What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits? And what happens when this forces humanity to the cusp of post-human evolution? This is a tale of Bangkok struggling for survival in a post-oil era of rising sea levels and out-of-control mutation. Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's Calorie Man in Thailand. Undercover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct,...

"Transportation dominates our daily existence. Thousands, even millions, of miles are embedded in everything we do and touch. We live in a door-to-door universe that works so well most Americans are scarcely aware of it. The grand ballet in which we move ourselves and our stuff is equivalent to building the Great Pyramid, the Hoover Dam, and the Empire State Building all in a day. Every day. And yet, in the one highly visible part of the transportation...

This look at the near future presents the story of Offred, a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, once the United States, an oppressive world where women are no longer allowed to read and are valued only as long as they are viable for reproduction. In this Orwellian dramatization, religion becomes a tool of repression and social control to force women into the roles of stay-at-home wives, domestic staff, prostitutes, or surrogate mothers. They have...

The Subjection of Women by John Mill was first published in 1869, written in 1861 about women's rights. The ideas from this essay John developed jointly with his wife Harriet Taylor Mill. John Mill was an influential liberal thinker of the 19th century, and English philosopher, and a civil servant and Member of the Parliament. John shows us how institutions are vital to the happiness of society and to the individual and as these institutions are...

A former Google data scientist presents an insider's look at what the vast, instantly available amounts of information from the Internet can reveal about human civilization and society.

Digital minimalists are the calm, happy people who can hold long conversations without furtive glances at their phones. Common sense tips, like turning off notifications, or occasional rituals like observing a digital sabbath, don't go far enough in helping us take back control of our technological lives. What we need is a thoughtful method to decide what tools to use, for what purposes, and under what conditions. Here Newport identifies the common...

"We are approaching a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change. Soon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organise your life, operate your business, and run core government services. You will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy. None of us are prepared. As co-founder of the pioneering AI company DeepMind,...

The "New York Times"-bestselling author of "Physics of the Impossible" offers a stunning and provocative vision of the future, and explains how science will shape human destiny and everyone's daily life by the year 2100.

Baseball, first dubbed the "national pastime" in print in 1856, is the country's most tradition-bound sport. Despite remaining popular and profitable into the twenty-first century, the game is losing young fans, among African Americans and women as well as white men. Furthermore, baseball's greatest charm--a clockless suspension of time--is also its greatest liability in a culture of digital distraction. These paradoxes are explored by the historian...

"When the technologies we use every day collapse our experiences into 24/7 availability, platforms for personal branding, and products to be monetized, nothing can be quite so radical as...doing nothing. Here, Jenny Odell sends up a flare from the heart of Silicon Valley, delivering an action plan to resist capitalist narratives of productivity and techno-determinism, and to become more meaningfully connected in the process."-- Provided by publisher....