The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change

The Rebel Sell: Why the Culture Can't Be Jammed

Joseph Heath, Andrew Potter · 376 pages

Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive

Bruce Schneier · 366 pages

In today's hyper-connected society, understanding the mechanisms of trust is crucial. Issues of trust are critical to solving problems as diverse as corporate responsibility, global warming, and the political system. In this insightful and entertaining book, Schneier weaves together ideas from across the social and biological sciences to explain how society induces trust. He shows the unique role

Intellectuals and Society

Thomas Sowell · 611 pages

This is a book about intellectuals written for the lay person. Its purpose is to unravel the world of intellectuals in order to understand an important social phenomenon how the thinkers of our society mold that society, leaving an impact on people in every walk of life, even if they are basically unknown to the world at large. It is a portion of the population whose activities can have, and have

City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles

Mike Davis · 462 pages

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari · 456 pages

From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.” One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What hap

Monoculture: How One Story is Changing Everything

F.S. Michaels · 190 pages

"As human beings, we've always told stories: stories about who we are, where we come from, and where we're going. Now imagine that one of those stories is taking over the others, narrowing our diversity and creating a monoculture. Because of the rise of the economic story, six areas of your world -- your work, your relationships with others and the environment, your community, your physical and sp

World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction

Immanuel Wallerstein · 109 pages

The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures

Jean Baudrillard · 224 pages

The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued

Ann Crittenden · 329 pages

"The price of motherhood is everywhere apparent. College-educated women pay a "mommy tax" of more than a million dollars in lost income when they have a child. Family law deprives mothers of financial equality in marriage. Most child care is excluded from the gross domestic product, at-home mothers are not counted in the labor force, and the social safety net simply leaves them out. With passion a

Cruel Optimism

Lauren Berlant · 342 pages

Lauren Berlant explores individual and collective affective responses to the unraveling of the U.S. and European economies by analzying mass media, literature, television, film, and video.

Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

Fredric Jameson · 438 pages

This wide-ranging work seeks to crystallize a definition of postmodernism. The author looks at the postmodern across a wide landscape, from high art to low; from market ideology to architecture, from painting to punk; film, from video art to literature.

Utopia for Realists: Why Making the World a Better Place Isn't a Fantasy and How We Can Do It

Rutger Bregman · 328 pages

From a universal basic income to a 15-hour workweek, from a world without borders to a world without poverty – it’s time to return to utopian thinking. Rutger Bregman takes us on a journey through history, beyond the traditional left-right divides, as he introduces ideas whose time has come. Utopia for Realists is one of those rare books that takes you by surprise and challenges what you think you

The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Jane Jacobs · 458 pages

The Death and Life of Great American Cities was described by The New York Times as “perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning. . . . [It] can also be seen in a much larger context. It is first of all a work of literature; the descriptions of street life as a kind of ballet and the bitingly satiric account of traditional planning theory can still be read for pleasure

Consuming Life

Zygmunt Bauman · 160 pages

"With the advent of liquid modernity, the society of producers is transformed into a society of consumers. In this new consumer society, individuals become simultaneously the promoters of commodities and the commodities they promote. They are, at one and the same time, the merchandise and the marketer, the goods and the travelling salespeople. They all inhabit the same social space that is customa

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

Hans Rosling · 342 pages

Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market

Eric Schlosser · 320 pages

In Reefer Madness, the best-selling author of Fast Food Nation investigates America's black market and its far-reaching influence on our society through three of its mainstays -- pot, porn, and illegal immigrants. The underground economy is vast; it comprises perhaps 10 percent -- perhaps more -- of America's overall economy, and it's on the rise. Eric Schlosser charts this growth, and finds its r

Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and a Radical New Way to Make a Difference

William MacAskill · 272 pages

Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic

John De Graaf, David Wann, Thomas H. Naylor · 288 pages

The Condition of the Working Class in England

Friedrich Engels · 336 pages

"The Condition of the Working Class is the best-known work of Engels, and in many ways still the best study of the working class in Victorian England. It was also Engels's first book, written during his stay in Manchester from 1842 to 1844. Manchester was then at the very heart of the Industrial Revolution and Engels compiled his study from his own observations and detailed contemporary reports. T

Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class

Noam Scheiber · 384 pages

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

Steven Pinker · 802 pages

From Goodreads: Selected by *The New York Times Book Review* as a Notable Book of the Year The author of *The New York Times* bestseller *The Stuff* of Thought offers a controversial history of violence. Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen. Yet as *New York Times* bestselling author Steven Pin

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

Barbara Ehrenreich · 240 pages

The author's experience holding low-wage jobs in three parts of the U.S. in the late 1990s.

The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need

Juliet B. Schor · 272 pages

Janesville: An American Story

Amy Goldstein · 351 pages

"A Washington Post reporter's intimate account of the fallout from the closing of a General Motors' assembly plant in Janesville, Wisconsin--Paul Ryan's hometown--and a larger story of the hollowing of the American middle class. This is the story of what happens to an industrial town in the American heartland when its factory stills--but it's not the familiar tale. Most observers record the immedi