The book has 163,800 words (624 pages in octavo hardback), with a table of contents, foreword, labeled sections, summaries, index, notes, references, appendices and postscript. E-book editions are fully searchable and convertible, without DRM. Most people are somewhat, or even deeply confused about how to be a good person. If reliable recipes were available, how to be good would be almost the most valuable information that one could imagine. This book first explains the importance of a def...

Ronald Reagan’s most-quoted living author—George Gilder—is back with an all-new paradigm-shifting theory of capitalism that will upturn conventional wisdom, just when our economy desperately needs a new direction.America’s struggling economy needs a better philosophy than the college student's lament: "I can't be out of money, I still have checks in my checkbook!" We’ve tried a government spending spree, and we’ve learned it doesn’t work. Now is the time to rededicate our country t...

This classic study of ethics in business presents an eye-opening account of how corporate managers think the world works, and how big organizations shape moral consciousness. Robert Jackall takes the reader inside a topsy-turvy world where hard work does not necessarily lead to success, but sharp talk, self-promotion, powerful patrons, and sheer luck might. What sort of everyday rules-in-use do people play by when there are no fixed standards to explain why some succeed and others fail? In...

A work of seminal importance, this book presents Ivan Illich's penetrating analysis of the industrial mode of production which characterises our contemporary world. The conviviality for which noted social philosopher Ivan Illich is arguing is one in which the individual's personal energies are under direct personal control and in which the use of tools is responsibly limited. This book claims out attention for the urgency of its appeal, the stunning clarity of its logic and the overwhelmin...

This widely acclaimed book, first published in 1974, was a classic from its first day in print. Written in a direct, inviting way by Harry Braverman, whose years as an industrial worker gave him rich personal insight into work, Labor and Monopoly Capital overturned the reigning ideologies of academic sociology.This new edition features an introduction by John Bellamy Foster that sets the work in historical and theoretical context, as well as two rare articles by Braverman,...

Though the scientific community largely agrees that climate change is underway, debates about this issue remain fiercely polarized. These conversations have become a rhetorical contest, one where opposing sides try to achieve victory through playing on fear, distrust, and intolerance. At its heart, this split no longer concerns carbon dioxide, greenhouse gases, or climate modeling; rather, it is the product of contrasting, deeply entrenched worldviews. This brief examines what causes peopl...

In this political essay, Ivan Illich calls for the right to useful unemployment: a positive, constructive, and even optimistic concept dealing with that activity by which people are useful to themselves and others outside the production of commodities for the market.

Distinguished cyberneticist Stafford Beer states the case for a new science of systems theory and cybernetics. His essays examine such issues as The Real Threat to All We Hold Most Dear, The Discarded Tools of Modern Man, A Liberty Machine in Prototype, Science in the Service of Man, The Future That Can Be Demanded Now, The Free Man in a Cybernetic World.Designing Freedom ponders the possibilities of liberty in a cybernetic world.

Science is the great intellectual adventure, but can also be an instrument of profit, power, and privilege. Wrongly used, it might yet make the twenty-first century our last. To make sense of this, we need to let go of old ideas and assumptions.This No-Nonsense Guide to Science introduces a new way of thinking about science, moving away from ideas of perfect certainty and objectivity. We must accept uncertainty and ignorance in the field, as well as the need for citizens’ ...

The Company of Strangers shows us the remarkable strangeness, and fragility, of our everyday lives. This completely revised and updated edition includes a new chapter analyzing how the rise and fall of social trust explain the unsustainable boom in the global economy over the past decade and the financial crisis that succeeded it.Drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, history, psychology, and literature, Paul Seabright explores how our evolved ability of abstract ...

"Daly is turning economics inside out by putting the earth and its diminishing natural resources at the center of the field . . . a kind of reverse Copernican revolution in economics."--Utne Reader"Considered by most to be the dean of ecological economics, Herman E. Daly elegantly topples many shibboleths in Beyond Growth. Daly challenges the conventional notion that growth is always good, and he bucks environmentalist orthodoxy, arguing that the current fo...

Ideal for professors who want to provide a comprehensive set of the most important readings in the philosophy of technology, from foundational to the cutting edge, this book introduces students to the various ways in which societies, technologies, and environments shape one another. The readings examine the nature of technology as well as the effects of technologies upon human knowledge, activities, societies, and environments. Students will learn to appreciate the ways that philosophy inf...