Showing titles in Sociology

In the autumn of 1992, two young women students at Melbourne University went to the police claiming that they had been indecently assaulted at a party. The man they accused was the head of their co-ed residential college. The controversial book that Helen Garner wrote about the resulting Ormond College sexual harassment case caused a social media storm. Prominent feminists were outraged at Garner's perceived support for the man involved, but many saw her approach a necessary and much welcome nuance towards the power dynamic between men and women.

Reassuring, honest, funny, and most of all empowering, Great Sex Starts at 50 is the must-have sex and relationships book for men and women hitting half a century with little sign of slowing down. There's no denying that something happens to us sexually at 50. From menopause to the mixed blessing of Viagra to other challenges that go beyond the physical: How do you ignite desire after decades with the same person?

Fuelled by a childhood fascination with death, journalist Hayley Campbell searches for answers in the people who make a living by working with the dead. Along the way, she encounters mass fatality investigators, embalmers and a former executioner who is responsible for ending 62 lives. She meets gravediggers who have already dug their own graves, visits a cryonics facility in Michigan, goes for late-night Chinese with a detective and questions a man whose job it is to make crime scenes disappear.

More than half of American adults and more than 75 percent of young Americans believe in intelligent extraterrestrial life. This level of belief rivals that of belief in God. American Cosmic examines the mechanisms at work behind the thriving belief system in extraterrestrial life, a system that is changing and even supplanting traditional religions.

Geoffrey West's research centres on a quest to find unifying principles and patterns connecting everything, from cells and ecosystems to cities, social networks and businesses. Scale addresses big, urgent questions about global sustainability, population explosion, urbanization, ageing, cancer, human life spans and the increasing pace of life but also encourages us to question the world around us.

Gang-fighters! Drug addicts. Teenage runaways and prostitutes! The toughest and most hopeless kids that New York's ghettos had to offer. Then a young preacher from the Pennsylvania hills arrived on their turf and began preaching a message of renewal, miracles, and God's love. This is one of the century's great true stories. Over 14 million copies in print!

Many years of working with the dying showed the authors that certain lessons come up over and over again. Some of these lessons are enormously difficult to master but even the attempts to understand them can be deeply rewarding. Here, in 14 accessible chapters, from the "Lesson of Love" to the "Lesson of Happiness", the authors reveal the truth about our fears, our hopes, our relationships, and above all, about the grandness of who we really are.

In this collection of deeply insightful and powerful essays, Chelsea Watego examines the ongoing and daily racism faced by First Nations peoples in so-called Australia. Rather than offer yet another account of ‘the Aboriginal problem’, she theorises a strategy for living in a society that has only ever imagined Indigenous peoples as destined to die out. Drawing on her own experiences and observations of the operations of the colony, she exposes the lies that settlers tell about Indigenous people.

In 1962 Cindy drops out of college to impulsively marry an Australian grazier, moving from the glamorous world of Palm Springs, California, to an isolated sheep station on the sweeping plains of the Riverina in New South Wales. Cindy's new life at Kingsley Downs station is not what she'd imagined, as she is flung into a strange and challenging world. Natural disasters and the caprices of the wool industry shape her destiny and though she tries hard to fit in, she finds she is always the outsider.

Called "the sleeper hit of the publishing season" by The Boston Globe, Shop Class as Soulcraft became an instant best seller, attracting fans with its radical (and timely) reappraisal of the merits of skilled manual labor. On both economic and psychological grounds, author Matthew B. Crawford questions the educational imperative of turning everyone into a "knowledge worker," based on a misguided separation of thinking from doing.

Led by incredible faith, Wilkerson left his country pulpit in 1958 for the streets of New York City, where a murder trial of seven teenaged boys churned society's antipathy toward them. Even Wilkerson was bewildered by his sense of compassion, but in spite of doubt, he followed the Spirit's prompting to help the boys. This is the amazing story of his journey, and of the mighty power of God to accomplish the impossible.

When Ada Calhoun found herself in the throes of a midlife crisis, she thought that she had no right to complain. She was married with children and a good career. So why did she feel miserable? And why did it seem that other Generation X women were miserable, too? Calhoun decided to find some answers. She looked into housing costs, HR trends, credit card debt averages, and divorce data. At every turn, she saw a pattern: sandwiched between the Boomers and Millennials, Gen X women were facing new problems as they entered middle age, problems that were being largely overlooked.

Lust. Gluttony. Greed. Sloth. Wrath. Envy. Pride. These so-called ‘deadly sins’, consecrated as an essential pillar of divinity, have been used by the patriarchy to control women in particular and keep them small throughout our history. What would happen if we stopped trying to be ‘good’? In On Our Best Behaviour, Elise Loehnen looks at the ways in which women have been penned by the fake morality of the sins, and how we find ourselves complicit in denying ourselves a full existence for fear of crossing some sort of line.

The knowledge of death is so terrifying that we live most of our lives in denial of it. Our fear of death has underpinned our religions, inspired our cultures, and also driven our science. Today we are living through a revolution in biology. Giant strides are being made in our understanding of why we age and die, and why some species live longer than others. Immortality, once a faint hope, has never been more within our grasp. Here, Nobel Prize-winning biologist Venki Ramakrishnan offers a definitive look at why we die - and whether we can do anything about it.

David Fajgenbaum, a former Georgetown quarterback, was nicknamed the Beast in medical school, where he was also known for his unmatched mental stamina. But things changed dramatically when he began suffering from inexplicable fatigue. In a matter of weeks, his organs were failing and he was read his last rites. Doctors were baffled by his condition, which they had yet to even diagnose. Floating in and out of consciousness, Fajgenbaum prayed for a second chance, the equivalent of a dramatic play to second the game into overtime.

Des forges antiques aux chaînes de montage, “Histoire générale de l’industrie” fait revivre l’épopée humaine de l’ingéniosité et de la transformation. Ce livre audio dévoile les grandes bascules techniques, les pionniers audacieux et les révolutions silencieuses qui ont façonné nos manières de produire, d’échanger et de vivre.

Beginning with post-WW2 monitoring devices, Listening In traces an arc through the Cold War era into the present day in which state and commercial spyware can record our calls, copy messages and secretly film us. Exploring how mass audio surveillance is carried out through devices such as smart phones, speakers and baby monitors and used to inform and train AI algorithms, the book provides fresh insights into how we are allowing our personal privacies to be traded for enhanced social connectivity and technological convenience.

We have always been told that work defines us, and serves as the foundation of our dignity as human beings. So why, all over the world, are more and more people quitting their jobs? In recent years, we have had several opportunities to ask ourselves whether the life we are living is the one we truly desire. For many, the answer has been no. This is due to a growing unwillingness to submit to the toxic and vexatious rules imposed by many work contexts. Even prior to the pandemic, a survey conducted in 140 countries revealed that 80 percent of the employed population disliked their jobs.

Grim Reaper sits on the heart surgeon's shoulder. A slip of the hand and life ebbs away. The balance between life and death is so delicate, and the heart surgeon walks that rope between the two. In the operating room, there is no time for doubt. It is flesh, blood, rib retractors and pumping the vital organ with your bare hand to squeeze the life back into it. An off day can have dire consequences - this job has a steep learning curve, and the cost is measured in human life. Cardiac surgery is not for the faint of heart.

"Forty-four percent of the American population is convinced that Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead sometime in the next 50 years," writes Sam Harris. "Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the U.S. government actually believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this...should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency."