(back cover) Our world is a fascinating and complex place, with politics, religion, tradition, and revolution constantly affecting the fabric of nations. Here are facts and figures on borders and boundaries, nationalities and nations, customs and beliefs, war and peace, politics and royalty, transport systems, education, language, technology, flags, national dress, and more. This book tells you what you need to know about the nations and cultures of the world.
The preeminent doctor and bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel is repeatedly asked one question: Which country has the best healthcare? He set off to find an answer. The US spends more than any other nation, nearly $4 trillion, on healthcare. Yet, for all that expense, the US is not ranked #1 -- not even close. In Which Country Has the World's Best Healthcare? Ezekiel Emanuel profiles eleven of the world's healthcare systems in pursuit of the best or at least where excellence can be found. Using a unique comparative structure, the book allows healthcare professionals, patients, and policymakers alike to know which systems perform well, and why, and which face endemic problems. From Taiwan to Germany, Australia to Switzerland, the most inventive healthcare providers tackle a global set of challenges -- in pursuit of the best healthcare in the world.
An inside look at the obsessive, secretive, and often bizarre world of high-profile stamp collecting, told through the journey of the world’s most sought-after stamp. When it was issued in 1856, it cost a penny. In 2014, this tiny square of faded red paper sold at Sotheby’s for nearly $9.5 million, the largest amount ever paid for a postage stamp at auction. Through the stories of the eccentric characters who have bought, owned, and sold the one-cent magenta in the years in between, James Barron delivers a fascinating tale of global history and immense wealth, and of the human desire to collect. One-cent magentas were provisional stamps, printed quickly in what was then British Guiana when a shipment of official stamps from London did not arrive. They were intended for periodicals, and most were thrown out with the newspapers. But one stamp survived. The singular one-cent magenta has had only nine owners since a twelve-year-old boy discovered it in 1873 as he sorted through papers in his uncle’s house. He soon sold it for what would be $17 today. (That’s been called the worst stamp deal in history.) Among later owners was a fabulously wealthy Frenchman who hid the stamp from almost everyone (even King George V of England couldn’t get a peek); a businessman who traveled with the stamp in a briefcase he handcuffed to his wrist; and John E. du Pont, an heir to the chemical fortune, who died while serving a thirty-year sentence for the murder of Olympic wrestler Dave Schultz. Recommended for fans of Nicholas A. Basbanes, Susan Orlean, and Simon Winchester, The One-Cent Magenta explores the intersection of obsessive pursuits and great affluence and asks why we want most what is most rare.
Every day, millions of people fight about religion. Whether with friends, family, or on social media, we expend lots of energy, lots of sharp words, and lots of strong feelings. But very few know how to have a good religious argument a rational, respectful, and productive exchange of differing views. Bishop Robert Barron, one of the leading Catholic figures in the world and among the most active on social media, has enjoyed thousands of fruitful religious arguments. In this book based on talks delivered at Facebook and Google, he explains why religion at its best opens up the searching mind, and how we all believer and unbeliever alike can share better discussions about God.
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017 • One of the best books of the year by The New York Times, LA Times, and NPR Franklin Foer reveals the existential threat posed by big tech, and in his brilliant polemic gives us the toolkit to fight their pervasive influence. Over the past few decades there has been a revolution in terms of who controls knowledge and information. This rapid change has imperiled the way we think. Without pausing to consider the cost, the world has rushed to embrace the products and services of four titanic corporations. We shop with Amazon; socialize on Facebook; turn to Apple for entertainment; and rely on Google for information. These firms sell their efficiency and purport to make the world a better place, but what they have done instead is to enable an intoxicating level of daily convenience. As these companies have expanded, marketing themselves as champions of individuality and pluralism, their algorithms have pressed us into conformity and laid waste to privacy. They have produced an unstable and narrow culture of misinformation, and put us on a path to a world without private contemplation, autonomous thought, or solitary introspection—a world without mind. In order to restore our inner lives, we must avoid being coopted by these gigantic companies, and understand the ideas that underpin their success. Elegantly tracing the intellectual history of computer science—from Descartes and the enlightenment to Alan Turing to Stewart Brand and the hippie origins of today's Silicon Valley—Foer exposes the dark underpinnings of our most idealistic dreams for technology. The corporate ambitions of Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, he argues, are trampling longstanding liberal values, especially intellectual property and privacy. This is a nascent stage in the total automation and homogenization of social, political, and intellectual life. By reclaiming our private authority over how we intellectually engage with the world, we have the power to stem the tide. At stake is nothing less than who we are, and what we will become. There have been monopolists in the past but today's corporate giants have far more nefarious aims. They’re monopolists who want access to every facet of our identities and influence over every corner of our decision-making. Until now few have grasped the sheer scale of the threat. Foer explains not just the looming existential crisis but the imperative of resistance.
Critical Thinking presents, defines and explains the intellectual skills and habits of mind that comprise critical thinking and its relationship to social justice. Each of the sequential chapters includes detailed examples and learning exercises that guide the reader step by step from intellectual competency, to critical thinking, to cultural cognition, and to critical awareness necessary for social justice. The book documents and explains the scope of multiple crises facing society today, including environmental destruction, income and wealth inequality, large-scale human migration, and the rise of autocratic governments. It shows how critical thinking, cultural cognition, and critical awareness lead to the possibility of solutions grounded in social justice. All college students, especially those in the social sciences and humanities, will develop the intellectual skills necessary for critically engaging information in order to become active learners and effective agents in the world. This book complements information in introductory, interdisciplinary, or discipline-specific courses. Every chapter contains examples and exercises that can be assigned as homework, adopted as in-class activities, or both. The Conclusion also contains exercises for developing writing and basic mathematical competency skills.
For many centuries the library of lawless hell hole Santa Mondega, in South America, has held a gruesome secret. There is on its shelves a nameless book, by an anonymous author, and everyone who has ever read it ... is dead.
What is it that drives the success of America and the identity of its people? Jack Hitt thinks it's because we're all a bunch of amateurs. America’s self-invented tinkerers are back at it in their metaphorical garages—fiddling with everything from solar-powered cars to space elevators. In Bunch of Amateurs, Jack Hitt draws a fascinating look at amateurs and their pursuits—from a tattooed young woman in the Bay Area trying to splice a jellyfish’s glow-in-the-dark gene into common yogurt to a space fanatic on the brink of developing the next generation of telescopes from his mobile home. Beginning with Ben Franklin’s kite, Hitt argues that history is bound up in a cycle of amateur surges, each one driving us to rediscover the true heart of the American dream. Amateur pursuits are too often criticized as outdated practices until a Mark Zuckerberg steps out of his dorm room with the rare but crucial success story. According to Hitt, we are poised at another frontier that will lead, once more, to the newest incarnation of the American dream.
