"Some democracies are highly homogeneous. Others have long maintained a brutal racial or religious hierarchy, with some groups dominating and exploiting others. Never in history has a democracy succeeded in being both diverse and equal, treating members of many different ethnic or religious groups fairly. And yet achieving that goal is now central to the democratic project in countries around the world. It is, Yascha Mounk argues, the greatest experiment...

We live in a world of influence operations run amok, where dark ads, psyops, hacks, bots, soft facts, ISIS, Putin, trolls, and Trump seek to shape our very reality. In this surreal atmosphere created to disorient us and undermine our sense of truth, we've lost not only our grip on peace and democracy--but our very notion of what those words even mean. The author takes us to the front lines of the disinformation age, where he meets Twitter revolutionaries...

Independent journalists like Amy Goodman, Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, and Matt Taibbi are changing the face of journalism, providing investigative, adversarial alternatives to mainstream, corporate news outlets. Cameras follow as they expose government and corporate deception; just as the ground-breaking independent journalist I.F. Stone did decades ago.

"Conspirituality takes a deep dive into the troubling phenomenon of influencers who have curdled New Age spirituality and wellness with the politics of paranoia -- peddling vaccine misinformation, tales of child trafficking, and wild conspiracy theories. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, a disturbing social media trend emerged: a large number of yoga instructors and alt-health influencers were posting stories about a secretive global cabal...

"Tracking an underground language from one family's obsession to the outcasts who spoke it in order to survive. Centuries ago in middle Europe, a coded language appeared, scrawled in graffiti and spoken only by people who were "wiz" (in the know) -- vagrants and refugees, merchants and thieves. This hybrid language was rich in expressions for police, jail, or experiencing trouble, such as "being in a pickle." And beginning with Martin Luther, German...

"We are commonly deceived by numbers in our everyday lives. From lotteries, product warranties, and weight loss fads to misleading headlines and social media posts, there is no shortage of confusing or misleading information. Numbers are used to manipulate our decisions and impact our lives in ways that may not be immediately apparent. Data Duped: How to Avoid Being Hoodwinked by Misinformation will help you avoid being fooled by these messages and...

"A powerful decade-long study of adoption in the age of Roe, revealing the grief of the American mothers for whom the choice to parent was never real. Adoption has always been viewed as a beloved institution for building families, as well as a mutually agreeable common ground in the abortion debate, but little attention has been paid to the lives of mothers who relinquish infants for private adoption. Relinquished reveals adoption to be a path of...

"A French cheesemonger and an American academic and ex-pat join forces to serve up a sumptuous history of France and its food, in the delicious tradition of Anthony Bourdain, Peter Mayle, and Pamela Druckerman"-- From the cassoulet that won a war to the crêpe that doomed Napoleon, the history of France is intimately entwined with its gastronomic pursuits. Hénaut and Mitchell provide a history of France -- through its food. The result is an innovative...

"We are in the midst of a communications revolution. We have access to more information than at any time in history. But are we more informed or just overwhelmed by so much information we can't process? In [this book], legendary television journalist Bob Schieffer examines today's journalism and those who practice it -- ow they see their profession, how it has been changed by new technology, and how well they believe they are carrying out their responsibility...