"Wally Funk was among the Mercury 13, the first group of American pilots to complete NASA's 1961 Women in Space program... Undeterred, Funk went on to become one of America's first female aviation inspectors and civilian flight instructors, though her dream of being an astronaut never dimmed. In this offbeat odyssey, journalist and fellow space buff Sue Nelson travels with Wally Funk, approaching her 80th birthday, as she races to make her giant leap....

"A lively history of American libertarianism and its decay into dangerous fantasy. In 2010 in South Fulton, Tennessee, each household paid the local fire department a yearly fee of $75.00. That year, Gene Cranick's house accidentally caught fire. But the fire department refused to come because Cranick had forgotten to pay his yearly fee, leaving his home in ashes. Observers across the political spectrum agreed-some with horror and some with enthusiasm-that...

"How to Be a Craftivist is a manifesto for quiet activism: how to tackle issues not with shouting and aggression but with gentle protest, using the process of `making' to engage thoughtfully in the issues we are about, to influence and effect change. Sarah Corbett - professional campaigner and founder of the Craftivist Collective - shares her journey from burnt-out activist, tired of marching, confrontation and demonizing opposition, towards a more...

Gioia tells a 4,000-year history of music as a global source of power, change, and upheaval. He shows how social outcasts have repeatedly become trailblazers of musical expression.

"The internet was designed to be a kind of free-speech paradise, but a lot of the material on it turned out to incite violence, spread untruth, and promote hate. Over the years, three American behemoths--Facebook, YouTube and Twitter--became the way most of the world experiences the internet, and therefore the conveyors of much of its disturbing material. What should be done about this enormous problem? Should the giant social media platforms police...

"Global business leader Mathias Döpfner offers a revolutionary roadmap to reshape global trade, strengthen our democracy, and safeguard our freedoms. Freedom is on the decline around the world. Autocrats in Europe, Asia, and the Mideast are undermining our open societies, human rights, and the rule of law. The Russian invasion in Ukraine was a wake-up call for the West, but the biggest threat remains China. For two generations, Americans and Europeans...

"The Breakdown of Higher Education makes the case for drastic reform of a higher education now hopelessly corrupted by radical politics"--

"Meme Wars is the first major account of how "Stop the Steal" went from online to real life, from the wires to the weeds. Leading media expert Joan Donovan, PhD, veteran tech journalist Emily Dreyfuss, and cultural ethnographer Brian Friedberg pull back the curtain on the digital war rooms in which a vast collection of antiestablishmentarians bond over hatred of liberal government and media. Together as a motley reactionary army, they use memes and...

In an era of climate change, resource scrambles and digital revolution, when nations are rejecting open borders and turning inward, what will become of our borders? In Border Wars, Professor Klaus Dodds takes us on a journey into tomorrow's geopolitical conflicts. From no man's lands to the space race, we discover how the best-known border conflicts of our age are intensifying, and explore the dangerous and often unexpected sites of border conflict...

Why did it take so long to end slavery in the United States, and what did it mean that the nation existed eighty-eight years as a "house divided against itself," as Abraham Lincoln put it? The decline of slavery throughout the Atlantic world was a protracted affair, says Patrick Rael, but no other nation endured anything like the United States. Here the process took from 1777, when Vermont wrote slavery out of its state constitution, to 1865, when...