Social Science Power

This book by military strategist Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., is the definitive take on the race for military dominance in the twenty-first century. It shows how militaries that successfully pursue disruptive innovation can gain a major advantage over their rivals, while those that fail to do so risk exposing their countries to great danger.

International best-selling author and leading global expert on mental strength Amy Morin turns her focus to feminism, explaining what it means - and what it takes - to be a mentally strong woman in the age of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements.

In 2007, a short blogpost by Gawker Media outed PayPal founder and billionaire investor Peter Thiel as gay. Thiel's sexuality had been known to close friends and family, but he didn't consider himself a public figure, and believed the information was private. This post would be the casus belli for a meticulously plotted conspiracy that would end nearly a decade later with a $140 million dollar judgment against Gawker and its bankruptcy. Only later would the world learn that Gawker's demise was not incidental - it had been masterminded by Thiel.

For over a decade, Taylor Lorenz has been the authority on internet culture, documenting its far-reaching effects on all corners of our lives. Her reporting is serious yet entertaining and illuminates deep truths about ourselves and the lives we create online. In her debut book, Extremely Online, she reveals how online influence came to upend the world, demolishing traditional barriers and creating whole new sectors of the economy. Lorenz shows this phenomenon to be one of the most disruptive changes in modern capitalism.

In this magnificent biography, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Lion and Franklin and Winston brings vividly to life an extraordinary man and his remarkable times. Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power gives us Jefferson the politician and president, a great and complex human being forever engaged in the wars of his era.

To fully understand these strange and dangerous times, Jared Yates Sexton takes a hard look at our nation’s history: namely, the abuses committed by those in power and the comforting stories that shaped the way the West has viewed itself up to the present. As reactionaries and authoritarians cling to myths about “Western civilization,” The Midnight Kingdom exposes how political power, religious indoctrination, and economic dominance have been repeatedly weaponized to oppress and exploit, sounding an alarm for what lies ahead as the current order frays.

Women are the future of American business. According to a recent Nielsen report, women will control two-thirds of American consumer wealth in less than a decade. And yet almost all business and success literature is still written for men - dispensing advice that doesn't take into account women's unique strengths or address the demands of family life on mothers.

For nearly two centuries, international relations have been premised on the idea of the “Great Powers.” As the thinking went, these mighty states—the European empires of the nineteenth century, the United States and the USSR during the Cold War—were uniquely able to exert their influence on the world stage because of their overwhelming military capabilities. But as military historian Phillips Payson O’Brien argues in War and Power, this conception of power fails to capture the more complicated truth about how wars are fought and won.

From acclaimed author Shadi Hamid comes an urgent and deeply personal argument for why American dominance, despite its many flaws, remains the world’s best hope. Hamid traces his journey from opposing America’s role in the world to reluctantly embracing it—while grappling with how recent events, from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to Israel’s devastating war in Gaza, have challenged his convictions.

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.

This complete collection brings together the full scope of Nietzsche's radical and transformative philosophy in a single, meticulously curated work.

At the office of Safe Steps, Victoria's dedicated 24/7 family violence response call centre, phone counsellors receive a call every three minutes. Many women are repeat callers - on average, they will go back to an abusive partner eight times before leaving for good. 'You must get so frustrated when you think a woman's ready to leave and then she decides to go back,' I say. 'No,' replies one phone counsellor, pointedly. 'I'm frustrated that even though he promised to stop, he chose to abuse her again.'

In Happiness, Matthieu Ricard demonstrated that true happiness is not tied to fleeting moments or sensations, but is an enduring state of soul rooted in mindfulness and compassion for others. Now he turns his lens from the personal to the global, with a rousing argument that altruism - genuine concern for the well-being of others - could be the saving grace of the 21st century. It is, he believes, the vital thread that can answer the main challenges of our time.

This audiobook explains why emotions are contagious, how health behaviors spread, why the rich get richer, even how we find and choose our partners. Intriguing and entertaining, Connected overturns the notion of the individual and provides a revolutionary paradigm - that social networks influence our ideas, emotions, health, relationships, behavior, politics, and much more. It will change the way we think about every aspect of our lives.

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.

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.

Throughout the book, powell shares personal reflections as well as practices to help you begin bridging wherever you are—in your community, friendships, family, workplace—even with those whom you might never have imagined you could find common ground.

The story we usually tell about childhood and success is the one about intelligence: success comes to those who score highest on tests, from preschool admissions to SATs. But in How Children Succeed, Paul Tough argues that the qualities that matter most have more to do with character: skills like perseverance, curiosity, conscientiousness, optimism, and self-control. How Children Succeed introduces us to a new generation of researchers and educators who, for the first time, are using the tools of science to peel back the mysteries of character.

A moving example of unconditional love in difficult times, the best-selling author of Tattoos on the Heart, Father Gregory Boyle, shares what three decades of working with gangs in Los Angeles has taught him about faith, compassion, and the enduring power of radical kinship.

The issues of poverty, inequality, racial injustice, and climate change have never been more pressing or paralyzing. Current approaches to social change, which rely on linear thinking and traditional power dynamics to "solve" social problems, are not helping. In fact, they may only be entrenching the status quo. This book draws on stories of committed social changemakers to uncover a set of principles and practices for social change that dramatically depart from the industrial approach. Simple yet profound, these stories distill timely lessons for leaders, scholars, and policymakers.