Other books that might interest you

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  A Brief History of a Perfect...

  Chunka Mui, Paul B. Carroll, Tim...

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  A Brief History of a Perfect Future 
  What if, instead of trying to predict the future, we could just pick the one we want—and then invent it? Well, we can. 
  Think of the wealth of technological resources already available to us. The computing power in that smartphone in your pocket could have guided 120 million Apollo-era spacecraft to the moon and back. A gigabyte of memory cost $300,000 in the 1980s—today, it costs a fraction of a penny. Now, try to imagine 2050, when your computing devices will be a million times more powerful or available at one-millionth of today’s prices. 
  In this deeply researched and compelling book, the authors do the imagining for you, describing seven so-incredible-as- to-be-almost-magical capabilities that will be available by 2050 in computing, communication, information, genomics, energy, water, and transportation. You may finally get that flying car, have ample water even in a desert, and be treated for disease through microscopic robots in your bloodstream. 
  Drawing on their decades of experience helping major organizations formulate strategies for innovation, the authors demonstrate how to use combinations of those seven capabilities to imagine “perfect” futures, whether that means reversing climate change, resolving today’s disinformation crisis, or living 20 years longer. This book paints visions of how the world could—and should—look as we pass the planet on to future generations. 
  We can use those visions to start inventing a perfect future—today.

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  How to Use Politicians to Get...

  Scott Colvin

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  Ever since the 2009 expenses scandal erupted, public opinion towards politicians has hit rock bottom. Even with a new intake into Parliament, people are still asking what is the point of having an MP? However, people do not realise that politicians can be used to help them get what they want in a range of situations in everyday life. Scott Colvin has spent the past ten years working in national and local politics. During that time he has worked out how to use politicians to win a range of personal battles, both as a consumer and in his community. All the battles he has won - including getting the chief executive of a FTSE-25 company to personally intervene to send an engineer to his home, saving the last post office in his town, campaigning for his child's nursery to remain open and getting a wheel clamper to remove a clamp free of charge - he has done by using MPs and councillors either passively or actively to support his campaigns. He believes that everyone could do the same if only they knew how. This book is an informal 'how to' guide for consumers, pressure groups, residents groups, etc to demonstrate how and when to use your national and local politicians to assert your rights as both a consumer and a citizen. Politicians are often seen to have played the system for their own financial and personal gain - it is time for the people they represent to get the same chance.

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  The New Censorship - Inside the...

  Joel Simon

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   An examination of how the media is under fire and how to safeguard journalists and the information they seek to share with the public.Journalists are being imprisoned and killed in record numbers. Online surveillance is annihilating privacy, and the Internet can be brought under government control at any time. Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, warns that we can no longer assume that our global information ecosystem is stable, protected, and robust. Journalists are increasingly vulnerable to attack by authoritarian governments, militants, criminals, and terrorists, who all seek to use technology, political pressure, and violence to set the global information agenda.Reporting from Pakistan, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, and Mexico, among other hotspots, Simon finds journalists under threat from all sides. The result is a growing crisis in information—a shortage of the news we need to make sense of our globalized world and fight human rights abuses, manage conflict, and promote accountability. Drawing on his experience defending journalists on the front lines, he calls on “global citizens,” U.S. policy makers, international law advocates, and human rights groups to create a global freedom-of-expression agenda tied to trade, climate, and other major negotiations. He proposes ten key priorities, including combating the murder of journalists, ending censorship, and developing a global free-expression charter to challenge the criminal and corrupt forces that seek to manipulate the world's news.“Wise and insightful. [Simon] offers hope to all who care about maintaining the free flow of information in a world full of would-be censors.”—Ann Cooper, Columbia Journalism School

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  Illicit Flirtations - Labor...

  Rhacel Salazar Parrenas

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  An “excellent” ethnography that “reveal[s] the global implications of the US morality on international policies and migrant workers” (Cristina Firpo, International Review of Modern Sociology). 
   
  In 2004, the US State Department declared Filipina hostesses in Japan the largest group of sex trafficked persons in the world. Since receiving this global attention, the number of hostesses entering Japan has dropped by nearly 90 percent. To some, this might suggest a victory for the global anti-trafficking campaign, but Rhacel Parreñas counters that this drastic decline—which stripped thousands of migrants of their livelihoods—is a setback. Parreñas worked alongside hostesses in a working-class club in Tokyo’s red-light district, serving drinks and entertaining her customers. While the common assumption has been that these hostess bars are hotbeds of sexual trafficking, Parreñas quickly discovered a different world of working migrant women, there by choice, and, most importantly, where none were coerced into prostitution. Illicit Flirtations calls into question the US policy to broadly label these women as sex trafficked. It highlights how in imposing top-down legal constraints to solve the perceived problems—including laws that push dependence on migrant brokers and measures that criminalize undocumented migrants—many women become more vulnerable to exploitation, not less. This book gives a long overdue look into the real world of those labeled as trafficked. 
   
  “A highly readable and informative book.” —Ko-lin Chin, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books 
   
  “A nuanced portrayal. . . . Scholars and policy-makers should take note.” —Viviana A. Zelizer, Princeton University, author of Purchase of Intimacy and Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy 
   
  “An extraordinary book.” —Saskia Sassen, Columbia University, author of A Sociology of Globalization

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  Room at the Table - A Leader's...

  Renée Branch Canady

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  What Was Your First Memory of Race?This opening question is the heart and soul of “Room at the Table.” The word equity is thrown around in multiple media outlets, corporations, and non-profits. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion… Many shy away from these terms, convinced that they already understand. In truth, these concepts are a mystery to most. It’s more important than ever to grasp the vital, far-reaching aim of the equity lens. What does this work look like? What does it sound like? What actions must equity leaders take to turn the future of leadership into a reality?With public health injustices on the rise, grounded equity leadership can forge the path to a more healthy, understanding, and effective outlook for all of our futures. In her groundbreaking work, Dr. Renee Branch Canady, CEO of the Michigan Public Health Institute, shares through research and candid stories what it’s like to be on the front lines as an equity public health leader. In a culture centered on optics, Dr. Canady brings to light the true act of doing for the sake of change.Points of focus include:• The innovative concept of “Leadering” • Using our outrage to enact change • Seeing, saying, and doing differently • Acting courageously in the face of institutional racism • Leading with authenticity • Harboring the conviction to move equity work forward, one step at a timeIn Dr. Canady’s words, “Health equity leadership is a new leadership in this space that’s predicated by what’s happening at this moment. It hasn’t happened before. Focusing on others, a willingness to be courageous, and a willingness to do something that hasn’t been done before is a grey space in health equity leadership.”“Room at the Table” addresses this grey space with unflinching honestly and hope.

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  High Tension - FDR's Battle to...

  John A. Riggs

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  An account of Franklin Roosevelt’s battle against the power industry to bring electricity to rural communities in the United States. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office in the depths of the Depression, high tension―or high voltage―power lines had been marching across the country for decades, delivering urban Americans a parade of life-transforming inventions from electric lights and radios to refrigerators and washing machines. But most rural Americans still lived in the punishing pre-electric era, unconnected to the grid, their lives consumed and bodies broken by backbreaking chores.High Tension is the story of FDR’s battle against the “Power Trust,” an elaborate Wall Street-controlled web of holding companies, to electrify all of America―even when the corrupt captains of the industry and their cronies (led by a formidable and honest champion, Wendell Willkie, whose role in the battle propelled him to a presidential bid to unseat Roosevelt in 1940) cried that running lines to rural areas would not be profitable and that in a free market there would simply have to be a divide between the electricity haves and have-nots. Roosevelt knew better. And in this story of shrewd political maneuvering, controversial legislation, New Deal government organizations like the Tennessee Valley Authority, the packing of Federal courts, towering business figures, greedy villains, and the crying needs of farmers and other rural citizens desperate for services critical to their daily lives, John A. Riggs has chronicled democracy’s greatest balancing act of government intervention with private market forces. Here is the tale of how FDR’s efforts brought affordable electricity to all Americans, powered the industrial might that won World War II, and established a model for public-private solutions today in areas such as transportation infrastructure, broadband, and health care.Praise for High Tension “The little known but captivating story of electricity is at the heart of the New Deal. John A. Riggs is the perfect person to tell the tale.” ―Walter Isaacson, author of The Innovators, Leonardo da Vinci, and Steve Jobs “[A] lucid and compelling tale. This is a fresh angle of vision on one of the most important and under-appreciated stories of the first half of the 20th century.” ―Jonathan Alter, author of The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope “An innovative history of the chaos and conniving that created America’s transformative electricity system. . . . A compelling read. Thoroughly researched and gracefully written. . . . A must for historians, it is also a gripping read for all.” ―Martin J. Sherwin, Pulitzer Prize-winning co-author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer “[A]n exhaustive look at President Franklin Roosevelt’s multipronged war against the private utility sector. . . . Riggs dives deep into the legislative, judicial, and public opinion battles over Roosevelt’s energy initiatives, including the Tennessee Valley Authority, and argues that the hybrid public-private system that emerged in America was critical to the nation’s “economic global supremacy” during and after WWII. . . . [T]his authoritative account is a valuable resource for students of America’s energy policy.” ―Publishers Weekly

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