Other books that might interest you

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  Feeling Their Pain - Why Voters...

  Jared McDonald

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  The 2020 presidential election in the United States marked, for many, a return to "compassionate politics." Joe Biden had run on a platform of empathy, emphasizing his personal history as a means of connecting with everyone, from American workers who had lost jobs to military families who had lost loved ones. Although perceptions of candidate compassion are broadly understood to influence vote choice, less understood is the question of how candidates convince voters they truly "care about people like them." In Feeling their Pain, Jared McDonald provides a framework for understanding why voters view some politicians as more compassionate than others. 
   
   
   
  McDonald shows that perceptions of compassion in candidates for public office are based on the number and intensity of commonalities that bind citizens to political leaders. Commonalities can come in many forms, such as a shared experience, a shared emotion, or a shared identity. Compassion may be universal, such as when candidates convey empathy to all individuals who are struggling. Or compassion may be exclusionary, such as when candidates express a preference for some groups over others. Thus, the way campaigns choose to wield compassion in their messaging strategies has important implications not only for election outcomes, but for American political polarization as well.

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  Gender Explained - A New...

  PhD Diane Ehrensaft, PsyD...

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  A Finalist for the 2025 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ+ Nonfiction 
   
  Gender is everywhere. Politicians argue over it, educational systems struggle to define it, and our friends, neighbors, and children explore it. More than ever before, young people are questioning their gender identities and redefining the role of gender in their lives. How should our society―and we as individuals (parents, teachers, friends)―respond? 
   
  In Gender Explained, Diane Ehrensaft, PhD, and Michelle Jurkiewicz, PsyD, separate medical fact from fear-mongering falsehoods and answer these questions: What should parents do when their child starts experiencing gender dysphoria? Which sports teams should transgender youth play on? How should schools teach young people about gender? And most important: What is gender-affirming care, and when should an individual have access to it? 
   
  With clear, expert guidance, this book is a safeguard against political vitriol, and it offers urgent protection for those among us who are transgender and/or nonbinary. Far more than an introduction to gender creativity, it is an invitation to develop compassion for everyone along the gender continuum.

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  The Hell Bomb

  William L. Laurence

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  The Hell Bomb by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist William L. Laurence is a sobering, meticulously detailed account of the dawn of the hydrogen bomb era. Written in the early 1950s, this scientific and political examination offers a front-row perspective on one of the most terrifying technological advancements in human history. Drawing on firsthand experiences from his time at Los Alamos and exclusive interviews with leading figures such as Hans A. Bethe, Laurence unpacks the terrifying potential of thermonuclear fusion and its unparalleled destructive power. 
  More than just a scientific treatise, The Hell Bomb wrestles with the ethical dilemmas and geopolitical consequences of nuclear armament in a rapidly changing post–World War II world. Laurence urges the public to confront the moral weight of such weapons and consider the path humanity must choose as it stands on the brink of unimaginable devastation. 
  Narrated with gravity and insight by Nathan Edwards, this audiobook remains a critical historical document and a powerful warning from the nuclear age's front lines.

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  Tripwires - 15...

  Richard North Patterson

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  In a trenchant work of nonfiction, the #1 New York Times bestselling author identifies a series of self-inflicted wounds on our body politic that have led to the current moment, and shows us how we can undo the harm“A modern-day Tocqueville, Richard North Patterson marshals an immense amount of research to show, incisively and readably, why we are now in danger of losing our democracy—and how we can recover from our current malaise.” —Max Boot, author of Reagan: His Life and LegendIn a trenchant work of nonfiction, the New York Times bestselling author identifies a series of self-inflicted wounds and destabilizing societal trends that have led America to the precipice of autocracy, and lays out a program or reversing the harm. From politicized Supreme Court decisions to wrong-headed policy initiatives and toxic political maneuvers, Richard North Patterson—whose novel on presidential politics, Protect and Defend, was a #1 New York Times bestseller—combines fifteen fateful moments in the past quarter-century with an immersive narrative of the underlying economic, cultural, and political developments that made these tripwires so profoundly consequential. 
   
  Starting with the Supreme Court intervention that awarded George W. Bush the presidency, Patterson examines the often under-appreciated turning points that helped undermine our polity, from the accidental accession of John Roberts as Chief Justice and the ruin wreaked by America’s subprime mortgages, to Donald Trump’s demand to see Barack Obama’s birth certificate, Marco Rubio’s sabotage of his own immigration reform bill, and Mitch McConnell’s refusal to convict Trump for his attempted coup—culimating in the ultimate betrayal of our constitutional democracy: the Roberts Court’s invitation to unbounded presidential power. 
   
  Patterson’s near-encyclopedic knowledge of recent U.S. history along with his political acumen and training as a trial lawyer allow him to distill cause and effect in a deeply synthetic way, building to a comprehensive account of the perverse compound of ignorance, corruption, racism, religiosity, plutocracy, and authoritarianism wrought by Trump’s return to power. He concludes with a detailed program for establishing a truly equitable and democratic society, offering hope for America’s future.

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  China's World View -...

  David Daokui Li

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  Writing in response to the growing anti-Chinese sentiment and alarmed by the threat of war, Dr. David Daokui Li pulls from his wealth of firsthand experience to demystify contemporary Chinese society and advocate for understanding between China and the West. In this urgently needed and fascinating book, he explains the inner workings of a rising superpower to help the world understand how it works—and how to work with it. 
   
   
   
  In Li's hands, an economic and political system that often baffles Westerners becomes coherent, sophisticated, and logical. He begins by explaining how two thousand years of history—from Confucian philosophy and ancient imperial dynasties to Communist Party chairmen from Mao to Deng Xiaoping—profoundly influence China's leadership today. Li brings the listener into high-level meetings he attended with figures including Xi Jinping, showing China's approach to governance. 
   
   
   
  In demystifying contemporary Chinese society, Li helps listeners reconceptualize contemporary China and the implications of its growth. He asserts that China's rise will be beneficial for the global order, holding out the hope that with shared understanding and mutual learning the Chinese and Western systems will eventually find a way to peacefully coexist.

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  Pandemic Panic - How Canadian...

  Joanna Baron, Christine Van Geyn

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  In October 2022, the economist Emily Oster wrote a plea for a “pandemic amnesty.” After detailing various ill-conceived public health policies throughout the pandemic, Oster concluded that “The standard saying is that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. But dwelling on the mistakes of history can lead to a repetitive doom loop as well.” She reasoned that many admittedly poor, public health decisions were made in an information vacuum and that the salubrious thing to do going forward would be to forgive and forget.
  		 
  Oster was concerned about the fraying social fabric because of polarizing online discourse and urged the need to move forward. However, our anecdotal experience has shown a second common response to pandemic mishaps—going blank entirely on what occurred during the pandemic. We have observed a phenomenon of the surreal, sometimes inane, often unprecedented and unusual public health measures taken over the roughly three-year pandemic period being a “memory hole,” where the mind completely fogs over. Many times in the course of writing this book, we have messaged one another upon unearthing one public policy absurdity upon another: the City of Toronto taping off cherry blossoms, Quebec requiring unvaccinated people to be chaperoned in plexiglass carts through the essential aisles of big-box stores.
  		 
  We are not psychologists, but no doubt there is an evolutionary benefit to allowing a collective trauma to dissolve into the slip-stream: it is unproductive to dwell on how we got by and how our government coped in real-time. Our memories are warped, first, by the “primacy effect” our tendency to remember “firsts” exemplified by people universally naming George Washington when asked to recall former U.S. presidents. Most people have a crystal clear memory of the moment their plague year started in earnest; for us and many others; it was March 11, 2020, the day the NBA suspended games for the rest of the season.

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