we desire, and deserve. Drawing on her own experience leading the overhaul of Hartford's zoning code and exploring the efforts of activists and city planners across the country, Bronin shows how new codes are reshaping our cities.

The folklore roots of Christmas under its many other guises (Yule, the Winter Solstice, Saturnalia) is examined in a different, darker light. The Winter Solstice is a time to be afraid. It’s the shortest day of the year, the longest night. In some parts of the world, the sun doesn’t rise at all. It’s dark, and we have to wonder if the sun will ever come back at all. Christmas has always been creepy and with The Fright Before Christmas, you'll see that side. This is a book for everyone who loves a little darkness around the holidays.

When award-winning journalist Nick Davies decided to break Fleet Street's unwritten rule by investigating his own colleagues, he found that the business of reporting the truth had been slowly subverted by the mass production of ignorance.

The disinformation age is drowning us in a deluge of data, "facts" and opinion. It consumes our attention. The result of this deficit of attention is the rise of fake news, media bias, and a polarised society. Our capacity to reason what is happening in the world and to make better decisions has become incapacitated amid the cacophony. Instead, we outsource our thinking to others without even realising it. Economist Peter Sainsbury unravels the truth about the power of media narratives, the breakdown in trust and why our attention has been diverted from what matters.