Showing results by narrator "Peter Lerman" in All Categories

In Saving Our Cities, William W. Goldsmith shows how cities can be places of opportunity rather than places with problems. With strongly revived cities and suburbs, working as places that serve all their residents, metropolitan areas will thrive, thus making the national economy more productive, the environment better protected, the citizenry better educated, and the society more reflective, sensitive, and humane.

Strategically situated at the gateway to the Mississippi River yet standing atop a former swamp, New Orleans was from the first what geographer Peirce Lewis called an "impossible but inevitable city". How New Orleans came to be, taking shape between the mutual and often contradictory forces of nature and urban development, is the subject of An Unnatural Metropolis.

For decades the suburbs have been where art happens despite: despite the conformity, the emptiness, the sameness. Time and again, the story is one of gems formed under pressure and that resentment of the suburbs is the key ingredient for creative transcendence. But what if, contrary to that, the suburb has actually been an incubator for distinctly American art, as positively and as surely as in any other cultural hothouse?

George Washington is remembered for leading the Continental Army to victory, presiding over the Constitution, and forging a new nation, but few know the story of his involvement in the establishment of a capital city and how it nearly tore the United States apart. In George Washington's Final Battle, Robert P. Watson brings this tale to life, telling how the country's first president tirelessly advocated for a capital on the shores of the Potomac.

The Supreme Court has never simply evaluated laws and arguments in light of permanent and immutable constitutional meanings, and social, moral, and yes, political ideas have always played into Supreme Court justices' impressions of how they think a case should be decided. Mark Tushnet traces the ways constitutional thought has evolved from the liberalism of the New Deal and Great Society to the Reagan conservatism that has been dominant since the 1980s.

A penetrating look at near-future disruption as truly autonomous vehicles arrive.   

Based in the idea that social phenomena are best studied through the lens of different disciplinary perspectives, Empty Churches studies the growing number of individuals who no longer affiliate with a religious tradition. Coeditors Jan Stets, a social psychologist, and James Heft, a historian of theology, bring together leading scholars in the fields of sociology, developmental psychology, gerontology, political science, history, philosophy, and pastoral theology.

J. Jacob Potashnik's collection of short stories about Montreal and other places is in the tradition of Saul Bellow, Mordechai Richler, and reminiscent of the work of Isaac Bashevis Singer and Sholom Aleichem, among others.

He was raised in a liberal Jewish home with a strong emphasis on civil rights and social justice. So to Glen Feigman, there was no question that Dr. King's speech would be the catalyst for a brighter future; one in which children would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Now, in the year 2011, Glen is an out gay man living in the city of Chicago. But when he, along with his elderly mother, witnesses one of many violent attacks plaguing his hometown, he begins reflecting on his past and childhood...

The hate is deep. The death is slow. The cause is silent. You know that Atlanta PD has given up on a case when they call in Dr. Damon Keane. The sleuth scientist is quietly famous in forensic circles for unraveling the most daunting technical puzzles, but this case is bewildering. Two people are already dead. The third victim, a priest, is dying by inches in an Atlanta hospital, and the cause is a complete mystery to doctors and detectives alike.

I'm here to tell you that manipulation is an important social tool that can bring you immense benefits. That is exactly what I want to talk to you about in this book. Manipulation can be incredibly helpful, and I can show you how to use it and why, as well as open your eyes to the malicious manipulation of others and teach you how to deal with it.

The chapters contained in this book present Mr. Roosevelt's views on many of the great national issues of the day. They were written since Mr. Roosevelt's return to America and appeared originally in The Outlook as editorials or articles. These articles include "The Management of Small States Which Are Unable to Manage Themselves", "A Remedy for Some Forms of Selfish Legislation", "Rural Life", "The Progressives, Past and Present", "The Pioneer Spirit and American Problems", and "The Tariff: A Moral Issue".

Phonopoetics tells the neglected story of early "talking records" and their significance for literature, from the 1877 invention of the phonograph to some of the first recorded performances of modernist works. The book challenges assumptions of much contemporary criticism by taking the recorded oral performance as its primary object of analysis and by exploring the historically specific convergences between audio recording technologies, media formats, generic forms, and the institutions and practices surrounding the literary.

Had Upton Sinclair not written a single book after The Jungle, he would still be famous. But Sinclair was a mere 25 years old when he wrote The Jungle, and over the next 65 years, he wrote nearly 80 more books and won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. He was also a filmmaker, labor activist, women’s rights advocate, and health pioneer on a grand scale. This new biography of Sinclair underscores his place in the American story as a social, political, and cultural force, a man who more than any other disrupted and documented his era in the name of social justice.

This is volume two—what Henry George called "the Solution to the Problem". This landmark treatise by the great economist Henry George was first published in 1879. George's work became the seminal analysis of the political economy which inspired most, if not all, the prominent thinkers of the Progressive Movement and many others of great influence: Upton Sinclair, John Dewey, George Bernard Shaw, Friedrich Hayek, H. G. Wells, Clarence Darrow, and Leo Tolstoy, to name but a few. His analyses and proposals are referred to as "Georgism".

A host of technologies—including digital cameras, drones, facial recognition devices, night-vision binoculars, automated license plate readers, GPS, geofencing, DNA matching, datamining, and artificial intelligence—have enabled police to carry out much of their work without leaving the office or squad car, in ways that do not easily fit the traditional physical search and seizure model envisioned by the framers of the Constitution. Virtual Searches develops a useful typology for sorting through this bewildering array of old, new, and soon-to-arrive policing techniques.

Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, the book that changed the course of the nation. It changed American history. Some say it was the most important book in the history of the United States.

Another pandemic is coming. We need to identify the lessons learned from our successes and failures during the COVID-19 pandemic to plan better for our future response.

This interdisciplinary study offers a comprehensive analysis of the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Providing full historical context and drawing on a wide range of literature, this book explores the continuous economic and social transformation of the post-socialist world. While the future is yet to be determined, understanding the present phase of transformation is critical.

Surveillance Capitalism in America offers a crucial historical perspective on the intimate relationship between surveillance and capitalism. While surveillance is often associated with governments, today the role of the private sector in the spread of everyday surveillance is the subject of growing public debate. Tech giants like Google and Facebook are fueled by a continuous supply of user data and digital exhaust. Surveillance is not just a side effect of digital capitalism; it is the business model itself.