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

New York Times best-selling author Ted C. Fishman reveals the stunning challenges of a world awash with seasoned citizens. By 2030, those over 50 will outnumber people under 17 for the first time in history. Fishman explores the resulting impact on families, businesses, nations, and medical care.

The nature of the mind lies at the heart of the eternal human quest for understanding. What does it mean to think? What is the relation between mind and body, and where do we draw the line between “physical” and “mental”? With an enthusiastic and scholarly approach, Professor Andrew Pessin of Connecticut College addresses these and other questions, including a studied look at beliefs, consciousness, groundbreaking thought experiments, and whether or not computers can ever truly think.

Do judges deduce their decisions from legal rules and principles, or do they decide cases based on what is fair given the facts at hand? The latter view, held by Legal Realists, serves as the starting point for Professor Stephen Mathis's eye-opening look at how judges reason. In this compelling lecture series, the esteemed professor addresses such as whether the law is distinct form morality.

La filosofía tibetana ama la calma, la pax, un estado perfecto para lograr la correcta reflexión que nos permite interiorizar y nos conduce, a través de cuentos y sencillos relatos (como los incluidos en este libro), a lo más hondo de nuestro ser. La búsqueda de uno mismo jamás de detiene. Las narraciones de esta obra y las reflexiones que las acompañan pueden suponer un simple entretenimiento, pero también un punto de inflexión que nos haga ver el mundo desde perspectivas diferentes.

Surviving non-Hodgkins lymphoma, melanoma, and prostate cancer, former White House chief-of-staff Hamilton Jordan shares his personal and political reflections--from his experiences with the Civil Rights movement to his civilian volunteer tour in Vietnam, from his years of scrutiny under the Carter administration to his agonizing, yet triumphant times battling cancer.

In this course of lectures, Professor Hadley Arkes seeks to recall the classic connection between morality and law. For law works by sweeping away personal choice and private judgment and replacing them with a public rule, meant to be enforced on everyone. And that state of affairs can be justified only if the law can, in fact, appeal to an understanding of the things that are more generally or universally right or wrong.

From noted journalist and professor David Dent comes this poignant and fascinating survey of contemporary African-American life.

In Search of Black America is compilation of eclectic personalities and rare insights. Dent spent five years researching and travelling across the continent interviewing America’s Black middle-class.

An author and university professor whose books include scholarly works on the Beatles and Bob Dylan, William McKeen here tackles the role of popular music in American culture. Beginning with the emergence of rock in the 1950s, and including the meteoric rise of artists such as Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry, McKeen examines the growth of the recording industry while incorporating the social and intellectual history of the country.

Better Than Homemade is food biographer Carolyn Wyman’s freewheeling and entertaining cultural history of the innovative packaged foods that changed the way we eat. It highlights the fascinating stories behind the food inventions; the histories behind the brands and icons that have become synonymous with them; the jingles that have made them such a large part of our popular culture; and the recipes that have tutored generations of homemakers and comfort-food master chefs.

How to Die is both an absorbing excursion through some of Western literature’s most compelling works on the subject of death as well as an anecdote-driven argument for cultivating a better understanding of death in the belief that, if we do, we’ll know more about what it means to live a meaningful life.

A history of the activism and achievement of African American athletes from Jesse Owens to Serena Williams to Colin Kaepernick, who advanced the cause of social justice through their outspokenness, commitment, and integrity. Muhammad Ali refused to fight in a war he believed was immoral. Wilma Rudolph retired from track and field to campaign for civil rights. Taking a Knee, Taking a Stand tells their stories and the stories of other prominent African American male and female athletes who often risked their careers to fight racial discrimination and promote social justice.

Raised in a lush suburb of 1920s Paris, Noor Inayat Khan was an introspective musician and writer, dedicated to her family and to her father’s spiritual values of harmony, beauty, and tolerance. She did not seem destined for wartime heroism. Yet, faced with the evils of Nazi violence and the German occupation of France, Noor joined the British Special Operations Executive and trained in espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance. For crucial months of the war, Noor was the only wireless operator in France sending critical information to London.

One in eight Americans struggles with hunger, and more than 13 million children live in food-insecure homes. As Christians we are called to address the suffering of the hungry and poor: "For I was hungry, and you gave me food..." (Matthew 25:35). However, the problems of hunger and poverty are too large and too complex for any one of us to resolve individually. I Was Hungry offers not only an assessment of the current crisis but also a strategy for addressing it. Jeremy Everett, a noted advocate for the hungry and poor, calls Christians to work across ideological divides....

While there have been many biographies of Dwight D. Eisenhower that focus on his military career or the time of his presidency, none clearly explores the important role faith played both in his personal life and in his public policy. This despite the fact that he is the only US president to be baptized as a Christian while in office. Alan Sears and Craig Osten invite you on a journey that is unique in American history and is essential to understanding one of the most consequential, admired, and complex Americans of the 20th century.

The Blue Communities Project is dedicated to three primary things: that access to clean, drinkable water is a basic human right; that municipal and community water will be held in public hands; and that single-use plastic water bottles will not be available in public spaces. The movement has been growing around the world for a decade. In Whose Water Is It, Anyway?, renowned water justice activist Maude Barlow recounts her own education in water issues as she and her fellow grassroots water warriors woke up to the immense pressures facing water in a warming world.

Four-time mayor of Washington, DC, Marion Barry, Jr. tells his shocking and courageous life story, beginning in the cotton fields in Mississippi to the executive offices of one of the most powerful cities in the world. This provocative, captivating narrative follows the Civil Rights activist, going back to his Mississippi roots, his Memphis upbringing, and his academic school days, up through his college years and move to Washington, DC, where he became actively involved in Civil Rights, community activism, and bold politics.

“No one who loves elephants or how humans interact with wildlife should pass up Jacob Shell’s remarkable book.”—Dan Flores, author of Coyote America Giants of the Monsoon Forest journeys deep into the mountainous rainforests of Burma and India to explore the world of teak logging...

Raised in Miami and the daughter of Cuban refugees, Crucet examines the political and personal contours of American identity and the physical places where those contours find themselves smashed: be it a rodeo town in Nebraska, a university campus in upstate New York, or Disney World in Florida. Crucet illuminates how she came to see her exclusion from aspects of the theoretical American Dream, despite her family's attempts to fit in with white American culture - beginning with their ill-fated plan to name her after the winner of the Miss America pageant.

The War on Drugs doesn't work. This became obvious to El Paso City Representatives Susie Byrd and Beto O'Rourke when they started to ask questions about why El Paso's sister city, Ciudad Juarez, has become the deadliest city in the world - 8,000-plus deaths since January 1, 2008. Byrd and O'Rourke soon realized American drug use and United States' failed War on Drugs are at the core of problem.

Sherlock Holmes is the most famous fictional detective in history, with a popularity that has never waned since catching the imagination of his late-Victorian readership. This companion explores Holmes' popularity and his complex relationship to the late-Victorian and modernist periods; on one hand bearing the imprint of a range of Victorian anxieties and preoccupations, while on the other shaping popular conceptions of criminality, deviance, and the powers of the detective.