Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection

Jacob Silverman (Get this book)
Freelancer Silverman, a celebrated Jeopardy! champion and contributor to Slate, the Atlantic and other publications, debuts with a deep and disquieting plunge into digital culture.The author focuses on the online world of "I share, therefore I am"—Facebook, Twitter and other social media—where technology companies, under the guise of improving our lives, engage in relentless "exploitation, manipulation, and erosion of privacy" in the pursuit of user data and advertising revenue. Intelligent, provocative and illuminating in the author's argument that social media companies must examine their ethics and find business models that don't depend on perpetual surveillance of customers. --Kirkus

Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs

Hari, Johann (Get this book)
This is a frank, often brutal examination of the origins of the American war-on-drugs policy. Dividing his book neatly into five parts, each with its own subsections, Hari concisely lays out the history and long-term effects of the war on drugs with both depth and precision. He portrays everyone with empathy, from drug dealers to drug addicts, law enforcement personnel, and civilians caught in the middle of this war, which, along with the first-person narration, helps to keep the narrative engaging, albeit often depressing. Hari ends the book by examining alternate ways drug use and drug addiction are being dealt with, the new and growing science that shows that everything we thought we knew about drugs may be wrong, and how there is hope for a new understanding of drug use in the future. --Booklist

They Know Everything About You

Scheer, Robert/ Beladi, Sara (Get this book)
Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Scheer examines how online convenience has supplanted bedrock American values of personal freedom and the right to privacy. Have Americans really surrendered liberties for the "freedom" of bypassing the mall and doing their shopping online? Certainly, but as the author discusses at length, the Internet has also given rise to the most perfect surveillance apparatus ever created. A vital piece of work that demands attention.--Kirkus