Social Science

A revelatory examination of how the wildfirelike spread of new forms of social interaction enabled by technology is changing the way humans form groups and exist within them, with profound long-term economic and social effects-for good and for ill. A handful of kite hobbyists scattered around the world find each other online and collaborate on the most radical improvement in kite design in decades. A midwestern professor of Middle Eastern history starts a blog after 9/11 that becomes essential reading for journalists covering the Iraq war. Activists use the Internet and e-mail to bring offensive comments made by Trent Lott and Don Imus to a wide public and hound them from their positions. A few people find that a world-class online encyclopedia created entirely by volunteers and open for editing by anyone, a wiki, is not an impractical idea. Jihadi groups trade inspiration and instruction and showcase terrorist atrocities to the world, entirely online. A wide group of unrelated people swarms to a Web site about the theft of a cell phone and ultimately goads the New York City police to take action, leading to the culprit's arrest. With accelerating velocity, our age's new technologies of social networking are evolving, and evolving us, into new groups doing new things in new ways, and old and new groups alike doing the old things better and more easily. You don't have to have a MySpace page to know that the times they are a changin'. Hierarchical structures that exist to manage the work of groups are seeing their raisons d'tre swiftly eroded by the rising technological tide. Business models are being destroyed, transformed, born at dizzying speeds, and the larger social impact is profound. One of the culture's wisest observers of the transformational power of the new forms of tech-enabled social interaction is Clay Shirky, and Here Comes Everybody is his marvelous reckoning with the ramifications of all this on what we do and who we are. more...

Price: $16.00

Explores the cultural extremes and the incomprehension that can arise when doing business across cultures - even when people are working for the same company. The book explains that there are five key factors or orientations that affect how people all deal with each other, do business and manage. more...

Price: $13.75

In her previous bestselling books, Jen Lancaster peeled back the veil on upward mobility and big city living. Now she's sumo-wrestling the biggest, stickiest topic of them all: her own fat ass. On the eve of her fortieth birthday, Jen decides she needs to make some changes in her life so she doesn't, you know, die. So she's embarked on a six-month weight loss program, kicking, screaming, and swearing all the way to the gym. The question is, can our heroine lose her ass without ditching the qualities that make her who she is. more...

Price: $14.00

In We the Media, nationally acclaimed newspaper columnist and blogger Dan Gillmor shows how anyone can produce the news, using personal blogs, internet chat groups, email, and a host of other tools. He tells the story of this emerging phenomenon and sheds light on this deep shift in how we make--and consume--the news. Journalism in the 21st century will be fundamentally different from the Big Media oligarchy that prevails today. We the Media casts light on the future of journalism, and invites us all to be part of it. more...

Price: $13.99

Covering the period between the American Revolution and the Civil War, The Americans: The National Experience the second volume of Daniel Boorstin's award-winning trilogy, examines the realities of everyday life for the early pioneers as well as for those living in the established population centers on the Atlantic coast. more...

Price: $7.99