Showing results for "The Making of Us" in Politics & Social Sciences

Humans are a puzzling species. On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the wild, often failing to overcome even basic challenges, like obtaining food, building shelters, or avoiding predators. On the other hand, human groups have produced ingenious technologies, sophisticated languages, and complex institutions that have permitted us to successfully expand into a vast range of diverse environments. What has enabled us to dominate the globe, more than any other species, while remaining virtually helpless as lone individuals?

A Silent Spring for your wardrobe, To Dye For is a jolting exposé that reveals the true cost of the toxic, largely unregulated chemicals found on most clothing today. Many of us are aware of the ethical minefield that is fast fashion: the dodgy labor practices, the lax environmental standards...

A "timely and hugely important" memoir of Justice John Paul Stevens's life on the Supreme Court (New York Times). When Justice John Paul Stevens retired from the Supreme Court of the United States in 2010, he left a legacy of service unequaled in the history of the Court. During his...

"Drug That Killed Prince Is Making Mexican Cartels Richer, U.S. Says" is from the June 09, 2016 US section of The New York Times. It was written by Azam Ahmed and narrated by Keith Sellon-Wright.

Appointments to the United States Supreme Court are now central events in American political life. However, this has not always been the case. As late as the middle of the twentieth century, presidents invested little time and effort in finding and vetting nominees. Media coverage was desultory, public opinion was largely non-existent, and the justices often voted independently and erratically.

The United States of 1797 faced enormous challenges. The father of the new nation, George Washington, left his vice president, John Adams, with relatively little guidance and impossible expectations to meet. Adams was confronted with intense partisan divides, debates over citizenship, fears of political violence, potential for foreign conflict with France and Britain, and a nation unsure that the presidency could even work without Washington at the helm. Making the Presidency is an exploration of the second US presidency, a period critical to the survival of the American republic.

In Making the Second Ghetto, Arnold Hirsch argues that in the post-depression years Chicago was a "pioneer in developing concepts and devices" for housing segregation. Hirsch shows that the legal framework for the national urban renewal effort was forged in the heat generated by the racial struggles waged on Chicago's South Side.

This new edition of What Makes Us Tick takes us beneath the often overwhelming surface noise of politics, economics, new technology and social change to explore something that hasn't changed: the 10 desires that drive us all and, now in a new prologue, the seven characteristics that define us as a species. From our desire to be taken seriously, to be useful and to be loved, to the desire for more, the desire for control and the desire for something to believe in, these universal human motivations powerfully influence our behaviour towards each other.

Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison, "Father of the Constitution," were two of the most important Founders of the United States as well as the closest of political allies. Yet historians have often seen a tension between the idealistic rhetoric of the Declaration and the more pedestrian language of the Constitution. Moreover, to some, the adoption of the Constitution represented a repudiation of the democratic values of the Revolution.

"The Making and Ethics of an Outlaw’s Interview" is from the US section of The New York Times. It was written by Ravi Somaiya and narrated by Keith Sellon-Wright.

George Soros made billions of dollars anticipating seismic changes in the financial markets and used that money to try to change the world. He discusses what he believes were the fatal flaws of the Bush administration - his antagonism toward which is well documented - and the wider American view of the world. Soros heads Soros Fund Management and is the founder of a global network of foundations.