"A thoughtful, funny, and at times lyrical" (Wall Street Journal) exploration of why people all over the world love to engage in pain on purpose--from dominatrices, religious ascetics, and ultramarathoners to ballerinas, icy ocean bathers, and sideshow performers Masochism is sexy, human, reviled, worshipped, and can be delightfully bizarre. Deliberate and consensual pain has been with us for millennia, encompassing everyone from Black Plague flagellants to ballerinas dancing on broken bones to competitive eaters choking down hot peppers while they cry. Masochism is a part of us. It lives inside workaholics, tattoo enthusiasts, and all manner of garden variety pain-seekers. At its core, masochism is about feeling bad, then better—a phenomenon that is long overdue for a heartfelt and hilarious investigation. And Leigh Cowart would know: they are not just a researcher and science writer—they’re an inveterate, high-sensation seeking masochist. And they have a few questions: Why do people engage in masochism? What are the benefits and the costs? And what does masochism have to say about the human experience? By participating in many of these activities themselves, and through conversations with psychologists, fellow scientists, and people who seek pain for pleasure, Cowart unveils how our minds and bodies find meaning and relief in pain—a quirk in our programming that drives discipline and innovation even as it threatens to swallow us whole.
"Fearless Speech emphasizes the distinction between what speech a democratic society should protect and what speech a democratic society should promote. The First Amendment has been legally deployed most visibly and effectively to promote powerful antidemocratic interests: misogyny, racism, religious zealotry, and corporate self-interest, in other words, reckless speech. Franks argues we need to focus on fearless speech--speakers who have called out injustice and hold the powerful accountable"--
A vital narrative history of 1970s pro basketball, and the Black players who shaped the NBAAgainst a backdrop of ongoing resistance to racial desegregation and strident calls for Black Power, the NBA in the 1970s embodied the nation's imagined descent into disorder. A new generation of Black players entered the league then, among them Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Spencer Haywood, and the press and public were quick to blame this cohort for the supposed decline of pro basketball, citing drugs, violence, and greed. Basketball became a symbol for post-civil rights America: the rules had changed, allowing more Black people onto the playing field, and now they were ruining everything.Enter Black Ball, a gripping history and corrective in which scholar Theresa Runstedtler expertly rewrites basketball's "Dark Ages." Weaving together a deep knowledge of the game with incisive social analysis, Dr. Runstedtler argues that this much-maligned period was pivotal to the rise of the modern-day NBA. Black players introduced an improvisational style derived from the playground courts of their neighborhoods. They also challenged the team owners' autocratic power, garnering higher salaries and increased agency. Their skills, style, and savvy laid the foundation for the global popularity and profitability of the league we know today.
"In the wake of the Great Resignation, the COVID-19 pandemic, and worker strikes around the world, executives can no longer ignore the demands of their most overlooked stakeholder - their employees. For decades, business strategy has focused almost exclusively on the customer, and the effects of this one-sided approach are becoming more and more apparent. According to Stephan Meier, employees must be equally - if not more - valued than customers. In The Employee Advantage, Meier provides a comprehensive roadmap that any organization, large or small, can implement to benefit from putting their employees first. The good news? You don't need to start from scratch. The employee-centric revolution is more like an evolution, and the customer-centric tools that gave you a competitive advantage can be repurposed to focus on employees. Through case studies of Fortune 500 companies like Costco, DHL, Best Buy, and Quest Diagnostics, you'll learn: -Why employees care about more than money when it comes to their jobs, just as customers value more than the price; -What two mindsets shifts are essential to becoming an employee-centric workplace; -How improving employee experience benefits your business and your bottom line. In the coming years, the companies that will win in the marketplace will be the companies that win with the best employees. To get ahead and stay ahead, businesses must embrace the employee-centric revolution"--
"Russell Shoatz was a gang member from age 11, battling for territory and dignity amid the white flight of 1950s Philadelphia. But at 23, after hearing Malcolm X speak on a street corner in Harlem, his life changed course. Shoatz would become a lifelong crusader for justice, a soldier in the most militant units of the Black Liberation Army, a Black Panther fighting the notorious Frank Rizzo and his Blue Guards. The fight turned increasingly violent, and as one of the "Philly Five," Shoatz was convicted to life in prison after a coordinated attack on a police station, which left one officer dead. The prison walls, however, could not deter Shoatz's battle for personal and collective freedom. He escaped maximum security facilities twice, making him a living legend, endowed with the moniker "Maroon," once used to honor runaways from plantations. He survived 22 years in solitary confinement, prompting an international campaign for his freedom. In October 2021, after 49 years in prison, Maroon was released into hospice care, reuniting briefly with his children before he passed away. But for nine years before his death, he worked with Sri Lankan writer Kanya D'Almeida, who he recognized as a comrade, to record his life's work in print. I Am Maroon charts a life of dizzying intrigue, set during the height of the struggle for Black liberation. With an unforgettable voice and a personality that comes off the page, Maroon reminds us that we too are capable of radical change, and leaves us a blueprint for how we might dedicate our lives and minds to the ongoing fight for freedom"--
"Emmy Noether is one of the most important figures in the history of science and mathematics.. Noether's mathematical genius enabled Einstein to bring his General Theory of Relativity, the basis of our current theory of gravity, to fruition. On a larger scale, what came to be known as "Noether's Theorem" - called by a Nobel laureate "the single most profound result in all of physics" - supplied the basis for the most accurate theory in the history of physics, the Standard Model, which forms our modern theory of matter. Noether's Theorem is also the tool physicists use to guide them towards the holy grail of a unified theory and is the secret weapon wielded by researchers at the cutting edge of fields as diverse as robotics, quantum computing, economics, and biology. Noether's life story is equally important and revelatory in understanding the pernicious nature of sexual prejudice in the sciences, revealing the shocking discrimination against one of the true intellectual giants of the twentieth century, a woman effectively excluded from the institutions, perquisites, and fame given male counterparts in the world of science. Noether's personality and optimistic, generous spirit, as Lee Phillips reveals, enabled her unique genius to persevere and arrive at insights that still astonish those who encounter them a century later"--
"Our era is one of significant and substantial loss, yet we barely have time to acknowledge it. The losses range from the personal grief of a single COVID death to the planetary disaster wrought by climate change, in an age of unraveling hopes and expectations, of dreams curtailed, of aspirations desiccated. This is capitalism's death phase. It has become clear that the cost of wealth creation for a few is enormous destruction for others, for the marginalized and the vulnerable but increasingly for all of us. At the same time, we are denied the means of mourning those futures that are being so brutally curtailed. At such a moment, taking the time to grieve is a political act. Sarah Jaffe shows how the act of public memorialization has become a radical statement, a vibrant response to loss, and a path to imagining a better world. When we are able to grieve well the ones we have lost, the causes they fought for, or the examples they bequeathed us, we are better prepared to fight for a transformed future"--
"For over four decades, Dr. Dean-David Schillinger has been a witness to the evolution of public health in America. From his days as a young, bright eyed resident to the Chief of Internal Medicine at one of the country's largest public hospitals, Schillinger has seen thousands of patients and observed how our healthcare system can both work for and against them. Yet, it wasn't insurance or improved medical tests that mattered most; it was simply listening to his patients. In Telltale Hearts, Schillinger takes readers into the exam rooms of a public hospital as he recounts his various experiences he's had with patients and how listening to their stories, their backgrounds and more, revolutionized his own approach to medicine. In a hospital that serves mostly low income and marginalized populations, it was never just the injury or ailment that was the whole story but rather the social, political and racial circumstances that led patients to the hospital in the first place. A woman who refuses to take her pills actually cannot swallow them to begin with while another who seems to be skipping her insulin injections has a family member who is stealing them. A patient with Type 2 diabetes doesn't just suffer from high blood sugar but has consistently lived in a food desert where sugary beverages and unhealthy food were the only options. With each story and each patient, Schillinger urges us to look at how listening to patients not only can lead to better care in a hospital, but a more empathetic approach to public health in general. Written with compassion and introspection, Telltale Hearts is a moving portrait of modern medicine and an urgent call for change in how we, as a society, take care of our own"--
"The Dead Don't Need Reminding is a braided story of Julian Randall's return from the cliff edge of a harrowing depression and his determination to retrace the hustle of a white-passing grandfather to the Mississippi town from which he was driven amid threats of tar and feather. Alternatively wry, lyrical, and heartfelt, Randall transforms pop culture moments into deeply personal explorations of grief, family, and the American way. He envisions his fight to stay alive through a striking medley of media ranging from Into the Spiderverse and Jordan Peele movies to BoJack Horseman and the music of Odd Future. Pulsing with life, sharp, and wickedly funny, The Dead Don't Need Reminding is Randall's journey to get his ghost story back."--
"Growing up in poverty in the 1950s, Kishore Mahbubani expected to become a common textile salesman after finishing high school. Instead, a government scholarship sent him to the University of Singapore, and four years later he found himself in the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Meanwhile, almost none of Mahbubani's cousins, scattered around the world after India's brutal partition, from Guyana to Hong Kong, would complete university. During this same period, Singapore itself was undergoing a metamorphosis. Granted internal self-governance in 1959 and achieving full independence six years later, the country came of age alongside Mahbubani. And as his star rose, so did the nation's. In Living the Asian Century, Mahbubani vividly chronicles his own life going from a poor childhood in a multiethnic neighbourhood to an illustrious diplomatic career that led him far from Singapore, from Cambodia to Australia, Malaysia to the United States and the UN - including the pinnacle of influence, the Security Council. Along the way Mahbubani has become one of Asia's most widely known commentators and spokespeople, with a unique perspective that straddles India, China, and the West"--
"Elias Aboujaoude explores how simplistic and hollow our concept of leadership has become, how divorced from the actual qualities and circumstances that make a truly great leader. The result: Everywhere we look, from corporate boardrooms to elected officials, we see failures of leadership. Dr. Aboujaoude begins with a takedown of the foibles of so-called leadership experts he dubs the "leadership industrial complex." an unholy alliance of gurus, coaches, business professors, TED-talkers seemingly united in a modern form of alchemy to create leadership gold. Rather, he vividly illustrates, leaders emerge from a combination of personal, psychological, and situational factors that vary from person to person. Personality, he shows, is sticky, not malleable, resisting attempts at manipulating it into something it is not. To a large degree, great leaders are born, or happen, with the help of innate temperament, talent, opportunity, timing, and circumstance, in ways that we do not fully understand. How Leaders Happen is a refreshing take on a classic subject. Frank and unflinching, it empowers readers to break free from the simplistic and hollow cult of leadership. Step up to lead if you are willing and capable, Dr. Aboujaoude urges, but if you decide otherwise, there are equally, often superior ways to make your contribution in the world"--
"In March 1906, American soldiers on the island of Jolo in the southern Philippines surrounded and killed 1000 local men, women, and children, known as Moros, on top of an extinct volcano. The so-called 'Battle of Bud Dajo' was hailed as a triumph over an implacable band of dangerous savages, a 'brilliant feat of arms' according to President Theodore Roosevelt. Some contemporaries, including W.E.B. Du Bois and Mark Twain, saw the massacre for what it was, but they were the exception and the U.S. military authorities successfully managed to bury the story. Despite the fact that the slaughter of Moros had been captured on camera, the memory of the massacre soon disappeared from the historical record. In Massacre in the Clouds, Kim A. Wagner meticulously recovers the history of a forgotten atrocity and the remarkable photograph that exposed its grim logic. His vivid, unsparing account of the massacre-which claimed hundreds more lives than Wounded Knee and My Lai combined-reveals the extent to which practices of colonial warfare and violence, derived from European imperialism, were fully embraced by Americans with catastrophic results"--
"Born in 1966 with a congenital heart defect known as the Tetralogy of Fallot, Gabriel Brownstein entered the world at a unique moment in the history of heart disease. He received a life-saving surgery at five years old, but surviving with his condition meant riding wave after wave of innovation to keep his heart beating. The Open Heart Club is both a memoir of a life on the edge of mortality and a history of the remarkable people who have made such a life possible. It begins in the 17th century when Nicolas Steno proved that the heart was made of muscle rather than the stuff of souls, and continues through today, with scientists who are trying to rewrite genetic codes to create the next wave of miracle cures"--
"Over the past few decades, China has climbed the ranks of the global powers with staggering speed. Its vast economy and growing regional aggression make it a threat to supersede the United States as the world's dominant power. But this outcome is far from inevitable. Like neighboring Russia-which harbors global ambitions of its own-right now China is at a turning point. Whereas international sanctions and a turn away from fossil fuels are steadily smothering Russia, China's downfall will be its shrinking population. Its chance to achieve global hegemony will soon disappear, making its quest for power both less certain and more dangerous. In World on the Brink, security expert Dmitri Alperovitch breaks down not only the significant weaknesses that have so far prevented China from surpassing the United States, but also the key strategies that will enable the U. S. to maintain primacy even as China ramps up its efforts. Cultivating crucial alliances, fostering domestic innovation in emerging tech fields, and stabilizing international relations with adversarial nations are all vital components to building a robust strategy in anticipation of a new cold war that seems more likely every day. As Alperovitch explains, we must play to our strengths and address our weaknesses, using our leverage as the strongest nation on the planet to tactfully navigate the next cold war. This sharp, timely book is the essential blueprint for doing just that"--
"FRESH, CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVE: Most books on nuclear weapons are focused on the past, especially World War II and the Cold War. Scoles offers the first modern analysis of nuclear weaponry today that goes beyond just geopolitical consequences but cultural as well"--
"You either were there or you wanted to be. [This] is the definitive oral history of The Village Voice--a New York City institution. Roaming its cramped, chaotic halls were the people who had written the first stories about the Stonewall Riots and the gay rights movement; who had advocated for civil rights before it was mainstream. The Voice was the first to cover hip-hop, the avant-garde art scene, and the AIDS crisis with urgency and seriousness when other papers were dismissing it as 'the gay disease.' It invented new forms of criticism and storytelling, revolutionized journalism, and covered cultural and political moments, often long before big outlets like the New York Times did. The book features interviews with iconic voices from the paper's early years, such as Norman Mailer, who co-founded the paper in 1955, and Mary Perot Nichols, who battled weekly with the infamous Robert Moses, and whose writing in the Voice saved countless New York City landmarks from destruction"--
"The Civil War was about states' rights, not slavery!" "If you don't like it here, you should go back to Africa." "What about Black-on-Black crime?" "You're just playing the race card." There's a whole arsenal of popular "gotchas" that crop up again and again in discussions about race in America. According to the people who use them, Critical Race Theory is a dangerous threat that promotes racial hatred, and affirmative action is reverse discrimination. At the same time, they insist that racism ended with the Obama presidency, and Black people should be grateful for the privilege of living in the United States. Keith Boykin sets the record straight, explaining why such all-too-common assertions are simply not true. Effortlessly combining history, pop culture, and stories from his own life, Boykin lays out the truth about anti-Black racism and white supremacy in America. Racist lies and misbeliefs just don't seem to go away-but with the help of this book, they also won't go unchallenged"--
This extraordinary investigation of the death of the author's grandson yields a powerful memoir of addiction, grief, and the stories we choose to tell our families and ourselves. Jared Kindred left his home and family at the age of eighteen, choosing to wander across America on freight train cars and live on the street. Addicted to alcohol most of his short life, and withholding the truth from many who loved him, he never found a way to survive. Through this ordeal, Dave Kindred's love for his grandson has never wavered. Leave Out the Tragic Parts is not merely a reflection on love and addiction and loss. It is a hard-won work of reportage, meticulously reconstructing the life Jared chose for himself--a life that rejected the comforts of civilization in favor of a chance to roam free. Kindred asks painful but important questions about the lies we tell to get along, and what binds families together or allows them to fracture. Jared's story ended in tragedy, but the act of telling it is an act of healing and redemption. This is an important book on how to love your family, from a great writer who has lived its lessons.
A breakthrough investigation of synthetic biology: the promising and controversial technology platform that combines biology and artificial intelligence and has the potential to program biological systems like we program computers. Synthetic biology is the technique that enables us not just to read and edit but also write DNA to program living biological structures as though they were tiny computers. Unlike cloning Dolly the sheep-which cut and copied existing genetic material-the future of synthetic biology might be something like an app store, where you could download and add new capabilities into any cell, microbe, plant, or animal. This breakthrough science has the potential to mitigate, perhaps solve, humanity's immediate and longer-term existential challenges: climate change; the feeding, clothing, housing, and caring for billions of humans; fighting the next viral outbreak before it becomes a global pandemic; old age as a treatable pathology; bringing back extinct animals. It could also be anarchic and socially destructive. With our governing structures created in an era before startling advances in technology, we are not prepared for a future in which life could be manipulated or programmed. As futurist Amy Webb and synthetic biologist Andrew Hessel show in this book, within the next decade, we will need to make important decisions: whether to program novel viruses to fight diseases, what genetic privacy will look like, who will "own" living organisms, how companies should earn revenue from engineered cells, and how to contain a synthetic organism in a lab. The Genesis Machine provides the background for us to understand and grapple with these issues, and think through the religious, philosophical, and ethical implications for the future.
"The inside story of how one president forever altered the Supreme Court, with consequences that endure today. By the summer of 1941, in the ninth year of his presidency, Franklin Roosevelt had molded his Court. He had appointed seven of the nine justices (the most by any president except George Washington) and handpicked the chief justice. But war time the Roosevelt Court had two faces. One was bold and progressive, the other supine and abject, cowed by the charisma of the revered president. This book examines these justices--from the mercurial, Vienna-born intellectual Felix Frankfurter to the Alabama populist Hugo Black; from the western prodigy William O. Douglas, FDR's initial pick to be his running mate in 1944, to Roosevelt's former attorney general and Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Jackson. The justices' shameless capitulation and unwillingness to cross their beloved president highlight the dangers of an unseemly closeness between Supreme Court justices and their political patrons. But the FDR Court's finest moments also provided a robust defense of individual rights, rights the current Court has put in jeopardy"--Adapted from the publisher's description.
"At a time when the crises of income inequality, climate, and democracy are compounding to create epic wealth disparity and the prospect of a second American civil war, four billionaires are hyping schemes that are designed to divert our attention away from issues that really matter. Each scheme--the metaverse, cryptocurrency, space travel, and transhumanism--is an existential threat in moral, political, and economic terms. In [this book], Jonathan Taplin [examines] the personal backgrounds and cultural power of these billionaires--Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Marc Andreesen ('The Four')--and shows how their tech monopolies have brought middle-class wage stagnation, the hollowing out of many American towns, a radical increase in income inequality, and unbounded public acrimony. Meanwhile, the enormous amount of taxpayer money to be funneled into the dystopian ventures of 'The Four'--the benefits of which will accrue to billionaires-- [exacerbates] these disturbing trends"--
"America's food system is broken, harming family farmers, workers, the environment, and our health. But it doesn't have to be this way. Here, brilliant innovators, scientists, journalists and activists explain how we can create a hopeful new future for food, if we have the courage to seize the moment. In 2008, the award-winning documentary Food, Inc. shook up our perceptions of what we ate. Now, the movie's timely sequel and this new companion book will address the remarkable developments in the world of food from lab-grown meat to the burgeoning food sovereignty movement that have unfolded since then. Featuring thought-provoking original essays from: Michael Pollan -- Eric Schlosser -- David E. Kelley and Andrew Zimmern -- Senator Cory Booker -- Sarah E. Lloyd -- Carlos A. Monteiro and Geoffrey Cannon -- Lisa Elaine Held -- Larissa Zimberoff --Saru Jayaraman -- Christiana Musk -- Nancy Easton -- Leah Penniman -- David LeZaks and Lauren Manning -- The Coalition of Immokalee Workers -- Michiel Bakker -- Danielle Nierenberg"--
This book posits that our national leaders have drifted into treating the pandemic as though it were an unavoidable natural catastrophe, repeating a cycle of panic followed by neglect. So a group of practitioners and scholars from many backgrounds came together determined to discover and learn lessons from this latest world war.
"The last, acceptable form of prejudice in America is based on class and executed through state-sponsored economic discrimination, which is hard to see because it is much more subtle than raw racism. While the American meritocracy officially denounces prejudice based on race and gender, it has spawned a new form of bias against those with less education and income. Millions of working-class Americans have their opportunity blocked by exclusionary snob zoning. These government policies make housing unaffordable, frustrate the goals of the civil rights movement, and lock in inequality in our urban and suburban landscapes. Through moving accounts of families excluded from economic and social opportunity as they are hemmed in through "new redlining" that limits the type of housing that can be built, Richard Kahlenberg vividly illustrates why America has a housing crisis. He also illustrates why economic segregation matters since where you live affects access to transportation, employment opportunities, decent health care, and good schools. He shows that housing choice has been socially engineered to the benefit of the affluent, and, that astonishingly the most restrictive zoning is found in politically liberal cities where racial views are more progressive"--
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