New Books (Westminster)

A history of how, in the mid-twentieth century, we came to believe in the concept of creativity. Named a best book of 2023 by the New Yorker and a notable book of 2023 by Behavioral Scientist. Creativity is one of American society's signature values, but the idea that there is such a thing as "creativity"--and that it can be cultivated--is surprisingly recent, entering our everyday speech in the 1950s. As Samuel W. Franklin reveals, postwar Americans created creativity, through campaigns to define and harness the power of the individual to meet the demands of American capitalism and life under the Cold War.

An inspiring look at wildlife species that are defying the odds and teaching important lessons about how to share a planet. The news about wildlife is dire- more than 900 species have been wiped off the planet since industrialization. Against this bleak backdrop, however, there are also glimmers of hope and crucial lessons to be learned from animals that have defied global trends toward extinction- bears in Italy, bison in North America, whales in the Atlantic. These populations are back from the brink, some of them in numbers unimaginable in a century. How has this happened? What shifts in thinking did it demand?

For more than half a century, medical advances have been driven by investigators launching experiments inside labs. Science is often conducted in isolation and geared toward the long view. This is the story of a group of people who tried to force the lab doors open: parents whose children had been diagnosed with a rare and fatal genetic condition known as Niemann-Pick disease type C. The disease prevents cells from processing cholesterol, which leads to the progressive loss of the brain's and the body's ability to function. Recognizing that there would never be a treatment in time to save their children if things stayed the same, the parents set up a collaboration with researchers and doctors in search of a cure.

In the late twentieth century, nothing united union members, progressive students, Black and Chicano activists, Native Americans, feminists, and members of the LGBTQ+ community quite as well as Coors beer. They came together not in praise of the ice cold beverage but rather to fight a common enemy: the Colorado-based Coors Brewing Company. Wielding the consumer boycott as their weapon of choice, activists targeted Coors for allegations of antiunionism, discrimination, and conservative political ties. Over decades of organizing and coalition-building from the 1950s to the 1990s, anti-Coors activists molded the boycott into a powerful means of political protest.

Legal and Ethical Issues of Live Streaming explores the potential legal and ethical issues of using live streaming technology, citing that although live streaming has a broadcasting capability, it is not regulated by the Federal Communications Commission, unlike other broadcasting media such as radio or television. Without this regulation, live streaming is opened up for broad use and misuse, including broadcasts of horrifying incidents such as the mass shootings at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019, sparking outrage and fear about the technology.

Shame, Gender Violence, and Ethics: Terrors of Injustice draws from contemporary, concrete atrocities against women and marginalized communities to re-conceptualize moral shame and to set moral shame apart from dimensions of subordination, humiliation, and disgrace. The interdisciplinary collection starts with a contribution from a Yazidi-survivor of genocidal and sexual violence, whose case brings together core themes: gender, ethnic and religious identity, and violence and shame. Further accounts of shame and gendered violence in this collection take the reader to other and equally disturbing accounts of lesser-known atrocities from around the world.

White ignorance is a form of collective denial that aggressively resists acknowledging the role of race and racism. It dominates our political landscape, warps white moral frameworks and affective responses, intervenes in white self-conceptions, and organizes white identities. In this way, white ignorance poses a problem for conceptions of responsibility that rely on individuals' intentions, causal contributions, or knowledge of the facts. As Eva Boodman shows, our moral concepts for responding to racism are implicated in the process of racialization when they understand responsibility as the attribution of blame or absolution, innocence or guilt.

The Success Paradox is the improbable story of a life and business transformed, told in a warmly authentic style that says: "I hit rock bottom, I surrendered, I began doing the opposite of what I'd been doing before, miracles happened, and here's what you can learn from my journey." With riveting personal details that illuminate his discoveries, Gary details how he defied the odds - not just to survive but to thrive - by implementing a series of paradoxical strategies, fundamentally opposite to anything he'd ever done before.

A critical and cutting-edge examination of modern prison labor. The United States is home to the most expansive prison system on Earth. In addition to holding nearly a quarter of the world's legal captives, this nation puts them to work. Close to two-thirds of those held in U.S. state prisons hold some sort of job while incarcerated. For these imprisoned people, the carceral institution is not only a place of punishment, but a workplace as well. Yet, very little is known about the world of work behind bars. In order to illuminate the "black box" that is modern prison labor, this book marshals 18 months of ethnographic observations within one of America's medium-security prisons as well as 82 interviews with currently incarcerated men and the institutional staff members tasked with overseeing them.

Did you know that mosquitoes' mouthparts are helping to develop pain-free surgical needles? Who'd have thought that the humble mussel could inspire so many useful things, from plywood production to a "glue" that can cement the crowns on teeth? Or that the design of polar bear fur may one day help keep humans warm in space? In everything from fashion to architecture, medicine to transportation, it may surprise you how many extraordinary inventions have been inspired by the natural world.

Over the last few years, social media has expanded to become a key platform for news dissemination and circulation, and a key orginator and propogator of 'fake news'.. Nations, governments, organisations and societies are now coming to terms with the unpredictable and debilitating consequences of fake news. The propagation of news containing falsehoods has been linked to an increase in measles cases, surges in youth crimes, the spread of pseudo-science, compromised national security, and more. Some even perceive it as a global threat to democratic systems around the world. In this book, the authors examine factors influencing the spread of fake news, and suggest ways to combat it by exploring the key elements which enable and facilitate this phenomenon.

Challenging the formidable tradition that places early New England Puritanism at the center of the American religious experience, Yale historian Jon Butler offers a new interpretation of three hundred years of religious and cultural development. Butler stresses the instability of religion in Europe where state churches battled dissenters, magic, and astonishingly low church participation. He charts the transfer of these difficulties to America, including the failure of Puritan religious models, and describes the surprising advance of religious commitment there between 1700 and 1865. Striking in its breadth and deeply rooted in primary sources, this seminal book recasts the landscape of American religious and cultural history.

Laboring for Justice highlights the experiences of day laborers and advocates in the struggle against wage theft in Denver, Colorado. Drawing on more than seven years of research that earned special recognition for its community engagement, this book analyzes the widespread problem of wage theft and its disproportionate impact on low-wage immigrant workers. Rebecca Galemba focuses on the plight of day laborers in Denver, Colorado--a quintessential purple state that has swung between some of the harshest and more welcoming policies around immigrant and labor rights.

Climate change is a defining issue of our time for which the immediate as well as potential future scope causes enormous impediments to human understanding and comprehension. It is argued here that humans ought to make wise use of their capacity of thinking, language, and communication in working on the task of responsible action.

Experience Colorado with this new, enlarged edition of A Colorado History. For fifty years, the authors of this preeminent resource have led readers on an extraordinary exploration of how the state has changed--and how it has stayed the same. From the arrival of Paleo-Indians in the Mesa Verde region to the fast pace of the twenty-first century, A Colorado History covers the political, economic, cultural, and environmental issues, along with the fascinating events and characters, that have shaped this dynamic state. In print for fifty years, this distinctive examination of the Centennial State is a must-read for history buffs, students, researchers--or anyone--interested in the remarkable place called Colorado.