Introduction: the working hypothesis -- What work is worth -- As American as economic pie -- Productive pluralism -- The labor market -- A future for work -- Turning around -- The environment and the economy -- Teaching to the rest -- The importance of borders -- More perfect unions -- The wage subsidy -- Beyond the market -- For those who cannot work -- The social wages of work -- Conclusion: regaining our balance -- Acknowledgements -- Index -- Endnotes

I did not want to fail, because the stakes were too high. After all, I was after nothing less than the secret of human harmony." The challenge that bestselling author Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson set for himself was formidable: to create a true interspecies peaceable kingdom within his own household. He hoped to learn if several different species-some, natural enemies-raised together from an early age could live peacefully side by side. So he took into his home seven young animals-a kitten, a rabbit, two rats, two chickens, and a puppy-and set about observing the whole process of socialization (or non-socialization) from the very beginning. The initial results were mixed. Tamaiti, the kitten, made herself instantly comfortable, but Hohepa, the Flemish giant rabbit, remained inscrutably reserved. Kia and Ora, the rats, slept all day and became active at night. Moa and Moana, the Polish frizzle chickens, bonded with each other but to no one else. Mika, the stray pup, barked much too much. But as the hours and days passed in this never-before-attempted environment, the animals began to change in startling ways, as Masson wondered which animals would bond, and which would recoil from one another? Can animals, including humans, truly change when direct experience tells them it's safe to do so? Would the experiment end in triumph, or in tragedy? Raising the Peaceable Kingdom poses universal questions we've all had about relationships, social strife, and peaceful coexistence. In its intimations of the potential for planetary harmony, this elegantly written book is a work of major significance. As a unique account of life in an interspecies community, it offers unmitigated enchantment, joy, and delight.

From the daughter of business mogul Donald Trump and a rising star in the Trump organization, this New York Times bestseller is a business book for young women on how to achieve success in any field, based upon what Ivanka Trump has learned from her father and from her own experiences. Inspiration. Success. Confidence. Passion. No one is born with these qualities, but they are the key ingredients for reaching goals, building careers, or taking a blueprint and turning it into a breathtaking skyscraper. In The Trump Card , Ivanka Trump recounts the compelling story of her upbringing as the ultimate Apprentice, the daughter of Donald and Ivana Trump, and shares the life lessons and hard-won insights that have made her a rising star in the business world. Whether it’s landing that first job, navigating the workplace, or making a lasting impact, Ivanka’s valuable, practical advice for young women shows how to: • Use uncertainty to your advantage—thrive in any environment • Step up and get noticed at work—focus and efficiency will open doors • Create a strong and consistent identity—your name and reputation are your best assets • Know what you want—get the most out of any negotiation. Ivanka also taps into the wisdom of today’s leaders, including Arianna Huffington, Russell Simmons, and Cathie Black, with “Bulletins” from her BlackBerry. “We’ve all been dealt a winning hand,” she writes, “and it is up to each of us to play it right and smart.”

More of Isaac Asimov's weekly science columns for the Los Angeles Times and those his wife, Janet, wrote during his illness and after his death in April 1992. The Asimovs discuss how close we are to producing life in a lab, the latest revelations about dinosaur extinction, recent startling sightings of planets and stars, if we can establish colonies on Mars, if computer intelligence can ever surpass human intelligence, and the gravest dangers to our environment. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

David Fisher is no hero. As a bureaucrat for the Environmental Perfection Agency, he reviews magical impact statements and ensures that various manufacturers of magical devices don't foul the environment. But when he receives a call to investigate the Toxic Spell Dump, David must confront an ancient deity bent on destroying Western Civilization.

This manuscript portrays optimization as a process. In many practical applications the environment is so complex that it is infeasible to lay out a comprehensive theoretical model and use classical algorithmic theory and mathematical optimization. It is necessary as well as beneficial to take a robust approach, by applying an optimization method that learns as one goes along, learning from experience as more aspects of the problem are observed. This view of optimization as a process has become prominent in varied fields and has led to some spectacular success in modeling and systems that are now part of our daily lives.

A fresh edition of the sustainable design pioneer Victor Papanek’s classic and ever-relevant book examining the important role of design in combating climate change. Whether it’s horror at the plastic littering the world’s beaches or despair at the melting polar ice caps, the world is gradually waking up to the impending climate disaster. In The Green Imperative , Papanek argues for design that addresses these issues head-on. This means using materials that can be recycled and reused, no more pointless packaging, thinking about how products make us feel and engage all our senses, putting nature at the heart of design, working at a smaller scale, rejecting aesthetics for their own sake, and thinking before we buy. First published at the end of the twentieth century, this book offered a plethora of honest advice, clear examples, and withering critiques, laying out the flaws of and opportunities for the design world at that time. A quarter of a century on, Papanek’s lucid prose has lost none of its verve, and the problems he highlights have only become more urgent, giving today’s reader both a fascinating historical perspective on the issues at hand and a blueprint for how they might be solved.

A powerful portrayal of Jeffrey Sachs's ambitious quest to end extreme global poverty, now a Signal paperback. "The poor you will always have with you," according to Matthew 26:11. But Jeffrey Sachs, economics superstar, special advisor to the Secretary General of the UN and the author of The End of Poverty , vehemently disagrees. In his view, poverty -- especially the extreme deprivation of sub-Saharan Africa -- can easily be eradicated. The vast sums spent in foreign aid over the decades has not come close to alleviating the dire subsistence problems of Africans. Sachs believed he knew the reason: the developed world simply hadn't spent enough. In 2006, Sachs, backed by tens of millions of donor dollars, launched the five-year Millennium Villages Project. Sachs would test his theories in villages in different African countries, then, with each success, scale up until until the program was continent-wide. His first village "make-over" was a small community in Sauri, Kenya, and the immediate effect was encouraging. With that first inkling of success achieved, Sachs rolled out a dozen model Millennium villages in ten countries. For the past six years, Nina Munk has reported deeply on the Project, following Sachs on official trips and listening in on conversations with heads of states, rival organisations and potential donors. And she has immersed herself in the lives of people in two of the remote villages: Ruhiira, in southwest Uganda, and Dertu, in the arid borderland between Kenya and Somalia. Accepting hospitality from these camel herders and smallhold farmers, and sharing in their struggles, Munk came to understand the on-the-ground issues challenging Sachs' one-size-fits-all approach to global poverty. The Idealist is the profound and moving story of what happened when the abstract theories of a brilliant, driven man met messy human reality.

"A lovely work of writing and a rich scientific exploration of trees, suffused with poetry and humanity. Between Earth and Sky takes us on a journey through the wonders of the forest canopy and the web of spiritual and literal connections we have with trees. Nalini Nadkarni is a unique figure in forest ecology—as a pioneering tree climber and explorer, and a topnotch scientist, she's a hero in a world where heroes don't come around often."—Richard Preston, author of The Wild Trees and The Hot Zone “Besides cutting them, climbing them, and planting them, the urge to anthropomorphize trees, make them into metaphors, and worship them, is practically universal. Many people feel an intimate connection to trees. Nadkarni's scientific, personal, and literary book shows why, on so many levels, this should be so. Although the ancient Chinese thought of humans as the connection between earth and sky, my vote would go to trees.”—Liza Dalby, author of East Wind Melts the Ice “From mosses to giant figs, from nail polish to turpentine, from poetry to rap music, world-acclaimed arbornaut Nadkarni weaves science and story together as she shares her passion for trees, reminding us that forests and humans are inextricably linked.” –Margaret D. Lowman, author of Life in the Treetops and It's a Jungle Up There “I came in from an afternoon of splitting firewood to find this book waiting for me in the mail. It's as wonderful a compendium as one could imagine of all things that make trees such special companions, rooted and steady and patient and full of glory.”—Bill McKibben, author of The Bill McKibben Reader “An epic and lyrical look at trees—an exploration that ranges from molecules and metabolism to ecology, poetry and dance—so breathtaking and eye-opening that it will be impossible to ever look at a tree or think about the world in the same way again.”—Thomas E. Lovejoy, President, The Heinz Center

"A lovely work of writing and a rich scientific exploration of trees, suffused with poetry and humanity. Between Earth and Sky takes us on a journey through the wonders of the forest canopy and the web of spiritual and literal connections we have with trees. Nalini Nadkarni is a unique figure in forest ecology--as a pioneering tree climber and explorer, and a topnotch scientist, she's a hero in a world where heroes don't come around often."--Richard Preston, author of The Wild Trees and The Hot Zone "Besides cutting them, climbing them, and planting them, the urge to anthropomorphize trees, make them into metaphors, and worship them, is practically universal. Many people feel an intimate connection to trees. Nadkarni's scientific, personal, and literary book shows why, on so many levels, this should be so. Although the ancient Chinese thought of humans as the connection between earth and sky, my vote would go to trees."--Liza Dalby, author of East Wind Melts the Ice "From mosses to giant figs, from nail polish to turpentine, from poetry to rap music, world-acclaimed arbornaut Nadkarni weaves science and story together as she shares her passion for trees, reminding us that forests and humans are inextricably linked." -Margaret D. Lowman, author of Life in the Treetops and It's a Jungle Up There "I came in from an afternoon of splitting firewood to find this book waiting for me in the mail. It's as wonderful a compendium as one could imagine of all things that make trees such special companions, rooted and steady and patient and full of glory."--Bill McKibben, author of The Bill McKibben Reader "An epic and lyrical look at trees--an exploration that ranges from molecules and metabolism to ecology, poetry and dance--so breathtaking and eye-opening that it will be impossible to ever look at a tree or think about the world in the same way again."--Thomas E. Lovejoy, President, The Heinz Center

"Wake up! Act! A call to address global climate change from two masters of science fiction. Isaac Asimov and Frederik Pohl are among the greatest science fiction writers who ever lived. Their talent for envisioning the future, and their clarity in writing about that future, made their novels enduring classics. In Our angry Earth, they applied those skills to a careful survey of the state of Planet Earth and the probable effect of our carbon-burning culture on it. Their cleared-eyed call to action is as fresh and timely as it was twenty-five years ago, when this book was published. The new introduction and afterword by Kim Stanley Robinson bring the book completely up to date. Robinson is one of the greatest modern SF writers, author of the bestselling Mars trilogy, the New York Times bestselling 2312, and the current climate change-focused bestseller New York 2140. He has written fiction and nonfiction about climate change for the past thirty years. In 2008, Time named Robinson a "Hero of the Environment."--Page 4 of cover.

Modernity was supposed to be the period in human history when the fears that pervaded social life in the past could be left behind and human beings could at last take control of their lives and tame the uncontrolled forces of the social and natural worlds. And yet, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, we live again in a time of fear. Whether its the fear of natural disasters, the fear of environmental catastrophes or the fear of indiscriminate terrorist attacks, we live today in a state of constant anxiety about the dangers that could strike unannounced and at any moment. Fear is the name we give to our uncertainty in the face of the dangers that characterize our liquid modern age, to our ignorance of what the threat is and our incapacity to determine what can and can't be done to counter it. This new book by Zygmunt Bauman one of the foremost social thinkers of our time is an inventory of liquid modern fears. It is also an attempt to uncover their common sources, to analyse the obstacles that pile up on the road to their discovery and to examine the ways of putting them out of action or rendering them harmless. Through his brilliant account of the fears and anxieties that weigh on us today, Bauman alerts us to the scale of the task which we shall have to confront through most of the current century if we wish our fellow humans to emerge at its end feeling more secure and self-confident than we feel at its beginning.

"This Fifth Edition of Public International Law in a Nutshell is a concise yet accurate summary of the field of public international law, covering its basic sources, actors, and procedures, and key subject matter areas, such as human rights, the law of the sea, international environmental law, the law of war, and U.S. foreign relations law. This edition is fully updated to include recent treaties, institutions, and Supreme Court decisions."--Publisher.

"Each year, Peter Singer, the philosopher, ethicist, and Animal Rights activist, teaches a large undergraduate class on Ethics. In advance of the Thanksgiving holiday in America, he gives a lecture to his students on the ethical issues involved with its journey to our holiday tables. He covers how the bird came into existence and the kind of life and death it has as well as the conditions of the workers involved with its production and the environmental impact of their being factory farmed. It is not a pretty picture and may lead one to think twice about their turkey traditions. This very short book will be an expanded form of the essay based on that lecture he wrote for our book, Ethics in the Real World. The plan is to increase that essay from about 1,000 words to 8,000 and package it as an On Bullshit-sized book which could be a Thanksgiving classic!"-- Provided by publisher

Heal your body, lose excess weight, and free yourself from toxic food with this simple guide focusing on sustainable food. 31-DAY FOOD REVOLUTION is your guide to liberation from a toxic food world. Author Ocean Robbins reveals the secrets the industrialized food industry doesn't want you to know, how specific ingredients and methods could be making you sick-and what to do about it. And he shows you how-in just 31 days-you can use the amazing power of delicious food to heal your gut, lose excess weight, and lower your risk for disease, all while contributing to a healthier planet. Ocean's plan includes 31 simple and affordable step-by-step actions that give you a road map to healthy, ethical, and sustainable food. He breaks it down into four parts: Detoxify : Get rid of the unhealthy foods and environmental factors making you sick. Nourish : Fuel your body with the healthy micronutrients you need to thrive. Gather : Build your community and surround yourself with supportive, positive people. Transform : YOU can be part of the solution. It's a lot easier to change the world than you imagine! You'll discover amazing secrets, such as how to stop food cravings, why nuts are one of the best snack foods, time-saving habits, and how to catch dangerous ingredients hiding in food labels. In his nonjudgmental and down-to-earth way, Ocean Robbins meets you wherever you are on your personal journey with food. Then, he provides you with tools that make it easy to eat less sugar, processed foods, and unhealthy animal products-and to happily enjoy whole plant foods, and more fair trade, local, organic, and otherwise consciously sourced fare. Ocean helps you make small improvements that lead to big results. If you want to feel better, enjoy your food more, and help sustain the planet, start reading this book today. In just 31 days you can change your health for the better. And your body will thank you for the rest of your life.

An NPR Best Book of 2022 “Delectable. . . Huneven treats us to a savory plot that blends spiritual yearnings with earthly pleasures. Forks out!” —Oprah Daily From critically acclaimed, award-winning author Michelle Huneven, a sharp and funny novel of a congregational search committee, told as a memoir with recipes Dana Potowski is a restaurant critic and food writer and a longtime member of a progressive Unitarian Universalist congregation in Southern California. Under pressure to find her next book idea, she’s asked to join the church search committee for a new minister and agrees, resolving to secretly pen a memoir, with recipes, about the experience. That memoir, Search , follows the travails of the committee and their candidates—and becomes its own media sensation. Dana had good material to work with: the committee is a wide-ranging mix of Unitarian Universalist congregants, and their candidates range from a baker and microbrew master/pastor to a reverend who identifies as both a witch and an environmental warrior. Although she may have been ambivalent about joining the committee, Dana finds that she cares deeply about the fate of this institution and she will fight the entire committee, if necessary, to win the day for her side. This wry and wise tale will speak to anyone who has ever gone searching.

The unholy alliance of the Political Right and the Religious Right threatens to destroy the America we love. It also threatens to generate a popular aversion to God and religion by identifying religious values with a pro-war, pro-business, pro-rich, anti-science, and anti-environmental stance. Over the past few decades, the Republicans have achieved political dominance by forging a union with the Religious Right. This marriage has provided a sanctimonious veneer for policies that have helped the rich get richer while ignoring the needs of the middle class and the poor, dismantling environmental and civil liberties protections, and seeking global domination. The Right champions the materialism and ruthless selfishness promoted by unrestrained capitalism and then laments the moral crises of family instability and loneliness experienced by people who bring these commercial values into their homes and personal lives. In response, the Religious Right offers insular communities for the faithful and a culture that blames liberals, activist judges, homosexuals, independent women, and all secular people for the moral and spiritual emptiness so many Americans experience. Yet, however distorted both the Right's analysis and its solutions to America's spiritual crisis may be, it wins allegiance by addressing the human hunger for a life with some higher purpose. The Left, by contrast, remains largely tone-deaf to the spiritual needs of the American people. It is the yearning for meaning in life, not just the desire for money or power, that lies at the core of American politics. Addressing the central mystery of contemporary politics -- why so many Americans vote against their own economic interests --" The Left Hand of God" provides an invaluable, timely, and blunt critique of the current state of faith in government. Lerner challenges the Left to give up its deeply held fear of religion and to distinguish between a domination-oriented, Right-Hand-of-God tradition and a more compassionate and hope-oriented Left-Hand-of-God worldview. Further, Lerner describes the ways that Democrats have misunderstood and alienated significant parts of their potential constituency. To succeed again, Lerner argues, the Democratic Party must rethink its relationship to God, champion a progressive spiritual vision, reject the old bottom line that promotes the globalization of selfishness, and deal head-on with the very real spiritual crisis that many Americans experience every day. Lerner presents a vision that incorporates and then goes far beyond contemporary liberal and progressive politics. He argues for a new bottom line in our economy, schools, and government. This is a fundamentally fresh approach, one that takes spiritual needs seriously in our economic and political lives. Presenting an eight-point progressive spiritual covenant with America, Lerner provides a blueprint for how the Democratic Party can effectively challenge the Right and position itself to win the White House and Congress. By appealing to religious, secular, and spiritual but not necessarily religious people, "The Left Hand of God" blazes a trail that could change our world and reclaim America from the Religious Right.

Hailed as a classic of speculative fiction, Marge Piercy's landmark novel is a transformative vision of two futures--and what it takes to will one or the other into reality. Harrowing and prescient, Woman on the Edge of Time speaks to a new generation on whom these choices weigh more heavily than ever before. Connie Ramos is a Mexican American woman living on the streets of New York. Once ambitious and proud, she has lost her child, her husband, her dignity--and now they want to take her sanity. After being unjustly committed to a mental institution, Connie is contacted by an envoy from the year 2137, who shows her a time of sexual and racial equality, environmental purity, and unprecedented self-actualization. But Connie also bears witness to another potential outcome: a society of grotesque exploitation in which the barrier between person and commodity has finally been eroded. One will become our world. And Connie herself may strike the decisive blow. Praise for Woman on the Edge of Time "This is one of those rare novels that leave us different people at the end than we were at the beginning. Whether you are reading Marge Piercy's great work again or for the first time, it will remind you that we are creating the future with every choice we make." --Gloria Steinem "An ambitious, unusual novel about the possibilities for moral courage in contemporary society." -- The Philadelphia Inquirer "A stunning, even astonishing novel . . . marvelous and compelling." -- Publishers Weekly "Connie Ramos's world is cuttingly real." --Newsweek "Absorbing and exciting." -- The New York Times Book Review From the Trade Paperback edition.

The outspoken political advisor and commentator offers a survey of history's most memorable coups and failures. Dick Morris is one of the frankest and most incisive political observers in America today. A fiercely intelligent advisor to candidates at the highest levels of government, Morris is a popular columnist and a political analyst for the Fox News Channel, bringing his brilliant strategic mind and insider's political savvy to a weekly audience of millions. Now, in Power Plays, Morris reaches into history to create this fresh and fascinating survey of the most dramatic political moves ever made, from the wildly effective to the disastrous. The result is a strategy playbook that holds lessons equally valuable to the planning of a political campaign, a business venture -- or even the War on Terror. Drawing on American and international examples, Morris identifies five different types of power play, and focuses on politicians whose careers have skyrocketed after implementing them successfully -- or foundered in the wake of misjudgment. Morris explores ideologues like Ronald Reagan and Winston Churchill, who stood on principle and waited for their moment to shine, and "triangulators" like George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and François Mitterrand, who seized the opportunity to defang their opponents by stealing their pet issues and solving them. He looks at figures as diverse as Abraham Lincoln, Harry Truman, and Richard Nixon -- who rose to power by dividing and conquering their enemies -- and at reformers like Britain's Tony Blair and Japan's Junichiro Koizumi, who ascended by purging their parties of corruption. And he shines a light on how Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson used technology and new media to electrify their political careers. In a chapter inspired by the aftermath of September 11, 2001, Morris also reviews the efforts of FDR and Churchill to mobilize their nations in the face of Nazi Germany -- and compares their performance to that of George W. Bush in mounting America's ongoing campaign against terrorism. Morris also devotes attention to unsuccessful power plays, from Woodrow Wilson's failed attempt to launch the League of Nations to the disavowal of environmental issues that, he argues, cost Al Gore the presidency in 2000. His analysis is surprising, often irreverent, but always enlightening. And the conclusion he draws -- that candidates who best serve the people also serve themselves -- is a breath of fresh air in the often bloodthirsty arena that is politics. - Jacket flap.

"Auditory Scene Analysis addresses the problem of hearing in complex auditory environments. It uses a series of creative analogies to describe the process required of the human auditory system as it analyzes mixtures of sounds to recover descriptions of individual sounds. Unified and comprehensive, it establishes a theoretical framework that integrates Bregman's findings with an unusually wide range of previous research in psychoacoustics, speech perception, music theory and composition, and computer modeling. The core of the book explains how primitive auditory processes employ a set of principles, analogous to those employed in computer pattern recognition that use correlations in acoustic inputs, received simultaneously and successively, to conclude that they must have been caused by the same environmental event. Bregman shows how the resulting organization affects perceptions and demonstrates that the same principles apply in laboratory studies of simple signals, in music composition, and in speech perception. He examines schema-based scene analysis, relations between vision and audition, and problems with current theories concerning the duplex perception of speech. He concludes by summarizing what is known about auditory scene analysis and suggests directions for future study. Albert Bregman is Professor of Psychology at McGill University. A Bradford Book