In a comprehensive and theoretically novel analysis, Take Back Our Future unveils the causes, processes, and implications of the 2014 seventy-nine-day occupation movement in Hong Kong known as the Umbrella Movement. The essays presented here by a team of experts with deep local knowledge ask: how and why had a world financial center known for its free-wheeling capitalism transformed into a hotbed of mass defiance and civic disobedience? Take Back Our Future argues that the Umbrella Movement was a response to China's internal colonization strategies—political disenfranchisement, economic subsumption, and identity reengineering—in post-handover Hong Kong. The contributors outline how this historic and transformative movement formulated new cultural categories and narratives, fueled the formation and expansion of civil society organizations and networks both for and against the regime, and spurred the regime's turn to repression and structural closure of dissent. Although the Umbrella Movement was fraught with internal tensions, Take Back Our Future demonstrates that the movement politicized a whole generation of people who had no prior experience in politics, fashioned new subjects and identities, and awakened popular consciousness.

In a comprehensive and theoretically novel analysis, Take Back Our Future unveils the causes, processes, and implications of the 2014 seventy-nine-day occupation movement in Hong Kong known as the Umbrella Movement. The essays presented here by a team of experts with deep local knowledge ask: how and why had a world financial center known for its free-wheeling capitalism transformed into a hotbed of mass defiance and civic disobedience? Take Back Our Future argues that the Umbrella Movement was a response to China's internal colonization strategies—political disenfranchisement, economic subsumption, and identity reengineering—in post-handover Hong Kong. The contributors outline how this historic and transformative movement formulated new cultural categories and narratives, fueled the formation and expansion of civil society organizations and networks both for and against the regime, and spurred the regime's turn to repression and structural closure of dissent. Although the Umbrella Movement was fraught with internal tensions, Take Back Our Future demonstrates that the movement politicized a whole generation of people who had no prior experience in politics, fashioned new subjects and identities, and awakened popular consciousness.

Wall Street scandals. Fights over taxes. Racial resentments. A Lakers-Celtics championship. The Karate Kid topping the box-office charts. Bon Jovi touring the country. These words could describe our current moment—or the vaunted iconography of three decades past. In this wide-ranging and wickedly entertaining book, New York Times bestselling journalist David Sirota takes readers on a rollicking DeLorean ride back in time to reveal how so many of our present-day conflicts are rooted in the larger-than-life pop culture of the 1980s—from the “Greed is good” ethos of Gordon Gekko (and Bernie Madoff) to the “Make my day” foreign policy of Ronald Reagan (and George W. Bush) to the “transcendence” of Cliff Huxtable (and Barack Obama). Today’s mindless militarism and hypernarcissism, Sirota argues, first became the norm when an ’80s generation weaned on Rambo one-liners and “Just Do It” exhortations embraced a new religion—with comic books, cartoons, sneaker commercials, videogames, and even children’s toys serving as the key instruments of cultural indoctrination. Meanwhile, in productions such as Back to the Future, Family Ties, and The Big Chill, a campaign was launched to reimagine the 1950s as America’s lost golden age and vilify the 1960s as the source of all our troubles. That 1980s revisionism, Sirota shows, still rages today, with Barack Obama cast as the 60s hippie being assailed by Alex P. Keaton–esque Republicans who long for a return to Eisenhower-era conservatism. “The past is never dead,” William Faulkner wrote. “It’s not even past.” The 1980s—even more so. With the native dexterity only a child of the Atari Age could possess, David Sirota twists and turns this multicolored Rubik’s Cube of a decade, exposing it as a warning for our own troubled present—and possible future.

We need to break free from the capitalist economy. Degrowth gives us the tools to bend its bars. Economic growth isn’t working, and it cannot be made to work. Offering a counter-history of how economic growth emerged in the context of colonialism, fossil-fueled industrialization, and capitalist modernity, The Future Is Degrowth argues that the ideology of growth conceals the rising inequalities and ecological destructions associated with capitalism, and points to desirable alternatives to it. Not only in society at large, but also on the left, we are held captive by the hegemony of growth. Even proposals for emancipatory Green New Deals or postcapitalism base their utopian hopes on the development of productive forces, on redistributing the fruits of economic growth and technological progress. Yet growing evidence shows that continued economic growth cannot be made compatible with sustaining life and is not necessary for a good life for all. This book provides a vision for postcapitalism beyond growth. Building on a vibrant field of research, it discusses the political economy and the politics of a non-growing economy. It charts a path forward through policies that democratise the economy, “now-topias” that create free spaces for experimentation, and counter-hegemonic movements that make it possible to break with the logic of growth. Degrowth perspectives offer a way to step off the treadmill of an alienating, expansionist, and hierarchical system. A handbook and a manifesto, The Future Is Degrowth is a must-read for all interested in charting a way beyond the current crises.

By being too timid and too weak, too hesitant and too confused, Democrats have allowed Republicans to run amok. Republicans today control everything: the White House, the Congress, the Supreme Court, the federal bureaucracy, the military, and the corporate special interests and their lobbyists. They operate powerful right-wing organizations, right-wing think tanks, and a conservative media that serves as an attack dog against Democrats. Republicans have used their absolute power to corrupt our democracy, degrade our military, weaken our health care system, diminish our stature in the world, damage our environment, reward the rich, hammer the poor, squeeze the middle class, bankrupt our Treasury, and indenture our children to foreign debt holders. In this important book, James Carville and Paul Begala show Democrats how they can take it back. They offer a clear-eyed critique of their party's failures and make specific, concrete recommendations on how Democrats can avoid losing elections on divisive issues such as abortion, gun control, gay rights, and moral values and start winning them on health care, political reform, energy, the environment, tax reform, and more. Carville and Begala say that liberal Democrats are right that too many establishment Democrats kowtow to corporate interests and shamefully supported George W. Bush's rush to war. And moderate Democrats are right to complain that too many Democrats are out of step with middle-class values, too removed from people of faith, too enthralled with intellectual and cultural elites. But the problem with the Democrats, Carville and Begala argue, is not ideological. It's anatomical. They lack a backbone. Take It Back is a spinal transplant for Democrats and an audacious battle plan for victory.

"An expert on US election law presents an encouraging assessment of current efforts to make our voting system more accessible, reliable, and effective"--

How will AI change our world within twenty years? A pioneering technologist and acclaimed writer team up for a “dazzling” (The New York Times) look at the future that “brims with intriguing insights” (Financial Times). This edition includes a new foreword by Kai-Fu Lee. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Financial Times Long before the advent of ChatGPT, Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan understood the enormous potential of artificial intelligence to transform our daily lives. But even as the world wakes up to the power of AI, many of us still fail to grasp the big picture. Chatbots and large language models are only the beginning. In this “inspired collaboration” (The Wall Street Journal), Lee and Chen join forces to imagine our world in 2041 and how it will be shaped by AI. In ten gripping, globe-spanning short stories and accompanying commentary, their book introduces readers to an array of eye-opening settings and characters grappling with the new abundance and potential harms of AI technologies like deep learning, mixed reality, robotics, artificial general intelligence, and autonomous weapons.

Shortlisted for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year award A renowned climate scientist shows how fossil fuel companies have waged a thirty-year campaign to deflect blame and responsibility and delay action on climate change, and offers a battle plan for how we can save the planet. Recycle. Fly less. Eat less meat. These are some of the ways that we've been told can slow climate change. But the inordinate emphasis on individual behavior is the result of a marketing campaign that has succeeded in placing the responsibility for fixing climate change squarely on the shoulders of individuals. Fossil fuel companies have followed the example of other industries deflecting blame (think "guns don't kill people, people kill people") or greenwashing (think of the beverage industry's "Crying Indian" commercials of the 1970s). Meanwhile, they've blocked efforts to regulate or price carbon emissions, run PR campaigns aimed at discrediting viable alternatives, and have abdicated their responsibility in fixing the problem they've created. The result has been disastrous for our planet. In The New Climate War, Mann argues that all is not lost. He draws the battle lines between the people and the polluters-fossil fuel companies, right-wing plutocrats, and petrostates. And he outlines a plan for forcing our governments and corporations to wake up and make real change, including: A common-sense, attainable approach to carbon pricing- and a revision of the well-intentioned but flawed currently proposed version of the Green New Deal; Allowing renewable energy to compete fairly against fossil fuels Debunking the false narratives and arguments that have worked their way into the climate debate and driven a wedge between even those who support climate change solutions Combatting climate doomism and despair-mongering With immensely powerful vested interests aligned in defense of the fossil fuel status quo, the societal tipping point won't happen without the active participation of citizens everywhere aiding in the collective push forward. This book will reach, inform, and enable citizens everywhere to join this battle for our planet.

Packed with research, insights, and illuminating (and often funny) examples from Paris’s own divorce experience, this book is a “practical and reassuring guide to parting well.” —Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project Engaging and revolutionary, filled with wit, searing honesty, and intimate interviews, Splitopia is a call for a saner, more civil kind of divorce. As Paris reveals, divorce has improved dramatically in recent decades due to changes in laws and family structures, advances in psychology and child development, and a new understanding of the importance of the father. Positive psychology expert and author of Happier, Tal Ben-Shahar, writes that Paris’s “personal insights, stories, and research” create “a smart and interesting guide that can be extremely helpful for those going through divorce.” Reading this book can be the difference between an expensive, ugly battle and a decent divorce, between children sucked under by conflict or happy, healthy kids. This is “a compelling case that it’s high time for a new definition of Happily Ever After—for everyone” (Brigid Schulte, author of Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time).

Gold Medal Winner for Best Leadership Book in the 2021 Axiom Business Book Awards Named one of the "Top Ten Technology Books Of 2020" — Forbes Named one of the "10 Best New Business Books of 2020" by Inc. magazine "Johnson and Suskewicz have raised a battle cry for the kind of leadership we need in these uncertain times." -- Sandi Peterson, Member, Board of Directors, Microsoft We all know a visionary leader when we see one. They're bold and prophetic and at the same time pragmatic. They don't just promote change--they drive it, while inspiring and mobilizing others to do the same. Visionaries like Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos possess a host of innate qualities that make them extraordinary, but what truly sets them apart is their ability to turn vision into action. In Lead from the Future, Innosight's Mark W. Johnson and Josh Suskewicz introduce a new way of thinking and managing, called "future-back," that enables any manager to become a practical visionary. Addressing the many barriers to change that exist in established organizations, they present a systematic approach to overcoming them that includes: The principles and mind-set that allow leadership teams to look beyond typical short-term planning horizons A method for turning emerging challenges into the growth opportunities that can define an organization's future A step-by-step approach for translating a vision into a strategic plan that teams can align around and commit to Ways to ensure that visionary thinking becomes a repeatable organizational capability As practical as it is inspiring, Lead from the Future is the guide you and your team need to develop a vision and translate it into transformative growth.