Social Science Power

Encore.org founder and CEO Marc Freedman tells the story of his 30-year quest to answer some of contemporary life's most urgent questions: With so many living so much longer, what is the meaning of the increasing years beyond 50? How can a society with more older people than younger ones thrive? In a poignant book that defies categorization, Freedman finds insights by exploring purpose and generativity, digging into the drive for longevity and the perils of age segregation, and talking to social innovators across the globe bringing the generations together for mutual benefit.

Jennifer Pharr Davis, the former record holder of the FKT (or Fastest Known Time) on the Appalachian Trail, tells the story of her meteoric rise in the world of endurance hiking and, in doing so, unpacks key traits that make women uniquely suited to endurance. With a storyteller's ear for fascinating detail and description, she takes us with her as she sets the record on the Appalachian Trail and introduces us to the mentors who helped her to identify and unlock different facets of her endurance capabilities.

Jack Zipes has spent decades as a "scholarly scavenger," discovering forgotten fairy tales in libraries, flea markets, used bookstores, and internet searches, and he has introduced countless readers to these remarkable works and their authors. In Buried Treasures, Zipes describes his special passion for uncovering political fairy tales of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, offers fascinating profiles of more than a dozen of their writers and illustrators, and shows why they deserve greater attention and appreciation.

This audiobook reveals that people with disabilities are the invisible force that has shaped history. They have been instrumental in the growth of freedom and birth of democracy. They have produced heavenly music and exquisite works of art. They have unveiled the scientific secrets of the universe. And at 1.2 billion, they are also the largest minority group in the world. Al Etmanski offers 10 lessons we can all learn from people with disabilities, illustrated with short, funny, inspiring, and thought-provoking stories of 100 individuals from 20 countries.

Invisible to Invaluable is a celebration of what midlife women do, who we are and what we are capable of. It's a rallying cry for us to change the world for the better. With personal stories, exciting research and insights from a cast of inspirational women, Jane Evans and Carol Russell's manifesto blows open the ageism that's sidelined midlife women at work and in society, and sets out an empowering vision for a world where we can unlock our full potential.

This groundbreaking study is based on the author's systematic comparative analysis of the vast textile collections in Iceland, Greenland, Denmark, Scotland, and the Faroe Islands, materials that are largely unknown even to archaeologists and span 1,000 years. Through these garments and fragments, Hayeur Smith provides new insights into how the women of these island nations influenced international trade by producing cloth (vaðmál); how they shaped the development of national identities by creating clothing; and how they helped their communities survive climate change.

Militaries with state-of-the-art information technology sometimes bog down in confusing conflicts. To understand why, it is important to understand the micro-foundations of military power in the information age - and this is exactly what Jon R. Lindsay's Information Technology and Military Power gives us. As Lindsay shows, digital systems now mediate almost every effort to gather, store, display, analyze, and communicate information in military organizations. He highlights how personnel now struggle with their own information systems, as much as with the enemy.

Inequality is America’s biggest problem. Unions are the single strongest tool that working people have to fix it. Organized labor has been in decline for decades. Yet it sits today at a moment of enormous opportunity. In the wake of the pandemic, a highly visible wave of strikes and new organizing campaigns have driven the popularity of unions to historic highs. The simmering battle inside of the labor movement over how to tap into its revolutionary potential—or allow it to be squandered—will determine the economic and social course of American life for years to come.

In 2016, writer and filmmaker Ben Howe found himself disillusioned with the religious movement he’d always called home. In the pursuit of electoral victory, many American evangelicals embraced moral relativism and toxic partisanship. Whatever happened to the Moral Majority, who headed to Washington in the ’80s to plant the flag of Christian values? Where were the Christian leaders that emerged from that movement and led the charge against Bill Clinton for his deception and unfaithfulness?

Thought-provoking and eye-opening, Blood and Silk is an accessible, personal look at modern Southeast Asia, written by one of the region's most experienced outside observers. This is a first-hand account of what it's like to sit at the table with deadly Thai Muslim insurgents, mediate between warring clans in the Southern Philippines and console the victims of political violence in Indonesia - all in an effort to negotiate peace and understand the reasons behind endemic violence.

Women experience 350-500 menstrual cycles in their lifetime. But your period is way more than PMS, carb cravings, and lady rage. It's actually a four-part code that, once cracked, will uncover a series of monthly superpowers, and working with your menstrual cycle is a key to wellness, self-esteem, and empowerment. In Code Red, Lisa Lister shares how to live and work in complete alignment with the rhythms of nature, the moon, and your menstrual cycle.

Short on time? Or maybe you’ve already read the book, but need a refresh on the most important takeaways. In a quick, easy read, you can take the main principles from Outliers: The Story of Success. Outliers asserts that a person’s background and environment are every bit as important as intelligence and drive in achieving success. Critics have complained that Gladwell’s explanations for success are simply interesting, but too simplistic. However, the book has sold millions of copies and remains popular.

At first, what happened on the Mekong River on October 5, 2011 seemed like a simple matter of rough frontier justice. A detachment of Thai military commandos reported that they had confronted a band of drug runners smuggling methamphetamines out of the Golden Triangle, the famously lawless borderlands between Burma, Laos, and Thailand. A gunfight ensued, the smugglers fled, and the commandos seized two barges and a haul of nearly a million pills.

What’s gone wrong with our media? The answer: its owners. From William Randolph Hearst to Elon Musk, from the British press barons to colonial upstarts Conrad Black and Rupert Murdoch, media proprietors have manipulated the news to accumulate wealth and influence as they meddled with democracy. Eric Beecher knows the news business from bottom to top. He has been a journalist, editor and media proprietor, with the rare distinction of having both worked for and been sued (unsuccessfully) by the Murdochs. This book reveals the distorted role of the media moguls of the past two centuries.

For centuries, oceans were the chessboard on which empires battled for supremacy. But in the nuclear age, air power and missile systems dominated our worries about security, and for the United States, the economy was largely driven by domestic production, with trucking and railways that crisscrossed the continent serving as the primary modes of commercial transit.

When Louise Hay published the first edition of this book more than 2 years ago with the title Empowering Women, her hope was to help all women experience and take ownership of their self-love, self-worth, self-esteem, and rightful, powerful place in the world. Today, her words and wisdom ring as true as ever-and resonate even more deeply with women seeking the best next step on their path. This new edition of her groundbreaking work delves insightfully into every aspect of a woman's life, from relationships to health to sexuality to finances.

A social activist, journalist, public theologian, and international speaker who has become a powerful and brilliant voice of her generation offers a bold path to liberation and healing for people of African descent struggling in the shadows of the American Dream.

After five years of ground-breaking research, Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom share some unexpected answers, gripping stories, and a tapestry of unlikely connections. The Starfish and the Spider argues that organizations fall into two categories: traditional “spiders,” which have a rigid hierarchy and top-down leadership, and revolutionary “starfish,” which rely on the power of peer relationships. The Starfish and the Spider explores what happens when starfish take on spiders (such as the music industry vs. Napster, Kazaa, and the P2P services that followed).

If you cut off a spider's leg, it's crippled; if you cut off its head, it dies. But if you cut off a starfish's leg it grows a new one, and the old leg can grow into an entirely new starfish. The Starfish and the Spider argues that organizations fall into two categories: "spiders", which have a rigid hierarchy, and "starfish", which rely on the power of peer relationships.

For all the attention globalization has received in recent years, little consensus has emerged concerning how best to understand it. For some, it is the happy product of free and rational choices; for others, it is the unfortunate outcome of impersonal forces beyond our control. It is, in turn, celebrated for the opportunities it affords and criticized for the inequalities in wealth and power it generates.