Other books that might interest you

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  Habit Forming - Drug Addiction...

  Elizabeth Kelly Gray

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  Habitual drug use in the United States is at least as old as the nation itself. Habit Forming traces the history of unregulated drug use and dependency before 1914, when the Harrison Narcotic Tax Act limited sales of opiates and cocaine under US law. Many Americans used opiates and other drugs medically and became addicted. Some tried Hasheesh Candy, injected morphine, or visited opium dens, but neither use nor addiction was linked to crime, due to the dearth of restrictive laws. After the Civil War, American presses published extensively about domestic addiction. Later in the nineteenth century, many used cocaine and heroin as medicine. As addiction became a major public health issue, commentators typically sympathized with white, middle-class drug users, while criticizing such use by poor or working-class people and people of color. When habituation was associated with middle-class morphine users, few advocated for restricted drug access. By the 1910s, as use was increasingly associated with poor young men, support for regulations increased. In outlawing users' access to habit-forming drugs at the national level, a public health problem became a larger legal and social problem, one with an enduring influence on American drug laws and their enforcement.

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  Vaccine Nation - America’s...

  Elena Conis

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  With employers offering free flu shots and pharmacies expanding into one-stop shops to prevent everything from shingles to tetanus, vaccines are ubiquitous in contemporary life. The past fifty years have witnessed an enormous upsurge in vaccines and immunization in the United States: American children now receive more vaccines than any previous generation, and laws requiring their immunization against a litany of diseases are standard. Yet, while vaccination rates have soared and cases of preventable infections have plummeted, an increasingly vocal cross section of Americans have questioned the safety and necessity of vaccines. In Vaccine Nation, Elena Conis explores this complicated history and its consequences for personal and public health. 
  Vaccine Nation opens in the 1960s, when government scientists—triumphant following successes combating polio and smallpox—considered how the country might deploy new vaccines against what they called the “milder” diseases, including measles, mumps, and rubella. In the years that followed, Conis reveals, vaccines fundamentally changed how medical professionals, policy administrators, and ordinary Americans came to perceive the diseases they were designed to prevent. She brings this history up to the present with an insightful look at the past decade’s controversy over the implementation of the Gardasil vaccine for HPV, which sparked extensive debate because of its focus on adolescent girls and young women. Through this and other examples, Conis demonstrates how the acceptance of vaccines and vaccination policies has been as contingent on political and social concerns as on scientific findings. 
  By setting the complex story of American vaccination within the country’s broader history, Vaccine Nation goes beyond the simple story of the triumph of science over disease and provides a new and perceptive account of the role of politics and social forces in medicine.

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  AI - The Ultimate Marketing Game...

  Dr. Deepak Renganathan

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  The launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 threw the entire business world into disarray. Not many businesses were prepared for a technological shift that was so sudden and drastic. Moreover, similar to the early days of the World Wide Web, the Artificial Intelligence revolution also comes with a fair share of hype. The overwhelming developments in the field of Artificial Intelligence, coupled with the mushrooming of AI firms, tools, and platforms, are enough to baffle even the most astute marketing managers. As if all these were not enough, radically divergent views from industry stalwarts fuel a raging debate:  
  “AI will continue to get way more capable… People are using it to create amazing things. If we could see what each of us can do 10 or 20 years in the future, it would astonish us today.” 
  Sam Altman, Cofounder and CEO of OpenAI 
  I can't see a path that guarantees safety. We're entering a period of great uncertainty where we're dealing with things we've never dealt with before. And normally, the first time you deal with something totally novel, you get it wrong. 
  Geoffrey Hinton, 'The Godfather of AI'  
  This book is an attempt to evaluate both sides of the view and present a middle path, that of a cautious optimism. Dive into this essential guide to navigate the promises and complexities of AI to ensure you are not just a bystander but a leader in the next technological era. 
  Dr. Deepak Renganathan, a Doctorate in AI and an Advisory Board Certified Chair™, is a seasoned marketing professional with over 22 years of experience across industries such as automobile, luxury real estate, fashion, and 5-star hospitality. Deepak has delivered positive turnarounds for Fortune 500 companies across the Americas, China, EMEA, and APAC regions. His expertise lies in creating impactful, data-driven marketing strategies by leveraging AI, big data, and automation for business growth.

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  Lost in Automatic Translation -...

  Vered Shwartz

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  The last decade has seen an exponential increase in the development and adoption of language technologies, from personal assistants such as Siri and Alexa, through automatic translation, to chatbots like ChatGPT. Yet questions remain about what we stand to lose or gain when we rely on them in our everyday lives. As a non-native English speaker living in an English-speaking country, Vered Shwartz has experienced both amusing and frustrating moments using language technologies: from relying on inaccurate automatic translation, to failing to activate personal assistants with her foreign accent. English is the world's foremost go-to language for communication, and mastering it past the point of literal translation requires acquiring not only vocabulary and grammar rules, but also figurative language, cultural references, and nonverbal communication. Will language technologies aid us in the quest to master foreign languages and better understand one another, or will they make language learning obsolete?

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  A Call to Farms - Reconnecting...

  Jennifer Grayson

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  Hope for the future lies with a new generation of regenerative farmers. 
   
   
   
  Within a decade, nearly half of all American farmland will change hands as an older generation of farmers steps aside. In their place, a groundswell of new growers will face numerous challenges, including soil degradation, insufficient income, and investors devouring farmland at a staggering pace. These new farmers are embracing regenerative agriculture—the holistic approach to growing food that restores the soil and biodiversity—in the movement to reclaim our health and the planet's. But can their efforts help reverse an epidemic of diet-related disease, food inequality, and even climate change? 
   
   
   
  To answer that question and more, award-winning journalist Jennifer Grayson embedded herself in a groundbreaking farmer training program, then embarked on this investigative journey. The diverse array of farmers, graziers, and food activists whom she profiles here are working toward better, more sustainable foodways for all. From a one-acre market garden in Oregon to activists reviving food sovereignty in South Carolina, A Call to Farms tells the captivating story of these new agrarians finding hope and purpose in reconnecting to the land and striving to improve the future of American food.

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  The Phantom Cosmos - Decoding...

  Dirk Fallon

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  The universe is a vast expanse filled with enigmas that have intrigued scientists and philosophers for millennia. In the wake of the Big Bang, the cosmos burst into existence, unleashing a torrent of energy and matter that set the stage for the formation of everything we know today. From the very first moments, the universe exhibited a complexity that would eventually lead to the emergence of galaxies, stars, and planets. Yet, amid this wondrous creation, a peculiar and subtle force began to assert its influence—one that would later be identified as dark energy. This mysterious component, largely invisible and poorly understood, is now believed to be responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe, challenging our conventional understanding of gravity and the evolution of cosmic structures. 
  In the early epochs of the universe, conditions were extremely volatile and unpredictable. Subatomic particles collided with tremendous energy, and the nascent fabric of space-time was in constant flux. As the universe cooled and matter began to coalesce, forces that governed particle interactions and the formation of atoms started to take hold. It was during this formative period that the seeds of cosmic structure were planted, and the universe embarked on a long, gradual journey towards complexity. However, it was also during this time that the presence of dark energy, although not yet recognized, began to subtly influence the behavior of the cosmos. This influence was initially hidden in the chaotic interplay of energy and matter but would later emerge as one of the most critical factors in cosmic evolution.

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