Social Change

Inspired by civil rights activist and congressman John Lewis's call to challenge injustice, explore famous moments of global activism throughout history with more than 70 narrative stories—including the Newsboys' strike of 1899, the Freedom Summer Project of 1964, Greta Thunberg's first School Strike for Climate, and students against book banning.

Ice is everywhere: in gas stations, in restaurants, in hospitals, in our homes. Americans think nothing of dropping a few ice cubes into tall glasses of tea to ward off the heat of a hot summer day. Most refrigerators owned by Americans feature automatic ice machines. Ice on-demand has so revolutionized modern life that it’s easy to forget that it wasn’t always this way—and to overlook what aspects of society might just melt away as the planet warms. In Ice, journalist and historian Amy Brady shares the strange and storied two-hundred-year-old history of ice in America

Puberty is a time of exciting changes, new feelings, and big firsts. The Essential Girl’s Guide to Puberty & Periods is here to help you navigate this journey with confidence!

An acclaimed sportswriter offers an inside look at the Black quarterbacks whose skill and grit transformed the NFL In Rocket Men, John Eisenberg offers the definitive history of Black quarterbacks in the NFL—men who shaped not only the history of football but the cause of civil rights in...

Economic growth is wrecking the planet. It's the engine driving climate change, pollution, and the shrinking of natural spaces. To save the environment, will we have to shrink the economy? Might this lead to a better society, helping us break free from an obsession with material wealth that only benefits the few? Alessio Terzi takes these questions as a starting point for a journey into the socioeconomic, evolutionary, and cultural origins of our need for growth.

In China's Next Act, Scott M. Moore re-envisions China's role in the world, with a focus on sustainability and technology. Moore argues that these increasingly pressing, shared global challenges are reshaping China's economy and foreign policy, and consequently, cannot be tackled without China.

Germany should have been a global leader in combating climate change—its voters consider it a major issue and back the world’s most powerful Green Party. Yet, Germany’s climate policies have been disappointing. What happened?

A heartfelt middle grade story about changing friendships, peer pressure, and the courage to speak up when lines are crossed, perfect for fans of Starfish and Finally Heard. Sophie Valentine would rather be at home, doing school virtually. Instead, she’s waiting in a crowded middle school...

The next generation will face the reality that human activity is changing the planet from one geological epoch to another. From this vantage point—two generations across two geological epochs facing a fundamentally changing planet—Larry Rasmussen writes to his grandchildren. As a grandfather invested in a green earth and climate justice as well as a scholar of faith-based earth ethics, Rasmussen bridges this gap between generations to write to the future about climate change, global citizenship, democracy, and legacy.

You care what's happening in the world - but you can't help feeling you missed the part where the key stuff got explained. What's a budget deficit? How does voting actually work? What's the deal with the UN? And what does net zero mean again? Thankfully, No Silly Questions is here to lay out the facts and principles behind the day's headlines. Zara Seidler and Sam Koslowski, creators of The Daily Aus - Australia's leading social-first news service - are like your super well-informed mates who you can rely on to quickly bring you up to speed.

Tipping is huge in America. Almost everyone leaves at least one tip every day. More than five million American workers depend on them, and we spend $66 billion on tips each year. And everyone recognizes that queasy feeling - in bars and restaurants, barbershops and beauty parlors, hotels and strip clubs, and everywhere else - when the check arrives or the tip jar looms. Omnipresent yet poorly understood, tipping has worked its way into almost every part of daily life.

In Communicate for Change, journalist and communication consultant Genelle Aldred offers suggestions and guidance to help us be better listeners, readers, watchers, and talkers. With insight drawn from years of experience, she breaks down the barriers to effective conversation so we can communicate in a more nuanced, thoughtful way and understand our part in bringing about a more just society. Thought-provoking and stimulating, it lays out how we can take that next step from learning and talking about anti-racism and unconscious bias to putting it into practice.

Imagine having a secret guide that predicts your body's changes before they happen—giving you time to prepare instead of panic. Are you a girl experiencing unexpected body changes that make you feel like you've lost control? The changes happening to your body right now aren't just normal—they're your unique opportunity to build confidence that will last a lifetime.

To anticipate and inform future responses to demographic change, Justin Gest looks to the past. In Majority Minority, Gest wields historical analysis and interview-based fieldwork inside six of the world's few societies that have already experienced a majority minority transition to understand what factors produce different social outcomes. Gest concludes that states hold great power to shape public responses and perceptions of demographic change through political institutions and the rhetoric of leaders.

In atemberaubendem Tempo haben die Menschen den Planeten ihren Bedürfnissen unterworfen. Im 21. Jahrhundert stehen sie vor den Scherben ihres Tuns: Die natürlichen Ressourcen erschöpft, die Klimaerwärmung eine tödliche Bedrohung, globale Pandemien eine akute Gefahr. Werden wir auch diese Krise meistern? Die Bestsellerautoren Johannes Krause und Thomas Trappe zeigen, was wir aus der Vergangenheit für unser Überleben lernen können - und welche Gefahren in der zügellosen Kraft des Menschen liegen.

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.

Sabrina is a curious girl who loves her family, nature, and learning… about almost everything. Maybe one day she’ll be a scientist. However, when she overhears her dad—who’s about the smartest person she knows—say that she’s "too bookish for a girl," her confidence is shaken.

Do you want to make the world a fairer and more equal place? But are there times when all those big complex problems feel totally overwhelming or difficult to understand? You're not alone, and yet sometimes it's just the little things you can do, every single day, that all add up and make the biggest difference. In this handbook, founders of Everyday Racism Natalie and Naomi Evans introduce young listeners to anti-racism work - explaining what racism is, where it comes from, and the everyday small actions young people can take to combat it.

The Shape of Change introduces Dynamic Materialism and Adaptive Realism as two interwoven ways of understanding how living, technological, and social systems evolve within a world that is constantly shifting. Dynamic Materialism looks to the physical and structural forces that shape behavior, tracing the feedback loops, constraints, and emergent patterns that guide the growth of ecosystems, economies, and technologies.

In When the Facts Change, Tony Judt's widow and fellow historian Jennifer Homans has assembled an essential collection of the most important and influential pieces written in the last 15 years of Judt's life, the years in which he found his voice in the public sphere. Included are seminal essays on the full range of Judt's concerns, including Europe as an idea and in reality, before 1989 and thereafter; Israel, the Holocaust and the Jews; American hyperpower and the world after 9/11.