Which Side Of History

"A valuable primer on this moment where humans are deciding how much power over their lives they give to monopolies and algorithms." —DAVE EGGERS, bestselling author of The Circle Which Side of History? offers a collection of bold essays on how technology is affecting democracy, society, and our future. Featuring prominent national voices such as Sacha Baron Cohen, Marc Benioff, Ellen Pao, Ken Auletta, Chelsea Clinton, Tim Wu, Khaled Hosseini, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, Jaron Lanier, Willow Bay, Sal Khan, Sherry Turkle, Shoshana Zuboff, Vivek Murthy, Geoffrey Canada, and many more. The essays focus on the extraordinary impact of technology on our privacy, kids and families, race and gender roles, democracy, climate change, and mental health. This groundbreaking book challenges opinion leaders and the broader public to take action to improve technology's effects on our lives. • Featuring notable journalists, engineers, entrepreneurs, novelists, activists, filmmakers, business leaders, scholars, and researchers, including: Thomas Friedman, Kara Swisher, Michelle Alexander, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, Jenna Wortham, Cameron Kasky, Howard Gardner, and Tristan Harris. • Explores the ethical behavior of Big Tech, or the lack thereof. • Offers roadmaps for constructive change and thought-provoking perspectives. With the rise of cyberbullying and hate speech online, issues around climate change and technology, and the "move fast and break things" mentality of tech culture, Which Side of History? will urge readers to draw the line. • This book will help shape the conversations we have around technology in our society and our future for years to come. • A smart book for anyone who approaches tech and the future with a healthy skepticism • Edited by James P. Steyer, the CEO and founder of Common Sense Media. • Add it to the shelf with books like Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr, and The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff.

A #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! Human beings have never had it better than we have it now in the West. So why are we on the verge of throwing it all away? In 2016, New York Times bestselling author Ben Shapiro spoke at the University of California–Berkeley. Hundreds of police officers were required to protect his speech. What was so frightening about Shapiro? He came to argue that Western civilization is in the midst of a crisis of purpose and ideas; that we have let grievances replace our sense of community and political expediency limit our individual rights; that we are teaching our kids that their emotions matter more than rational debate; and that the only meaning in life is arbitrary and subjective. As a society, we are forgetting that almost everything great that has ever happened in history happened because of people who believed in both Judeo-Christian values and in the Greek-born power of reason. In The Right Side of History, Shapiro sprints through more than 3,500 years, dozens of philosophers, and the thicket of modern politics to show how our freedoms are built upon the twin notions that every human being is made in God’s image and that human beings were created with reason capable of exploring God’s world. We can thank these values for the birth of science, the dream of progress, human rights, prosperity, peace, and artistic beauty. Jerusalem and Athens built America, ended slavery, defeated the Nazis and the Communists, lifted billions from poverty, and gave billions more spiritual purpose. Yet we are in the process of abandoning Judeo-Christian values and Greek natural law, watching our civilization collapse into age-old tribalism, individualistic hedonism, and moral subjectivism. We believe we can satisfy ourselves with intersectionality, scientific materialism, progressive politics, authoritarian governance, or nationalistic solidarity. We can’t. The West is special, and in The Right Side of History, Ben Shapiro bravely explains how we have lost sight of the moral purpose that drives each of us to be better, the sacred duty to work together for the greater good,.

The Right Side of History tells the 100-year history of queer activism in a series of revealing close-ups, first-person accounts, and intimate snapshots of LGBT pioneers and radicals. This diverse cast stretches from the Edwardian period to today. Described by gay scholar Jonathan Katz as "willfully cacophonous, a chorus of voices untamed," The Right Side of History sets itself apart by starting with the turn-of-the-century bohemianism of Isadora Duncan and the 1924 establishment of the nation's first gay group, the Society for Human Rights; it also includes gay activism of labor unions in the 1920s and 1930s; the 1950s civil rights movement; the 1960s anti-war protests; the sexual liberation movements of the 1970s; and more contemporary issues such as marriage equality. The book shows how LGBT folk have always been in the forefront of progressive social evolution in the United States. It references heroes like Abraham Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, Bayard Rustin, Harvey Milk, and Edie Windsor. Equally, the book honors names that aren't in history books, from participants in the Names Project, a national phenomenon memorializing 94,000 AIDS victims, to underground agitprop artists.

In The Left Side of History Kristen Ghodsee tells the stories of partisans fighting behind the lines in Nazi-allied Bulgaria during World War II: British officer Frank Thompson, brother of the great historian E.P. Thompson, and fourteen-year-old Elena Lagadinova, the youngest female member of the armed anti-fascist resistance. But these people were not merely anti-fascist; they were pro-communist, idealists moved by their socialist principles to fight and sometimes die for a cause they believed to be right. Victory brought forty years of communist dictatorship followed by unbridled capitalism after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Today in democratic Eastern Europe there is ever-increasing despair, disenchantment with the post-communist present, and growing nostalgia for the communist past. These phenomena are difficult to understand in the West, where “communism” is a dirty word that is quickly equated with Stalin and Soviet labor camps. By starting with the stories of people like Thompson and Lagadinova, Ghodsee provides a more nuanced understanding of how communist ideals could inspire ordinary people to make extraordinary sacrifices.

Ever since its first publication in 1992, The End of History and the Last Man has provoked controversy and debate. Francis Fukuyama's prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. Now updated with a new afterword, The End of History and the Last Man is a modern classic.

"What every leader needs to know about dignity and how to create a culture in which everyone thrives. This landmark book from an expert in dignity studies explores the essential but under-recognized role of dignity as part of good leadership. Extending the reach of her award-winning book Dignity: Its Essential Role in Resolving Conflict, Donna Hicks now contributes a specific, practical guide to achieving a culture of dignity. Most people know very little about dignity, the author has found, and when leaders fail to respect the dignity of others, conflict and distrust ensue. She highlights three components of leading with dignity: what one must know in order to honor dignity and avoid violating it; what one must do to lead with dignity; and how one can create a culture of dignity in any organization, whether corporate, religious, governmental, healthcare, or beyond. Brimming with key research findings, real-life case studies, and workable recommendations, this book fills an important gap in our understanding of how best to be together in a conflict-ridden world."--

"From the editor-at-large of Breitbart.com, a timely and compelling look at how liberals use bullying toward their opponents on today's top political issues"--

Exploring why conservatives have lost almost every political argument since 1945, Ed West looks at this endless litany of failure from the perspective of one of the losers, in a semi-autobiographical, self-deprecating way. Since the 1950s the western world has gone through a huge cultural shift, comparable to the rise of Christianity during the late Roman period and the 16th century religious revolution unleashed by Martin Luther. Both of these led to profound changes in public ideas about morality and sexuality, and eventually to 'culture wars' between two deeply opposed groups. Today what we're witnessing is a sort of second Reformation, and that's why it's going to be long, painful and boring, and both sides are going to get more idiotic and hysterical, just as religious divisions once drove Catholics and Protestants into prolonged insanity. Conservatives, like the pagans and Catholics before them, are very much on the losing side. The future appears progressive and their defeat is inevitable, part of an 'arc of history' that leads irrevocably to a progressive utopia in which they're left in the dustbin. As Barack Obama said of al-Qaeda, another group of guys not entirely comfortable with the modern world, conservatives are 'Small Men on the Wrong Side of History'. Too many polemics and articles on the Right are tediously shouty, and too few of them explore where their arguments have fallen flat and why people find conservatives so repulsive. Small Men on the Wrong Side of History is aimed at being the rare conservative book that someone on the Left will enjoy. West will look at some of the idiocies of the modern Right and the strange characteristics shared by conservatives, including himself, but he will also offer explanations as to why people are conservative, and explain some of the benefits conservatism offers. In particular he argues it's now necessary as a break on 'runaway liberalism', the competitive desire to appear Woker Than Thou which is driving progressive politics to extremes, and which has provoked a reaction with figures like the psychologist Jordan Peterson and his legion of fans.