Showing titles in Society

Roger Scruton’s How to be a Conservative presents the case for modern conservatism not in the terms of an elegy but rather as a practical example of how to live as a conservative despite the pressures to live otherwise. As he writes, the book ‘is not about what we have lost, but about what we have retained, and how to hold on to it’. In this witty and frank account, Scruton draws on his years of experience as a counter-cultural presence in public life.

In thirteen iconoclastic essays, Slavoj Žižek disrupts the death-grip that neoliberalists, Trumpian populists, toxic self-improvement industries and accelerationists alike have established on the idea of progress. Anatomizing what is lost when opponents of the future are allowed to define it, Žižek ruthlessly exposes what different visions of progress exclude or sacrifice and the dynamics of desire, denial and disavowal at work in Hollywood blockbusters, Buddhist economics, decolonization movements and other engines of vision.

The work of queer autistic scholar Nick Walker has played a key role in the evolving discourse on human neurodiversity. Neuroqueer Heresies collects a decade's worth of Dr. Walker's most influential writings, along with new commentary by the author and new material on her radical conceptualization of Neuroqueer Theory. This book is essential for anyone seeking to understand the foundations, terminology, implications, and leading edges of the emerging neurodiversity paradigm.

By the author of the modern classic The Black Swan, this collection of aphorisms and meditations expresses his major ideas in ways you least expect. The Bed of Procrustes takes its title from Greek mythology: the story of a man who made his visitors fit his bed to perfection by either stretching them or cutting their limbs. It represents Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s view of modern civilization’s hubristic side effects.

Byung-Chul Han is one of the most widely read philosophers in Europe today, a member of the new generation of German thinkers that includes Markus Gabriel and Armen Avanessian. In The Agony of Eros, a bestseller in Germany, Han considers the threat to love and desire in today's society. For Han, love requires the courage to accept self-negation for the sake of discovering the Other. In a world of fetishized individualism and technologically mediated social interaction, it is the Other that is eradicated, not the self.

Brought to you by Penguin. The celebrated scientist and author of Why Information Grows reveals how knowledge moves, drives progress and shapes the world We all understand that knowledge shapes the fate of business and the growth of nations, but few of us are aware of the principles that govern...

Our universities are broken. Established as sanctuaries of truth and higher learning, they are now decaying institutions that are failing a generation of young people. Consumed by funding and admissions crises, dominated by dogma and governed by self-interest, their founding principles have been corrupted. This explosive book shows us why, and what we must do to fix them.

The founder of the international Transition Towns movement asks why true creative, positive thinking is in decline, asserts that it's more important now than ever, and suggests ways our communities can revive and reclaim it.

Amoral, inmisericorde, despiadada y, sobre todo, muy instructiva, esta incisiva obra concentra tres mil años de historia del poder en cuarenta y ocho leyes claras y concisas. Robert Greene detalla las leyes del poder en su esencia más cruda, sintetizando el pensamiento de Maquiavelo, Sun Tzu, Carl von Clausewitz y otros grandes teóricos y estrategas.

Imagine this: You're walking past a shallow pond and spot a toddler thrashing around in the water, in obvious danger of drowning. You look around for her parents, but nobody is there. You're the only person who can save her and you must act immediately. But as you approach the pond you remember that you're wearing your most expensive shoes. Wading into the water will ruin them—and might make you late for a meeting. Should you let the child drown?

At a time when we are all confronted by not one, but many crossroads in our modern lives - identity, technology, trust, politics, and a global pandemic - celebrated mythologist and wilderness guide Martin Shaw delivers Smoke Hole: three metaphors to help us understand our world, one that is assailed by the seductive promises of social media and shadowed by a health crisis that has brought loneliness and isolation to an all-time high.

Hailed upon publication as a cogent and hard-hitting critique, The Sociological Imagination took issue with the ascendant schools of sociology in the United States, calling for a humanist sociology connecting the social, personal, and historical dimensions of our lives. The sociological imagination Mills calls for is a sociological vision, a way of looking at the world that can see links between the apparently private problems of the individual and important social issues.

Violence and the Sacred is Rene Girard's landmark study of human evil. Here Girard explores violence as it is represented and occurs throughout history, literature, and myth. Girard's forceful and thought-provoking analyses of Biblical narrative, Greek tragedy, and the lynchings and pogroms propagated by contemporary states illustrate his central argument that violence belongs to everyone and is at the heart of the sacred.

Even the most reasonable of us can be selective about when we think reasonably. We may realize that the best thing to do is to take the advice of our doctor when facing a medical issue. When shopping for a new car or appliance we might carefully assess online reviews and weigh our options calmly before making an informed decision. But when it comes to things that feel more fraught, we might throw this approach out the window, dismissing facts and patterns that form a body of evidence, and trust our gut.

This audiobook is an invitation to a dream school with a faculty that includes 12 of the greatest philosophers from the ancient world, sharing their lessons in happiness, resilience and much more. Discover how soldiers, psychologists, gangsters, astronauts, anarchists and others use these ideas today. Lively and powerful, this is philosophy for the street, for the workplace, for the battlefield, for love, for life.

To Have or to Be? is one of the seminal books of the second half of the 20th century. Fromm's thesis is that two modes of existence struggle for the spirit of humankind: the having mode, which concentrates on material possessions, power, and aggression, and is the basis of the universal evils of greed, envy, and violence; and the being mode, which is based on love, the pleasure of sharing, and in productive activity.

In this irreverent and illuminating audiobook, acclaimed writer and scientist Leonard Mlodinow shows us how randomness, chance, and probability reveal a tremendous amount about our daily lives, and how we misunderstand the significance of everything from a casual conversation to a major financial setback. As a result, successes and failures in life are often attributed to clear and obvious causes, when in actuality they are more profoundly influenced by chance.

Misogyny is a hot topic, yet it's often misunderstood. What is misogyny, exactly? Who deserves to be called a misogynist? How does misogyny contrast with sexism, and why is it prone to persist - or increase - even when sexist gender roles are waning? This book is an exploration of misogyny in public life and politics by the moral philosopher Kate Manne. It argues that misogyny should not be understood primarily in terms of the hatred or hostility some men feel toward all or most women. Rather, it's primarily about controlling, policing, punishing, and exiling the "bad" women.

We are able to configure privacy settings on our devices and social media platforms, but we know our efforts pale in comparison to the scale of surveillance capitalism and algorithmic manipulation. In our hyperconnected era, many have begun to wonder whether it is still possible to live a private life, or whether it is no longer worth fighting for. The Right to Oblivion argues incisively and persuasively that we still can and should strive for privacy, though for different reasons than we might think.

Linear and progressive views of history have dominated the popular imagination for the past seventy years in a worldview wedded to the inexorable rise of globalization and GDP growth at any cost. However, the end of the Cold War failed to produce the end of history as hoped, a fact brought home to many by Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.