Few challenges are more daunting than feeding a global population projected to reach 9.7 billion in 2050, at a time when climate change is making it increasingly difficult to successfully grow crops. In response, corporate and philanthropic leaders have called for major investments in industrial agriculture, including genetically modified seed technologies. Reporting from Africa, Mexico, India, and the United States, this book discovers how in country...

Having one full-time job is the riskiest career move you can make; we need a new path to design sustainable, future-proof, fulfilling lives that doesn't tie our identities and livelihoods to our jobs. In The Portfolio Life, Harvard professor, serial entrepreneur, and self-described human Venn diagram Christina Wallace delivers a model for thriving amidst the constant disruptions of the 21st century. Adapting tried-and-true practices from the business...

Amassing unimaginable amounts of personal data, giants like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple—once symbols of American ingenuity and freedom—have become a techno-oligarchy with overwhelming economic and political power. Decades of unchecked data collection have given Big Tech more targeted control over Americans’ daily lives than any company or government in the world. In The Tyranny of Big Tech, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri argues that...

Uses the extraordinary account of how the biggest private company in the world grew to be that big to tell the story of modern corporate America. The annual revenue of Koch Industries is bigger than that of Goldman Sachs, Facebook, and U.S. Steel combined. Koch is everywhere: from the fertilizers that make our food to the chemicals that make our pipes to the synthetics that make our carpets and diapers to the Wall Street trading in all these commodities....

The jaw-dropping exposé on how America's fast-food industry has shaped the landscape of America. This fascinating study reveals how the fast-food industry has altered the landscape of America, widened the gap between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and transformed food production throughout the world. Eric Schlosser inspires readers to look beneath the surface of our food system, consider its impact on society and, most of all, think...

With world oil production about to peak and inexorably head toward steep decline, what fuels are available to meet rising global energy demands? That question, once thought to address a fairly remote contingency, has become ever more urgent, as a spate of books has drawn increased public attention to the imminent exhaustion of the economically vital world oil reserves. Kenneth S. Deffeyes, a geologist who was among the first to warn of the coming...

Chronicles America's more than twenty-year struggle with opioid addiction, from the introduction of OxyContin in 1996, through the spread of addiction in distressed communities in Central Appalachia, to the current national crisis.

Petroleum is so deeply entrenched in our economy, politics, and daily lives that even modest efforts to phase it out, are fought tooth and nail. Companies and governments depend on oil revenues. Developing nations see oil as their only means to industrial success. And, the Western middle class refuses to modify its energy-dependent lifestyle. But, even by conservative estimates, we will have burned through most of the world's accessible oil within...

"A deeply human story, Fentanyl, Inc. is the first deep-dive investigation of a hazardous and illicit industry that has created a worldwide epidemic, ravaging communities and overwhelming and confounding government agencies that are challenged to combat it. "A whole new crop of chemicals is radically changing the recreational drug landscape," writes Ben Westhoff. "These are known as Novel Psychoactive Substances (NPS) and they include replacements...