MAP

Macmillan Author Program

Put your program on the MAP

Our approach to customization makes it possible for you to combine your proprietary materials with the “best of Macmillan” to get just the right content, generate funds for your department, and raise your institutional profile with a high-impact author visit. Our vetted Macmillan content can be combined with your own authored materials to create a customized product uniquely suited for your students.

The Macmillan Author Program can include some or all of these elements

  • Vetted textbook content, combined with your proprietary materials and aligned with your course outcomes to foster student engagement.

  • Writing from bestselling and award-winning scholars, essayists, and fiction authors via premier Macmillan imprints such as Farrar, Straus & Giroux; Henry Holt; Picador; St. Martin’s Press; and others.

  • Campus visits from prominent Macmillan authors—an experience from which the entire university benefits.

  • Design, production, and consultative expertise of our Hayden-McNeil custom publishing group to create affordable course materials.

  • Support for faculty development or any other program needs.

We offer simple or complex solutions based upon your enrollment size

Up to 200 students annually

With MAP, you can package a trade title with your composition text(s) and save 50% off the trade title.

Browse Trade Titles

200 to 699 students annually

  • Package a popular trade title with your composition text at 50% off the trade title

  • Incorporate your original content (minimum of 16-32 pages) with your text and you can generate a royalty stream

  • Incorporate popular ForeWords modules into your text.

Browse Trade Titles

700+ students annually

You can infuse excitement and vigor into your writing program with MAP:

 
  • Package a popular trade title with your composition text at 50% off the trade title

  • Incorporate your original content (minimum of 16-32 pages) with your text and you can generate a royalty stream

  • Incorporate popular ForeWords modules into your text

  • Schedule an event with a high-profile author

  • Incorporate select trade reading into your text

  • Curated trade excerpts available for your text, browse our excerpts below.

Available Excerpts

Reinvent your writing program with MAP

    • “The Work Itself” The New American Workplace James O’Toole and Edward E. Lawler III 39–60 This selection describes how evolving trends in global economics have changed the nature of employee labor and management in the American workplace.
      “Globalization of the Local” The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century Thomas L. Friedman 477–488 This selection considers the benefits and dangers of a global economy that seeks to preserve local cultures. It focuses specifically on the diversification of communication technologies and investment practices.
      “In Search of a Better Sponge” The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-First Century Ryan Avent 64–77 This selection considers the future of labor as automated technologies continue to take over jobs typically assigned to humans. It speculates that there will be a greater division between the haves and the have-nots, which will result in serious political conflict.
      “The Lexus and the Olive Tree” The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization Thomas L. Friedman 29–43 This selection examines the tensions between new technological developments and time-worn cultural battlegrounds. It advocates striking a balance between these tensions in order to create healthy societies across the world.
      “What Is Your Mother Worth?” You Are the Product: How to Survive―And Thrive―In the Era of Reputation Economics Joshua Klein 3–19 This selection explains how global commerce is evolving in response to new social arrangements facilitated by the internet.
      “Turning AI into IA” Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations Thomas L. Friedman 216–265 This selection profiles a number of global companies that are innovating in response to automated labor. In doing so, it introduces the concept ofto explain how continuing education and professional development are changing in light of accelerated technological innovation.
      “The Future of Globalization” What Would the Great Economists Do?: How Twelve Brilliant Minds Would Solve Today’s Biggest Problems Linda Yueh 283–298 This selection projects the future of global trade in light of Brexit and President Donald Trump’s economic strategies.
      “Dude, Where’s My Pension?” The Rise of the Naked Economy: How to Benefit from the Changing Workplace? Ryan Coonerty and Jeremy Neuner 69–105 This selection examines how the evolving global marketplace is affecting how companies across the world are imagining work and the workplace.

    • “Should You Think Like an Economist?” Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking Richard E. Nisbett 69–83 This selection considers the benefits and pitfalls of using economic theory (e.g., cost–benefit analysis) to evaluate how and why people make decisions. In doing so, it reflects on how we calculate the value of human life.
      “Average Is Over” That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum 142–166 This selection examines how college students can prepare for a global economy by becoming more creative thinkers and producers.
      “Focusing and Tunneling” Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means so Much Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir 19–38 This selection examines how students can view their capacity to focus as a resource that, when leveraged properly, can reap significant dividends in situations where time is scarce.
      “Is ‘Unanimous’ as Reassuring as it Sounds? (Others, Part II) How to Find Answers in an Unwise Crowd” The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals about Our Power to Change Tali Sharot 173–196 This selection questions whether reaching consensus with others actually produces correct thinking. In doing so, it provides a set of thinking strategies for remembering that opinions are interdependent and biased and, thus, must be scrutinized carefully.
      “Adapting and You” Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure Tim Harford 267–284 This selection discusses how workers can test new ideas by creating safe spaces for productive failure.
      “Rethinking Creativity: The Habits and Principles of Innovation” Swarm Intelligence: What Nature Teaches Us about Shaping Creative Leadership James Haywood Rolling, Jr. 166–191 This selection argues for a conception of creativity that is systemic and social rather than individual and isolated. It offers ten principles for maximizing creativity among diverse groups of people in the workplace.
      “Cognitive Ease” Thinking, Fast and Slow Daniel Kahneman 59–70 This selection examines the role that cognitive ease and cognitive strain play in shaping perception and forming judgments. It offers practical advice for producing more persuasive messages.
      “The Two Types of Loonshots: Trippe vs. Crandall” Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries Safi Bahcall 65–93 This selection identifies two different forms of imaginative innovations: p-type and s-type; p-types focus on creating products that no one thinks will work and s-types take existing products and introduce a new strategy. It then uses the case study of Pan-Am to identify potentials and pitfalls of each type of innovation.

    • “Improving the Lives of the Poor” Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means so Much Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir 167–182 This selection considers ways to improve the state of poverty both domestically and internationally. It emphasizes the need to improve existing designs rather than inventing new approaches or products.
      “Taking It All the Way to ‘Sandra Fucking Day O’Connor’” Because of Sex: One Law, Ten Cases, and Fifty Years That Changed American Women’s Lives at Work Gillian Thomas 169–186 This selection examines Harris vs. Forklift Systems Inc., a Supreme Court case that exposes how women experience sexual harassment in the workplace.
      “Globalization” Created Equal: Voices on Women’s Rights Anna Horsbrugh-Porter 138–145 This selection examines how globalization affects the working conditions of women who are often subject to exploitation and physical abuse.
      “Women in the Workplace” Everyday Sexism Laura Bates 222–251 This selection addresses gender discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace by placing the individual testimonies of women within the framework of longitudinal reports and statistics.
      “Women and Work” Equality for Women = Prosperity for All: The Disastrous Global Crisis of Gender Inequality Augusto Lopez-Claros and Bahiyyih Nakhjavani 92–126 This selection considers how deeply held cultural beliefs make gender equality in the workplace nearly impossible. In doing so, it identifies potential agents of change, which include increased economic incentives for women in the workplace, diversity quotas, and innovative parental leave/childcare policies.
      “Not-So-Just Deserts” Can American Capitalism Survive?: Why Greed Is Not Good, Opportunity Is Not Equal, and Fairness Won’t Make Us Poor Steven Pearlstein 73–104 This selection examines the historical causes of income inequality in the US.
      “Working for the Weekend” by Chris Maisano The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for a New Century Sarah Leonard and Bhaskar Sunkara 13–21 This selection examines why capitalist economies exploit the labor force. In doing so, it suggests shortening working hours and ensuring “full employment” for all workers.
      “A Very Serious Issue” Gigged: The End of the Job and the Future of Work Sarah Kessler 222–235 This selection examines how gig-based companies, which outsource on-demand expertise via apps (think Uber), can compromise the long-term security of its workers by not providing benefits that are characteristic of traditional jobs. It explores whether alternative economic models can actually produce greater equity among laborers and business owners.
      “Surviving the Post-Employment Economy” The View from Flyover Country: Dispaches from the Forgotten America Sarah Kendzior 27–32 This selection examines the mental and emotional consequences of an economy that exploits the expertise of college graduates.
      “Worthwhile Work” Fair Shot: Rethinking, Inequality, and How We Earn Chris Hughes 97–115 This selection argues that creating a modest guaranteed income program will allow workers to identify and engage in labor that is meaningful to them.
      “Greening the Organization” The Green Workplace: Sustainable Strategies That Benefit Employees, the Environment, and the Bottom Line Leigh Stringer 37–58 This selection discusses how and why contemporary businesses should become more environmentally responsible.
      “Slackers” Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America Tom Lutz 281–320 This selection challenges the negative cultural associations assigned to those who choose not to invest their time in the US workplace.
      “Stepping Out into the World of Networking” Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream Barbara Ehrenreich 41–63 This selection exposes the challenges associated with searching for and landing a white-collar job. It focuses specifically on the difficulty of creating professional networks.

    • “Job Interview Etiquette” Reply All . . . And Other Ways to Tank Your Career Richie Frieman 17–42 This selection provides practical strategies for succeeding in a job interview.
      “Ego versus Reality” No Ego: How Leaders Can Cut the Cost of Workplace Drama, End Entitlement, and Drive Big Results Cy Wakeman 26–41 This selection explains how employees can become more empathetic with their colleagues and, thus, less invested in unproductive workplace drama.
      “Invisible to Indispensible: Becoming the Fireproof Employee” Corporate Confidential: 50 Secrets Your Company Doesn’t Want You to Know—And What to Do about Them 117–150 This selection offers a number of practical strategies that can help employees become indispensable in the workplace.
      “When Work Works” Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time Brigid Schulte 123–150 This selection reflects on the bright spots of workplace innovation in order to change the narrative about what personal and corporate success requires.
      “Ask for Help” Great on the Job: What to Say, How to Say It. The Secrets of Getting Ahead. Jodi Glickman 95–116 This selection offers practical strategies for learning new tasks and soliciting useful feedback in the workplace.
      “Managing Power Relationships” Secrets to Winning at Office Politics: How to Achieve Your Goals and Increase Your Influence at Work Marie G. McIntyre, PhD 212–232 This selection offers practical strategies for negotiating the power dynamics between colleagues and supervisors in the workplace. It introduces the concepts of upward influence,lateral influence, and downward influence.
      “Narcissus” The Schmuck in My Office: How to Deal Effectively with Difficult People at Work Jody J. Foster, MD MBA, with Michelle Joy 43–74 This selection discusses how self-centered employees typically act in the workplace and provides basic strategies for dealing with them (and not becoming one yourself).
      “What to Expect When You’re Expecting the Naked Economy” The Rise of the Naked Economy: How to Benefit from the Changing Workplace Ryan Coonerty and Jeremy Neuner ??? This selection offers practical strategies for navigating an economy characterized by unconventional thinking, improved communication, and increased trust.
      “Exercising Caution: Matters of Prudence” The Elements of Ethics for Professionals W. Brad Johnson and Charles R. Ridley 143–168 This selection provides practical advice for conducting oneself prudently in the workplace.
      “Peace with the Place” Making Peace with Your Office Life: End the Battles, Shake the Blues, Get Organized, and Be Happier at Work Cindy Glovinsky 177–192 This selection offers practical advice for managing the physical, spatial, and mechanical challenges associated with the contemporary workplace.
      “Make a Work Companion” Making Peace with Your Office Life: End the Battles, Shake the Blues, Get Organized, and Be Happier at Work Cindy Glovinsky 125–138 This selection describes how a workplace reflection journal can help employees manage tasks more effectively, learn from mistakes, and maintain emotional equilibrium in the workplace.
      “Cracking the Dress Code” Your Body at Work: A Guide to Sight-Reading the Body Language of Business, Bosses, and Boardrooms David Givens 95–110 This selection provides practical strategies for dressing professionally in the workplace.
      “The Hazards of E-Mail” Quick and Nimble: Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation Adam Bryant 97–104 This selection explains how and how not to use email in the workplace. It also addresses why face-to-face communication is often a more effective method in order to maintain a positive work environment.
      “A Little Respect” Quick and Nimble: Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation Adam Bryant 51–65 This selection presents practical strategies for fostering respectful interactions in the workplace.

    • “Mindcloning, Natural Selection, and Digital Eugenics” Virtually Human: The Promise—And the Peril—Of Digital Immortality Martine Rothblatt 91–119 This selection examines how artificial intelligence research is guided by the logics of natural selection. In doing so, it discusses how mind-cloning technologies offer benefits and pose dangers to the human race.
      “Screw the Rats!” The Brain Electric: The Dramatic High-Tech Race to Merge Minds and Machines Malcolm Gay 91–118 This selection considers whether neurological implants signal the future possibility of human cyborgs.
      “The Two-Minute Problem” Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era James Barrat 22–34 This selection outlines the importance of creating public discussion about the dangers of artificial superintelligence research.
      “Shaping and Sharing Minds” Beyond Boundaries: The New Neuroscience of Connecting Brains with Machines—And How It Will Change Our Lives Miguel Nicolelis 223–250 This selection examines the research of neuro-engineers who are developing electrical stimulation techniques capable of connecting multiple brains at once.
      “Cyborg” Ten Billion Tomorrows: How Science Fiction Technology Became Reality and Shapes the Future Brian Clegg 207–224 This selection examines why the technological development of a human cyborg feels more threatening than other prosthetic technologies. In doing so, it tracks the various ways humans rely on machines to improve their quality of life and speculates on the future of neural implants.
      “EEG, ESP, AI” Breakpoint: Why the Web Will Implode, Search Will Be Obsolete, and Everything Else You Need to Know about Technology Is in Your Brain Jeff Stibel 159–177 This selection explores how technologies, such as brain-computer interfaces, are slowly redefining what it means to be a thinking human. To make its case, it argues that artificial intelligence research is best understood as having a long evolutionary history.
      “The Future of Intelligence” On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines Jeff Hawkins with Sandra Blakeslee 205–233 This selection examines what is needed to build intelligent machines, whether building them is a good idea, why we might want to build them, and when we can expect them to be a part of our daily lives. It organizes the discussion around the concepts of capacity, replicability, and sensory systems.
      “Enough” Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age Bill McKibben 200–227 This selection responds to “techno zealots” calls for improving the human race by stressing the value of restraint, patience, and limits in our quest for technological growth.
      “Perception Shift” The Neuro Revolution: How Brain Science Is Changing Our World Zach Lynch with Byron Laursen 181–201 This selection discusses emerging research on cosmetic neurology, a field that is attempting to correct emotional and attention-based disorders through the technological transformation of neurobiology.

      New Additions 2018

      “The Bestseller-ometer, or, How Text Mining Might Change Publishing” The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel Jodie Archer and Matthew L. Jockers 1–31 This selection offers an introduction to distant reading methods by explaining how algorithms can successful predict when a novel will become a worldwide bestseller.
      “The Genie in the Bottle: Sequencing Newborn Babies” The Gene Machine: How Genetic Technologies Are Changing the Way We Have Kids—And the Kids We Have Bonnie Rochman This selection considers how prenatal screening will evolve as genomic sequencing technologies become cheaper and more ubiquitous.
      “The Invention of Ronald Pinn” The Secret Life: Three True Stories of the Digital Age Andrew O’Hagan 85–110 This selection examines how identity theft is changing as digital technologies, such as bitcoin and online gambling, become more widespread in their use.
      “#WhenDeathIsShared” Modern Death: How Medicine Changed the End of Life Haider Warraich 267–278 This selection argues that our understanding of death is changing as terminal patients use social media to document their final days of life.
      “Programming the Post-Human: Computer Science Redefines ‘Life’” Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology Ellen Ullman 129–159 This selection discusses how computer scientists have attempted to program a robot that dispenses with the limits of biological humans. In doing so, it identifies what aspects of humanity will be most difficult to simulate.
      “Serendipity” Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age Sven Birkerts 47–58 This selection examines how predictive algorithms that facilitate GPS tracking applications are changing the way we experience the work of searching for answers. It argues that we are becoming a society that banishes the value of inefficiency.
      “The Harm of Surveillance” No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State Glenn Greenwald 170–210 This selection examines the implications of allowing governments to surveil the data use of its citizens. In doing so, it explores what it means to be human in an age where privacy does not exist.

    • “Why They Hate Us” Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution Mona Eltahawy 3–32 This selection examines the deep-seated misogyny that permeates Arab countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Its analysis addresses the complex ways that hate breeds violence against women.
      “Taking It All the Way to ‘Sandra Fucking Day O’Connor’” Because of Sex: One Law, Ten Cases, and Fifty Years That Changed American Women’s Lives at Work Gillian Thomas 169–186 This selection examines Harris vs. Forklift Systems Inc., a Supreme Court case that exposes how women experience sexual harassment in the workplace.
      “’Everyone Deserves a Safe Delivery’” Because of Sex: One Law, Ten Cases, and Fifty Years That Changed American Women’s Lives at Work Gillian Thomas 206–228 This selection examines Young vs. the United Parcel Service, Inc., a Supreme Court case that exposes how pregnant women experience sexual discrimination in the workplace.
      “Honorary Dyke” The Unspeakable and Other Subjects of Discussion Meghan Daum 91–112 This selection reflects on the experiences of a heterosexual woman dressing and acting like a lesbian. In doing so, it addresses how narrowly defined gender categories structure women’s identities in dangerous ways.
      “Maid to Order” by Barbara Ehrenreich Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild 85–103 This selection examines the socioeconomic dangers of domestic cleaning services. It addresses such topics as the exploitation of immigrant women, the difference between domestic and public spaces, the dangers of invisible labor, and the consequences of inequitable wage scales.
      “Violence against Women” Walking Prey: How America’s Youth Are Vulnerable to Sex Slavery Holly Austin Smith 81–89 This selection presents a firsthand account of how young women are subject to sexual violence. In doing so, it exposes how sexual assault against women is made acceptable in American culture.
      “A Green Dress” A Murder Over a Girl: Justice, Gender, Junior High Ken Corbett 161–181 This selection recounts the trial of Brandon McInerney who murdered Leticia King for being a transgender woman. In doing so, it exposes the many ways that transgender men and women experience verbal discrimination and physical violence.
      “Yeah, Leticia” A Murder Over a Girl: Justice, Gender, Junior High Ken Corbett 81–101 This selection describes the events leading up to and following the murder of Leticia King, a transgender woman.
      “Smile and Say Nothing” by Ian Wheeler-Nicholson Out of the Ordinary: Essays on Growing Up with Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Parents Noelle Howey and Ellen Samuels 103–112 This selection reflects on the emotional impact of being raised by lesbian parents in a homophobic culture.
      “I Remember Reaching for Michael’s Hand” by Stefan Lynch Out of the Ordinary: Essays on Growing Up with Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Parents Noelle Howey and Ellen Samuel 63–71 This selection reflects on a father’s fight against homophobic police practices in Toronto during the late 1970s.
      “Education for All” Created Equal: Voices on Women’s Rights Anna Horsbrugh-Porter 10–16 This selection presents a brief history of the benefits of educating women.
      “Sticky Floors” Created Equal: Voices on Women’s Rights Anna Horsbrugh-Porter 30–37 This selection examines the exploitation of women’s labor and identifies ways to combat it.
      “Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain” The Empathy Exams: Essays Leslie Jamison 185–218 This selection confronts the limited ways that female pain is represented in the media. Drawing from personal experience and from the testimonies of other women, it asks readers to imagine alternative forms of representation that address the layered complexity of physical and emotional suffering.
      “The Democratic Republic of Congo: Rape” War Is Not Over When It's Over: Women Speak Out from the Ruins of War Ann Jones 131–167 This selection describes the experiences of women who have been physically and sexually assaulted in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In doing so, it exposes how both government and cultural practices encourage men and women to remain silent about sexual abuse.
      “The Wind of Knives” Amexica: War Along the Borderline Ed Vulliamy 184–205 This selection examines the mass slaughter of women taking place in Juárez, a city near the Mexican–United States border. In doing so, it exposes how the Mexican government has been complicit in sustaining this terrifying phenomenon.

      New Additions 2018

      “Swanlights, Turning” Things That Helped: On Postpartum Depression Jessica Friedmann 34–66 This selection sets the experiences of postpartum depression within the broader history of violence against women.
      “Size Me Up” One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter: Essays Scaachi Koul 33–51 This selection examines the gendered assumptions that connect shopping with body image.
      “Brothers” Eat the Apple Matt Young 184–186 This selection considers how sexual epithets such as “queer” and “faggot” organize group action in the military. It focuses specifically on the emotional consequences of using such terms when a “brother” comes out.
      “The Dream (Girl) Is Over” This Is Running for Your Life: Essays Michelle Orange 27–59 This selection examines the history of the “dream girl” in film and television media and evaluates its role in creating ideal body images for women.
      “Silenced Women: The Invisible Problem” Everyday Sexism Laura Bates 13–40 This selection examines the variety of ways women experience sexual intimidation, discrimination, and assault in public. In doing so, it provides a vocabulary for explaining how gendered violence is ubiquitous but still a largely invisible problem.
      Selections from Because I Was a Girl: True Stories for Girls of All Ages Because I Was a Girl: True Stories for Girls of All Ages Melissa de la Cruz This edited collection presents firsthand accounts of women from a number of age groups, ethnicities, and sexualities who experienced gender and sexual discrimination. It also provides, in each major section, a timeline of landmark accomplishments that have supported gender and sexual equality.

    • “Post-Racism: Why the Race Card Is a Crisis of Success” The Race Card: How Bluffing about Bias Makes Race Relations Worse Richard Thompson Ford 308–349 This selection reflects on the controversial outcome of the OJ Simpson murder trial to argue that the catchphrase “race card” prevents rather than redresses racism in the US.
      “I” Citizen: An American Lyric Claudia Rankine 5–19 This selection reflects on how the cultural logic of whiteness encourages violence against African American men and women on a day-to-day basis.
      “A Reckoning” Slaves in the Family Edward Ball 392–418 This selection reflects on what it feels like to confront the history of slavery buried in one’s family history. In doing so, it demonstrates how racial reconciliation can begin.
      “The Emperor’s New Clothes” Seeing a Color-Blind Future: The Paradox of Race Patricia J. Williams 3–16 This selection addresses the consequences of assuming that race no longer affects the way we interact with one another. Although it claims that color blindness should be a goal in the future, it cautions against a naive utopianism that conceals how racism continues to evolve.
      “Why Harlem Drug Cops Don’t Discuss Race” by Michael Winerip How Race Is Lived in America: Pulling Together, Pulling Apart Correspondents of The New York Times 231–249 This selection examines how racial prejudice shapes the practices of New York City police officers. It focuses specifically on how Dominican residents are frequently identified as drug users, sellers, and traffickers.
      “A Time for Reassessment?” Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past Bruce Bartlett 187–194 This selection reflects on how the Republican Party can responsibly attract black voters.
      “Dialogue” White Lies: Race and the Myths of Whiteness Maurice Berger 174–181 This selection examines argumentative strategies that encourage US citizens to address their deep-seated assumptions about race and racism.
      “White” White Lies: Race and the Myths of Whiteness Maurice Berger 9–12 This selection examines argumentative strategies that encourage white citizens to address their deep-seated assumptions about race and racism.
      “White3” White Lies: Race and the Myths of Whiteness Maurice Berger 164–168 This selection defines whiteness and discloses how it benefits white men and women at the expense of other races.
      “Refusing to Be a Victim” Killing Rage: Ending Racism bell hooks 51–61 This selection introduces the terms accountability and responsibility to help African American men and women resist the rhetoric of victimization. As an alternative, it promotes the rhetoric of liberal democracy and the rhetoric of self-determination in the struggle to end racism.
      “Keeping a Legacy of Shared Struggle” Killing Rage: Ending Racism bell hooks 204–214 This reflects on anti-Semitism’s place in the history of US racism. In doing so, it exposes the tensions between black and white Jewish cultures and advocates a collective resistance to white supremacy.
      “Less Than Human” Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others David Livingstone Smith 11–25 This selection demonstrates that dehumanization is not just a way of talking but a way of thinking, as well. In doing so, it addresses the role that popular media plays in creating an environment where violence is acceptable.
      Selection from The Silence of Our Friends: The Civil Rights Struggle Was Never Black and White The Silence of Our Friends: The Civil Rights Struggle Was Never Black and White [graphic novel] Mark Long, Jim Demonakos, and Nate Powell 24–37 This selection depicts the racial tension created by a university campus protest during the Civil Rights movement. In doing so, it dramatizes the difficulty of maintaining interracial friendships in an environment saturated by racism.
      “’Keep This a White Man’s Country’” Infamy: The Shocking Story of the Japanese-American Internment in World War II Richard Reeves 98–124 This selection examines the history of the Japanese relocation camps, which were opened in the US during World War II. In doing so, it exposes how appeals to military necessity were underwritten by racist reasoning.
      “Jim Crow Greek Row” Blackballed: The Black and White Politics of Race on America’s Campuses” Lawrence 17–47 This selection examines the role that racism plays in Greek life on university campuses.
      “A New Leader” Malcolm X: A Graphic Biography [graphic novel] Andrew Helfer and Randy DuBurke 58–69 This selection depicts how Malcolm X became a national leader of anti-racist protesting when he advocated for Johnson X Hinton after a brutal police assault.
      “Information Wars” Race Baiter: How the Media Wields Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation Eric Deggans 41–63 This selection examines how conservative political media represents race and racism on their platforms. In doing so, it stresses the importance of listening to and reading perspectives that challenge one’s held values.
      “The Trouble with Race” The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality Walter Benn-Michaels 21–49 This selection challenges the view that a clear definition of race exists and makes the case that the category of race does not tell us very much about who we are or how we should interact with one another.
      “Article I: Our Wretchedness in Consequence of Slavery” David Walker’s Appeal: To the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America David Walker 7–18 This selection appears in a pamphlet written in 1829 to excoriate the deep-seated racism that defines slavery in the US and across the world.
      “Old Poison, New Bottles” Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America Ari Berman 245–285 This selection examines how the election of President Barack Obama spurred political efforts to revise The Voting Rights Act and, thus, to extend the history of racism in the US.
      “The Counterrevolution (II)” Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America Ari Berman 207–244 This selection examines how the systematic rejection of registered black votes in the 2000 presidential election spurred civil rights activists to seek better enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.
      “After Shelby” Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America Ari Berman 286–314 This selection reflects on the activist efforts of civil rights leaders after the Supreme Court determined that Section IV(b) of the Voter Registration Act was unconstitutional. This section established the formula that required states and local governments with histories of racial discrimination to gain federal clearance for any revision to voting law.
      “The In-Betweens: On Asian-Americanness” We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation Jeff Chang 137–157 This selection reflects on how one becomes “Asian-American” and, thus, subject to racial discrimination. It uses the term in-betweenness to describe how Asian-American men and women are treated as neither white nor non-white and advocates a form of racial justice that demands equity for all.
      “Chapter 5” Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton with Erin Torneo 75–93 This selection reflects on how it feels to be falsely accused of sexual assault because you fit a specific racial profile. In doing so, it exposes how the US legal system is designed to target black men and women as criminals.

      New Additions 2018

      “The Art of Running” On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City Alice Goffman 23–53 This selection examines the strategies that young black men have developed to avoid the police and the court system. In doing so, it exposes how concentrated police surveillance in poor black communities prevents its inhabitants from receiving basic human rights.
      “The Forgotten Ghetto” Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea Mitchell Duneier 217–237 This selection examines the evolution of black ghettos throughout US history in order to assess the effects of race relations and poverty in contemporary American culture.
      “The Weight of Others” Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City Richard Sennett 121–143 This selection examines the ethical stakes of defining difference in terms of alien, brother, and neighbor. In doing so, it considers how the organization of public and private spaces produces a complicated mix of emotions.
      “What Would Martin Luther King, Jr., Say?: Stop and Search, 1995” Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America James Forman, Jr. 185–215 This selection examines the negative impact that stop-and-search police tactics have on black communities living in Washington D.C. In recounting the history of these practices, it demonstrates that from a legal perspective, that things could have been otherwise.
      “The Reach of Our Mercy, 2014–2016” Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America James Forman, Jr. 217–239 This selection discusses the powerful effect that the war on drugs has had on black communities. It discusses the how modest reforms to the legal system that are based on accountability, mercy, and forgiveness might counteract the mass incarceration of black men and women.
      “Demographobia: Racial Fears and Colorized Futures” Who We Be: The Colorization of America Jeff Chang 241–255 This selection examines how the population growth of underrepresented racial groups in the US transforms how public spaces, public politics, and public culture are perceived. Its argument is organized around the term demographobia, or the irrational fear of changing racial demographics.
      “Dis/Union: The Paradox of the Post-Racial Moment” Who We Be: The Colorization of America Jeff Chang 273–289 This selection considers the challenges of writing about and discussing race and racism following the election of President Barack Obama. It charts the tensions that underrepresented racial groups experience in a “post-racial” moment defined by increased segregation.
      “Fair and Lovely” One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter Scaachi Koul 53–75 This selection examines the insidious ways that racism affects Indian women who are not considered to have fair enough skin.
      “Police! Police!” City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp Ben Rawlence 162–173 This selection chronicles how inhabitants of the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya experienced life in the aftermath of a major bombing spree in 2012. It shows with heart-rending clarity how competing political forces define the way that communities feel about spaces they are forced to inhabit.
      “Crackdown!” City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp Ben Rawlence 225–230 This selection chronicles how it feels to be an unwanted refugee in Nairobi, Kenya. It lays bare the consequences using governmental force to organize and manage public spaces.
      “Relations” Notes from No Man’s Land Eula Biss 15–35 This selection explores the deep-seated history of racism in the US by examining the impact that white and black dolls have on perceptions of beauty.
      “When They Call You a Terrorist” When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele 243–253 This selection reflects on the challenges that black activists will face in the wake of President Donald Trump’s election. In doing so, it charts the restorative practices that the “Black Lives Matter” movement will pursue in the future.
      “What Is White Privilege?” Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race Reni Eddo-Lodge 85–116 This selection examines the complexities of white privilege by tracking how whiteness circulates in the popular media. At every point, it shows how difficult it can be to have a conversation about race in the contemporary historical moment.
      “It Begins Like This” Real American Julie Lythcott-Haims 3–7 This selection reflects on the experience of being biracial in the US and, thus, being viewed by many as not a real American.
      “Call to Action” In the Country We Love: My Family Divided Diane Guerrero with Michelle Burford 237–247 This selection presents methods for immigration reform in the US that support rather than exploit undocumented families.

      New Additions 2018

      Excerpt Full Title Author(s) and/or Editor(s) Pages Synopsis
      “The Art of Running” On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City Alice Goffman 23–53 This selection examines the strategies that young black men have developed to avoid the police and the court system. In doing so, it exposes how concentrated police surveillance in poor black communities prevents its inhabitants from receiving basic human rights.
      “The Forgotten Ghetto” Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea Mitchell Duneier 217–237 This selection examines the evolution of black ghettos throughout US history in order to assess the effects of race relations and poverty in contemporary American culture.
      “The Weight of Others” Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City Richard Sennett 121–143 This selection examines the ethical stakes of defining difference in terms of alien, brother, and neighbor. In doing so, it considers how the organization of public and private spaces produces a complicated mix of emotions.
      “What Would Martin Luther King, Jr., Say?: Stop and Search, 1995” Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America James Forman, Jr. 185–215 This selection examines the negative impact that stop-and-search police tactics have on black communities living in Washington D.C. In recounting the history of these practices, it demonstrates that from a legal perspective, that things could have been otherwise.
      “The Reach of Our Mercy, 2014–2016” Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America James Forman, Jr. 217–239 This selection discusses the powerful effect that the war on drugs has had on black communities. It discusses the how modest reforms to the legal system that are based on accountability, mercy, and forgiveness might counteract the mass incarceration of black men and women.
      “Demographobia: Racial Fears and Colorized Futures” Who We Be: The Colorization of America Jeff Chang 241–255 This selection examines how the population growth of underrepresented racial groups in the US transforms how public spaces, public politics, and public culture are perceived. Its argument is organized around the term demographobia, or the irrational fear of changing racial demographics.
      “Dis/Union: The Paradox of the Post-Racial Moment” Who We Be: The Colorization of America Jeff Chang 273–289 This selection considers the challenges of writing about and discussing race and racism following the election of President Barack Obama. It charts the tensions that underrepresented racial groups experience in a “post-racial” moment defined by increased segregation.
      “Fair and Lovely” One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter Scaachi Koul 53–75 This selection examines the insidious ways that racism affects Indian women who are not considered to have fair enough skin.
      “Police! Police!” City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp Ben Rawlence 162–173 This selection chronicles how inhabitants of the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya experienced life in the aftermath of a major bombing spree in 2012. It shows with heart-rending clarity how competing political forces define the way that communities feel about spaces they are forced to inhabit.
      “Crackdown!” City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp Ben Rawlence 225–230 This selection chronicles how it feels to be an unwanted refugee in Nairobi, Kenya. It lays bare the consequences using governmental force to organize and manage public spaces.
      “Relations” Notes from No Man’s Land Eula Biss 15–35 This selection explores the deep-seated history of racism in the US by examining the impact that white and black dolls have on perceptions of beauty.
      “When They Call You a Terrorist” When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele 243–253 This selection reflects on the challenges that black activists will face in the wake of President Donald Trump’s election. In doing so, it charts the restorative practices that the “Black Lives Matter” movement will pursue in the future.
      “What Is White Privilege?” Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race Reni Eddo-Lodge 85–116 This selection examines the complexities of white privilege by tracking how whiteness circulates in the popular media. At every point, it shows how difficult it can be to have a conversation about race in the contemporary historical moment.
      “It Begins Like This” Real American Julie Lythcott-Haims 3–7 This selection reflects on the experience of being biracial in the US and, thus, being viewed by many as not a real American.
      “Call to Action” In the Country We Love: My Family Divided Diane Guerrero with Michelle Burford 237–247 This selection presents methods for immigration reform in the US that support rather than exploit undocumented families.

    • Excerpt Full Title Author(s) and/or Editor(s) Pages Synopsis
      “At a Shelter (After Katrina)” Pulphead: Essays John Jeremiah Sullivan 79–88 This selection reflects on the difficulty of maintaining hope about the future in light of the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina.
      “The Lonely City” The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone Olivia Laing 3–8 This selection examines how highly populated urban cities produce a unique sense of loneliness. It defines loneliness not as physical solitude, but as the absence of meaningful connection with others.
      “Coerced Communities” KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps Nikolaus Wachsmann 499–512 This selection examines how inmates of Nazi concentration camps created community networks in order to survive. In doing so, it also shows how fragile those bonds were in the face of torture and terror.
      “The City Has Always Been a Happiness Project” Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design Charles Montgomery 17–43 This selection argues that the history of urban architecture has been informed by the desire to produce happy citizens. In light of this history, it proposes a series of principles for designing happy cities in the future.
      “Autism as a Design Principle: Gambling” The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction Matthew B. Crawford 89–112 This selection examines the effects of “affective capitalism,” which creates experiences around objects and public spaces that exploit the human desire for agency. Its organizing case study is the gaming systems held in public casinos.
      “Space Invaders Burglar’s Guide to the City Geoff Manaugh 3–32 This selection argues that we can develop a stronger sense of spatial awareness by learning to think like burglars.
      “Hotels” White Lies: Race and the Myths of Whiteness Maurice Berger 193–195 This selection examines how hotels in Washington D.C. and Baltimore reflect and produce racial ambivalence.
      “Los Angeles Plays Itself” by Dayna Tortorici City by City: Dispatches from the American Metropolis Keith Gessen and Stephen Squibb 16–28 This selection reflects on what it feels like to live in Los Angeles by focusing on several of its most notorious characteristics: traffic, crime, film, and self-improvement.
      “Fear and Aggression in Palm Coast” by Elias Rodriques City by City: Dispatches from the American Metropolis Keith Gessen and Stephen Squibb 309–315 This selection reflects on what it is like to live in Palm Coast, Florida as a young black man. In doing so, it explores how racial fear can turn into aggression and violence.
      “Tampa” The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America George Packer 190–208 This selection traces how the US financial crisis of 2009 affected the city of Tampa, Florida. Likening the rapid economic growth and subsequent crash to a Ponzi scheme, it exposes what it feels like to be the subject of irresponsible economic leadership.
      “What If?: Niagara Falls, Canada” Utopia Drive: A Road Trip through America’s Most Radial Idea Erik Reece 323–340 This selection encourages US citizens to create utopian public spaces that counteract current political and economic systems.
      “The Inner World” American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center William Langewiesche 1–13 This selection reflects on what it was like to live in Manhattan in the aftermath of 9/11. It focuses specifically on how the city cleaned up the ruins of the World Trade Center.
      “The Dance of the Dinosaurs” American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center William Langewiesche 145–154 This selection reflects on the emotional tension between groups charged with cleaning up and protecting Manhattan in the aftermath of 9/11.

      New Additions 2018

      “A Nazi Deception” Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea Mitchell Duneier 3–25 This selection offers a wide-ranging historical account of how ghettos have evolved over time. In doing so, it provides a vivid account of how forced segregation is born from racial fear.
      “My Home Is New Orleans” by Mike Miller This I Believe II: More Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women Jay Allison and Dan Gediman with John Gregory and Viki Merrick 164–166 This selection describes the emotional effects of leaving and returning to New Orleans after the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina. It stresses how decisions to return home are born, against all common sense, from a deep-seated attachment to place.
      “A Feeling of Wildness” by David Gessner This I Believe II: More Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women Jay Allison and Dan Gediman with John Gregory and Viki Merrick 88–90 This selection argues that a feeling of wildness can be attained not only when occupying spaces such as the Amazon and Mount Everest, but also in domestic spaces where our most primal selves are laid bare.
      “A Fugitive Community” On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City Alice Goffman 197–206 This selection describes how heavily policed public spaces create both a feeling of homelessness and the sense that one does not have access to basic human rights.
      “César E. Chavéz National Monument, California, and the Future” The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks Terry Tempest Williams 351–367 This selection considers the César E. Chavéz National Monument alongside the mission for more inclusive and racially diverse communities that its namesake sought. It invites readers to consider national parks as spaces that can produce empathy, understanding, and hope for the future.
      “A Dose of Enchantment” Under the Stars: How America Fell in Love with Camping Dan White 343–351 This selection considers the curative emotional effects of spending time in the wilderness, where one is able to experience a sanctuary of silence. It focuses specifically on the Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park.
      “The Weight of Others” Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City Richard Sennett 121–143 This selection examines the ethical stakes of imagining difference in terms of alien, brother, and neighbor. In doing so, it considers how the organization of public and private spaces produces a complicated of mixed emotions.
      “High-Tech Homelessness in the City of Angels” Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor Virginia Eubanks 84–126 This selection explores how it feels to be homeless in Skid Row, Los Angeles by demonstrating how the area is regulated by an algorithm-based information system that equates homelessness with criminality.
      “Demographobia: Racial Fears and Colorized Futures” Who We Be: The Colorization of America Jeff Chang 241–255 This selection examines how the population growth of underrepresented racial groups in the US transforms how public spaces, public politics, and public culture are perceived. Its argument is organized around the term demographobia, or the irrational fear of changing racial demographics.
      “Goodbye to All That” Notes from No Man’s Land Eula Biss 54–71 This selection measures the illusions of living in New York City against the lived reality and explores the complex emotions that result from negotiating over-imagined public spaces.
      “Goodbye to All That” Slouching Towards Bethlehem Joan Didion 225–238 This selection reflects on the experience of first moving to New York City, living there for eight years, and eventually leaving.
      “In the Web” Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan’s Disaster Zone” Richard Lloyd Parry 165–176 This selection considers what it is like to live in Japan knowing that a catastrophic earthquake is always on the horizon. It focuses on the mixed emotions that are born from environmental catastrophe and how communities form and deform in response to suffering and loss.
      “The Deleted City” Fallen Glory: The Lives and Deaths of History’s Greatest Buildings James Crawford 519–534 This selection explores the rise and fall of Geocities, a software platform designed to help internet users develop websites around physical locations they would like to inhabit. In doing so, it explores what it felt like to live in the earliest versions of the internet.
      “Los Angeles Notebook” Slouching Towards Bethlehem Joan Didion 217–224 This selection reflects on the curious experience of living in Los Angeles, California.

    • “Time and Distance Overcome” Notes from No Man’s Land Eula Biss 3–11 This selection examines the history of telephone polls by linking them to the practice of lynching black men and women.
      “The Jig, the Nudge, and Local Ecology” The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction Matthew B. Crawford 31–44 This selection encourages an ecological view of human agency by stressing how material objects facilitate the creation and maintenance of social environments.
      “Cyberkinetics” The Brain Electric: The Dramatic High-Tech Race to Merge Minds and Machines Malcolm Gay 159–184 This selection examines cutting-edge cyberkinetic research that enables quadri- and paraplegic men and women to control prosthetic limbs with neural implants.
      “Toy Children” My Misspent Youth: Essays Meghan Daum 85–89 This selection reflects on how dolls shape the perception of young girls during childhood.
      “Screen Culture” The Artificial Ape: How Technology Changed the Course of Human Evolution Timothy Taylor 171–190 This selection examines how objects come to represent cultural values and organize social relationships. In doing so, it reflects on the human capacity to generate abstract ideas from concrete objects and, thus, create increasingly sophisticated technologies.
      “A Question of Design” Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make William McDonough and Michael Braungart 17–44 This selection examines how the industrial revolution created a one-size-fits-all economy organized by products that are incompatible with human and ecological health.
      “Tools of the Trade” A Burglar’s Guide to the City Geoff Manaugh 139–192 This selection examines the tools that burglars use to gain access to protected architectural spaces. In doing so, it shows how communities form around the practice of picking locks for non-criminal purposes.
      “Ray Gun Ready” Ten Billion Tomorrows: How Science Fiction Technology Became Reality and Shapes the Future Brian Clegg 101–116 This selection reflects on historical efforts to engineer a ray gun. In doing so, it shows how a technology can travel across time, space, and scientific domains.
      “Infernal Machines” Listen to This Alex Ross 55–68 This selection considers how digital recording technologies have changed the way that we experience, produce, consume, and share music.
      “If Only Pizza Didn’t Come on Paper Plates” No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet and the Discoveries He Makes about Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process Colin Beavan 51–72 This selection addresses the environmental dangers posed by disposable bags, plates, and utensils and reflects on what it would take to change our manufacturing and distribution system.
      “Lost in the Shuffle” Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past Simon Reynolds 86–128 This selection reflects on what it means to collect “old” objects such as audio recordings. In doing so, it considers how the nature of record collection is changing as music is distributed online.
      “The Forger” The Art of the Con: The Most Notorious Fakes, Frauds, and Forgeries in the Art World Anthony M. Amore 15–36 This selection considers what forgers need to know about the historical objects they are re-creating in order to successfully deceive the public.
      “Auto-Tune Gives You a Better Me” Uproot: Travels in Twenty-First-Century Music and Digital Culture” Jace Clayton 26–57 This selection examines how auto-tune technologies shape how music is produced and consumed in different cultures across the world.

      New Additions 2018

      “Hero of Camping: The S’more” Under the Stars: How America Fell in Love with Camping Dan White 120–125 This selection tells the history of s’mores. It focuses on the evolution of each individual component and explains how, when placed together, they become a staple of camping.
      “The Bond of Making” Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City Richard Sennett 242–263 This selection examines architectural co-production, or the practice of establishing open-ended structures that allow future inhabitants to cooperatively determine how such structures ought to be finished and used.
      “The Bestseller-ometer, or, How Text Mining Might Change Publishing” The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel Jodie Archer and Matthew L. Jockers 1–31 This selection offers an introduction to distant reading methods by explaining how algorithms can successful predict when a novel will become a worldwide bestseller.
      “The Mirrorwall” Fallen Glory: The Lives and Deaths of History’s Greatest Buildings James Crawford 467–490 This selection examines the history of the Berlin Wall and examines the curious effects its creation and destruction had on community formation.
      “What Will Survive of Us” Otherwise Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and Reviews Geoff Dyer 319–324 This selection examines how activist communities raise awareness about traffic safety by installing memorials of broken white bikes in public spaces.

    • “Extinction: Charlie Veron, Darwin of the Coral” The Reef: A Passionate History: The Great Barrier Reef from Captain Cook to Climate Change Iain McCalman 249–273 This selection discusses the research of Charlie Veron, a “nature-loving naturalist” who has dedicated his life to studying the effects of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef.
      “The Signs” The Whale and the Supercomputer: On the Northern Front of Climate Change Charles Wohlforth 169–200 This selection reflects on the challenge of getting branches of government to respond to climate change. It focuses specifically of the benefits on scientific knowledge created from firsthand pattern recognition.
      “When Rachel Carson Meets Al Gore” The Green and the Black: The Conplete Story of the Shale Revolution, the Fight over Fracking, and the Future of Energy Gary Sernovitz 163–181 This selection, written by an oil-and-gas industry insider, discusses the dangers and benefits of shale-based energy production and consumption (e.g., fracking).
      “The Forest and the Trees” The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History Elizabeth Kolbert 148–172 This selection examines how global warming has affected tropical ecosystems and considers what will happen if they fail to adapt to climate change.
      “The Story in the Snows” Thin Ice: Unlocking the Secrets of Climate in the World’s Highest Mountains Mark Bowen 376–395 This selection examines climate change over the course of world history, focusing specifically on how human civilizations have adapted to rising temperatures. It does so, primarily, by analyzing the data collected from ice cores, which exist in mountain ice caps across the world.
      “Maybe We Should Call It Something Scarier” The Bill McKibben Reader: Pieces from an Active Life Bill McKibben 71–73 This selection argues that the metaphors we use to describe global warming has a fundamental effect on how seriously we take the issue.
      “Life Upcycles” The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability—Designing for Abundance William McDonough and Michael Braungart 25–49 This selection identifies the limits of how we discuss preventing climate change and emphasizes the importance of maximizing the use of natural resources. In doing so, it claims that environmental regulations are better understood as opportunities for redesigning products and policies.
      “Closing the Gap: Antarctica as a Global Solution” Lost Antarctica: Adventures in a Disappearing Land James McClintock 197–217 This selection examines the impact climate change has had on the ecosystems in Antarctica and speculates on why it is so difficult for us to address the environmental catastrophe we have created.
      “The Widening Gyre” The Melting World: A Journey Across America’s Vanishing Glaciers Christopher White 231–258 This selection considers the worldwide effects of climate change, focusing specifically on the ecological consequences of rapidly melting glaciers.
      “Past or Future?” Tipping Point for Planet Earth: How Close Are We to the Edge? Anthony D. Barnosky and Elizabeth A. Hadley 9–27 This selection defines the factors that constitute an environmental “tipping point” and explains environmental catastrophe in terms of increased human violence.
      “Environment and Gender” Created Equal: Voices on Women’s Rights Anna Horsbrugh-Porter 134–138 This selection examines the intimate connection between climate change and women living in third-world countries. Specifically, it tracks how the degradation of impoverished women corresponds to the degradation of our environment.
      “Tomorrow’s Agriculture” The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century Dr. Dickson Despommier 107–131 This selection examines how urban farming can address the rapid loss of fertile land that has been created by climate change. It also considers how urban farming can increase food production, reduce pollution, and preserve water.
      “205 Easy Ways to Save the Earth” Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—And How It Can Renew America Thomas L. Friedman 249–262 This selection argues that too much time and energy is invested in making people aware of climate change, when we should be investing in technological solutions that stop the problem. In doing so, it offers a list of viable solutions and speculates on the political challenges of trying to implement them.
      “Life on the No Longer Permanent Permafrost” Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map Cleo Paskal 65–84 This selection examines how climate change is radically altering the ecosystem of the Arctic. It focuses specifically on the devastating effects of its thawing permafrost.
      “Today’s Weather: Intolerable with Periods of Inhabitable” Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map Cleo Paskal 129–149 This selection examines how the combination of poor environmental management and climate change devastates otherwise fertile ecosystems. It focuses specifically on how such devastation increases the suffering of human populations.
      “Missing the Water for the Trees: How Plants Make Water” Water in Plain Sight: Hope for a Thirsty World Judith D. Schwartz 91–119 This selection examines how rainforests control temperature and increase water sufficiency across continents. In doing so, it demonstrates the dangerous environmental effects of deforestation.

      New Additions 2018

      “The Rational Case for Panic” Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future Paul Mason 245–262 This selection examines the close relationship between environmental and economic catastrophe and explains how current economic practices are ill-suited to solve the most pressing problems that humanity faces.
      “Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist” Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays Paul Kingsnorth 61–82 This selection examines how environmentalism has shifted from a commitment to the preservation of wild spaces to the creation of sustainable environments. It admonishes readers to ditch the political debates and get back to nature.
      “Mother Nature as Political Mentor Thank You For Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations Thomas L. Friedman 298–336

      Synopsis: This selection examines how our political systems should be as adaptable and resilient as nature has proven to be. It argues climate change is not just environmental, but technological and economic, as well.

    • “Cognitive Ease” Thinking, Fast and Slow Daniel Kahneman 59–70 This selection examines the role that cognitive ease and cognitive strain play in shaping perception and forming judgments. It offers practical advice for producing more persuasive messages.
      “Cool on the Brain” Cool: How the Brain’s Hidden Quest for Cool Drives Our Economy and Shapes Our World Steven Quartz and Anette Asp 60–87 This selection examines how brains assign social value to consumer products. It uses the idea of “coolness” to draw its conclusions.
      “Frozen Mirrors” The Brain Electric: The Dramatic High-Tech Race to Merge Minds and Machines Malcolm Gay 215–222 This selection examines cutting-edge research on mirror neurons, which claims that physical interaction with the environment is crucial to forming perception and understanding.
      “Everything’s an Inference” Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking Richard E. Nisbett 17–33 This selection examines the role that inference plays in developing perception, forming judgments, and accepting beliefs.
      “A Mind’s Voyage Around the Real World” Beyond Boundaries: The New Neuroscience of Connecting Brains with Machines—And How It Will Change Our Lives Miguel Nicolelis 178–194 This selection examines whether brain activity can extend beyond the limits of human and animal bodies. Specifically, it discusses how neuroscientists synced the brain of a primate with a robot stationed on the other side of the world.
      “The Mind in the Machine” Big Brain: The Origins and Future of Human Intelligence Gary Lynch and Richard Granger 17–32 This selection offers an introduction to the field of artificial intelligence by discussing its most basic problems: how to define mental abilities, how to program machine learning capabilities, and how to create complex circuit architectures that mirror human brains.
      “Pheromones, Language, Mirrors” Breakpoint: Why the Web Will Implode, Search Will Be Obsolete, and Everything Else You Need to Know about Technology Jeff Stibel 135–157 This selection examines how cognitive linguists and neuroscientists are redefining the way digital technology processes and, thus, alters the process of language understanding, translation, and acquisition.
      “Caching: Forget About It” Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths 84–104 This selection examines the role that caching algorithms play in determining what how to prioritize and access memory.
      “Overfitting, When to Think Less” Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths 149–168 This selection examines how we can use algorithms to simplify complexity and guard against overfitting (the unnecessary use of complicated models to influence decision-making).
      “Marketing to the Mind” The Neuro Revolution: How Brain Science Is Changing Our World Zack Lynch with Byron Laursen 47–73 This selection examines how brain-imaging research is helping businesses market their products to consumers more effectively. In doing so, it explains how consumers benefit from the regulation of impulse spending, illogical spending patterns, and reckless stock trading practices.
      “The Witness on Your Shoulders” The Neuro Revolution: How Brain Science Is Changing Our World Zack Lynch with Byron Laursen 19–46 This selection examines new research in neurolaw, a field of study that examines relevant connections between neuroscience and legal studies. It outlines the benefits of truth-detecting technologies and speculates on how they will be incorporated into our legal system.
      “May the Force Be with You: The Illusion of Choice” Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about Our Everyday Deceptions Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde with Sandra Blakeslee 160–187 This selection examines what magicians have to teach us about how our brains work. It focuses specifically on whether human beings have free will.
      “See Me If You Can” Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature Alva Noë 93–112 This selection considers whether art can be studied from a neuroscientific perspective. In raising this question, it claims that art encourages new ways of thinking, talking, and feeling.
      “Just Don’t Kill the Patient” Waking the Spirit: A Musician’s Journey Healing Body, Mind, and Soul Andrew Schulman 167–188 This selection examines how the proper selection of music can aid or impede medical procedures and the recovery process of patients.

      New Additions 2018

      “History’s Rigid, Rocky, and Goofy Way of Thinking about Consciousness” The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind Michael S. Gazzaniga 11–28 This selection provides a compelling introduction to the history of human consciousness.
      “Making Brains One Module at a Time” The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind Michael S. Gazzaniga 83–106 This selection examines the modular character of the human brain. It emphasizes the non-special character of modular brain functioning by comparing humans to animals and recommends that we understand consciousness in terms of the interaction between layered architectures.
      “The Chemistry of Seduction” The Hungry Brain: Outsmarting the Instincts That Make Us Overeat Stephan J Guyenet, PhD 41–68 This selection explains the brain science of food consumption and explores ways to recalibrate the tendency to overeat.
      “Does Evidence Change Beliefs? (Priors)” The Influential Mind: The Power of Confirmation and the Weakness of Data Tali Sharot 11–34 This selection explores how our brains interact with facts in order to form judgments and justify beliefs.

    • “Do You See What I Hear?” The Neuro Revolution: How Brain Science Is Changing Our World Zack Lynch with Byron Laursen 114–132 This selection describes how emerging neuroscientific researchers are investigating synesthesia. In doing so, it considers the possibility that neurotechnologies will soon transform music into visual art.
      “Let Me Concentrate!: Repetition” Every Song Ever: Twenty Ways to Listen in an Age of Musical Plenty Ben Ratliff 13–24 This selection examines how repetition in music heightens our awareness of variation in the world around us.
      “Kissing Bottles and Talking to Angels” Nothing Feels Good: Punk rock, Teenagers, and Emo Andy Greenwald 17–33 This reflects on the history of emo music in the US. It focuses on how its characteristic sadness helps listeners cope with the triviality of their youth.
      “The Art of Fear: Music in Stalin’s Russia” The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century” Alex Ross 235–283 This selection examines how Russian composers were affected by the totalitarian imperatives that defined communist Russia under Stalin.
      “From the New World” Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music Greg Milner 50–73 This selection considers how different sound recording technologies affect the way we experience music and film.
      “Technical Transcendence” Reinventing Bach Paul Elie 167–238 This selection chronicles how composers and musicians reinvented Johann Sebastian Bach’s music in response to the devastation and aftermath of World War II. In doing so, it examines how sound recording technologies changed the way audiences listened to and identified with classical music.
      “Chacona, Lamento, Walking Blues” Listen to This Alex Ross 22–54 This selection examines how music can produce and represent complex human emotions. It focuses specifically on the feelings of sorrow and lament.
      “The Music of Poetry, the Poetry of Music” Waking the Spirit: A Musician’s Journey Healing Body, Mind, and Soul Andrew Schulman 191–203 This selection examines how music possesses the capacity to heal personal and catastrophic trauma.
      “Auto-Tune Gives You a Better Me” Uproot: Travels in Twenty-First-Century Music and Digital Culture” Jace Clayton 26–57 This selection examines how auto-tune technologies shape the way that music is produced and consumed in different cultures across the world.
      “Digitization: The Immaterial World” Love for Sale: Pop Music in America David Hajdu 211–236 This selection examines how the digitization of music has affected the way that consumers conceptualize music. It focuses specifically on ownership, auto-tune, and electronic music genres.
      “Air Guitar Styles” Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature Alva Noë 168–181 This selection argues that pop music does not require close listening and thereby complicates how we typically think about musical art. Pop music, rather, is an art of personal style that is more about the personality of the musician than the music he or she creates.

      New Additions 2018

      “Some Things I Cannot Unhear” Too Much and Not the Mood Durga Chew-Bose 197–204 This selection explores how memories, both personal and public, are intimately connected to sound.

    • “Initiation” White Lies: Race and the Myths of Whiteness Maurice Berger 122–128 This selection reflects on how racism was a fundamental component of the author’s college education.
      “The Faculty/Student Nonaggression Pact” Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education Murray Sperber 112–121 This selection examines how the low quality undergraduate education at large public universities affects how students experience college. It focuses specifically on the phenomenon of grade inflation.
      “Why College Costs So Much” Higher Education?: How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids—And What We Can Do about It Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus 113–131 This selection examines why college has become so expensive and projects why costs will continue to rise in the future.
      “Crisis of Affordability” College Disrupted: The Great Unbundling of Higher Education Ryan Craig 17–34 This selection examines the causes and effects of increased college tuition.
      “Preparing for the Great Unbundling” College Disrupted: The Great Unbundling of Higher Education Ryan Craig 117–143 This selection examines how American universities can create a relevant curriculum that maximizes students’ investments in the 21st century.
      “Institutions and Frozen Thought” The Anti-Education Era: Creating Smarter Students through Digital Learning James Paul Gee 85–93 This selection examines how educational institutions, in their effort to solve complex problems, freeze thinking in unproductive ways. Specifically, it considers how the local goals of a professor, committee, or department often conflict with a university’s larger mission, which is to provide high quality education for students.
      “The Negro Problem” The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy Nicholas Lemann 155–165 This selection examines relationship between merit and race in higher education. It focuses specifically on the effects of affirmative action for African American professors and students.
      “An Important Event” by Sophie Karasek We Believe You: Survivors of Campus Sexual Assault Speak Out Annie E. Clark and Andrea L. Pino 292–295 This selection is the public address delivered by Sofie Karasek who filed federal grievances against the University of California at Berkeley for failing to address reports of sexual harassment and sexual assault on campus.
      “Talking the Talk: Rhetoric and Reality for Students of Color” by Heather D. Washington Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk Richard H. Hersh and John Merrow 185–193 This selection examines whether students of color are, in fact, given equal access in higher education. It focuses specifically on the disparity between what universities say about racial equity and what they actually do to achieve it.
      “Six Challenges to the American University” by Vartan Gregorian Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk Richard H. Hersh and John Merrow 77–96 This selection outlines six challenges that universities need to address if they hope to preserve a democratic republic. These challenges include: (a) the information glut; (b) the curriculum crisis; (c) the commercialization of research; (d) the evolution of faculty positions; (e) the quality of education; and (f) distance and e-learning.

      New Additions 2018

      “Institutionalized” Change Comes to Dinner: How Vertical Farmers, Urban Growers, and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How America Eats Katherine Gustafson 50–64 This selection examines how universities are partnering with local farmers to establish a sustainable food economy for their students and faculty.
      “Turning AI into IA” Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations Thomas L. Friedman 203–243 This selection profiles a number of global companies that are innovating in response to automated labor. In doing so, it introduces the concept of intelligent assistance to explain how continuing education and professional development are changing in light of accelerated technological innovation.
      “Dehumanized: On the Selling (Out) of American Education, and What It Costs Us” Essays from the Nick of Time: Reflections and Refutations Mark Slouka 157–179 This selection critiques the view that education is valuable when it increases economic viability. In doing so, it makes a case for humanities-based learning.
      “Not for Me” by Whitney Mixter Freshman Year of Life: Essays that Tell the Truth about Work, Home, and Love after College The MindSumo community 45–48 This selection reflects on the challenges of determining what to do after college graduation.
      “Arguing Affirmative Action” Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? Michael J. Sandel 167–183 This selection presents different ways of interpreting the value of affirmative action to higher education.
      “Lonely at Amherst” The Perils of “Privilege”: Why Injustice Can’t Be Solved by Accusing Others of Advantage Phoebe Maltz Bovy 77–121 This selection examines how student protests in higher education are, in part, created by the cultural logics of privilege.
      “Average Is Over” That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum 142–166 This selection examines how college students can prepare themselves for a global economy by becoming more creative thinkers and producers.
      “The Limits of the ‘College Solution’” Reskilling America: Learning to Labor in the Twenty-First Century Katherine S. Newman and Hella Winston 13–26 This selection examines whether the increasing gap between higher and lower social classes can be solved by asking all college students to imagine education as “cultivating the mind.” In doing so, it demonstrates that a technical education is often a better investment in the current market conditions.

    • “Women Refugees” Created Equal: Voices on Women’s Rights Anna Horsbrugh-Porter 145–151 This selection discusses the dangers that women and children face as war refugees.
      “The Reckoning” America’s War Machine: Vested Interests, Endless Conflicts James McCartney with Molly Sinclair McCartney 187–201 This selection examines the challenges associated with reducing military spending in the US. In doing so, it outlines, in economic terms, what Americans forfeit domestically as a result of increasing military debt.
      “Sierra Leone: Girls” War Is Not Over When It’s Over: Women Speak Out from the Ruins of War Ann Jones 92–130 This selection examines the sexual assault of young girls in Sierra Leone. It focuses on how this accepted practice compromises their ability to receive education.
      “Chapter 10” A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier Ishmael Beah 69–88 This selection reflects on the physical, psychological, and emotional challenges of surviving in war-torn Sierra Leone.
      “Sleeping with the Taliban” After We Kill You, We Will Welcome You Back as Guests: Unembedded in Afghanistan Ted Rall 179–198 This selection provides a visual account of how the US’s military involvement with Afghanistan affected its citizens. It focuses specifically on how the country’s economy and security have eroded since the US began pulling troops from the region.
      “Between Scylla and Charybdis: Coming Home” No Man’s Land: Preparing for War and Peace in Post-9/11 America Elizabeth D. Samet 29–82 This selection reflects on the difficulties that soldiers experience after they come home from war. It draws from classical Greek literature and contemporary media to observe how one’s sense of time and stability change after returning from war.
      “Chapter 1” Thank You for Your Service David Finkel 7–21 This selection describes the mental and physical costs that war veterans experience after they have returned from service.
      “June 30, 2007” The Good Soldiers David Finkel 68–89 This selection provides a one-month snapshot of a US Army battalion serving during the 2007 “surge” in Iraq.
      “Legalizing Torture” A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror Alfred McCoy 210–225 This selection questions the moral and legal consequences of allowing torture practices in US anti-terror campaigns. In doing so, it asserts that torture, more than any other military practice, compromises the international reputation of Americans.
      “No One Is Safe from This” No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes Anand Gopal 101–117 This selection examines the collateral damage caused by the international conflict between the US armed forces and the Taliban. It focuses specifically on the lives of tribesmen and women living in the Maiwand district in Afghanistan.
      “Drones, Baby, Drones!” Kill Chain: The Rise of High-Tech Assassins Andrew Cockburn 211–243 This selection examines how the CIA’s use of drone warfare affects the lives of citizens in the Middle East and South Asia. It challenges the claim that drones are a precise killing technology.
      “War” Enough Said: What’s Gone Wrong with the Language of Politics Mark Thompson 199–234 This selection argues that because we lack an adequate vocabulary for defining the terrors of modern war, we become susceptible to governmental cases for entering into it.
      “Chapter 5” We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed Philip Gourevitch 63–74 This selection chronicles the experiences of Tutsi minorities during the Rwandan genocide. In doing so, it exposes the emotional costs of living as a refugee.
      “Chapter 10” We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed Philip Gourevitch 132–144 This describes how Rwandan citizens sought to prevent the massive genocide taking place in their country. In doing so, it exposes how genocide was able to occur in the first place.
      “Chapter 16” We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed Philip Gourevitch 242–255 This selection describes how Hutu leaders were brought to justice after they had been removed from power.

      New Additions 2018

      “In Bed with the Enemy” City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp Ben Rawlence 213–221 This selection depicts the heart-rending consequences of the Somali-Kenyan conflict in 2012, focusing specifically on the traumatic experiences of the Somalis in the Dadaab refugee camp.
      “Soapbox” Eat the Apple Matt Young 237–241 This selection stages a dialogue between a post-basic training-self and a war veteran–self to expose the long-term consequences of serving in a war.

    • “The Case for Food and Agriculture Innovation” Unnaturally Delicious: How Science and Technology Are Serving Up Super Foods to Save the World Jayson Lusk 189–212 This selection argues for the advancement of technological development in agricultural research. It argues that political arguments against technology tend to overlook the massive benefits of earlier inventions.
      “On Opening Day, Fields of Dreams” Dinner at the New Gene Café: How Genetic Engineering Is Changing What We Eat, How We Live, and the Global Politics of Food Bill Lambrecht 3–20 This selection provides a short history of genetically modified food research in the US.
      “Stay Small and Stay Alive” The Meat You Eat: How Corporate Farming Has Endangered America’s Food Supply Ken Midkiff 157–173 This selection offers food consumers specific ways to support local farming through their eating and food-purchasing habits. In doing so, it touts the benefits of sustainable farming.
      “The Price of Protein” Animal Factory: The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy, and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment David Kirby 439–452 This selection considers how factory animal farming will respond to the economic, environmental, and health concerns they create.
      “The Omnivore’s Contradiction” The Modern Savage: Our Unthinking Decision to Eat Animals James McWilliams 40–69 This selection argues that purchasing animal products from local farms does not address the fact that they suffer when they are raised for slaughter. It advocates eliminating animal consumption by exhibiting empathy and learning about animal sentience.
      “Remodeling Nature” The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century Dr. Dickson Despommier 15–34 This selection introduces the benefits of vertical farming, a practice of urban food production that addresses problems associated with traditional farming such as water pollution.
      “Genetically Altered Rice” Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate Naomi Klein 87–90 This selection examines the consequences of using emotional appeals to support GMOs. It focuses on how such appeals ignore the tools we already have to solve existing social problems.

      New Additions 2018

      “Dining with Crickets” Bugged: The Insects Who Rule the World and the People Obsessed with Them David MacNeal 199–227 This selection considers how harvesting crickets, a high-nutrition food source, can address rising food production demands across the world.
      “Gulf Wild: Walmart, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the Multimillion-Dollar Idea” The Fish Market: Inside the Big-Money Battle for the Ocean and Your Dinner Plate Lee van der Voo 99–109 This selection explores the complicated relationship between environmental conservation and economic gain by examining Walmart’s investments in environmental policy-making.
      “Cultivating the Urban Jungle” Change Comes to Dinner: How Vertical Farmers, Urban Growers, and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How America Eats Katherine Gustafson 131–145 This selection examines how urban farming programs are providing low-income communities access to nutrient-rich foods and health education.
      “Framing In and Out of the Box” Change Comes to Dinner: How Vertical Farmers, Urban Growers, and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How America Eats Katherine Gustafson 200–222 This selection argues that reducing hunger across the world is not about food production, but rather the need to improve food access and distribution. It profiles a handful of companies who are trying to solve these problems.
      “A Grand Experiment” The Bill McKibben Reader: Pieces from an Active Life Bill McKibben 125–134 This selection reports on what it’s like to eat locally produced food for seven months. In doing so, it shows how one’s engagement with local spaces and communities change.
      “The Future of Food” 100 Million Years of Food: What Our Ancestors Are and Why It Matters Today Stephen Le 175–214 This selection reflects on the challenges of future food production and consumption, particularly as it relates to competing views about meat-based protein diets, eco-friendly farming practices, and GMOs.

    • Selection from “Aids and Its Metaphors” Illness as Metaphor and AIDs and Its Metaphors Susan Sontag 93–104 This selection defines metaphor and examines how it shapes attitudes toward disease.
      “Fighting Smarter, Not Harder” Good Germs, Bad Germs: Health and Survival in a Bacterial World Jessica Snyder Sachs 151–182 This selection outlines how the healthcare system can prescribe antibiotics more responsibly. In doing so, it explores new methods for bolstering immunity.
      “The Death of Cancer” The Death of Cancer: After Fifty Years on the Front Lines of Medicine, a Pioneering Oncologist Reveals Why the War on Cancer is Winnable—And How We Can Get There” Vincent DeVita, Jr., MD, and Elizabeth DeVita-Raeburn 244–284 This selection examines how our understanding of cancer has changed as a result of advances in research. It argues that very soon we will cure cancer completely.
      Selection from On Immunity: An Inoculation On Immunity: An Inoculation Eula Biss 72–76 This selection examines the history of how illness became associated with filth, germs, and pollution.
      “Things Fall Apart” Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End Atul Gawande 25–54 This selection considers how and why we age. In doing so, it describes medical advancements that make the decline toward death gradual.
      “Treatment: Candidates but No Champions” The End of Memory: A Natural History of Aging and Alzheimer’s Jay Ingram 183–200 This selection reflects on the state of Alzheimer's research, focusing specifically on the language that defines its characteristics, challenges, and treatment possibilities.
      “Cadillac Care” How We Do Harm: A Doctor Breaks Ranks about Being Sick in America Otis Webb Brawley, MD, with Paul Goldberg 29–43 This selection examines how medicine can be transformed when trust becomes the foundation of the healthcare system.
      “Bigger, Simpler Trials” Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients Ben Goldacre 223–239 This selection argues that the medical system needs to conduct large trials more consistently in order to reduce uncertainty about the most effective treatment options.
      “The Power of the Invisible” The End of Plagues: The Global Battle Against Infectious Disease” John Rhodes 5–9 This selection conceptualizes smallpox as an invisible enemy in a large city. In doing so, it recounts how this disease altered the course of world history.
      “Birth of a Killer” The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years Sonia Shah 11–33 This selection explains, in rich detail, how malaria interacts with human bodies and, thus, outlines why it is such a dangerous disease.
      “Just Don’t Kill the Patient” Waking the Spirit: A Musician’s Journey Healing Body, Mind, and Soul Andrew Schulman 167–188 This selection examines how the proper selection of music can aid or impede medical procedures and the recovery process of patients.
      “The Epidemic” The Selfishness of Others: An Essay on the Fear of Narcissism Kristin Dombek 17–30 This selection examines how Western medicine has defined personality disorders. It focuses specifically on how such definitions organize relationships via popular and social media.
      “Random Thoughts” Ordinarily Well: The Case for Antidepressants Peter D. Kramer 14–19 This selection explains the different components of a random drug trial. It offers basic definitions for the terms control condition, randomization, and blinding and argues that assumptions about the nature of an illness affect the way researchers examine it.
      “Troubled Genes” Van Gogh’s Ear Bernadette Murphy 229–235 This selection outlines how scholars throughout history have diagnosed Vincent Van Gogh’s mental illness.
      “Blame” Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond Sonia Shah 121–140 This examines the historical tension between locals and “outsiders” in the cholera epidemic. Specifically, it focuses on how scapegoating outsiders often compromises the containment of the disease.

      New Additions 2018

      “Silencing a Gene: The Future of Down Syndrome” The Gene Machine: How Genetic Technologies Are Changing the Way We Have Kids—And the Kids We Have Bonnie Rochman 101–126 This selection explores how genomic sequencing can lead to the suppression or elimination of genetic diseases such as Down syndrome. It explores the history of how Down syndrome has been described throughout history.
      “The On-Flying Things” Bugged: The Insects Who Rule the World and the People Obsessed with Them David MacNeal 77–103 This selection explores the role that bugs have played in spreading diseases throughout history.
      “You Are Not a Car: Your Body Does Not Wear Out” Cracking the Aging Code: The New Science of Growing Old—And What It Means for Staying Young Josh Mitteldorf and Dorion Sagan 35-53 This selection explores the common metaphors we use to describe the aging process and invites a deeper consideration of why our bodies work the way they do.
      “Labels” Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction Maia Szalavitz 56–71 This selection examines the labels we place on children who are not deemed “normal.” It focuses specifically on the role that such labels play in self-perception.
      “Sunrise, Sunset” Inferno: A Doctor’s Ebola Story Steven Hatch, MD 273–281 This selection reflects on how the US news media represented the Ebola and Zika outbreaks.
      “Creatureliness” The Way We Die Now Seamus O’Mahoney 254–268 This selection examines the metaphors and phrases associated with a “dignified” death.
      “Typhoid: If You Are Diseased, Don’t Deliberately Infect Other People” Get Well Soon: History’s Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them Jennifer Wright 162–178 This selection tells the story of how typhoid began to spread among wealthy Americans in the early 20th century. In doing so, it explores the metaphors that are commonly attached to the motives of sick people.
      “Swept in Malaria’s Current” The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years Sonia Shah 34–58 This selection traces the history of how malaria spread across the world. In doing so, it shows how our perception of geographic spaces is intimately tied to our understanding of how diseases spread.

    • “Should You Think Like an Economist?” Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking Richard E. Nisbett 69–83 This selection considers the benefits and pitfalls of using economic theory (e.g., cost–benefit analysis) to evaluate how and why people make certain decisions. In doing so, it reflects on how we calculate the value of human life.
      “Global Cities and Survival Circuits” by Saskia Sassen Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russel Hochschild 254–274 This selection examines how globalization has affected immigrant women. In doing so, it introduces the idea of a survival circuit, or the economic pathways created by women in order to live.
      “Globalization” Created Equal: Voices on Women’s Rights Anna Horsbrugh-Porter 138–145 This selection examines how globalization affects the working conditions of women who are often subject to exploitation and physical abuse.
      “From Babylon to Bitcoin” The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and the Blockchain Are Challenging the Global Economic Order Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey 15–40 This selection provides a historical introduction to cryptocurrencies (such as bitcoin), focusing specifically on how its developers can establish trust with consumers. In doing so, it makes the case for a non-government currency system.
      “Globalization of the Local” The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century Thomas L. Friedman 477–488 This selection considers the benefits and dangers of a global economy that seeks to preserve local cultures. It focuses specifically on the diversification of communication technologies and investment practices.
      “The Global Economy: Waiting for the Ship to Come In” Global Warring: How Environment, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map Cleo Paskal 79–84 This selection examines the role that the shipping trade plays in a global economy. It focuses specifically on how increased global tradings affects the composition of existing ecosystems.
      “Blank Is Beautiful” The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism Naomi Klein 3–25 This selection introduces the idea of disaster capitalism, an economic practice that exploits public resources in the wake of catastrophic events such as natural disasters or international wars.
      “Democracy in Shackles” Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate Naomi Klein 44–47 This selection argues that the American government supports democracy in other countries only when those countries adopt capitalist economic values.
      “In Search of a Better Sponge” The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-First Century Ryan Avent 64–77 This selection considers the future of labor as automated technologies continue to take jobs typically assigned to humans. It speculates that there will be a greater division between the haves and the have-nots, which will result in serious political conflict.
      “Improving the Lives of the Poor” Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir 167–182 This selection considers ways to improve the state of poverty both domestically and internationally. It emphasizes the need to improve existing designs rather than inventing new approaches or products.

      New Additions 2018

      “Neoliberalism Is Broken” Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future Paul Mason 3–30 This selection explains the root causes of the 2008 world financial crisis and explains why existing economic practices do not offer a hopeful future rooted in equality.
      “If You Want to Speak to a Human Being, Press 1” The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization Thomas L. Friedman 406–433 This selection outlines the ways that globalization could be compromised across the world.
      “American Dreams: America, Iran, Turkey” Notes on a Foreign Country: An American abroad in a Post-American World Suzy Hansen 215–238 This selection reflects on disparities in the US healthcare system by comparing it to healthcare systems in the Middle East.
      “Afterword” Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India Sujatha Gidla 295–306 This selection discusses the emotional and physical impact of being born in an “untouchable” slum in India. It focuses specifically on the effects of starvation and how radical activist groups respond to the economic disparities between classes.
      “In Bed with the Enemy” City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp Ben Rawlence 213–221 This chapter depicts the heart-rending consequences of the Somali-Kenyan conflict in 2012, focusing specifically on the traumatic experiences of the Somalis in the Dadaab refugee camp.
      “The Call” Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China Evan Osnos 21–33 This selection examines the tensions between China’s competing economic value systems in order to explain how its politics, technologies, and geographies are evolving over time.
      “The Lexus and the Olive Tree” The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization Thomas L. Friedman 29–43 This selection examines the tensions between new technological developments and time-worn cultural battlegrounds. It advocates striking a balance between these tensions in order to create healthy societies across the world.
      “How Susie Bayer’s T-Shirt Ended Up on Yusef Mama’s Back” Interesting Times: Writings from a Turbulent Decade George Packer 189–200 This selection examines how the disposability of the US’s clothing economy affects African countries.
      “The Images in Our Heads” Interesting Times: Writings from a Turbulent Decade George Packer 201–203 This selection casts a critical eye toward the images that American media exports to other countries.
      “Gangsta War” Interesting Times: Writings from a Turbulent Decade George Packer 204–223 This selection examines the lives of young men and women in Abidjan, Ivory Coast in the wake of a civil war.
      “Living Up to It” Interesting Times: Writings from a Turbulent Decade George Packer 3–17 This selection examines the events of 9/11 to discuss how US democracy is perceived across the world. It focuses specifically on the need to break with political and economic policies that are narrow, defensive, chauvinistic, and preoccupied with national security.
      “One People (Egypt)” A Rage for Order: The Middle East in Turmoil, from Tahrir Square to ISIS) Robert F. Worth 17–35 This selection offers a firsthand account of the 2011 public protests in Cairo, Egypt that resulted in the overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. It explains how this revolutionary moment was co-opted by the Muslim Brotherhood in order to secure political influence in the country.
      “The War Begins” A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea: One Refugee’s Incredible Story of Love, Loss, and Survival Melissa Fleming 21–49 This selection discusses the revolutionary political protests in Daraa, Syria in 2011 by recounting the experiences of refugee Doaa Al Zamel.
      “Competing Capitalisms” Power, Inc.: The Epic Rivalry Between Big Business and Government—And the Reckoning that Lies Ahead David Rothkopf 338–364 This selection discusses how different countries across the world have adapted capitalism to support their national economies.

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