The Winter Of Our Disconnect

By Susan Maushart
"Maushart (The Mask of Motherhood) embarked with her three teenagers on a six-month screen blackout (no cellphones, iPods, PCs, laptops, game stations, or television) to discover if the technology intended to stimulate and keep us virtually more connected was, as she suspected, making us actually more disconnected and distracted. Ironically, Maushart may have gone screen-dark, but her writing remains riddled with "textspeak"--"LOLs," "WTFs," emoticons--and exhausting chipperness and self-conscious "hipness," which all distract from an otherwise intelligent and eloquent core text. Funny and poignant precisely when it is not trying to be, this book vacillates between diary entries (written longhand) and deeply researched reportage, which brings needed balance to the subject of new media, often touted as either the answer to all of our problems or the accelerant of societal doom. What Maushart's experiment uncovers is a commonsense conclusion: in a world of proliferating demands on our attention, exercising the on/off switch is the ultimate practice in understanding connection."    (Publishers Weekly)   Check Our Catalog .

Outrageous Fortunes: The Twelve Surprising Trends That Will Reshape the Global Economy

By Daniel Altman
"Amid all the handwringing on the downward trajectory of the global economy comes this cool, collected, and sensible view of forthcoming economic trends. Altman (Connected), professor at NYU's Stern School of Business, looks at deeper factors--geography, culture, government policies--to challenge conventional (or simply much touted) wisdom: he predicts China's economic supremacy will be short, undermined by its own central government's heavy-handedness and Confucian cultural influences. He offers an unflinching examination of the merits and flaws of capitalism and socialism and resets archaic perceptions about how to encourage or inhibit growth. In his analysis, capitalism comes out on top, but succeeds best and for a longer period of time with government intervention and redistributive policies. Altman predicts global migratory shifts that will make today's world financial centers obsolete and foresees the pitfalls of a unified European currency. Altman delivers more than mere analysis or foreshadowing: this is revelatory reading for even the most casual observer of economics, and an invaluable tool for reconsidering how the world makes money."  (Publishers Weekly)  Check Our Catalog

The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality

By Branco Milanovic
"Milanovic defies the typical image of an economist by presenting research overlaid with humor, literary insights, and fully imagined portraits of daily life as he examines inequality across time and continents. He weighs the wealth divide between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy of Pride and Prejudice as well as Anna Kareninas financial prospects had she married Vronsky. He ponders John Rawls, Alexis de Tocqueville, Karl Marx, Max Weber, and others to explore theories regarding the rich and the poor. Using complicated economic models that he explains very well, Milanovic breaks down incomes to make comparisons between the haves and the have-nots within nations, between nations, and among citizens of the world. He offers vignettes that make his concepts all the more accessible and entertaining as he explains the errors of Marxism and why a persons relative wealth is determined more by their country of origin than by their familys wealth. Milanovic writes as much like a philosopher as an economist as he ponders the growing trend of inequality in income around the world and answers questions many readers likely ask themselves about their economic prospects."    (Booklist Reviews)   Check Our Catalog

12 Angry Men; True Stories Of Being A Black Man In America Today

By Gregory S. Parks
"Victims of racial profiling recount the particulars of their harassment.
Polls suggest that an overwhelming majority of African-Americans believe racial profiling is ubiquitous in American society. This collection puts faces to the problem, demonstrating that racial profiling occurs in both big cities and small towns. It can happen outside Manhattan's Latin Quarter, in a city park, airport, tony neighborhood or high-crime section of town; its victims include a 19-year-old high-school graduate, a young hip-hop artist, a Harvard Law School graduate, a New York Times journalist, an ACLU attorney, a Hall of Fame baseball player and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. In this collaboration, law clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals Parks (Critical Race Realism, 2008, etc.) and Hughey (Sociology/Mississippi State Univ.) collect a dozen stories designed to drive home the outrage engendered and the humiliation endured by those stopped and frisked, detained or arrested, for walking, driving, flying, even simply reading while black. Readers shouldn't expect fine writing—only the account by Times reporter Solomon Moore could be described as eloquent—or balanced discussion of the frequently disputed facts and the always difficult tension that exists at the intersection of individual liberty and civil order. This is raw testimony intended to vividly capture the invasions of privacy and the assaults on dignity that always accompany unreasonable government intrusion."    (Kirkus Reviews)   Check Our Catalog

Alone Together; Why We Expect More From Technology And Less From Each Other

By Sherry Turkle
" As the digital age sparks increasing debate about what new technologies and increased connectivity are doing to our brains, comes this chilling examination of what our iPods and iPads are doing to our relationships from MIT professor Turkle (Simulation and Its Discontents). In this third in a trilogy that explores the relationship between humans and technology, Turkle argues that people are increasingly functioning without face-to-face contact. For all the talk of convenience and connection derived from texting, e-mailing, and social networking, Turkle reaffirms that what humans still instinctively need is each other, and she encounters dissatisfaction and alienation among users: teenagers whose identities are shaped not by self-exploration but by how they are perceived by the online collective, mothers who feel texting makes communicating with their children more frequent yet less substantive, Facebook users who feel shallow status updates devalue the true intimacies of friendships. Turkle 's prescient book makes a strong case that what was meant to be a way to facilitate communications has pushed people closer to their machines and further away from each other."   (Publisher's Weekly)  Check Our Catalog

Cloning Terror; The War Of Images, 9/11 To The Present

By W.J.T. Mitchell
“In this heady brew of biopolitics and biotechnology, W. J. T. Mitchell explores some of the greatest terror of our times—the fears that claim us and chain us. His deft and defiant reading of the technologies of image-making lays bare the brutality and banality of the war on terror. This is a passionate and polemical engagement with reality and representation.”—Homi K. Bhabha, Harvard University
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Atlas Of World Hunger

By Thomas J. Bassett
"“"The Atlas of World Hunger" paints a comprehensive picture of hunger in our time. Bassett and Winter-Nelson thoroughly examine the roots of hunger and poverty and incontrovertibly show their association. By devising a new scale to measure hunger vulnerability and by naming the multiple causes of hunger and poverty around the globe, from local to international levels, the "Atlas" provides an outline for solutions that will reduce the roster of hungry people from one billion today to zero as soon as possible.”—Paul Farmer, MD, PhD, cofounder of Partners In Health
--Paul Farmer, MD, PhD, cofounder of Partners In Health"   Check Our Catalog