Bøger udgivet af PublicAffairs

"No athlete is referenced as frequently in commentaries on Black politics as LeBron James. The NBA all-star, gold medal Olympian, four time NBA champion, and four-time finals MVP has been a pivotal figure in both the culture and politics of basketball. Despite his unmatched skill, success and popularity, James has never been fully free from the entrenched racism and anti-blackness in American life. His story, of both success and adversity, represents a larger story of how conflicts and tensions off the court always make it into the game and how athletes of color reckon with their ascent to fame while still living in a deeply racist society. In The Book of James, Valerie Babb examines his evolution from a basketball protâegâe to social activist. Every day it becomes more apparent that basketball stardom is just the first step in the evolution of one of the most celebrated presences in modern American culture. This book considers the peaks and pitfalls of his route to this prominence as well as well as what separates his outspokenness from previous athletes. The Book of James is timely in its examination of his impact on national race discourse. The result is a unique blend of memoir, biography and criticism that brings into focus the role of athletes in shaping and altering public discourse while simultaneously pushing the boundaries of their sport"--

This extraordinary investigation of the death of the author's grandson yields a powerful memoir of addiction, grief, and the stories we choose to tell our families and ourselves. Jared Kindred left his home and family at the age of eighteen, choosing to wander across America on freight train cars and live on the street. Addicted to alcohol most of his short life, and withholding the truth from many who loved him, he never found a way to survive. Through this ordeal, Dave Kindred's love for his grandson has never wavered. Leave Out the Tragic Parts is not merely a reflection on love and addiction and loss. It is a hard-won work of reportage, meticulously reconstructing the life Jared chose for himself--a life that rejected the comforts of civilization in favor of a chance to roam free. Kindred asks painful but important questions about the lies we tell to get along, and what binds families together or allows them to fracture. Jared's story ended in tragedy, but the act of telling it is an act of healing and redemption. This is an important book on how to love your family, from a great writer who has lived its lessons.

A breakthrough investigation of synthetic biology: the promising and controversial technology platform that combines biology and artificial intelligence and has the potential to program biological systems like we program computers.  Synthetic biology is the technique that enables us not just to read and edit but also write DNA to program living biological structures as though they were tiny computers. Unlike cloning Dolly the sheep-which cut and copied existing genetic material-the future of synthetic biology might be something like an app store, where you could download and add new capabilities into any cell, microbe, plant, or animal. This breakthrough science has the potential to mitigate, perhaps solve, humanity's immediate and longer-term existential challenges: climate change; the feeding, clothing, housing, and caring for billions of humans; fighting the next viral outbreak before it becomes a global pandemic; old age as a treatable pathology; bringing back extinct animals. It could also be anarchic and socially destructive. With our governing structures created in an era before startling advances in technology, we are not prepared for a future in which life could be manipulated or programmed. As futurist Amy Webb and synthetic biologist Andrew Hessel show in this book, within the next decade, we will need to make important decisions: whether to program novel viruses to fight diseases, what genetic privacy will look like, who will "own" living organisms, how companies should earn revenue from engineered cells, and how to contain a synthetic organism in a lab. The Genesis Machine​ provides the background for us to understand and grapple with these issues, and think through the religious, philosophical, and ethical implications for the future.

"Once a romanticized beacon of democracy, culture, and the arts, France has slowly slid further and further away from its historic image of liberty, equality and fraternity. The country is on the brink. With a precarious labor force facing dwindling wages, a right wing political surge that has resulted in drastic acts of Islamaphobia and Anti-Seminitism, and a media increasingly led by government cronies, France has entered an unprecedented era of social, political and economic turbulence. So, where is France heading, who runs it, and why does it matter? In Fixing France, French-Algerian journalist Nabila Ramdani gets to the very heart of a declining France racked with division. From the rise of Marine Le Pen to the segregated suburbs to the growing educational divide and wealth disparity, Ramdani offers a compelling and original critique of contemporary France. Deeply reported, the book is filled with interviews with senior public figures, including all presidents of the 21st century as well as with numerous ordinary French people who feel excluded by the powerbrokers and from the establishment institutions that run their lives. Yet, while Ramdani follows France's historical tradition of dissent, she simultaneously acknowledges that there is much to be hopeful about. What emerges is a true portrait of a country undergoing dramatic change and upheaval"--

"The inside story of how one president forever altered the Supreme Court, with consequences that endure today. By the summer of 1941, in the ninth year of his presidency, Franklin Roosevelt had molded his Court. He had appointed seven of the nine justices (the most by any president except George Washington) and handpicked the chief justice. But war time the Roosevelt Court had two faces. One was bold and progressive, the other supine and abject, cowed by the charisma of the revered president. This book examines these justices--from the mercurial, Vienna-born intellectual Felix Frankfurter to the Alabama populist Hugo Black; from the western prodigy William O. Douglas, FDR's initial pick to be his running mate in 1944, to Roosevelt's former attorney general and Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Jackson. The justices' shameless capitulation and unwillingness to cross their beloved president highlight the dangers of an unseemly closeness between Supreme Court justices and their political patrons. But the FDR Court's finest moments also provided a robust defense of individual rights, rights the current Court has put in jeopardy"--Adapted from the publisher's description.

"Dave Kindred is among the greatest living chroniclers of sports. He has covered dozens of Super Bowls, developed a personal relationship with Muhammad Ali, and traveled the country following some of the greatest stars and teams in all of sports. But as he looks back on his life, it's a girls' high school basketball team, the Lady Potters of Morton, Illinois, that stands apart from the rest. In this moving and intimate story, Kindred writes about his rise to professional success and the changes that brought him back to his hometown late in life. As he dealt with personal hardship, his urge to write sustained him. For years, he has recapped the games of the Lady Potters, including their many runs to state basketball championships. It has been this community that was there for him as he lost a grandson to addiction, and then his wife to long-term illness. He goes to game after game, sitting the stands and making notes, being paid nothing but Milk Duds. Tender and honest, Kindred's story reminds readers what sports are really about. Kindred trades in the exhausting spectacle of Super Bowl Sunday for the joy of togetherness, the fire of competition, and the inexhaustible hope for victory tomorrow"--

"At a time when the crises of income inequality, climate, and democracy are compounding to create epic wealth disparity and the prospect of a second American civil war, four billionaires are hyping schemes that are designed to divert our attention away from issues that really matter. Each scheme--the metaverse, cryptocurrency, space travel, and transhumanism--is an existential threat in moral, political, and economic terms. In [this book], Jonathan Taplin [examines] the personal backgrounds and cultural power of these billionaires--Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Marc Andreesen ('The Four')--and shows how their tech monopolies have brought middle-class wage stagnation, the hollowing out of many American towns, a radical increase in income inequality, and unbounded public acrimony. Meanwhile, the enormous amount of taxpayer money to be funneled into the dystopian ventures of 'The Four'--the benefits of which will accrue to billionaires-- [exacerbates] these disturbing trends"--

"America's food system is broken, harming family farmers, workers, the environment, and our health. But it doesn't have to be this way. Here, brilliant innovators, scientists, journalists and activists explain how we can create a hopeful new future for food, if we have the courage to seize the moment. In 2008, the award-winning documentary Food, Inc. shook up our perceptions of what we ate. Now, the movie's timely sequel and this new companion book will address the remarkable developments in the world of food from lab-grown meat to the burgeoning food sovereignty movement that have unfolded since then. Featuring thought-provoking original essays from: Michael Pollan -- Eric Schlosser -- David E. Kelley and Andrew Zimmern -- Senator Cory Booker -- Sarah E. Lloyd -- Carlos A. Monteiro and Geoffrey Cannon -- Lisa Elaine Held -- Larissa Zimberoff --Saru Jayaraman -- Christiana Musk -- Nancy Easton -- Leah Penniman -- David LeZaks and Lauren Manning -- The Coalition of Immokalee Workers -- Michiel Bakker -- Danielle Nierenberg"--

This book posits that our national leaders have drifted into treating the pandemic as though it were an unavoidable natural catastrophe, repeating a cycle of panic followed by neglect. So a group of practitioners and scholars from many backgrounds came together determined to discover and learn lessons from this latest world war.

"The last, acceptable form of prejudice in America is based on class and executed through state-sponsored economic discrimination, which is hard to see because it is much more subtle than raw racism. While the American meritocracy officially denounces prejudice based on race and gender, it has spawned a new form of bias against those with less education and income. Millions of working-class Americans have their opportunity blocked by exclusionary snob zoning. These government policies make housing unaffordable, frustrate the goals of the civil rights movement, and lock in inequality in our urban and suburban landscapes. Through moving accounts of families excluded from economic and social opportunity as they are hemmed in through "new redlining" that limits the type of housing that can be built, Richard Kahlenberg vividly illustrates why America has a housing crisis. He also illustrates why economic segregation matters since where you live affects access to transportation, employment opportunities, decent health care, and good schools. He shows that housing choice has been socially engineered to the benefit of the affluent, and, that astonishingly the most restrictive zoning is found in politically liberal cities where racial views are more progressive"--

"Every day, in dance studios all across America, millions of little girls line up at the barre and take ballet class. Ballet is for girls what football is for boys; while few go on to professional careers, their time in the studio shapes their lives, instilling lessons about gender, power, the value of their bodies and minds, and their place in the world both in and outside of dance. In Turning Pointe, journalist Chloe Angyal takes readers into the exclusive and complicated world of ballet, from the suburban studios where young dancers learn the artform, to the elite summer training programs, to ballet's professional world. She shares the love of ballet that so many dancers feel while also grappling with its shortcomings: the power and tyranny of male choreographers, the impossible standards of beauty, and the racism that pervades ballet. Drawing on interviews with over 80 dancers, students, teachers, and health care professionals, Turning Pointe offers an unprecedented window into the joys and pain of ballet. As Angyal makes clear, if ballet is going to survive in the twenty-first century, if it is going to chart a path into a more socially just future, this reckoning is essential"--

"As the forces of social media and capitalism collide, and individualism becomes more important than ever across a wide array of industries, 'branding ourselves' or actively defining our selves for others has become the norm. Yet, this phenomenon is not new. In Self-Made, Tara Isabella Burton shows us how we arrived at this moment of fervent personal branding. Through a series of chronological biographical essays on famous (and infamous) 'self-creators' in the modern Western world, from the Renassiance to the Enlightenment to modern capitalism and finally to our present moment of mass media, Burton examines the theories and forces behind our never-ending need to curate ourselves"--

"Secret operations, corruption, crime, and a city teeming with spies: why Miami was as crucial to winning the Cold War as Washington DC or Moscow. The Cuban Missile Crisis was perhaps the most dramatic and dangerous period of the Cold War. What's less well known is that the city of Miami, mere miles away, was a pivotal, though less well known, part of Cold War history. With its population of Communist exiles from Cuba, its strategic value for military operations, and its lax business laws, Miami was an ideal environment for espionage. Covert City tells the history of how the entire city of Miami was constructed in the image of the US-Cuba rivalry. From the Bay of Pigs invasion to the death of Fidel Castro, the book shows how Miami is a hub for money and cocaine but also secrets and ideologies. Cuban exiles built criminal and political organizations in the city, leading Washington to set up a CIA station there, codenamed JMWAVE. It monitored gang activities, plotted secret operations against Castro, and became a base for surveilling Latin American neighbors. The money and infrastructure built for the CIA was integral to the development of Miami. Covert City is a sweeping and entertaining history, full of stunning experimental operations and colorful characters--a story of a place like no other"--

The definitive story of the California redwoods, their discovery and their exploitation, as told by an activist who fought to protect their existence against those determined to cut them down. Every year millions of tourists from around the world visit California's famous redwoods. Yet few who strain their necks to glimpse the tops of the world's tallest trees understand how unlikely it is that these last isolated groves of giant trees still stand at all. In this gripping historical memoir, journalist and famed redwood activist Greg King examines how investors and a growing U.S. economy drove the timber industry to cut down all but 4 percent of the original two-million-acre redwood ecosystem. King first examined redwood logging in the 1980s-as an award-winning reporter. What he found in the woods convinced him to leap the line of neutrality and become an activist dedicated to saving the very last ancient redwood groves remaining in private hands. The land grab began in 1849, when a "green gold rush" of migrants came to exploit the legendary redwoods that grew along the Russian River. Several generations later, in 1987, Greg King discovered and named Headwaters Forest-at 3,000 acres the largest ancient redwood habitat remaining outside of parks-and he led the movement to save this grove. After a decade of one of the longest, most dramatic, and violent environmental campaigns in US history, in 1999 the state and federal governments protected Headwaters Forest. The Ghost Forest explores a central question, an overhanging mystery: What was it like, this botanical Elysium that grew only along the Northern California coast, a forest so spectacular-but also uniquely valuable as a cornerstone of American economic growth-that in the end it would inspire life-and-death struggles? Few but loggers and surveyors ever saw such magnificent trees, ancient sentinels that, like ghosts, have informed King's understanding of the world. On a lifelong journey, King finds himself through the generations, and through the trees.

Now a Netflix documentary The National Book Award winning history of how racist ideas were created, spread, and deeply rooted in American society. Some Americans insist that we're living in a post-racial society. But racist thought is not just alive and well in America -- it is more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues, racist ideas have a long and lingering history, one in which nearly every great American thinker is complicit. In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti-black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history. He uses the life stories of five major American intellectuals to drive this history: Puritan minister Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and legendary activist Angela Davis. As Kendi shows, racist ideas did not arise from ignorance or hatred. They were created to justify and rationalize deeply entrenched racist policies and the nation's racial inequities. In shedding light on this history, Stamped from the Beginning offers us the tools we need to expose racist thinking. In the process, he gives us reason to hope.

"From the critically acclaimed author of Think Like a Rocket Scientist comes a simple process for discarding obsolete beliefs and cultivating independent thought A rare handful of leaders, artists, scientists, and entrepreneurs seem to have Teflon in their heads. They think and act with genuine independence, offering up ideas and insights direct from the subtle workings of their own minds. No matter how far that might take them from their social or political group. We sometimes call these people geniuses, as if they're another breed. But genius doesn't have to belong to just a few people-it can be cultivated. Great thinkers operate unconstrained by the opinions of others-or their own past opinions. They can act on new information regardless of the beliefs they once held, or identities they once adopted. They distinguish fact from manipulation. And just as importantly, they act first instead of reacting-creating new ideas and opportunities for themselves and others. This is a book for aspiring universe-denters: executives and entrepreneurs, activists and artists, individuals who want to escape groupthink, discard obsolete and harmful beliefs, generate breakthrough ideas, spot hidden opportunities, and flourish in a world of ever-increasing manipulation, change, and challenge. In short, it's a book for geniuses"--

"Fifteen years ago, Walmart was the most controversial company in America. By offering incredibly low prices, it had come to dominate the retail landscape. But with this dominance came a suite of ethical concerns. Walmart was accused of wiping out of mom-and-pop businesses across the country; ruthlessly pressuring suppliers to cut costs, even if it meant closing up U.S. factories and moving production overseas; and, above all, not taking adequate care of its own employees, who were paid so little that many wound up on public assistance. Today, while Walmart remains America's largest employer, the picture is very different. It has become an environmental leader among businesses, its starting wage has risen from $7.25 to $12, and employee benefits have improved. Walmart has joined a number of major corporations that say they are dedicated to practicing a new, socially conscious form of capitalism. In Still Broke, award-winning author Rick Wartzman goes inside the company's transformation, showing in novelistic detail how the company has gotten to where it is. Yet he also asks a critical question: is it enough? With a still-simmering public debate around the minimum wage and widespread movements by workers demanding better treatment, how far will $12 an hour go in today's economy? Or even $15? Or Walmart's average wage, which now hovers above $16-but, even so, doesn't pencil out to so much as $35,000 a year for a fulltime worker? In the richest nation on earth, how did the bar get set so low? How did America find itself relying on an army of low-wage workers without ever acknowledging their most basic needs? And if Walmart's brand of change is the best we have, how can we ever expect to build a healthy society? With unparalleled access to the key executives and change-makers at Walmart, Still Broke does more than document a remarkable business makeover. It interrogates the role of business in American life, and asks what the future of our economy and country can be-and whose job it is to make it"--

"Soccernomics is written with an economist's brain and a soccer writer's skill, and it applies high-powered analytical tools to everyday soccer topics, looking at data and revealing counterintuitive truths about the world's most loved game. It all adds up to a revolutionary new way of looking at soccer that could change the way the game is played"--

"It's easy to name the companies that have dominated the stock market over the past ten years. Apple, Google, Amazon, Netflix, Facebook--these are all among the best-performing stocks over a decade or more. But here's a company that has performed just as well: HEICO. Or what about Trex? Ever heard of Casella? Or Laitram? These lesser known companies are all part of a sector known as industrial tech, and together they offer a surprisingly bright future not just to investors but to workers as well as our broader communities. Their products include aerospace parts, color enamels, and recycled plastic lumber; things consumers don't necessarily buy but which we all rely on for the functioning of our economy. And it turns out it's a booming business. In The Titanium Economy, the authors reveal this little-understood, under-appreciated and under-valued sector of the economy for what it really is: a reliable source of high-paying, domestic jobs and soaring stock prices, a bright spot in an economy that has too often been buffeted by external shocks."--

A recent history of the Democratic Party that identifies its chronic errors—the “pathologies” of the New Democratic mindset—and argues urgently against a return to the status quo Why did the Democrats initially abandon their principles, and why haven’t they been able to grasp that they need a new strategy in the face of decades of diminishing returns? In Chaotic Neutral, political scientist Ed Burmila breaks it to us, tracing the party’s metamorphosis from bold defender of labor rights, civil rights, and a robust social safety net to a timorous, ideology-free, regulation-averse lifestyle brand.Chaotic Neutral tracks the evolution (or devolution) of the Democratic Party from the New Deal era to Biden’s status-quo candidacy and the pandemic, when, even in the midst of a national crisis, the Democrats could not manage to pass sweeping progressive legislation. It is a timely analysis and, simultaneously, a timeless one that pinpoints why Dem politicians act like also-rans even when they’re in power. Burmila doesn’t pull any punches as he describes the Democrats’ brand of futility politics, but he also doesn’t claim that all is futile, instead laying out a potent strategy for how the party might abandon its lesser-of-two-evils strategy and shift back into drive.

"In Civil War by Other Means, Jeremi Suri, shows how the victory of the Union was never secure and the resistance to it began immediately. Key Confederate figures fled to exile in Mexico after their defeat and returned when they could safely resume their former lives once the threat of Northern domination had been quashed. Many antebellum influences and attitudes lived on secretly, and their creeping influence gradually overwhelmed Lincoln's vision for a more progressive and egalitarian America. The Civil War, in short, was never completely over for the defeated; they pursued it through guile, stealth, and persistence, outlasting the resolve of the northern interlopers and returning the South to its retrogressive customs and habits"--

"With the growth of remote work and an increased focus on diversity and inclusion, companies are increasingly finding themselves in "wars for talent" as they source and recruit candidates from all over the world. They need to find new ways to contact people and new sources of talent. They need to create an enduring and tangible culture that helps everyone feel empowered to do their best work. And they need to develop inclusive organizations that leverage differences for growth and innovation. Informed by more than 70 years of experience and expertise and propelled by extensive original SHRM research, Reset delivers a candid and forward-thinking vision for leaders to reimagine their company cultures in a time of global upheaval. Part call to action, part strategic roadmap, Reset challenges business leaders' underlying assumptions about workers and the workplace, delivers practical strategies for finding and keeping the talent needed to make businesses successful, and introduces dynamic tools to sustain that success over the long haul. Now is the time for leaders to completely reimagine, reorganize, and Reset their operations to create a more daring, resilient and sustainable future. This is the book that will guide them exactly when they most need it"--