Social High

Ayn Rand's famous 1957 classic, Atlas Shrugged, has become more widely read and influential with each passing year, thanks in part to its brilliant dramatization of Rand's Objectivist philosophy and its celebration of self-reliance, integrity, rationality, and productive effort.

StoryCorps OutLoud sets out across the country to record and preserve the stories of LGBT individuals along with their families and friends. OutLoud is a project undertaken in the memory of Isay's father, psychiatrist Dr. Richard Isay. Professionally credited for helping to persuade the mental-health community that homosexuality is not a mental disorder, Dr. Isay was himself a closeted gay man for many years.

All the sixth graders at Memorial Middle School are talking about one thing: their first boy-girl party. Lucia's had enough talk about what to wear and who's going with who. If her best friend hadn't insisted, she wouldn't even go to the dumb party. But after she gets to know Adesh, she starts to think maybe this boy-girl party won't be so bad.

Allie's world is turned upside down when she's diagnosed with diabetes. Her overprotective parents are driving her crazy, and she's desperate to keep her condition a secret from her friends. But her secretive ways are awfully suspicious and soon the rumors are flying. Is Allie's reputation ruined for good?

Why are so many of us wrong about so much? From COVID-19 to climate change to the results of elections, millions of Americans believe things that are simply not true—and act based on these misperceptions. In Wrong: How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation, expert in media and politics Dannagal Goldthwaite Young offers a comprehensive model that illustrates how political leaders and media organizations capitalize on our social and cultural identities to separate, enrage, and—ultimately—mobilize us.

On an ordinary January afternoon, a disturbing revelation about his wife hurls one man into a maelstrom of public humiliation and heartbreak, and eventually on a spree of run-ins with lawyers, judges, therapists, and law enforcement. Land of July tells the true story of a teacher/student sex scandal that not only shocked an entire school and small suburban community, but made national news. It’s a story filled with countless anecdotes about marriage, trust, infidelity, grief, and the desperate search for hope and family in the face of ruin.

Since Hamas's attack on Israel last October 7, the term "settler colonialism" has become central to public debate in the United States. A concept new to most Americans, but already established and influential in academic circles, settler colonialism is shaping the way many people think about the history of the United States, Israel and Palestine, and a host of political issues. This short book is the first to examine settler colonialism critically for a general audience.

The citizens of Western democracies have been relentlessly propagandized, lied to, and fed a steady diet of distortions and untruths by their media for decades. Editor Michael Walsh brings together a stellar collection of critical thinkers and writers to explain how and why this is happening, its negative effects on our democracies, and what we can do to reverse it.

Based on hours of interviews with camp survivors and workers, thousands of government documents, and over a decade of research, Darren Byler, one of the leading experts on Uyghur society and Chinese surveillance systems, uncovers how a vast network of technology provided by private companies - facial surveillance, voice recognition, smartphone data - enabled the state and corporations to blacklist millions of Uyghurs because of their religious and cultural practice starting in 2017.

On December 28th, 1879, the night of the Great Storm, the Tay Bridge collapsed, along with the train that was crossing and everyone on board...This is the true story of that disastrous night, told from multiple viewpoints: The station master waiting for the train to arrive - who sees the approaching lights simply vanish. The bored young boys watching from their bedroom window who witness the disaster. The dreamer who designed the bridge which eventually destroyed him. The old highlanders who professed the bridge doomed from the outset.

The clash between Israel and Palestine has been one of the most emotionally engaging causes of modern times. Prophets Without Honor tells the story of the attempts to solve the conflict and examines the reasons for its resilience. Shlomo Ben-Ami, who participated at a high level in the July 2000 Camp David peace talks that almost led to a historic deal, uses his insider experience to illuminate the specific factors that impede a solution to the conflict.

In this groundbreaking book, Anita Hannig brings us into the lives of ordinary Americans who go to extraordinary lengths to set the terms of their own death. Faced with a terminal diagnosis and unbearable suffering, they decide to seek medical assistance in dying—a legal option now available to one in five Americans. The Day I Die tackles one of the most urgent social issues of our time: how to restore dignity and meaning to the dying process in the age of high-tech medicine.

In a fascinating account combining policy expertise with compelling on-the-ground reporting, Susan Crawford reveals how the giant corporations that control cable and Internet access in the United States use their tremendous lobbying power to tilt the playing field against competition, holding back the infrastructure improvements necessary for the country to move forward. And she reveals how cities and towns are fighting monopoly power to bring the next technological revolution to their communities.

Around 250,000 people have had their genomes sequenced, and scientists expect that number to rise to one billion by 2025. Professor Steven J. Heine argues that the first thing we will do on receiving our DNA test results is to misinterpret them completely. Despite breathless (often lightly researched) media coverage about newly discovered "cancer" or "divorce" or "IQ" genes, the prospect of a DNA test forecasting how your life is going to turn out is vanishingly small.

From drones to satellites, missile defense systems to cyber warfare, Israel is leading the world when it comes to new technology being deployed on the modern battlefield. The Weapon Wizards shows how this tiny nation of 8,000,000 learned to adapt to the changes in warfare and in the defense industry and become the new prototype of a 21st century superpower, not in size, but rather in innovation and efficiency - and as a result of its long war experience.

Grounded in extensive research and reporting, Spy Schools reveals how academia has emerged as a frontline in the global spy game. In a knowledge-based economy, universities are repositories of valuable information and research, where brilliant minds of all nationalities mingle freely with few questions asked. Intelligence agencies have always recruited bright undergraduates, but now, in an era when espionage increasingly requires specialized scientific or technological expertise, they're wooing higher-level academics.

The term "home economics" may conjure traumatic memories of lopsided hand-sewn pillows or sunken muffins. But common conception obscures the story of the revolutionary science of better living. The field exploded opportunities for women in the 20th century by reducing domestic work and providing jobs as professors, engineers, chemists, and businesspeople. And it has something to teach us today. Danielle Dreilinger traces the field's history from Black colleges to Eleanor Roosevelt to Okinawa, from a Betty Crocker brigade to DIY techies.

The death of Colonel Muammar Qadhafi freed Libya from 42 years of despotic rule, raising hopes for a new era. But in the aftermath, the country descended into bitter rivalries and civil war, paving the way for the Islamic State and a catastrophic migrant crisis. In a fast-paced narrative that blends frontline reporting, analysis, and history, Frederic Wehrey tells the story of what went wrong.

In an illuminating analysis, Dr. Genevieve Guenther shows that the climate debate is not, in fact, neatly polarized, with Republicans obstructing climate action and Democrats advancing climate solutions. Partisans on the right and the left often repeat the same fossil-fuel talking points, and this repetition produces a centrist consensus upholding the status quo, even as global heating accelerates. Weaving this analysis through fascinating critical histories of the terms that dominate the language of climate politics Dr. Guenther shows how this consensus is established.

The Parkland school shooting was the most avoidable mass murder in American history. And the policies that made it inevitable have spread to your school....