Allah: God in the Qur'an (ebook) by
A concise and illuminating portrait of Allah from one of the world's leading Qur'anic scholars The central figure of the Qur'an is not Muhammad but Allah. The Qur'an, Islam's sacred scripture, is marked above all by its call to worship Allah, and Allah alone. Yet who is the God of the Qur'an? What distinguishes the qur'anic presentation of God from that of the Bible? In this illuminating study, Gabriel Said Reynolds depicts a god of both mercy and vengeance, one who transcends simple classification. He is personal and mysterious; no limits can be placed on his mercy. Remarkably, the Qur'an is open to God's salvation of both sinners and unbelievers. At the same time, Allah can lead humans astray, so all are called to a disposition of piety and fear. Allah, in other words, is a dynamic and personal God. This eye-opening book provides a unique portrait of the God of the Qur'an.
Beginners: the joy and transformative power of lifelong learning by
Inspired by his young daughter's insatiable need to know how to do almost everything, and stymied by his own rut of mid-career competence, Tom Vanderbilt begins a year of learning purely for the sake of learning. He tackles five main skills (and picks up a few more along the way), choosing them for their difficulty to master and their distinct lack of career marketability--chess, singing, surfing, drawing, and juggling. What he doesn't expect is finding himself having rapturous experiences singing Spice Girls songs in an amateur choir, losing games of chess to eight-year-olds, and dodging scorpions at a surf camp in Costa Rica. Along the way, he interviews dozens of experts to explore the fascinating psychology and science behind the benefits of becoming an adult beginner. Weaving comprehensive research and surprising insight gained from his year of learning dangerously, Vanderbilt shows how anyone can begin again--and, more important, why they should take those first awkward steps. Ultimately, he shares how a refreshed sense of curiosity opened him up to a profound happiness and a deeper connection to the people around him--and how small acts of reinvention, at any age, can make life seem magical.
Stranger in the Shogun's City: a Japanese woman and her world by
*Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography* A vivid, deeply researched work of history that explores the life of an unconventional woman during the first half of the 19th century in Edo--the city that would become Tokyo--and a portrait of a great city on the brink of a momentous encounter with the West. The daughter of a Buddhist priest, Tsuneno was born in a rural Japanese village and was expected to live a traditional life much like her mother's. But after three divorces--and a temperament much too strong-willed for her family's approval--she ran away to make a life for herself in one of the largest cities in the world: Edo, a bustling metropolis at its peak. With Tsuneno as our guide, we experience the drama and excitement of Edo just prior to the arrival of American Commodore Perry's fleet, which transformed Japan. During this pivotal moment in Japanese history, Tsuneno bounces from tenement to tenement, marries a masterless samurai, and eventually enters the service of a famous city magistrate. Tsuneno's life provides a window into 19th-century Japanese culture--and a rare view of an extraordinary woman who sacrificed her family and her reputation to make a new life for herself, in defiance of social conventions.
What Remains: bringing America's missing home from the Vietnam War by
Every generation has known the uncertainties of war. Collective memorials, such as the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery, testify to the many service members who never return, their fates still unresolved. But advances in forensic science have provided new and powerful tools to identify the remains of the missing, often from the merest trace--a tooth or other fragment. These new techniques have enabled military experts to recover, repatriate, identify, and return the remains of lost service members. So promising are these scientific developments that they have raised the expectations of military families hoping to locate their missing. As Wagner shows, the possibility of such homecomings compels Americans to wrestle anew with their memories, as with the weight of their loved ones' sacrifices, and to reevaluate what it means to wage war and die on behalf of the nation.
The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre by
The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre: A Photographic History offers a perspective largely missing from other accounts. At once captivating and disturbing, it will embolden readers to confront the uncomfortable legacy of racial violence in U.S. history.
Americanon : an unexpected U.S. history in thirteen bestselling books by
A surprising history of thirteen of America's most popular reference titles - books that hundreds of millions of Americans have bought and dogeared over the centuries - Americanon explores the strange personalities and social upheaval that led production of the country's common language, customs, and culture. Far from innocuous, America's dictionaries, almanacs, and manuals have shaped its world in profound ways. Spanning 245-years, the books sold tens of millions of copies and set out specific archetypes for the ideal American, from the self-made entrepreneur to the humble farmer.
The Ethics of Precaution: uncertain environmental health threats and duties of due care (ebook) by
There are thousands of substances manufactured in the United States to which the public is routinely exposed and for which toxicity data are limited or absent. Some insist that uncertainty about the severity of potential harm justifies implementing precautionary regulations, while others claim that uncertainty justifies the absence of regulations until sufficient evidence confirms a strong probability of severe harm. In this book, Levente Szentkirályi overcomes this impasse in his defense of precautionary environmental risk regulation by shifting the focus from how to manage uncertainty to what it is we owe each other morally. He argues that actions that create uncertain threats wrongfully gamble with the welfare of those who are exposed and neglect the reciprocity that our equal moral standing demands. If we take the moral equality and rights of others seriously, we have a duty to exercise due care to strive to prevent putting them in possible harm's way. The Ethics of Precaution will be of great interest to researchers, educators, advanced students, and practitioners working in the fields of environmental political theory, ethics of risk, and environmental policy.
Cybercrime and Digital Deviance (ebook) by
Cybercrime and Digital Deviance is a work that combines insights from sociology, criminology, and computer science to explore cybercrimes such as hacking and romance scams, along with forms of cyberdeviance such as pornography addiction, trolling, and flaming. Other issues are explored including cybercrime investigations, organized cybercrime, the use of algorithms in policing, cybervictimization, and the theories used to explain cybercrime. Graham and Smith make a conceptual distinction between a terrestrial, physical environment and a single digital environment produced through networked computers. Conceptualizing the online space as a distinct environment for social interaction links this text with assumptions made in the fields of urban sociology or rural criminology. Students in sociology and criminology will have a familiar entry point for understanding what may appear to be a technologically complex course of study. The authors organize all forms of cybercrime and cyberdeviance by applying a typology developed by David Wall: cybertrespass, cyberdeception, cyberviolence, and cyberpornography. This typology is simple enough for students just beginning their inquiry into cybercrime. Because it is based on legal categories of trespassing, fraud, violent crimes against persons, and moral transgressions it provides a solid foundation for deeper study. Taken together, Graham and Smith's application of a digital environment and Wall's cybercrime typology makes this an ideal upper level text for students in sociology and criminal justice. It is also an ideal introductory text for students within the emerging disciplines of cybercrime and cybersecurity.
From Sit-Ins To #revolutions: media and the changing nature of protests (ebook) by
From Sit-Ins to #revolutions examines the evolution and growth of digital activism, while at once outlining how scholars theorize and conceptualize the field through new methodologies. As it closely examines the role that social and digital media play in enabling protests, this volume probes the interplay between historical and contemporary protests, emancipation and empowerment, and online and offline protest activities. Drawn from academic and activist communities, the contributors look beyond often-studied mass action events in the USA, UK, and Australia to also incorporate perspectives from overlooked regions such as Aboriginal Australia, Thailand, Mexico, India, Jamaica and Black America. From illustrating the allure of political action to a closer look at how digital activists use new technologies to push toward reform, From Sit-Ins to #revolutions promises to shed new light on key questions within activism, from campaign organization and leadership to messaging and direct action.
How to Decide: simple tools for making better choices (ebook) by
In How to Decide, bestselling author Annie Duke and former professional poker player lays out a series of tools anyone can use to make better decisions.
The Natural Mother of the Child: a memoir of nonbinary parenthood by
Krys Malcolm Belc's visual memoir-in-essays explores how the experience of gestational parenthood--conceiving, birthing, and breastfeeding his son Samson--eventually clarified his gender identity.
The Stars in Our Pockets: getting lost and sometimes found in the digital age by
Human innovation in tech is changing the world around us in ways we often fail to perceive. But what of the changes that are happening inside of us? Howard Axelrod spent two years living in solitude after a basketball accident left him blinded in one eye. In his memoir, The Point of Vanishing, he recounts his search for a means of orienting himself in the world. Now, Axelrod spins his personal philosophy out into the wider world, where technology is changing the nature of human consciousness faster than we can see it happening. He draws a parallel between the environmental crisis and a lesser-known, but equally pressing issue- as we lose the world around us, he argues, we are losing our interior worlds, too. We can't navigate without a GPS, we can't pay attention unless our attention is DEMANDED in all caps and moving pictures. We tap our phones 2,617 times a day, inadvertently deciding to rely on these devices instead of our minds to provide our lives with content and meaning. In the tradition of Leslie Jamison's Empathy Exams, Axelrod marshals cultural and theoretical ideologies to ask questions both personal and universal.
Violent Manhood (ebook) by
This book will touch on all of the hot topic issues of masculinity and violence, including gun violence, sexual assault and the #MeToo movement, violence against women, LGBT people, and people of color. Its unique approach will add to many conversations that should, as Sumerau explains, be focused on masculinity, and are far too often focused on something else. Taking the approach of talking with young college men who are privileged provides a unique look at how manhood and masculinity may not be progressing like many people hope and provides insights from all angles to critically examine the ways men construct and explain relationships between violence, manhood, and inequality in society.
The Criminalization of Immigration: truth, lies, tragedy, and consequences (ebook) by
This book offers a comprehensive understanding of past and current immigration policy in the United States and exposes falsehoods in the rhetoric and narrative portraying Latino and Mexican immigrants in the U.S.
Voting and Political Representation in America: Issues and Trends (ebook) by
Examines voting trends and political representation in the United States today--with a special focus on debates over voting rights, voter fraud, and voter suppression--and election rules and regulations, including those related to gerrymandering, campaign fundraising, and other controversies. Do average Americans have a voice in Washington? Are they well-represented, or are they marginalized? Do elections reflect fundamental democratic institutions and values, or are they tarnished by voter suppression, voter fraud, gerrymandering, or other factors? To what extent do America's elected officials reflect the diversity of race, religion, gender, socioeconomic background, sexual orientation, and political views of the wider American population? This encyclopedia explores all these questions and more. It examines important mechanisms and laws shaping political representation in America in the 21st century, such as term limits, gerrymandering, the Electoral College, and "direct democracy" (ballot initiatives and referendums); and the degree to which various demographic groups are represented in state and federal legislatures, from Latinos and senior citizens to atheists and residents of rural states. It also explains the basis for escalating concerns about both voter fraud and voter suppression. Sets voting trends and political representation in context through a historical overview of their evolution in America Provides authoritative coverage of important terms, laws, trends, and controversies ranging from racially based voter suppression efforts to gerrymandering in an encyclopedia section Coverage of structural elements of elections and political representation Chronology of events that have shaped the modern world of voting and political representation in America.
Apple: skin to the core by
From the horrible legacy of the government boarding schools, to a boy watching his siblings leave and return and leave again, to a young man fighting to be an artist who balances multiple worlds. Eric Gansworth shatters that slur and reclaims it in verse and prose and imagery that truly lives up to the word heartbreaking.
Every Body Looking by
Every Body Looking is a debut novel in verse in the style of Elizabeth Acevedo and Jason Reynolds. Candice Iloh's book tells the story of Ada-daughter of an immigrant father and an African American mother-and her struggle to find a place for herself in America and in her own family.
The Night Watchman by
The Night Watchman is a majestic work of fiction from this revered cultural treasure.
A Furious Sky: the five-hundred-year history of America's hurricanes by
Hurricanes menace North America from June through November every year, each as powerful as 10,000 nuclear bombs. These megastorms will likely become more intense as the planet continues to warm, yet we too often treat them as local disasters and TV spectacles, unaware of how far-ranging their impact can be. As best-selling historian Eric Jay Dolin contends, we must look to our nation's past if we hope to comprehend the consequences of the hurricanes of the future.With A Furious Sky, Dolin has created a vivid, sprawling account of our encounters with hurricanes, from the nameless storms that threatened Columbus's New World voyages to the destruction wrought in Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria. Weaving a story of shipwrecks and devastated cities, of heroism and folly, Dolin introduces a rich cast of unlikely heroes, such as Benito Vines, a nineteenth-century Jesuit priest whose innovative methods for predicting hurricanes saved countless lives, and puts us in the middle of the most devastating storms of the past, none worse than the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, which killed at least 6,000 people, the highest toll of any natural disaster in American history.Dolin draws on a vast array of sources as he melds American history, as it is usually told, with the history of hurricanes, showing how these tempests frequently helped determine the nation's course. Hurricanes, it turns out, prevented Spain from expanding its holdings in North America beyond Florida in the late 1500s, and they also played a key role in shifting the tide of the American Revolution against the British in the final stages of the conflict. As he moves through the centuries, following the rise of the United States despite the chaos caused by hurricanes, Dolin traces the corresponding development of hurricane science, from important discoveries made by Benjamin Franklin to the breakthroughs spurred by the necessities of the World War II and the Cold War.Yet after centuries of study and despite remarkable leaps in scientific knowledge and technological prowess, there are still limits on our ability to predict exactly when and where hurricanes will strike, and we remain terribly vulnerable to the greatest storms on earth. A Furious Sky is, ultimately, a story of a changing climate, and it forces us to reckon with the reality that as bad as the past has been, the future will probably be worse, unless we drastically reimagine our relationship with the planet.
A Life on Our Planet: my witness statement and a vision for the future by
We have one final chance to create the perfect home for ourselves and restore the wonderful world we inherited. All we need is the will to do so. -author
Owls of the Eastern Ice: a quest to find and save the world's largest owl by
When he was just a fledgling birdwatcher, Jonathan C. Slaght had a chance encounter with one of the most mysterious birds on Earth. Bigger than any owl he knew, it looked like a small bear with decorative feathers. He snapped a quick photo and shared it with experts. Soon he was on a five-year journey, searching for this enormous, enigmatic creature in the lush, remote forests of eastern Russia. That first sighting set his calling as a scientist. Despite a wingspan of six feet and a height of over two feet, the Blakiston's fish owl is highly elusive. They are easiest to find in winter, when their tracks mark the snowy banks of the rivers where they feed. They are also endangered. And so, as Slaght and his devoted team set out to locate the owls, they aim to craft a conservation plan that helps ensure the species' survival. This quest sends them on all-night monitoring missions in freezing tents, mad dashes across thawing rivers, and free-climbs up rotting trees to check nests for precious eggs. They use cutting-edge tracking technology and improvise ingenious traps. And all along, they must keep watch against a run-in with a bear or an Amur tiger. At the heart of Slaght's story are the fish owls themselves: cunning hunters, devoted parents, singers of eerie duets, and survivors in a harsh and shrinking habitat. Through this rare glimpse into the everyday life of a field scientist and conservationist, Owls of the Eastern Ice testifies to the determination and creativity essential to scientific advancement and serves as a powerful reminder of the beauty, strength, and vulnerability of the natural world.
Avian Reservoirs: virus hunters and birdwatchers in Chinese sentinels posts (ebook) by
Frédéric Keck traces how the anticipation of bird flu pandemics has changed relations between birds and humans in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan, showing that humans' reliance on birds is key to mitigating future pandemics.
Hooked: food, free will, and how the food giants exploit our addictions by
Moss uses the latest research on addiction to uncover what the scientific and medical communities--as well as food manufacturers--already know: that food, in some cases, is even more addictive than alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs. Our bodies are hardwired for sweets, so food giants have developed fifty-six types of sugar to add to their products, creating in us the expectation that everything should be cloying; we've evolved to prefer fast, convenient meals, hence our modern-day preference for ready-to-eat foods. Moss goes on to show how the processed food industry--including major companies like Nestlé, Mars, and Kellogg's--has tried not only to evade this troubling discovery about the addictiveness of food but to actually exploit it. For instance, in response to recent dieting trends, food manufacturers have simply turned junk food into junk diets, filling grocery stores with "diet" foods that are hardly distinguishable from the products that got us into trouble in the first place. As obesity rates continue to climb, manufacturers are now claiming to add ingredients that can effortlessly cure our compulsive eating habits. A gripping account of the legal battles, insidious marketing campaigns, and cutting-edge food science that have brought us to our current public health crisis, Hooked lays out all that the food industry is doing to exploit and deepen our addictions, and shows us why what we eat has never mattered more.
How to Make a Vaccine: an essential guide for COVID-19 & beyond by
In How to Make a Vaccine, an expert who has firsthand experience developing vaccines tells an optimistic story of how three hundred years of vaccine discovery and a century and a half of immunology research have come together at this powerful moment--and will lead to multiple COVID-19 vaccines. Dr. John Rhodes draws on his experience as an immunologist, including working alongside a young Anthony Fauci, to unravel the mystery of how vaccines are designed, tested, and produced at scale for global deployment. Concise and accessible, this book describes in everyday language how the immune system evolved to combat infection, how viruses responded by evolving ways to evade our defenses, and how vaccines do their work. That history, and the pace of current research developments, make Rhodes hopeful that multiple vaccines will protect us. Today the complex workings of the immune system are well understood. The tools needed by biomedical scientists stand ready to be used, and more than 160 vaccine candidates have already been produced. But defeating COVID-19 won't be the end of the story: Rhodes describes how discoveries today are also empowering scientists to combat future threats to global health, including a recent breakthrough in the development of genetic vaccines, which have never before been used in humans. As the world prepares for a vaccine, Rhodes offers a current and informative look at the science and strategies that deliver solutions to the crisis.
Strange Bedfellows: adventures in the science, history, and surprising secrets of STDs by
With curiosity and wit, Strange Bedfellows rips back the bedsheets to expose what really happens when STDs enter the sack. Sexually transmitted diseases have been hidden players in our lives for the whole of human history, with roles in everything from World War II to the growth of the Internet to The Bachelor. But despite their prominence, STDs have been shrouded in mystery and taboo for centuries, which begs the question: why do we know so little about them? Enter Ina Park, MD, who has been pushing boundaries to empower and inform others about sexual health for decades. With Strange Bedfellows, she ventures far beyond the bedroom to examine the hidden role and influence of these widely misunderstood infections and share their untold stories. Covering everything from AIDS to Zika, Park explores STDs on the cellular, individual, and population-level. She blends science and storytelling with historical tales, real life sexual escapades, and interviews with leading scientists--weaving in a healthy dose of hilarity along the way. The truth is, most of us are sexually active, yet we're often unaware of the universe of microscopic bedfellows inside our pants. Park aims to change this by bringing knowledge to the masses in an accessible, no-nonsense, humorous way--helping readers understand the broad impact STDs have on our lives, while at the same time erasing the unfair stigmas attached to them. A departure from the cone of awkward silence and shame that so often surrounds sexual health,Strange Bedfellows is the straight-shooting book about the consequences of sex that all curious readers have been looking for.
The Ten Year War: Obamacare and the unfinished crusade for universal coverage by
In The Ten Year War, veteran journalist Jonathan Cohn offers the compelling, authoritative history of how the law came to be, why it looks like it does, and what it's meant for average Americans. Drawn from hundreds of hours of interviews, plus private diaries, emails and memos, The Ten Year War takes readers to Capitol Hill and to town hall meetings, inside the West Wing and, eventually, into Trump Tower, as the nation's most powerful leaders try to reconcile pragmatism and idealism, self-interest and the public good, and ultimately two very different visions for what the country should look like. At the heart of the book is the decades-old argument over what's wrong with American health care and how to fix it. But the battle over healthcare was always about more than policy. The Ten Year War offers a deeper examination of how our governing institutions, the media and the two parties have evolved, and the dysfunction those changes have left in their wake.
Viruses, Pandemics, and Immunity by
How viruses emerge to cause pandemics, how our immune system combats them, and how diagnostic tests, vaccines, and antiviral therapies work. Throughout history, humans have contended with pandemics. History is replete with references to plagues, pestilence, and contagion, but the devastation wrought by pandemics had been largely forgotten by the twenty-first century. Now, the enormous human and economic toll of the rapidly spreading COVID-19 disease offers a vivid reminder that infectious disease pandemics are one of the greatest existential threats to humanity. This book provides an accessible explanation of how viruses emerge to cause pandemics, how our immune system combats them, and how diagnostic tests, vaccines, and antiviral therapies work-- concepts that are a foundation for our public health policies.
When Brains Dream: exploring the science and mystery of sleep by
When Brains Dream reveals recent discoveries about the sleeping brain and the many ways in which dreams are psychologically, and neurologically, meaningful experiences; explores a host of dream-related disorders; and explains how dreams can facilitate creativity and be a source of personal insight. Making an eloquent and engaging case for why the human brain needs to dream, When Brains Dream offers compelling answers to age-old questions about the mysteries of sleep.
Burning the Books: a history of the deliberate destruction of knowledge (ebook) by
Richard Ovenden describes the deliberate destruction of knowledge held in libraries and archives from ancient Alexandria to contemporary Sarajevo, from smashed Assyrian tablets in Iraq to the destroyed immigration documents of the UK Windrush generation. He examines both the motivations for these acts--political, religious, and cultural--and the broader themes that shape this history. He also looks at attempts to prevent and mitigate attacks on knowledge, exploring the efforts of librarians and archivists to preserve information, often risking their own lives in the process. More than simply repositories for knowledge, libraries and archives inspire and inform citizens. In preserving notions of statehood recorded in such historical documents as the Declaration of Independence, libraries support the state itself. By preserving records of citizenship and records of the rights of citizens as enshrined in legal documents such as the Magna Carta and the decisions of the US Supreme Court, they support the rule of law. In Burning the Books, Ovenden takes a polemical stance on the social and political importance of the conservation and protection of knowledge, challenging governments in particular, but also society as a whole, to improve public policy and funding for these essential institutions.
A Shimmer of Joy by
A Shimmer of Joy provides an intriguing array of information, not only about the books but also about the authors, artists, publishers, and designers who created them. Along the way, the reader gains insight into the evolving eras of children's literature and book publishing in the 20th and 21st century, with fascinating stories of its publication history and biographies of the creators. Anyone will gain a new, deeper, appreciation for the picture book while also remembering a time when, sitting in a classroom or on a lap, someone read you a book and opened up your world. For the collector, bibliophile, or children's book enthusiast, this collection is guaranteed to provide nothing but joy. "All spot-on choices....a shop-window of the creative versatility embedded in children's picture books over the decades."--The Book Collector