Social Society

In this pathbreaking book, New York Times best-selling author Cass Sunstein asks us to rethink freedom. He reveals that freedom of choice isn't nearly enough. To be free, we must also be able to navigate life. Accessible and lively and drawing on perspectives from the humanities, religion, and the arts, as well as social science and the law, On Freedom explores a crucial dimension of the human condition that philosophers and economists have long missed - and reveals what it would take to make freedom real.

Twenty thousand years ago, women were making and wearing the first clothing created from spun fibers. In fact, right up to the Industrial Revolution the fiber arts were an enormous economic force, belonging primarily to women. Despite the great toil required in making cloth and clothing, most books on ancient history and economics have no information on them. Much of this gap results from the extreme perishability of what women produced, but it seems clear that until now descriptions of prehistoric and early historic cultures have omitted virtually half the picture.

Par son titre même, le Traité théologico-politique pose la question du trait d'union entre la théologie et la politique, c'est-à-dire entre la religion et l'État. C'est dans la Lettre 30 à Oldenburg que Spinoza donne les trois raisons qui l'ont amené à problématiser dans ce traité le rapport entre théologie et politique. Tout d'abord, il s'agit de réfuter les préjugés des théologiens, ces hommes d'Église qui exigent la seule croyance, une foi dogmatique, incompatible avec une liberté de penser dont la raison examinerait les dogmes.

In this classic evaluation of play that has become a “must-listen” for those in game design, Dutch philosopher Johan Huizinga defines play as the central activity in flourishing societies. Like civilization, play requires structure and participants willing to create within limits. Starting with Plato, Huizinga traces the contribution of Homo Ludens, or “man the player” through medieval times, the Renaissance, and into our modern civilization.

What if every time you had a self-critical thought, you heard it in a man’s voice? The truth is not far off. Living in a patriarchy, women absorb a lifetime of messages that say your worth is defined by your looks, your accomplishments, and how well you take care of everyone around you. In fact, these messages are so pervasive that, even knowing they exist, they still manage to program themselves into our brains. The result is that women end up feeling anxious, guilty, and vaguely ashamed of themselves no matter how much they do for others or achieve for themselves.

The Sane Society is a continuation and extension of the brilliant psychiatric concepts Erich Fromm first formulated in Escape from Freedom; it is also, in many ways, an answer to Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents. Fromm examines man’s escape into over conformity and the danger of robotism in contemporary industrial society: Modern humanity has, he maintains, been alienated from the world of their own creation. Here Fromm offers a complete and systematic exploration of his “humanistic psychoanalysis.”

Predicting society’s present addiction to technology, our challenges with data privacy, and the dramatic increase in drug overdoses and depression that have accompanied a technology-induced lack of purpose, The Unabomber’s vision of the future has become our reality. Of course, his means were disgusting and condemnable. But his message is more important than ever. If we want to thrive in an age where automation and artificial intelligence and rapidly making humans obsolete, it is our responsibility to understand and prepare for the technological machine we are up against.

In an era defined by rapid technological advancement, Humanity in the Digital Age offers a thought-provoking exploration of how digital innovation is reshaping our world. This compelling book delves into the ethical dilemmas, societal transformations, and opportunities for sustainability that emerge as humanity becomes increasingly interconnected through technology. From artificial intelligence and big data to automation and virtual reality, this book examines the profound impact of technological progress on the environment, education, healthcare, and global economies.

Peter Singer is often described as the world's most influential philosopher. Now, in Ethics in the Real World, Singer shows that he is also a master at dissecting important current events in a few hundred words. In this book of brief essays, he applies his controversial ways of thinking to issues like climate change, extreme poverty, animals, abortion, euthanasia, human genetic selection, sports doping, the sale of kidneys, the ethics of high-priced art, and ways of increasing happiness.

When a high school student started a private Instagram account that used racist and sexist memes to make his friends laugh, he thought of it as “edgy” humor. Over time, the edge got sharper. Then a few other kids found out about the account. Pretty soon, everyone knew. Ultimately no one in the small town of Albany, California, was safe from the repercussions of the account’s discovery. Not the girls targeted by the posts. Not the boy who created the account. Not the group of kids who followed it. Not the adults—educators and parents—whose attempts to fix things too often made them worse.

The foundations of capitalism are being battered by a flood of altruism, which is the cause of the modern world's collapse. This was the view of Ayn Rand, a view so radically opposed to prevailing attitudes that it constituted a major philosophic revolution. In this series of essays, she presented her stand on the persecution of big business, the causes of war, the default of conservatism, and the evils of altruism.

In Physics of the Future, Michio Kaku - the New York Times best-selling author of Physics of the Impossible - gives us a stunning, provocative, and exhilarating vision of the coming century based on interviews with over 300 of the world’s top scientists who are already inventing the future in their labs. The result is the most authoritative and scientifically accurate description of revolutionary developments taking place....

Explaining Postmodernism is intellectual history with a polemical twist, providing fresh insights into the debates underlying the furor over political correctness, multiculturalism, and the future of liberal democracy.

Charles Eisenstein explores the history and potential future of civilization, tracing the converging crises of our age to the illusion of the separate self. He argues that our disconnection from one another and the natural world has mislaid the foundations of science, religion, money, technology, economics, medicine, and education as we know them. It has fired our near-pathological pursuit of technological Utopias even as we push ourselves and our planet to the brink of collapse.

James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia hypothesis and the greatest environmental thinker of our time, has produced an astounding new theory about future of life on Earth. He argues that the anthropocene - the age in which humans acquired planetary-scale technologies - is, after 300 years, coming to an end. A new age - the novacene - has already begun.

It's the 21st century, and although we tried to rear unisex children - boys who play with dolls and girls who like trucks - we failed. Even though the glass ceiling is cracked, most women stay comfortably beneath it. And everywhere we hear about vitally important "hardwired" differences between male and female brains. The neuroscience that we read about in magazines, newspaper articles, books, and even scientific journals increasingly tells a tale of two brains, and the result is a validation of the status quo.

International sex researcher, neuroscientist, and columnist Debra Soh debunks popular gender myths in this scientific examination of the many facets of gender identity that “is not only eminently reasonable and beautifully-written, it is brave and vital” (Ben Shapiro, number-one New York Times best-selling author).

From the Industrial Revolution to the age of artificial intelligence, The Technology Trap takes a sweeping look at the history of technological progress and how it has radically shifted the distribution of economic and political power among society’s members.

From one of our leading technology thinkers and writers, a guide through the 12 technological imperatives that will shape the next 30 years and transform our lives. Much of what will happen in the next 30 years is inevitable, driven by technological trends that are already in motion. In this fascinating, provocative new book, Kevin Kelly provides an optimistic road map for the future, showing how the coming changes in our lives - from virtual reality in the home to an on-demand economy to artificial intelligence embedded in everything we manufacture.

In this endlessly fascinating book, New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea that has profound implications: large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant. Groups are better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.