Showing results by publisher "Audible Studios for Bloomsbury" in Politics & Social Sciences

Many women - regardless of income, size, shape, ethnicity, and age - are uncomfortable in their own skin. We fixate on our body image and try endless diets, implants, hair extensions, and new shoes, but it's never enough. The problem is that girls and women have been socialized to mistakenly conflate body esteem and self-esteem. Body esteem refers to how you think and feel about your physical appearance: your size, shape, hair, and features.

Born to Palestinian refugees, Kassem Eid grew up in the small town of Moadamiya on the outskirts of the ancient city of Damascus. The streets that he and his many siblings played on were perfumed with jasmine. A precocious child, he excelled at school and had a natural gift for languages. But it didn't take long for Kassem to realise that he was treated differently at school because of his family's resistance to the brutal government regime.

For the first time in history, the navies of the world have united against a common enemy - a couple of thousand rag-tag, underfed men and boys in the western Indian Ocean. Crammed into open boats and armed with ancient AK-47s, they range up to a thousand miles from home shores in Somalia. No one knows how many die at sea. But occasionally they hit the jackpot, seizing vessels and crews to be ransomed for millions of dollars.

Navigating the world of dating can be like wandering an enchanted forest, full of creatures with peculiar habits and baffling behavior. In Wood Nymph Seeks Centaur, Francesca Lia Block provides a guide to this often-treacherous terrain, classifying all those mystifying men and women into various types of mythical forest fauna - Fauns and Werewolves, Mermaids and Banshees. After answering questions to determine your own type, you can learn to identify others.

From YouTube's Head of Culture and Trends, a rousing and illuminating behind-the-scenes exploration of Internet video's massive impact on our world. Whether your favorite YouTube video is a cat on a Roomba, 'Gangnam Style', the 'Bed Intruder' song, an ASAPscience explainer, Rebecca Black's 'Friday', or the 'Evolution of Dance', Kevin Allocca's Videocracy reveals how these beloved videos and famous trends - and many more - came to be and why they mean more than you might think.

For the first time in the history of our planet, more than half the population - 3.3 billion people - is now living in cities. City is the ultimate guidebook to our urban centers - the signature unit of human civilization. With erudite prose, this unique work of metatourism explores what cities are and how they work. It covers history, customs and language, districts, transport, money, work, shops and markets, and tourist sites, creating a fantastically detailed portrait of the city through history and into the future.

It may be taboo to say, but some groups in America do better than others. Mormons have recently risen to astonishing business success. Cubans in Miami climbed from poverty to prosperity in a generation. Nigerians earn doctorates at stunningly high rates. Indian and Chinese Americans have much higher incomes than other Americans; Jews may have the highest of all. Why do some groups rise?

In this funny, thought-provoking book based on the popular film of the same name, activists John de Graaf (coauthor of the best-selling Affluenza) and David Batker tackle 13 economic issues, challenging the listener to consider the point of our economy. Emphasizing powerful American ideals, including teamwork, pragmatism, and equality, de Graaf and Batker set forth a simple goal for any economic system: The greatest good for the greatest number over the longest run.

After an elderly man jumped from New York's Pulitzer Building, in 1911, his death made the front page of the New York Times: "WorldDome Suicide a Famous War Spy". By then Pryce Lewis had slipped entirely offstage; but, as Gavin Mortimer reveals, the headline did him justice, speaking to the dramatic, vitally important, and until now untold role he had played in the Civil War.

In the spring of 2010, as we watched oil gushing unstoppably into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, many Americans turned their focus to the region for the first time, wondering how this could happen and demanding corporate and government accountability. Yet Rowan Jacobsen brings a surprising perspective to the tragedy: as bad as the spill was, it is only the latest chapter in a century-long story of destruction.

In May 2003, President George W. Bush declared victory in Iraq. But while we won the war, we catastrophically lost the peace. Our failure prompted a fundamental change in our foreign policy. Confronted with theshortcomings of "shock and awe", the U.S. military shifted its focus to"stability operations": counterinsurgency and the rebuilding of failed states. In less than a decade, foreign assistance has become militarized; humanitarianism has been armed.

As you read these words, planet Earth teems with trillions of life-forms, all going about their own business: eating, reproducing, thriving.... Yet the life of almost every single organism draws nearer to certain death. On the other hand, "suicide" inside the mitochondria that live within us results in the death of millions of cells each second for our own good! Why is death such a universal companion to life on Earth? Why haven't animals evolved to break free of its shackles?

When Christine Armstrong became a mother, it never occurred to her that she would want to stop work or even work part-time. But the truth is, combining work and small kids is hard. From the broken breast pumps on business trips, to hiding chicken pox from the nursery, to the heartbreak when you come home and realise your baby smells of the childminder. When Christine Armstrong tried it, she found herself desolate with misery. Determined to make it work, she looked for answers by interviewing other working mums and found that she wasn't alone.

The United States intelligence establishment is a colossus. With stations in 170 countries, armed with cutting-edge surveillance gear, high-tech weapons, and fleets of armed and unarmed drone aircraft, it commands the most extensive and advanced intel force in history. But America's spy establishment still struggles to keep pace with a host of determined enemies around the world. In Intel Wars, leading espionage historian Matthew M. Aid delivers the inside stories of our decade-long struggle against terrorism.

The role of women in the Christian Church is the subject of heated debate. In this powerful book Julia Ogilvy interviews twelve of the most notable Christian women of our time, providing a telling and at times shocking analysis of the situation today. The women – from the Dean of York and the Presiding Bishop in America to Helena Kennedy QC and Dr Elaine Storkey – share some of the pain, disappointment and hurt they have experienced and reflect on the impact of a patriarchal Church on the suffering of women across the world.

The world was wild for gold. After discovering the Americas, and under pressure to defend their vast dominion, the Habsburgs of Spain promoted gold and silver exploration in the New World with ruthless urgency. But, the great influx of wealth brought home by plundering conquistadors couldn’t compensate for the Spanish government’s extraordinary military spending, which would eventually bankrupt the country multiple times over and lead to the demise of the great empire.

By utilising the latest thinking in health and behavioural economics, social psychology, neuroscience, management and social network analysis, Fully Connected will provide a blueprint for how to use social health to foster well-being and productivity. At every level, each person, department and organisation is struggling to find a way to navigate this challenging era; Fully Connected will be a blueprint for anyone looking to reclaim time, space and identity in our world.

If you could bring back one living being from the whole of the history of time, what would you choose? Comedian and former stem-cell biologist Helen Pilcher has thought about this problem - a lot. In Bring Back the King, Helen explains the cutting-edge science that makes the resurrection of extinct animals a very real possibility and highlights her choices from eras gone by, from the king of the dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus rex, to the King of Rock 'n' Roll, Elvis Presley.

From the author of the international best seller Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, a bracing and original look at the tension between our democratic egalitarian political ideals and our recalcitrant biology. Human beings are tribal. We possess a fundamental desire to belong to groups, teams, clubs, a tribe - something larger than ourselves. Political Tribes explores the phenomenon of human groupishness: how identities are shaped and formed by belonging to a group.

The Wild Duck Chase takes listeners into the peculiar world of competitive duck painting as it played out during the 2010 Federal Duck Stamp Contest - the only juried art competition run by the U.S. government. Since 1934, the duck stamp, which is bought annually by hunters to certify their hunting license, has generated more than $750 million, and 98 cents of each collected dollar has been used to help purchase or lease 5.3 million acres of waterfowl habitat in the U.S. - the core of the National Wildlife Refuge System.