Public Culture

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER MORE THAN 1 MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE The oldest cultures in the world have mastered the art of raising happy, well-adjusted children. What can we learn from them? “Hunt, Gather, Parent is full of smart ideas that I immediately wanted to force on my own kids...

Jon Savage, the author of the canonical England's Dreaming, explodes new ground in this electrifying history of pop music from 1955 through 1979. In demonstrating that gay and lesbian artists were responsible for many of the greatest cultural breakthroughs in the last half of the twentieth century, he shows that it was their secretly encoded music—appealing to a closeted but greatly oppressed public—which led to the historic dismantling of discriminatory gay laws and the fusion of queer and straight culture.

Over the next five years, millions of more Americans are expected to take Ozempic and other GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, which are rapidly being recognized as the miracle drugs of this century. If you’re not on them, you’ll probably know someone who is. What are the implications of the widespread use of these drugs, both on our bodies and our society? In this show, you’ll meet people across America who are either taking the jab or thinking about it, and the shocking intentional and unintentional results they are seeing.

When two Stanford graduate students set out to create a new kind of cigarette that wouldn’t kill them, they didn’t foresee all the obstacles that lay ahead — or the powerful forces their invention would unleash. Nearly 10 years after the launch of the JUUL, Backfired: The Vaping Wars asks: Could e-cigarettes have been the solution to one of the world’s most pressing public health problems—or was this technology doomed to introduce a whole new generation to nicotine, and end up perpetuating an intractable addiction?

As cultural hostility toward Christianity intensifies, many Christians have grown more reluctant to advocate for biblical values in the public square. But our perseverance for the common good—a good defined by God alone—is more important than ever in a culture that embraces darkness. When Culture Hates You is a call for Christians to unashamedly pursue righteousness in society out of our love for others.

In this eloquent and persuasive book, Neil Postman examines the deep and broad effects of television culture on the manner in which we conduct our public affairs, and how "entertainment values" have corrupted the very way we think. As politics, news, religion, education, and commerce are given less and less expression in the form of the printed word, they are rapidly being reshaped to suit the requirements of television.

In his new book, Don't Let Nobody Turn You Around, AND Campaign cofounder and president Justin Giboney explores a compelling vision of how the Black Church's social action tradition can inspire hope and healing in the face of today's polarized culture wars. The spirituals of the Black church, such as "Don't Let Nobody Turn You Around," were rallying cries during the Civil Rights movement, making clear the connection between faith and justice during marches and protests.

The grid is an accident of history and of culture, in no way intrinsic to how we produce, deliver and consume electrical power. Yet this is the system the United States ended up with, a jerry-built structure now so rickety and near collapse that a strong wind or a hot day can bring it to a grinding halt. The grid is now under threat from a new source: renewable and variable energy, which puts stress on its logics as much as its components.

This "provocative and personally searching"memoir follows one mother's story of enrolling her daughter in a local public school (San Francisco Chronicle), and the surprising, necessary lessons she learned with her neighbors. From the time Courtney E. Martin strapped her daughter, Maya, to her...

CONSERVATISM: AMERICA’S PERSONALITY DISORDER Conservatives often defend policies that feel hard-hearted. Why? Christopher Armitage and D. Carl Brown argue the root problem is a measurable empathy gap, not mere ideology. Their concise analysis shows how this gap drives positions on poverty, immigration, pollution, reproductive rights, and LGBTQ+ equality, hurting millions while claiming virtue. Grounded in psychology and real-world data, this book reframes the culture war and offers a path toward compassion-led politics. Christopher Armitage is an Air Force veteran and researcher in ...

A behind-the-scenes tour of the high-stakes world of IPOs and how a visionary band of startup executives, venture capitalists, and maverick bankers has launched a crusade to upend the traditional IPO as we know it. GOING PUBLIC is a character-driven narrative centered on the last five years of...

The inspiring story of how we overcame a history of infectious disease, poisonous environments, and early death and unlocked an explosion in human potential—and a vision for the work ahead to optimize human flourishing in the twenty-first century “Michelle Williams understands what too many...

Martin A. Lee traces the dramatic social history of marijuana, from its origins to its emergence in the 1960s as a defining force in a culture war that has never ceased. Lee describes how the illicit marijuana subculture overcame government opposition and morphed into a dynamic, multibillion-dollar industry. Colorful, illuminating, and at times irreverent, this is a fascinating listen for recreational users and patients, students and doctors, musicians and accountants, Baby Boomers and their kids, and anyone who has ever wondered about the secret life of this ubiquitous herb.

“After all I've seen and heard about Marilyn Monroe, this book is a revelation, an earthy, empathic vision of a real woman who happened to be an ethereal goddess.” — Mary Gaitskill, bestselling author of Bad Behavior and The Mare Based on new interviews and research, this ground-breaking...

From the Industrial Revolution to the age of artificial intelligence, The Technology Trap takes a sweeping look at the history of technological progress and how it has radically shifted the distribution of economic and political power among society’s members.

Public City/Public Sex examines how the notion that male sexual desire required suitable outlets shaped urban policing and development. Ross traces the struggle to control sex in public and argues that it was the very effort to police the city that created new opportunities for women who sold sex and men who sought sex with other men. Placing public sex at the center of urban history, Ross shows how those who used public spaces played a central role in defining the way the city was understood.

Bloomsbury presents Faith in the Public Square by Rowan Williams read by Niall Lucas Rowan Williams on critical contemporary issues in his final book as Archbishop of Canterbury. Archbishop Rowan Williams is the most gifted Anglican priest of his generation. His views are consistent and orthodox...

A road map to free your kids from the harms of digital technology and to recover the beauty, wonder, and true purpose of childhood—by a leading tech policy expert It’s no secret that addictive digital technologies like smartphones and social media apps are harming a generation of kids...

Founder of a global etiquette school and star of her own Netflix series, Sara Jane Ho teaches readers how to thrive socially in a variety of situations. "With her remarkable wit and profound understanding, she serves as an exceptional mentor, showing us all how to navigate life with confidence...

Bloomsbury presents How to be a conservative by Roger Scruton, read by Kris Dyer. Roger Scruton’s How to be a Conservative presents the case for modern conservatism not in the terms of an elegy but rather as a practical example of how to live as a conservative despite the pressures to live...