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Which Side of History?: How Technology Is Reshaping Democracy and Our Lives
By James P. Steyer. 2020
"A valuable primer on this moment where humans are deciding how much power over their lives they give to monopolies…
and algorithms." —DAVE EGGERS, bestselling author of The CircleWhich Side of History? offers a collection of bold essays on how technology is affecting democracy, society, and our future.Featuring prominent national voices such as Sacha Baron Cohen, Marc Benioff, Ellen Pao, Ken Auletta, Chelsea Clinton, Tim Wu, Khaled Hosseini, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, Jaron Lanier, Willow Bay, Sal Khan, Sherry Turkle, Shoshana Zuboff, Vivek Murthy, Geoffrey Canada, and many more.The essays focus on the extraordinary impact of technology on our privacy, kids and families, race and gender roles, democracy, climate change, and mental health.This groundbreaking book challenges opinion leaders and the broader public to take action to improve technology's effects on our lives.• Featuring notable journalists, engineers, entrepreneurs, novelists, activists, filmmakers, business leaders, scholars, and researchers, including: Thomas Friedman, Kara Swisher, Michelle Alexander, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, Jenna Wortham, Cameron Kasky, Howard Gardner, and Tristan Harris.• Explores the ethical behavior of Big Tech, or the lack thereof.• Offers roadmaps for constructive change and thought-provoking perspectives.With the rise of cyberbullying and hate speech online, issues around climate change and technology, and the "move fast and break things" mentality of tech culture, Which Side of History? will urge readers to draw the line.• This book will help shape the conversations we have around technology in our society and our future for years to come.• A smart book for anyone who approaches tech and the future with a healthy skepticism• Edited by James P. Steyer, the CEO and founder of Common Sense Media.• Add it to the shelf with books like Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr, and The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff.Trumpty Dumpty Wanted a Crown: Verses for a Despotic Age
By John Lithgow. 2020
Following the success of his New York Times bestseller Dumpty, award-winning actor, author, and illustrator John Lithgow presents a brand-new…
collection of satirical poems chronicling the despotic age of Donald Trump.Trumpty Dumpty Wanted a Crown is darker and more hard-hitting than ever. Lithgow writes and draws with wit and fury as he takes readers through another year of the shocking events involving Trump and his administration. His uproarious poems and illustrations encompass Trump's impeachment, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter protests, and much more. Lithgow targets Mitch McConnell, Mike Pompeo, Bill Barr, Jared Kushner, Elaine Chao, and many others, but also includes a few heroes of the moment, including Anthony Fauci, Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and even Barack Obama.The book arrives at a time when it's needed most. With all-new poems and never-before-seen line drawings, Lithgow will once again make readers laugh and pause to remember some of the most defining moments in recent history—skewering the reign of King Dumpty one stanza at a time.Digital audio edition read by the author.The Summer of 2020: George Floyd and the Resurgence of the Black Lives Matter Movement (Race, Rhetoric, and Media Series)
By Andre E. Johnson, Amanda Nell Edgar. 2024
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, protests broke out in Minneapolis and quickly spread across the…
United States. National unrest led to the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement and added to calls for justice in other American cities, including Los Angeles, Atlanta, Tulsa, and Louisville, Kentucky, where only months earlier, Breonna Taylor was killed by police. By some estimates, BLM protesters numbered between fifteen million and twenty-six million in the US and abroad. The Summer of 2020: George Floyd and the Resurgence of the Black Lives Matter Movement spotlights the perspectives of individual participants who contributed to the movement’s revived impact and global success throughout 2020. Authors Andre E. Johnson and Amanda Nell Edgar interview the movement’s activists—from seasoned organizers to first-time protesters—to discover what Black Lives Matter meant to those who participated in one of America’s largest social movements. Johnson and Edgar’s fieldwork reveals the complexity of taking a stand, especially in the face of increasing threats from white supremacist groups, continuing police aggression, and a persisting global pandemic. In a time with unprecedented levels of political polarization, the wave of support for the Black Lives Matter movement powerfully disrupted that expectation. Without a clear sense of what led to the surge in support for Black Lives Matter, racial justice advocates are left ill-equipped to maintain and harness the political momentum necessary to achieve lasting equity and justice. In delving beyond a conventional focus on leaders and figureheads, this volume bolsters social movement research by accounting for the increasing numbers of Black Lives Matter supporters and demonstrators and the lasting power of their message.BOOM! SPLAT!: Comics and Violence
By Jim Coby and Joanna Davis-McElligatt. 2024
Contributions by Lawrence Abrams, Diana Álvarez Amell, Partha Bhattacharjee, Natalja Chestopalova, Jim Coby, Rita Costello, Sam Cowling, Joanna Davis-McElligatt, Elisabetta…
Di Minico, Kiera M. Gaswint, Vincent Haddad, Kaleb Knoblauch, Christina M. Knopf, Leah Milne, Jacob Murel, Priyanka Tripathi, and Steven S. Vrooman In 1954, the culture, distribution, and content of comics forever changed. Long a mainstay of America’s reading diet, comic books began to fall under the scrutiny of parent groups, church leaders, and politicians. The bright colors and cheaply printed pulp pages of comic books that had once provided an escape were suddenly presumed to house something lascivious, insidious, and morally corrosive. While anxieties about representations of violence in comics have largely fallen to the wayside since the moral panic of the 1950s, thematic and symbolic visual depictions of violence remain central to the comics form. BOOM! SPLAT! Comics and Violence examines violence in every iteration—physical violence enacted between people and their environments, formal and structural violence embedded in the comics language itself, representations of historical violence, and ways of reading and seeing violence.BOOM! SPLAT! is composed of fifteen essays from renowned comics scholars and is organized thematically into four sections, including an examination of histories of violence, forms of violence, modes and systems of violence, and political and social violence. Chapters focus on well-known comics and comics creators, such as Steve Ditko, Hulk, X-Men, and the Marvel universe, to newspaper cartoon strips, postwar graphic novels, revolution, civil rights, trauma, #blacklivesmatter, and more. BOOM! SPLAT! serves as a resource to scholars and comics enthusiasts who wish to contemplate and confront the permutations, forms, structures, and discourses of violence that have always animated cartoons. Through this interrogation, our understanding of violence moves beyond the immediately physical and interpersonal into modes of ephemeral, psychological, and ideological violence. Contributors fill critical gaps by offering sustained explorations of the function of manifold violences in the comics language—those seen, felt, and imagined. The essays in this collection are critically necessary for understanding the current and historical role that violence has played in comics and will help recognize how cartooning imbricates, resists, and expands our thinking about and experiences of violence.This is What Democracy Looked Like: A Visual History of the Printed Ballot
By Alicia Yin Cheng. 2020
This Is What Democracy Looked Like, the first illustrated history of printed ballot design, illuminates the noble but often flawed…
process at the heart of our democracy. An exploration and celebration of US ballots from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this visual history reveals unregulated, outlandish, and, at times, absurd designs that reflect the explosive growth and changing face of the voting public. The ballots offer insight into a pivotal time in American history—a period of tectonic shifts in the electoral system—fraught with electoral fraud, disenfranchisement, scams, and skullduggery, as parties printed their own tickets and voters risked their lives going to the polls.Environmental Politics and Policy
By Walter A. Rosenbaum. 2023
Walter A. Rosenbaum′s classic Environmental Politics and Policy, Twelfth Edition, provides definitive coverage of environmental politics and policy, lively case…
material, and a balanced assessment of current environmental issues. The newly streamlined first half of the book sets needed context and describes the policy process, while the second half covers specific environmental issues such as air and water, toxic and hazardous substances, energy, and global policymaking on issues like climate change and trans-boundary politics. The Twelfth Edition includes updated case studies and a look at the transition in environmental policies between the Trump and Biden administrations, offering students a current and relevant look at the continuing challenge of reconciling sound science with practical politics.Environmental Politics and Policy
By Walter A. Rosenbaum. 2023
Walter A. Rosenbaum′s classic Environmental Politics and Policy, Twelfth Edition, provides definitive coverage of environmental politics and policy, lively case…
material, and a balanced assessment of current environmental issues. The newly streamlined first half of the book sets needed context and describes the policy process, while the second half covers specific environmental issues such as air and water, toxic and hazardous substances, energy, and global policymaking on issues like climate change and trans-boundary politics. The Twelfth Edition includes updated case studies and a look at the transition in environmental policies between the Trump and Biden administrations, offering students a current and relevant look at the continuing challenge of reconciling sound science with practical politics.The Politics of Fear: The Shameless Normalization of Far-Right Discourse
By Ruth Wodak. 2021
Far-right populist politics have arrived in the mainstream. We are now witnessing the shameless normalization of a political discourse built…
around nationalism, xenophobia, racism, sexism, antisemitism and Islamophobia. But what does this change mean? What caused it? And how does far-right populist discourse work? The Politics of Fear traces the trajectory of far-right politics from the margins of the political landscape to its very centre. It explores the social and historical mechanisms at play, and expertly ties these to the "micro-politics" of far-right language and discourse. From speeches to cartoons to social media posts, Ruth Wodak systematically analyzes the texts and images used by these groups, laying bare the strategies, rhetoric and half-truths the far-right employ. The revised second edition of this best-selling book includes: A range of vignettes analyzing specific instances of far-right discourse in detail. Expanded discussion of the "normalization" of far-right discourse. A new chapter exploring the challenges to liberal democracy. An updated glossary of far-right parties and movements. More discussion of the impact of social media on the rise of the far-right. Critical, analytical and impassioned, The Politics of Fear is essential reading for anyone looking to understand how far-right and populist politics have moved into the mainstream, and what we can do about it.The Politics of Fear: The Shameless Normalization of Far-Right Discourse
By Ruth Wodak. 2021
Far-right populist politics have arrived in the mainstream. We are now witnessing the shameless normalization of a political discourse built…
around nationalism, xenophobia, racism, sexism, antisemitism and Islamophobia. But what does this change mean? What caused it? And how does far-right populist discourse work? The Politics of Fear traces the trajectory of far-right politics from the margins of the political landscape to its very centre. It explores the social and historical mechanisms at play, and expertly ties these to the "micro-politics" of far-right language and discourse. From speeches to cartoons to social media posts, Ruth Wodak systematically analyzes the texts and images used by these groups, laying bare the strategies, rhetoric and half-truths the far-right employ. The revised second edition of this best-selling book includes: A range of vignettes analyzing specific instances of far-right discourse in detail. Expanded discussion of the "normalization" of far-right discourse. A new chapter exploring the challenges to liberal democracy. An updated glossary of far-right parties and movements. More discussion of the impact of social media on the rise of the far-right. Critical, analytical and impassioned, The Politics of Fear is essential reading for anyone looking to understand how far-right and populist politics have moved into the mainstream, and what we can do about it.Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How it Changes Us
By Dr Brian Klaas. 2021
'Illuminating . . . reveals why some people and systems are more likely to be corrupted by power than others'…
- Adam Grant'Passionate, insightful, and occasionally jaw-dropping . . . Corruptible sets out the story of the intoxicating lure of power-and how it has shaped the modern world' - Peter Frankopan'A brilliant exploration' - Dan Snow'Klaas is the rarest of finds: a political scientist who can also tell great stories. He mixes memorable anecdotes with stern analysis to tackle one of the biggest questions of all: do we have to be ruled by bad people?' - Peter PomerantsevDoes power corrupt or are corrupt people drawn to power?Are tyrants the products of bad systems or are they just bad people?And why do we give power to awful people?In Corruptible, professor of global politics Brian Klaas draws on over 500 interviews with some of the world's top leaders - from the noblest to the dirtiest - including presidents, war criminals, cult leaders, terrorists, psychopaths, and dictators to reveal the most surprising workings of power: how children can predict who is going to win an election based just on the faces of politicians; why narcissists make more money; what makes a certain species of bee more corrupt than others; whether a thirst for power is a genetic condition; and why being the second in command is in fact the smartest choice. From scans of psychopathic brains, to the effects of power on monkey drug use, Klaas weaves cutting-edge research with astonishing encounters (including a ski lesson with the former viceroy of Iraq, tea with a former UK prime minister, and breakfast with Madagascar's yogurt kingpin president). Written by the creator of the award-winning Power Corrupts podcast, Corruptible challenges our basic assumptions about power, from the board room to the war room, and provides a roadmap for getting better leaders at every level.This open access book sets out simple solutions to managing complex catastrophes. It focusses on four kinds of crises –…
climate change, crime-war cascades, epidemics and financial crises. These catastrophes are conceived as complex and prone to cascade effects. This book is optimistic in explaining that there are identifiable simple institutions that international society can strengthen and some simple principles that can help humankind to control the expanding gamut of complex catastrophes that confront the planet including simple, stable institutions and regulatory bodies. It draws on a wide range of current and past crises and challenges, from the Cold War to COVID-19, and from Weapons of Mass Destruction to restorative diplomacy with States like China, to provide an urgent and timely path forward. It speaks to those interested in criminology, public policy and international relations, political science, sociology, public health and economics.Beyond the 2026 Winter Olympic Games: Sustainable Scenarios for the Valtellina Mountain Region (Mega Event Planning)
By Andrea Arcidiacono, Stefano Di Vita. 2024
This volume offers a novel study of the Milan-Cortina's Winter Olympics 2026, with a focus on the mountainous region of…
Valtellina. It brings an up-to-date analysis of the complex interactions between mega-events and remote areas, both in terms of potentials for regeneration and risks for further segregation. Remote areas are traditionally characterized by socio-economic and spatial disparities. On the one hand, they benefit from attractive features, such as environmental and landscape resources, food and wine production, and energy production. On the other, they are by definition fragile environments, disrupted by the contradictions of international tourism, climate change, limited infrastructures and services, rural abandonment, and demographic decline.This book offers credible solutions for the sustainable development of mountainous regions as a legacy of Winter Olympics. It is an essential resource for scholars, professionals, and policy-makers in the fieldsof urban planning and design, architecture design, geography, sociology, and economics.The Reality and Myth of BRI’s Debt Trap: Evidences from Asia and Africa (Indo-Pacific Focus)
By Nian Peng, Ming Yu Cheng. 2024
This edited book aims to present a well-balanced view on the heated debate about BRI’s “debt trap” controversy within the…
route states by presenting compelling evidence from Asian and African countries. It is contributed by the university scholars, think tank experts, and governmental officials from the concerned parties such as China, USA, South/Southeast Asia, and Africa to discuss this new topic from their perspectives. It not only examines the origins and changes in external debt among the BRI route states before and after the launch of the BRI, but also analyzes the outcomes stemming from BRI projects. The book covers 12 chapters, in which the first chapter briefly introduces the aims and scope of this book. The following 2 chapters look at Chinese and Indian perspectives on the “debt trap”, respectively. The next 9 chapters examine the debt issue and BRI projects in Southeast Asian, South Asian, and African states, which mainly involve Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Nigeria, and give some useful policy suggestions to reduce the debt burden and promote the socioeconomic development in these countries.Declining Hegemonical Foreign Policies of Nigeria: A Historico-Political Analysis
By Sheriff F. Folarin. 2024
This book examines Nigeria’s declining political hegemony in Africa between 1985 and 2022, a period characterised by dramatic internal political,…
social and economic downturns that negatively affected her image and international relations. The study traces the country’s shifting leadership and foreign policies through different eras. Chapters analysing Nigerian foreign policy internal dynamics, ideology, her military and civilian rule, and how these played out in Nigeria's regional influence, paint a holistic politico-historical portrait of a nation in hegemonic decline from 1989 continuing into the present day. Deploying National Role Conception as an analytical tool to contextualise and dissect Nigerian foreign policy, this book deepens our understanding of Nigerian international relations, and challenges preconceptions as to how, and through what lens, foreign policies of declining states can and should be considered. Through its approach, the book offers scholars, students, researchers and policymakers fresh perspectives and tools for analysing foreign policies of states, particularly Nigeria.The Palgrave Handbook of Sovereign Wealth Funds
By H. Kent Baker, Jeffrey H. Harris, Ghiyath Nakshbendi. 2024
The Palgrave Handbook of Sovereign Wealth Funds provides a comprehensive, detailed analysis of these funds from a multidimensional perspective consisting…
of 33 chapters divided into seven sections. Section I provides background material about SWFs, providing a foundation for the remainder of the handbook. Section II examines various controversies, governance, and accountability topics involving SWFs. Section III discusses the political, legal, and tax aspects of SWFs. Section IV reviews numerous topics involving SWF management. Section V deals with SWFs’ policies, preferences, and performance. Section VI provides descriptive analyses of SWFs based on country or region. It also offers a comparison of SWF similarities and differences across countries. Section VII concludes by examining special issues and the future of SWFs.This handbook spans the gamut from theoretical to practical while offering the right balance of detailed and user-friendly coverage. Discussion of relevant research permeates the handbook. Although other books are available on SWFs, few are as comprehensive or provide a multidimensional perspective from academics and practitioners. This handbook fills a gap by showing how SWFs are a growing and dynamic force in international finance.Building an Olive-Shaped Society: Economic Growth, Income Distribution and Public Policies in China
By CICC Research, CICC Global Institute. 2024
This open access book offers a comprehensive analysis of China’s way of economic development balancing between efficiency and equity, striving…
to investigate existing challenges and to discuss the role of fiscal policies and philanthropy to mitigate social inequality. The book analyzes the current overall state and challenges of China's income and wealth distribution and describes the social inequality in specific fields such as labor market, housing markets, education, public health, infrastructure building and carbon emission. This book also explores the implications of long-run trends of macro-asset pricing. The book is both academically rigorous and readable. This valuable reference will attract readers in economics, public finance and social policy who seek to better understand China’s path of combating social inequality.Gun Control in Context: Learning from the Australian Gun Control Experience
By Suzanna Fay. 2024
This book approaches the gun control debate by asking what it takes to achieve acceptance of, and compliance with, gun…
control regulations in a community thought to be opposed and resistant. It does this by centring this question on the experience of gun dealers who occupy a dual role in the compliance process – subject to its regulations, yet central to the application of all regulatory processes. The findings are surprising in that they demonstrate more support for gun control than opposition among this group, more willingness to cooperate with authorities than resistance, and more possibility for setting the tone for support with the wider gun owning community. This book considers how policy makers in the USA can capitalise on these overtones of collaboration and concern for public safety and learn from the successes and mistakes of the Australian gun control experience.Gun Control in Context is essential reading for all those engaged across the broad spectrum of the gun control debate and offers a grounded and reasoned approach to the challenges of public policy. It will be of interest to criminologists, legal scholars, and political scientists alike.The book provides an understanding of the three decades of Armenia’s young history – from the perspective of relations between…
civil society and government institutions. It explores the intricate dynamics between the two entities: by explaining the patterns of relations since 1991 to present. The book offers a comprehensive exploration for understanding the state-society relations, and also delves into the historical backdrop of the region. Drawing on the latest data, the author examines real-world practices exemplifying relational variations and the opportunity structures for Armenia to progress by means of its civil society.Strongmen: Mussolini To The Present
By Ruth Ben-Ghiat. 2020
What modern authoritarian leaders have in common (and how they can be stopped). Ruth Ben-Ghiat is the expert on the…
"strongman" playbook employed by authoritarian demagogues from Mussolini to Putin—enabling her to predict with uncanny accuracy the recent experience in America and Europe. In Strongmen, she lays bare the blueprint these leaders have followed over the past 100 years, and empowers us to recognize, resist, and prevent their disastrous rule in the future. For ours is the age of authoritarian rulers: self-proclaimed saviors of the nation who evade accountability while robbing their people of truth, treasure, and the protections of democracy. They promise law and order, then legitimize lawbreaking by financial, sexual, and other predators. They use masculinity as a symbol of strength and a political weapon. Taking what you want, and getting away with it, becomes proof of male authority. They use propaganda, corruption, and violence to stay in power. Vladimir Putin and Mobutu Sese Seko’s kleptocracies, Augusto Pinochet’s torture sites, Benito Mussolini and Muammar Gaddafi’s systems of sexual exploitation, and Silvio Berlusconi and Donald Trump’s relentless misinformation: all show how authoritarian rule, far from ensuring stability, is marked by destructive chaos. No other type of leader is so transparent about prioritizing self-interest over the public good. As one country after another has discovered, the strongman is at his worst when true guidance is most needed by his country. Recounting the acts of solidarity and dignity that have undone strongmen over the past 100 years, Ben-Ghiat makes vividly clear that only by seeing the strongman for what he is—and by valuing one another as he is unable to do—can we stop him, now and in the future.This book explores how nationalism and multilateralism transform international society and global governance. It does so by comparing the governance…
model of the EU – a constitutionalised and increasingly polycentric form of multilateralism – with Northeast Asia. There nationalist administrations have resisted multilateral commitments and are locked into rivalries instead of pursuing a regional project.Both Europe and Northeast Asia can be seen as success stories of the late 20th/ early 21st centuries, but by having followed different approaches to international governance. The book traces these two trajectories through critical junctures in history to how both regions have dealt with the contemporary challenges of the financial crisis and climate change. During the financial crisis, Europe’s multilateral economic and monetary architecture revealed profound weaknesses whilst national policies allowed much of Northeast Asia to escape the worst of it. On climate change the European Union (EU) has developed effort-sharing governance models to reduce emissions, while Northeast Asian countries are relying on greening national industrial policy. The book argues that global governance has to find the balance between multilateralism and nationalism in order to find collaborative approaches to global challenges.This book provides a fresh take on the EU and on Northeast Asia and develops innovative concepts of international society and polycentric governance. Thus, it will be of considerable interest to researchers and students of global governance, international relations, EU and Asia Studies.