Remake The World

Over the last decade, author and activist Astra Taylor has helped shift the national conversation on topics including technology, inequality, indebtedness, and democracy. The essays collected here reveal the range and depth of her thinking, with Taylor tackling the rising popularity of socialism, the problem of automation, the politics of listening, the possibility of rights for the natural and non-human world, the future of the university, the temporal challenge of climate catastrophe, and more. Addressing some of the most pressing social problems of our day, Taylor invites us to imagine how things could be different while never losing sight of the strategic question of how change actually happens. Curious and searching, these historically informed and hopeful essays are as engaging as they are challenging and as urgent as they are timeless. Taylor 's unique philosophical style has a political edge that speaks directly to the growing conviction that a radical transformation of our economy and society is required.

For every woman, from the young to those in midlife and beyond, who has ever been told, "You can't" and thought, "Oh, I definitely will!"--this book is for you. Women are expected to be many things. They should be young enough, but not too young; old enough, but not too old; creative, but not crazy; passionate, but not angry. They should be fertile and feminine and self-reliant, not barren or butch or solitary. Women, in other words, are caught between social expectations and a much more complicated reality. Women who don't fit in, whether during life transitions or because of changes in their body, mind, or gender identity, are carving out new ways of being in and remaking the world. But this is nothing new: they have been doing so for thousands of years, often at the margins of the same religious traditions and cultures that created these limited ways of being for women in the first place. In The Defiant Middle, Kaya Oakes draws on the wisdom of women mystics and explores how transitional eras or living in marginalized female identities can be both spiritually challenging and wonderfully freeing, ultimately resulting in a reinvented way of seeing the world and changing it. "Change, after all," Oakes writes, "always comes from the margins."

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Shortlisted for the 2018 FT & McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award A brilliantly reported, global look at universal basic income—a stipend given to every citizen—and why it might be necessary in an age of rising inequality, persistent poverty, and dazzling technology. Imagine if every month the government deposited $1,000 into your bank account, with nothing expected in return. It sounds crazy. But it has become one of the most influential and hotly debated policy ideas of our time. Futurists, radicals, libertarians, socialists, union representatives, feminists, conservatives, Bernie supporters, development economists, child-care workers, welfare recipients, and politicians from India to Finland to Canada to Mexico—all are talking about UBI. In this sparkling and provocative book, economics writer Annie Lowrey examines the UBI movement from many angles. She travels to Kenya to see how a UBI is lifting the poorest people on earth out of destitution, India to see how inefficient government programs are failing the poor, South Korea to interrogate UBI’s intellectual pedigree, and Silicon Valley to meet the tech titans financing UBI pilots in expectation of a world with advanced artificial intelligence and little need for human labor. Lowrey explores the potential of such a sweeping policy and the challenges the movement faces, among them contradictory aims, uncomfortable costs, and, most powerfully, the entrenched belief that no one should get something for nothing. In the end, she shows how this arcane policy has the potential to solve some of our most intractable economic problems, while offering a new vision of citizenship and a firmer foundation for our society in this age of turbulence and marvels.

A full-color, lavishly illustrated introduction to the world of Final Fantasy VII Remake, presenting information on characters, settings, gameplay, and more! With its captivating characters, striking visual design, and intense gameplay, Final Fantasy VII set a new standard for the RPG genre and became one of the top video game releases of all time. Now, with Final Fantasy VII Remake, players return to Midgar in a stunning new rendition of a timeless classic. This World Preview volume offers both new players and longtime fans essential information on characters, settings, gameplay, and more, as well as introductory comments from producer Yoshinori Kitase and director Tetsuya Nomura.

“A smart, deep, black magic carnie noir existential bloodbath” from the acclaimed author of Boon (Gemma Files, Shirley Jackson Award–winning author). In the shadow of World War II, the barren, dusty streets of Litchfield, Arkansas, are even quieter than usual, leaving hotel detective George “Jojo” Walker with too much time to struggle with his own personal demons. But everything changes when a traveling picture show comes to town. The film’s purveyors check into the hotel where Jojo works and set up a special midnight screening at the local theater. The curtain rises on a surreal carnival of dark magic and waking nightmares, starring Jojo and the residents of Litchfield, as madness, murder, and mayhem threaten to engulf them all . . . “A stunner of a story . . . Flat-out brilliant . . . Unfolds like petals of an exotic and scandalous black flower—each one gently opening to give the reader a distressing revelation . . . Powerful ideas, wrapped in a dark mantle of horror.” —My Haunted Library “If you like pulpy noir with a dose of existentialism mixed with some utterly bizarre horror, this book is for you.” —Fangoria “Genre mash-ups like this one are difficult to execute, but Kurtz navigates it deftly, with writing so visceral and evocative it feels less like reading a book and more like watching a film in real time.” —Literary Hub “While it echoes with the shadowy threatening of Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes and the religious dread of Hjortsberg’s Falling Angel, the clearest voice here is Kurtz’s own cry into the existential abyss.” —Bracken MacLeod, author of Mountain Home

In Freedom Prime, young adults can choose their name, their trade, and their gender, but the one thing they cannot choose is to be part of a family, because the family unit has been eradicated.

Rediscover your self-worth, boost your self-confidence, and develop a sense of “enoughness” that can improve your life and the world around you. Do you, like so many of us, believe that you will never have enough time, money, talent, or love to truly be happy? Do you think you’re not good enough, not rich enough or thin enough or smart enough, to have the life you want? Or that problems in your community or the world around you could be solved if only there were more to go around? Everywhere, all the time, we get this message that there is something lacking, something more, something better to strive for. In fact, the idea that there isn’t enough or you aren’t enough is so deeply ingrained in us and into our culture that it holds sway over almost every aspect of our lives, from how we perceive our self-worth and our skills as parents, friends, and partners (I am not enough) to the ways in which we are taught and governed. Author and activist Laurie McCammon wrote this book to show that that is all a lie. Discover how your own never-enough thinking has been limiting you and how to challenge it in all the places it lurks. Let Laurie show you how to develop a sense of enoughness that can change not only how you feel about yourself but how you view time, your relationships, your work, and the possibilities for helping to shape a better you and a better world. Praise for Enough! “Like a breath of fresh air—along comes Laurie McCammon’s marvelous book to show us just how we got into “too much” and all its consequences and just how simple it is to get off the roller coaster and into a more peaceful and loving life ride. This book is a must for a saner and more caring future.” —Elisabet Sahtouris, PhD, evolutionary biologist and futurist, author of EarthDance and Gaia’s Dance

A humorous, always learned, and occasionally frightening introduction to one socialist teacher's view of America.