Social Media Study

Virtually anyone who has ever watched a profound movie, a powerful TV show, or read a moving novel understands that entertainment can and does affect us in surprising and significant ways. But did you know that our most popular forms of entertainment can have a direct physical effect on us, a measurable impact on society, geopolitics, the economy, and even the future itself? In You Are What You Watch, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Walter Hickey proves how exactly how what we watch (and read and listen to) has a far greater effect on us and the world at large than we imagine.

An updated and revised edition of the controversial classic - now more relevant than ever - argues that boys are the ones languishing socially and academically, resulting in staggering social and economic costs. After two major waves of feminism and decades of policy reform, women have made massive strides in education. Today they outperform men in nearly every measure of social, academic, and vocational well-being. Christina Hoff Sommers contends that it's time to take a hard look at present-day realities and recognize that boys need help.

The Alchemist's Handbook has long been an essential contribution to the study of alchemy since its first publication in 1960. It still stands as a groundbreaking work presenting in clear, concise language a practical manual of working knowledge that was formerly handed down under oath of secrecy. The scope of alchemical work is to provide both a means to synthesize all the other sciences and the necessary training of the intellectual and spiritual faculties. This edition includes a new foreword by Robert Allen Bartlett, author of Real Alchemy.

A fascinating guided tour of the complex, fast-moving, and influential world of algorithms - what they are, why they’re such powerful predictors of human behavior, and where they’re headed next. Algorithms exert an extraordinary level of influence on our everyday lives - from dating websites and financial trading floors, through to online retailing and internet searches - Google's search algorithm is now a more closely guarded commercial secret than the recipe for Coca-Cola.

Former big-city crime reporter Tamara Cherry calls on her award-winning skills as a journalist to examine the impact of the media on trauma survivors and the impact of trauma on members of the media. As Tamara documents the experiences of those who were forced to suffer on the public stage, she is confronted by everything she got wrong on the crime beat. Covering murders and traffic fatalities to sexual violence and mass violence, Cherry exposes a system set up to fail trauma survivors and journalists.

The mysterious civilizations of Lemuria and Atlantis become reality as Shirley Andrews, the author of Atlantis: Insights From a Lost Civilization combines details from scholars, scientists and the respected psychic Edgar Cayce.

When a murderous psychopath goes on a killing spree, law enforcement officials and the media never make his religion the central issue - unless he happens to be a Muslim. Then it sets off another frenzied wave of commentary about the inherent evils that lurk within the Muslim faith. From Fox News talking heads, who regularly smear Muslim leaders as secret terrorists, to Bill Maher, who has made Islam a routine target, it has become widely acceptable to libel a religion with a following of over 1.5 billion people.

Sex is cheap. Coupled sexual activity has become more widely available than ever. Cheap sex has been made possible by two technologies that have little to do with each other - the Pill and high-quality pornography - and its distribution made more efficient by a third technological innovation, online dating. Together, they drive down the cost of real sex, and in turn slow the development of love, make fidelity more challenging, sexual malleability more common, and have even taken a toll on men's marriageability. Cheap Sex takes listeners on an extended tour inside the American mating market.

This book documents each month of the first year of the pandemic and examines the issues that emerged, from racialized workers to residential care to policing. It demonstrates how politicians and uncritical media shaped the popular understanding of these issues and helped to justify the maintenance of a status quo that created the worst ravages of the crisis. Spin Doctors argues alternative ways in which Canadians should understand the big themes of the crisis and create the necessary knowledge to demand large-scale change.

Self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet" Audre Lorde is an unforgettable voice in 20th-century literature, and one of the first to center the experiences of black, queer women. This essential collection showcases her indelible contributions to intersectional feminism, queer theory, and critical race studies in 12 landmark essays and more than 60 poems-selected and introduced by one of our most powerful contemporary voices on race and gender, Roxane Gay.

Florida has long beckoned retirees seeking to spend their golden years in the sun, but, for many, the American dream of owning a home there was financially impossible. That changed in the 1950s, when the so-called "installment land sales industry" appeared out of nowhere to hawk billions of dollars of Florida residential property, sight unseen, to retiring northerners. For only $10 down and $10 a month, working-class pensioners could buy a piece of the Florida dream: a graded homesite that would be waiting for them in a planned community when they were ready to build.

This Highlights Listen & Learn! Audio Study, intended for those in grade four, introduces listeners to the importance of caring for your community. Getting Down and Dirty focuses on some of the run-down problem places found in cities, and how communities have joined together to turn these places into beautiful shared spaces. In addition to discussing bettering our communities, this audio study takes a look at some key comprehension skills including identifying an author's purpose, determining cause-and-effect relationships, and building vocabulary.

This Highlights Listen & Learn! Audio Study, intended for those in grade five, features a story called The Video Game Hero and focuses on vocabulary, plot, and characterization. The story follows Jack, a very talented video-game player who also uses a wheelchair. Jack often feels lonely at school because he doesn't have many friends. When Jack wins a video-gaming competition, his classmates seem to take more of an interest in him. At the end of the story, Jack learns a very interesting lesson about the people around him.

This book addresses the fraught relationship between women and aggression, one troubled by age-old patriarchal forces that disparage women's ambition, assertion, and voice.

Women make over 80% of healthcare decisions in the U.S., yet only 4% of all medical research and development is focused on women's health issues. From periods and childbirth to menopause, female pain has been normalized, as society shrugs and says "Welcome to being a woman," instead of coming up with better solutions. But it doesn't have to be this way. In The Vagina Business, award-winning journalist Marina Gerner, Ph.D. takes an eye-opening look at the innovators challenging the status quo to deliver the healthcare solutions women need.

Popularized by Joseph Campbell, the hero's journey features narrative stages along which a person matures and transforms. But where heroes transform is just as important as what they do to get there. Holly Bellebuono shows you how the location of each hero's journey step is intimately tied to the challenges faced, setting the tone for the entire adventure.

When Moya Bailey first coined the term misogynoir, she defined it as the ways anti-Black and misogynistic representation shape broader ideas about Black women, particularly in visual culture and digital spaces. She had no idea that the term would go viral, touching a cultural nerve and quickly entering into the lexicon. Misogynoir now has its own Wikipedia page and hashtag, and has been featured on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and CNN’s Cuomo Prime Time.

Sady Doyle, hailed as "smart, funny, and fearless" by the Boston Globe, takes listeners on a tour of the female dark side, from the biblical Lilith to Dracula's Lucy Westenra, from the T-Rex in Jurassic Park to the teen witches of The Craft. She illuminates the women who have shaped our nightmares: Serial killer Ed Gein's "domineering" mother Augusta; exorcism casualty Anneliese Michel, starving herself to death to quell her demons; author Mary Shelley, dreaming her dead child back to life.

Propaganda, an influential book written by Edward L. Bernays in 1928, incorporated the literature from social science and psychological manipulation into an examination of the techniques of public communication. Propaganda explored the psychology behind manipulating masses and the ability to use symbolic action and propaganda to influence politics, effect social change, and lobby for gender and racial equality.

In this book, Katherine Angel surveys medical and psychoanalytic understandings of female desire, from Freud to Kinsey to present-day science; MeToo-era debates over consent, assault, and feminism; and popular culture, TV, and film to challenge our assumptions about female desire. Why, she asks, do we expect desire to be easily understood? In contrast to the endless exhortation to know what we want, Angel proposes that sex can be a conversation, requiring insight, interaction, and mutual vulnerability.