Books about Societal from Amazon.com

Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse is novel set in the near future that describes a full scale socioeconomic collapse. More than just an exciting read, it is packed with useful survival and preparedness tips. It was described by one reviewer as "A survival manual neatly dressed as fiction."

An earlier short draft edition of the novel was distributed as shareware on the Internet in the early 1990s. At the time, despite the relatively small readership of the Internet, it had more than 82,000 downloads, making it the net´s most popular shareware novel of the decade. It was hosted at seven mirror sites on three continents.

"Patriots" is distinctly pro-Christian, pro-preparedness, pro-gun ownership, and anti-racist. It is considered a "must read" by those are concerned with the fragility of our society, and those interested in preparedness. It is also popular in Libertarian circles. "Patriots" was authored by James Wesley, Rawles, the editor of www.SurvivalBlog.com

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Price: $16.38 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Over the past two decades, investigators have learned more about the links between health and behavior

Health and Behavior reviews our improved understanding of the complex interplay among biological, psychological, and social influences and explores findings suggested by recent research. The book covers three main areas:

* What do biological, behavioral, and social sciences contribute to our understanding of health-including cardiovascular, immune system and brain functioning, behaviors that influence health, the role of social networks and socioeconomic status, and more.
* What can we learn from applied research on interventions to improve the health of individuals, families, communities, organizations, and larger populations?
* How can we expeditiously translate research findings into application?

With the perspective that individual willpower is only one thread in the fabric of health, the committee offers an ecological approach to health and behavior..
Price: $45.15 [Notify me when price goes down.]

What do Chris, the narrator, and his two travel buddies, Seb and Leo, have in common with Cuba, Israel, Turkey, and Bulgaria, the main countries they encounter in Bottled Water? They all are in the midst of a profound transition. Right after graduating university the three guys set off for Thailand, where their outlooks on the world and life will, unknown to them, change forever. Soon after the inspirational trip to Asia, Chris finds himself mired in the drudgery of a broken relationship and the relentless nightmare of his career in the financial world. When Chris and his friends figure out how to break away from their jobs and travel again, they are granted another chance to seek out the truth about love, job fulfillment, and the common threads woven through human lives everywhere. The turmoil they witness first-hand in these intense countries and the resulting adventures end up being their ultimate teacher. Bottled Water is replete with wonderment, passion, comedy, and challenges to the human heart of some of the world's most difficult conflicts..
Price: $13.81 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Life itself as well as the entire human economy depends on goods and services provided by earth's natural systems. The processes of cleansing, recycling, and renewal, along with goods such as seafood, forage, and timber, are worth many trillions of dollars annually, and nothing could live without them. Yet growing human impacts on the environment are profoundly disrupting the functioning of natural systems and imperiling the delivery of these services.

Nature's Services brings together world-renowned scientists from a variety of disciplines to examine the character and value of ecosystem services, the damage that has been done to them, and the consequent implications for human society. Contributors including Paul R. Ehrlich, Donald Kennedy, Pamela A. Matson, Robert Costanza, Gary Paul Nabhan, Jane Lubchenco, Sandra Postel, and Norman Myers present a detailed synthesis of our current understanding of a suite of ecosystem services and a preliminary assessment of their economic value. Chapters consider:

• major services including climate regulation, soil fertility, pollination, and pest control
• philosophical and economic issues of valuation
• case studies of specific ecosystems and services
• implication of recent findings and steps that must be taken to address the most pressing concerns

Nature's Services represents one of the first efforts by scientists to provide an overview of the many benefits and services that nature offers to people and the extent to which we are all vitally dependent on those services. The book enhances our understanding of the value of the natural systems that surround us and can play an essential role in encouraging greater efforts to protect the earth's basic life-support systems before it is too late..
Price: $15.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This thought-provoking work grapples with the vast range of issues associated with the aging population and challenges people of all ages to think more boldly and more creatively about the relationship between older Americans and their communities.

W. Andrew Achenbaum begins by exploring the demographics of our aging society and its effect on employment and markets, education, health care, religion, and political action. Drawing on history, literature, and philosophy, Achenbaum focuses on the way health care and increases in life expectancy have transformed late life from a phase characterized by illness, frailty, and debility to one of vitality, productivity, and spirituality. He shows how this transformation of aging is beginning to be felt in programs and policies for aging persons, as communities focus more effort on lifelong learning and extensive civic engagement.

Concerned that his own undergraduate students are too focused on the immediate future, Achenbaum encourages young people to consider their place in life's social and chronological trajectory. He calls on baby boomers to create institutional structures that promote productive, vital growth for the common good, and he invites people of all ages to think more boldly about what they will do with the long lives ahead of them.

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Price: $19.93 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The poverty rate in the United States has not dropped significantly since 1965. And if we continue to expect government and social services to take care of poverty without the help of individuals, nothing is likely to change. That's why the Circles Campaign has captured the imaginations of people of conscience across the United States, including educators, social workers, community organizers, faith leaders, business leaders, and politicians.

The Circles Campaign is an action plan that brings together the best efforts and resources of individuals, organizations, communities, and government in a program proven to raise people out of poverty.

Until It's Gone shows you how to:

• Define, recognize, and approach the problem of poverty in America
• Get started in building Circles out of poverty in your community
• Expand social networks and connect with others outside your comfort zone
• Be a bolder ally to those in need
• Become a transformational leader wherever you are
• Eliminate the barriers confronted by those in poverty

Praise for Until It's Gone:

'To achieve community sustainability, we must address issues of economic justice, which can occur only when there are relationships of mutual respect among the classes. The process that Scott Miller identifies to allow those relationships to develop is pure genius.' --Ruby K. Payne, PhD, author of the bestselling A Framework for Understanding Poverty

'Scott Miller offers us practical hope that we can end--not just reduce--poverty through a change in the ways we think and respond.' --Vicki Robin, co-author of the bestselling Your Money or Your Life and co-founder of Conversation Cafés.
Price: $9.09 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Nutrients from farms in the Mississippi River Basin are the leading cause of the Gulf of Mexico s "Dead Zone," a 5,000 to 7,000 square mile region where declining oxygen levels are threatening the survival of marine life. From the Corn Belt to the Gulf explores how new agricultural policy can help alleviate this problem, and at the same time improve water quality overall, enhance biodiversity, improve the quality of life for the people who live and work in Corn Belt communities, and relieve downstream flooding.

The themes of the book are the far-reaching environmental impacts of Corn Belt agriculture, including associated economic and social effects at multiple spatial scales and the potential for future agricultural policy to address those impacts through changes in agricultural landscapes and practices. We know that the environmental footprint of Corn Belt agriculture extends beyond farmland and adjacent lakes and streams to groundwater, rivers, cities downstream, into the Gulf of Mexico, and, ultimately, to global oceanic and atmospheric systems. And we acknowledge that agricultural policies, including commodity support payments, have economic impacts at the national and international levels. Pressing negotiations with America s trade partners, along with increasing societal attention to both the costs and environmental effects of current agricultural policy, are creating momentum for policy change.

From the Corn Belt to the Gulf presents innovative, integrated assessments of the agriculture and ecological systems in the Mississippi River Basin along with studies of local Iowa agricultural watersheds. Contributors from multiple academic and professional disciplines discuss how agricultural policies have contributed to current environmental conditions, and, in what the authors term alternative futures for agricultural landscapes, envision how new policy can help achieve more beneficial patterns..
Price: $35.69 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This important study explores various dimensions of trauma from an integrative, interdisciplinary perspective. Articles by international experts examine cultural intricacies and the moral and political nuances that shape individuals' responses to particular traumatic situations..
Price: $83.82 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Humorist Brian Eden presents comic stories reflecting American society and worldly strangeness - over 75 vignettes of satire, philosophical dribble, absurdities, musings,speculations and suggestions about our place in the cosmos..
Price: $8.25 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Freedom of Thought and Societal Forces provides a broad overview of Steiner's fresh thinking on "social threefolding." He acknowledged that the demand for social change, derived above all from the working class, whom industrialization had forced into a kind of indentured life dominated by economics. From Steiner's perspective, the underlying issue was not only economic, however, but also spiritual or cultural. Culture and the cultured classes had become estranged from "real life." Society needed a "free" culture that would include all classes. It also needed to shift labor into the legal sphere of rights, the only place where workers could find real freedom in society. Capital, too, needed to be liberated from egotism and allowed, like goods, simply to circulate. Above all, Steiner understood that social realities could not be separated from the spiritual realities of human existence.

From this point of view, we lack knowledge of ourselves as a spiritual beings. Thinking has become abstract. To remedy this, we must first admit it and develop modesty and humility. Second, we must increase our capacity to love one another and the world. Approaching this reality from another side, we see that what ordinary individual thinking also afflicts culture in general, which is also removed from reality. Culture, like thinking, must become alive and universally human. This is impossible, however, unless we develop what Steiner calls "freedom of thought." Authentic freedom of thought is always ethical and overcomes egotism. Indeed, a more general exercise of freedom in thought, as Steiner conceives it, provides a way through the twin dangers of materialism and abstraction, which together threaten society both in the narrower sense of "national" life and in the more global, geopolitical sense.

Freedom of Thought and Societal Forces is the first English translation from German of Gedankenfreiheit und soziale Kräfte (GA 333)..
Price: $20.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]