Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Politics & Social Sciences

The author of the classic best seller Lincoln on Leadership answers the question: How would President Lincoln handle the pressing crises of our modern world? Abraham Lincoln is recognized as one of history's finest leaders, a great president when the United States was under tremendous strain. But suppose he were alive today. How would Lincoln deal with today's high-pressure issues, from politics to business?

As a child, Joseph Beck heard the stories - when other lawyers came up with excuses, his father courageously defended a Black man charged with raping a White woman. Now a lawyer himself, Beck reconstructs his father's role in State of Alabama vs. Charles White, Alias, a trial that was much publicized when Harper Lee was 12 years old.

At age 28, Mira Ptacin discovered she was pregnant. Though it was unplanned, she soon embraced the pregnancy and became engaged to Andrew, the father. But five months later, an ultrasound revealed birth defects that would give the child no chance of survival outside the womb. Mira was given three options: terminate her pregnancy, induce early delivery, or wait and inevitably miscarry. Her story is woven together with the story of Mira's mother, who immigrated from Poland (also at the age of 28) and adopted a son, Julian.

From one of our most accomplished and widely admired historians, a revelatory portrait of Benjamin Franklin' s youngest sister and a history of history itself. Like her brother, Jane Franklin was a passionate reader, a gifted writer, and an astonishingly shrewd political commentator.

In the 21st century, many of the best-known and most influential stories have been conceived for juveniles. In "Children’s Literature", Professor Kimberley Reynolds of Newcastle University delves into the phenomenon and “golden ages” of this remarkably diverse literary genre. Throughout the lectures, Reynolds addresses questions of why children’s literature is so popular and how these extraordinary works have both responded to and helped to shape childhood.

Twelve Years a Slave (Originally published in 1853 with the sub-title: "Narrative of Solomon Northup, a citizen of New-York, kidnapped in Washington city in 1841, and rescued in 1853, from a cotton plantation near the Red River in Louisiana") is the written work of Solomon Northup; a man who was born free, but was bound into slavery later in life. Northup's account describes the daily life of slaves in Bayou Beof, their diet, the relationship between the master and slave, the means that slave catchers used to recapture them and the ugly realities that slaves suffered.

Few mixtures are as toxic as absolute power and insanity. When nothing stands between a leader's delusional whims and seeing them carried out, all sorts of bizarre outcomes are possible. This audiobook will look at the lives of the nine most mentally unbalanced figures in history.

The story of the Boston Massacre - when on a late winter evening in 1770, British soldiers shot five local men to death - is familiar to generations. But from the very beginning, many accounts have obscured a fascinating truth: the Massacre arose from conflicts that were as personal as they were political.

In The Dictionary Wars, Peter Martin recounts the patriotic fervor in the early American republic to produce a definitive national dictionary that would rival Samuel Johnson's 1755 Dictionary of the English Language. But what began as a cultural war of independence from Britain devolved into a battle among lexicographers, authors, scholars, and publishers, all vying for dictionary supremacy and shattering forever the dream of a unified American language.

License to Travel exposes the passport as both an instrument of personal freedom and a tool of government surveillance powerful enough to define our very humanity. Patrick Bixby examines the passports of artists and intellectuals, ancient messengers and modern migrants to reveal how these seemingly humble documents implicate us in larger narratives about identity, mobility, citizenship, and state authority.

Drawing on examples from around the world—from Uganda, Nigeria and South Africa to Saudi Arabia, the Americas and Europe—Gqola traces the construction and machinations of the female fear factory by exposing its lies, myths and seductions. She shows how seemingly disparate effects like driving bans, higher education rape, sexual harassment and femicide are all premised on the construction of people, mostly women, as female, and thereafter the use of fear as a tool of patriarchal subjugation and punishment.

In this sweeping, authoritative account, Daniel Byman traces the key moments in the white power movement’s evolution in the United States and around the world and then details its many facets today. Using a wide range of sources, Byman explodes several myths about white power terrorism and identifies dangerous gaps in current policies. Spreading Hate will be essential listening for anyone worried about this increasingly networked movement that threatens to grow more dangerous in the years to come.

Digital connections permeate our lives - and so do data breaches. Given that we must be online for basic communication, finance, healthcare, and more, it is remarkable how difficult it is to secure our personal information. Despite the passage of many data security laws, data breaches are increasing at a record pace. In Breached!, Daniel Solove and Woodrow Hartzog, two of the world’s leading experts on privacy and data security issues, argue that the law fails because, ironically, it focuses too much on the breach itself.

The emergence of genomic science in the last quarter century has revolutionized medicine, the justice system, and our understanding of who we are. We use genomics to determine guilt and exonerate the falsely convicted; devise new medicines; test embryos; and discover our ethnic and national roots. One might think that, given these advances, most would favor the availability of genomic tools. Yet as Jennifer Hochschild explains in Genomic Politics, the uses of genomic science are both politically charged and hotly contested.

In the Mayo Clinic book Back and Neck Health, acclaimed neurosurgeon Mohamad Bydon, MD, evaluates the primary back and neck conditions plaguing working adults today and identifies everyday actions that may exacerbate the pain. The book also outlines the variety of treatment options available to those living with chronic back and neck pain, including home treatments, physical therapy, interventional approaches, and different types of surgery.

With the exception of sleep, humans spend more of their lifetimes on work than any other activity. It is central to our economy, our society, and the family. It underpins our finances and our sense of meaning in life. Given the overriding importance of work, we need to recognize a profound transformation in the nature of work that is significantly altering lives: the incoming tidal wave of shadow work. Shadow work includes all the unpaid tasks we do on behalf of businesses and organizations.

Three powerful African-American female executives celebrate their gender and heritage as they share their secrets for success in this effective guide for businesswomen. Ways to communicate thoughtfully, trust yourself, and exude self-esteem are just a few tactics the authors discuss for those who want to enter the workforce as confident leaders.

World-renowned poet and Professor of African American Studies at U.C., Berkeley, June Jordan writes a deeply personal memoir of her formative years. June recalls her childhood experiences and reveals the duality of her parents’ influence on her stellar achievement as a poet. The first 12 years in Harlem were both peaceful and tumultuous for June, as she was raised the daughter of dirt-poor West Indian immigrants.

John Adams told Thomas Jefferson that “history is to ascribe the American Revolution to Thomas Paine.” Thomas Edison called him “the equal of Washington in making American liberty possible.” He was a founder of both the United States and the French Revolution. He invented the phrase, “The United States of America.” He rose from abject poverty in working-class England to the highest levels of the era’s intellectual elite. And yet, by the end of his life, Thomas Paine was almost universally reviled.

What can beer teach us about biology, history, and the natural world? From ancient Mesopotamian fermentation practices to the resurgent American craft brewery, authors Rob DeSalle and Ian Tattersall peruse the historical record and traverse the globe for engaging and often surprising stories about beer. They explain how we came to drink beer, what ingredients combine to give beers their distinctive flavors, how beer's chemistry works at the molecular level, and how various societies have regulated the production and consumption of beer.