Social Power

A new industrial revolution has begun. Like mechanization or electricity before it, artificial intelligence will touch every aspect of our lives—and cause profound disruptions in the balance of global power, especially among the AI superpowers: China, the United States, and Europe. Autonomous weapons expert Paul Scharre takes listeners inside the fierce competition to develop and implement this game-changing technology and dominate the future.

How do we find fulfillment in a world that’s obsessed with fast results and immediate gratification? How do we find fulfillment in a cultural ethos that seems to be on a constant hunt for a form of happiness that seldom contributes to the lasting life-satisfaction? But wait a sec - isn’t happiness the goal? Isn’t happiness what all of us are after? As it turns out, the answer is no. And in this FlashBooks summary on The Power of Meaning by Emily Esfahani Smith, you’ll find out why that is and what to do about it.

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.

The inside story of one woman’s quest to bring transparency and accountability to Big Tech, by the Facebook whistleblower who is determined to help us all retake control of our lives. In 2021, when news outlets feasted on “the Facebook Files,” Frances Haugen went public as the former...

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.

The founder of the international Transition Towns movement asks why true creative, positive thinking is in decline, asserts that it's more important now than ever, and suggests ways our communities can revive and reclaim it.

Elbridge A. Colby was the lead architect of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, the most significant revision of US defense strategy in a generation. Here he lays out how America's defense must change to address China's growing power and ambition. Based firmly in the realist tradition but deeply engaged in current policy, this book offers a clear framework for what America's goals in confronting China must be, how its military strategy must change, and how it must prioritize these goals over its lesser interests.

This collection of miscellaneous essays was published posthumously in 1921. In the first and largest section, The Hidden Power, the author identifies Spirit as the "innermost within" of all things and the unseen essence of all phenomena. He develops this proposition to claim that Spiritual Science has fixed laws just as does Physical Science, and that an understanding of the laws could enable man to develop powers of which he is currently unaware. The other essays cover a range of topics relating to metaphysics, the Bible and other arcana of religion.

In 1989, Francis Fukuyama famously announced the "end of history." The Berlin Wall had fallen; liberal democracy had won out. But what of illiberal democracy - the idea that popular majorities, working through the democratic process, might reject gender equality, religious freedoms, and other norms that Western democracies take for granted? Nowhere have such considerations become more relevant than in the Middle East, where the uprisings of 2011 swept the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups to power.

In the Closet of the Vatican is a fascinating description and evaluation of financial, sexual and political misconduct throughout the Catholic Church at a time when new revelations are being uncovered each and every week. This audiobook explores the underlying causes and includes interviews with numerous Cardinals and other individuals, some of whom cannot be named. Martel reveals financial scandals in the Vatican bank; political collusion with unsavoury regimes, including Castro’s Cuba and Pinochet’s Chile; sexual abuse and hypocrisy over homosexuality.

Dark Manipulation for Women reveals the hidden secrets of influence and emotional mastery, empowering you to confidently navigate your personal and professional relationships. Whether you want to reclaim your power in love, assert control in the workplace, or transform how others perceive you, this guide is your key to unlocking the dark feminine energy that lies within.

How 12 Tibetan Buddhist teachers succeed in merging East and West - including Pema Chodron, Joan Halifax, and Thubten Chodron, among others. Personal reflections and life stories from 12 contemporary female Tibetan Buddhist teachers, both Westerners and Tibetans, who share insights into how they discovered their true calling, overcame barriers, and developed the courage, determination, and wisdom to progress on the spiritual path. What drives a young London librarian to board a ship to India, meditate in a remote cave by herself for twelve years, and then build a flourishing nunnery in the Himalayas?

We pursue power, pleasure, and profit. We want as much as we can get, and we deploy instrumental reasoning-cost-benefit analysis-to get it. We judge ourselves and others by how well we succeed. It is a way of life and thought that seems natural, inevitable, and inescapable. As David Wootton reveals, it is anything but. In Power, Pleasure, and Profit, he traces an intellectual and cultural revolution that replaced the older systems of Aristotelian ethics and Christian morality with the instrumental reasoning that now gives shape and purpose to our lives.

Learn why the concept of "weird" is being reclaimed and turned into a badge of honor, used to show how being different—culturally, socially, physically, or mentally—can be a person's greatest strength. Most of us have at some point in our lives felt like an outsider, sometimes considering...

“An entertaining history of great oratory” (New Yorker) and a primer to rhetoric’s key techniques Rhetoric gives our words the power to inspire. But it’s not just for politicians: it’s all around us, whether you’re buttering up a key client or persuading your children to eat their...

"The nobility must awaken, or else resign itself to perish, and not even gloriously: To perish by corrosion and fatal submersion. To awaken - that means: to become once more, at any cost, a political class." Metaphysics of Power is a collection of Julius Evola's powerfully argued articles organized into areas key to Evola's thought: The state, education, family, liberty and duty, monarchy, empire, modern society, and aristocracy.

Packed with practical tips, easy-to-listen content, powerful exercises, and enlightening paradigms, this book covers a wide range of life skills that will help your child succeed both now and in the future. Whether they're struggling with school or facing challenges at home, this book has everything your child needs to thrive.

Why do some women still expect men to buy their dinner? Why do some men feel depressed after masturbating? What the hell is going on with porn? Comedian Sara Pascoe explores the complex connections between sex, power and money. This audiobook is a thoughtful and entertaining journey through anatomy and arousal, dating and sex work, animals and technology, and Pascoe makes our most baffling human behaviours less mysterious.

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.

Twenty-five years after the existence of Nixon's secret White House recordings became known, the tapes were released. These tapes dominated the final two years of Nixon's presidency and almost single-handedly forced his resignation. In Abuse of Power, the listener is invited into the Oval Office with Nixon and the White House staff as they try to distance themselves from the firestorm of allegations being leveled at them. Packed with revelations, these recordings offer a spellbinding portrait of raw power and a Shakespearean depiction of a king and his court.