Showing titles in Sociology

As an adult, Lauren Hough has had many identities: an airman in the U.S. Air Force, a cable guy, a bouncer at a gay club. As a child, however, she had none. Growing up as a member of the infamous cult The Children of God, Hough had her own self robbed from her. The cult took her all over the globe - to Germany, Japan, Texas, Chile - but it wasn't until she finally left for good that Lauren understood she could have a life beyond 'The Family'. Along the way, she's loaded up her car and started over, trading one life for the next.

Final Exit is the most famous book on voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide. There is unique step-by-step language for the competent adult who is terminally or hopelessly ill to bring their life to a peaceful, non-violent end if they wish. Final Exit outlines the legal complications connected with dying, death, hastened death, euthanasia laws, suicide, living wills, and advance directives. Derek Humphry explores the problems with life insurance, as well as the ethics of double suicide.

Over the past year, we have seen a profound awakening. Institutions and communities have taken down statues and flags, the names of white supremacists in universities and on buildings have been replaced and as we continue to see action, we are also collectively unlearning incorrect history and leaning hard into the truth. In this radical work, social entrepreneur, philanthropic innovator and public academic, Rachel Cargle breaks down KEA - knowledge, empathy and action - and how these elements serve as a lens to reimagine everything from racial justice to relationships to education and beyond.

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.

The Third Man Factor is an extraordinary account of how people at the very edge of death often sense an unseen presence beside them who encourages them to make one final effort to survive. This incorporeal being offers a feeling of hope, protection, and guidance, and leaves the person convinced he or she is not alone. There is a name for this phenomenon: It’s called the Third Man Factor.

In Germany on Christmas Day 1956 a baby girl was born without ears. She was the first victim of the notorious thalidomide epidemic. There would be over 10,000 more across 46 countries. For years the world believed the United States had avoided the catastrophe. After Frances Kelsey at the FDA became suspicious of the dangers of thalidomide in 1960, she led a successful fight to block its commercial approval. But now, having probed government and corporate archives and interviewed hundreds of key players, Jennifer Vanderbes reveals a darker truth that lay buried for decades.

Dr. Brian Goldman always believed that caring came naturally to physicians but over time was left wondering if he might not be the same caring doctor he was at the beginning of his career. The Power of Kindness takes us far from the theatre of medicine and into the world at large and investigates why kindness is so vital to our existence. 

There was a time, not too long ago, when talking openly about race was considered in poor taste. If you had good manners, you just didn’t talk about politics, religion, or race—not with your family or friends, and certainly not with your coworkers. Even now, many people feel the topic of race is better left alone. Professor Anita Foeman understands those worries. In How to Talk about Race, she addresses those specific concerns and others, giving common-sense guidance and step-by-step instructions you can employ to develop safe and productive dialogue about race.

In 2012, 38-year-old Ian Thorson's search for spiritual transcendence ended in tragedy on a remote Arizona mountaintop. His wife, a woman anointed as a goddess by an eccentric Buddhist community, held him in her arms as he slowly died from dehydration and dysentery. For Scott Carney, a journalist and anthropologist who lived in India for six years, Thorson's death was just the most recent iteration of an unspoken epidemic that connected intensive meditation and mental instability.

When published in 1981, The Mismeasure of Man was immediately hailed as a masterwork, the ringing answer to those who would classify people, rank them according to their supposed genetic gifts and limits. Yet the idea of of biology as destiny dies hard, as witness the attention devoted to The Bell Curve, whose arguments are here so effectively anticipated and thoroughly undermined.

In Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man, Acho takes on all the questions, large and small, insensitive and taboo, many white people are afraid to ask - yet which everyone needs the answers to, now more than ever. With the same open-hearted generosity that has made his video series a phenomenon, Acho explains the vital core of such fraught concepts as white privilege, cultural appropriation and “reverse racism”. 

Tras "12 reglas para vivir", llega su esperada continuación, la obra que nos da el perfecto equilibrio entre orden y caos. En "12 reglas para vivir", obra de la que se han vendido más de cinco millones de ejemplares y que ha influido como ninguna otra en el ámbito intelectual y político del último lustro, Jordan Peterson ofrecía verdades eternas aplicadas a las ansiedades contemporáneas. Su mensaje provocador sobre el valor de la responsabilidad individual y el significado de nuestras acciones ha resonado con enorme fuerza arrastrando a miles de lectores a las librerías.

Covering American transgender history from the mid-20th century to today, Transgender History takes a chronological approach to the subject of transgender history, with each chapter covering major movements, writings, and events.

Say goodbye to social anxiety: Master the art of confident communication, and build meaningful relationships with anyone. Do you wish that you could have genuine conversations with the people around you, but start to doubt yourself before you begin? Maybe you worry that you’ll feel tongue-tied, awkward, or anxious or that you’ll say the wrong thing and offend someone.

“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line,” writes Du Bois, in one of the most prophetic works in all of American literature. First published in 1903, this collection of 15 essays dared to describe the racism that prevailed at that time in America—and to demand an end to it. Du Bois’ writing draws on his early experiences, from teaching in the hills of Tennessee, to the death of his infant son, to his historic break with the conciliatory position of Booker T. Washington.

Tackling the climate crisis requires us to visit the roots of poverty, capitalist exploitation, police brutality and legal injustice. Climate justice offers the real possibility of huge leaps towards racial equality and collective liberation as it aims to dismantle the very foundations of these issues. In this book, Mikaela Loach offers a fresh and radical perspective for real climate action that could drastically change the world as we know it for the benefit of us all.

For the past 30 years, scientists, psychologists, teachers and entrepreneurs have been coming up with ways to overcome our biases and end unconscious discrimination, whether it be on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, religion age or even body type. In this landmark book, Nordell sets out to meet the people who are finding solutions - from meditating police chiefs to innovative hiring policies - and explains how their discoveries are set to change the world.

Throughout history, people have sought to reduce suffering, eliminate disease and enhance desirable qualities in their children. In the Victorian era eugenics, a full-blooded attempt to impose control over unruly biology, began to grow among the powerful and quickly spread to dozens of countries around the world. But these ideas are not merely historical: today, with new gene editing techniques, conversations are happening about tinkering with the DNA of our unborn children to make them smarter, fitter, stronger.

The Housekeeper's Tale reveals the personal sacrifices, bitter disputes and driving ambition that shaped these women's careers. Using secret diaries, unpublished letters, and the neglected service archives of our stately homes, Tessa Boase tells the extraordinary stories of five working women who ran some of Britain's most prominent households.

Throughout the twentieth century, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was regarded as an important sociological and economic text, continuing into the twenty-first century, when extreme capitalism has continued to come under fire. Weber's work provided a history, from where the profit motive could be ethically justified. Max Weber combined his interests in sociology, political economy and history to give perspective to his analysis. Concentrating principally on the experience of the West, he returned to the time when religion, its concepts and practice, dominated society.