Social Power

*A NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB MUST-READ* *A HARVARD PUBLIC HEALTH MAGAZINE BEST BOOK OF 2024* In this combination of diligent science reporting, moving patient success stories, and surprising self-discovery, journalist Julia Hotz helps us discover the lasting and life-changing power of social...

Sean Prophet was vice president of a millenarian cult that predicted nuclear war and prepared to survive it—building massive underground bomb shelters and stockpiling food and weapons for thousands of followers. My Cult Your Cult is part insider case study—and part personal reckoning. Prophet was born into Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT), which began as The Summit Lighthouse. The cult was founded in 1958 by his father, Mark Prophet, and later led by his mother, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, both of whom claimed to channel “Ascended Masters.

Have you ever wondered what country had the first truly global empire? Then pay attention... Folks used to say that the “Sun never sets on the British Empire” as a means of declaring Britain’s greatness. But it was the Portuguese who forged the first truly global empire. The major dominions of the Portuguese wrapped around the globe in a straight line, from Brazil to Angola, from Mozambique to India, and all the way to Macau. With its dominion under multiple time zones, the Sun, in fact, never did set on the Portuguese Empire.

In this remarkable book, Malidoma Some explores the essential role ritual plays in maintaining community and examines the structure common to all ritual. By telling stories of the rituals of his native West African Dagara culture, and his own experiences in the tribal community, he makes a convincing case that the lack of ritual in the Western world is a fundamental reason that the fabric of society is unravelling.

In The Personality of Power, Brian Massumi retheorizes the conditions of contemporary fascism through the prism of Trump's persona. Older theories based on identification of the masses with a charismatic leader no longer hold. Rather, an affective regime of reaction agitates bodies and orients lives at the molecular level. Massumi examines this agitation in relation to race, gender, personhood, and conspiracy thinking.

Power is not working—for women, for men, or for the world. We don’t need to remake women. We need to remake power. New York Times bestselling authors Katty Kay and Claire Shipman are on a mission to reclaim power for women. In the wake of sweeping changes in the way we work, the veteran...

Learn how small changes can make a big difference in your powers of persuasion with this New York Times bestselling introduction to fifty scientifically proven techniques for increasing your persuasive powers in business and life. Every day we face the challenge of persuading others to do what...

Aggression touches all of our lives. Whether it is a customer or angry coworker, an upset family member, a fellow student at school or college, or a stranger we bump into on the street, all of us, at times, must deal with aggressive people. Ellis Amdur has become well-known for his series of profession-specific books on dealing with aggressive and emotionally disturbed individuals. Words of Power is different. It is written for ordinary people who may, on occasion, have to deal with an angry, even enraged person.

Urgent as ever, Like a Thief in Broad Daylight illuminates the new dangers as well as the radical possibilities thrown up by today's technological and scientific advances and their electrifying implications for us all.

Pathologies of Power uses harrowing stories of life - and death - in extreme situations to interrogate our understanding of human rights. Paul Farmer argues that promoting the social and economic rights of the world's poor is the most important human rights struggle of our times. With passionate eyewitness accounts from the prisons of Russia and the beleaguered villages of Haiti and Chiapas, this book links the lived experiences of individual victims to a broader analysis of structural violence.

It’s time to stop playing small. Building Confidence and Unshakable Self-Esteem is your transformative guide to reclaiming your personal power. Whether you struggle with imposter syndrome, fear of judgment, or deeply rooted insecurity, this book delivers the mindset shifts, practical exercises, and emotional tools you need to rise above it all.

One of the US government's leading China experts reveals the hidden strategy fueling that country's rise - and how Americans have been seduced into helping China overtake us as the world's leading superpower.

Lose weight. Act confident. Play hard to get. This approach to dating doesn't lead to love; it leads to insecurity and loneliness. In Deeper Dating, psychotherapist Ken Page offers a new path to finding meaningful and lasting relationships. Learn how to attract people who love you for who you really are, become more self-assured and emotionally available, and lose your taste for relationships that diminish your self-esteem.

This instructive audiobook carries in itself a life-transforming value. None who listens to it with the needed interest and attention will ever feel inclined to remain unchanged in personal nature and untransformed in conduct and character.

Byung-Chul Han, a star of German philosophy, continues his passionate critique of neoliberalism, trenchantly describing a regime of technological domination that, in contrast to Foucault’s biopower, has discovered the productive force of the psyche.

The leviathan is the vast unity of the State. But how are unity, peace, and security to be attained? Hobbes’ answer is sovereignty, but the resurgence of interest today in Leviathan is due less to its answers than its methods: Hobbes sees politics as a science capable of the same axiomatic approach as geometry.

More than just a slogan on a t-shirt, feminism is a radical tool for fighting back against structural violence and injustice. Feminism, Interrupted is a bold call to seize feminism back from the cultural gatekeepers and return it to its radical roots. Lola Olufemi explores state violence against women, the fight for reproductive justice, transmisogyny, gendered Islamophobia, and solidarity with global struggles, showing that the fight for gendered liberation can change the world for everybody when we refuse to think of it solely as women's work.

War is no way to resolve our most problematic group, community, and societal issues, but neither is a peace that simply sweeps our problems under the rug. To create lasting change, we have to learn to work fluidly with two distinct, fundamental drives that are in tension: power - the single-minded desire to achieve one's solitary purpose - and love - the drive toward unity.... They are seemingly contradictory but in fact complimentary.

Award-winning historian Frank Dikötter explores how the People’s Republic of China was transformed from a backwater economy in the 1970s into the world superpower of today. His account is the first to be based on hundreds of previously unseen archival documents, from the secret minutes of top party meetings to confidential bank reports. Unfolding with great narrative sweep, this riveting, richly detailed chronicle recasts our understanding of an era that both the regime and foreign admirers celebrate as an economic miracle.

In a world constantly shaped by persuasion, understanding why we say "yes" is no longer a luxury—it's a necessity. The Power of Persuasion takes you on a deep dive into the science, strategies, and ethics of influence, showing how persuasion shapes everything from the choices we make to the identities we build. From everyday decisions to high-stakes moments, this book reveals the invisible forces that drive human behaviour.