How did American cities change throughout the 20th and early 21st century? This timely publication integrates research from American Literary and Cultural Studies, Urban Studies and History. The essays range from negotiations of the "ethnic city" in US literature and media, to studies of recent urban phenomena and their representations: gentrification, re-appropriation and conversion of urban spaces in the USA. These interdisciplinary and intercultural perspectives on American cities provide unique points of access for studying the complex narratives of urban transformation.

Have you ever wanted to know why civilizations decay or why war has been a recurrent phenomena throughout history; what are the forces causing population explosions, and why it is very likely that the power balance between today's developed countries and the less-developed world will be altered in the decades to come?

The inspired madness of America's apocalyptic and pre-millennial organizations may have reached a fever pitch with the turn of the twenty-first century, but intrepid cultural traveler Alex Heard spent a ten-year period witnessing the crescendo firsthand.  Heard's enthusiasm led him on errands as diverse as being a voyeur at a Republic of Texas militia standoff, accompanying an expectant UFO "greeting party" to a remote field in Minnesota, and enacting the grief of the California quail at an ad-hoc therapy group for fierce environmentalists who believe the earth is an actual living entity that's preparing to kill off its human population--and soon...or at least pretty soon.

Amazing as it may seem, however, throughout this trenchant subcultural travelogue, Heard never stoops to ridicule his subjects.  As one reviewer puts it, "Heard's real achievement may be that he makes us care--in a way that is more than voyeuristic--about the colorful characters he meets on the road to the new millennium.  He takes these people seriously, allows his assumptions to be challenged, and lets himself find that some of their beliefs and fears reflect his own" (San Jose Mercury News).

Apocalypse Pretty Soon will appeal to science fiction fans and students of subcultures, as well as anybody interested in way-out alternatives to the brave new world.


Amazing as it may seem, however, throughout this trenchant subcultural travelogue, Heard never stoops to ridicule his subjects. As one reviewer put it, "Heard's real achievement may be that he makes us care--in a way that is more than voyeuristic--about the colorful characters he meets on the road to the new millennium. He takes these people seriously, allows his assumptions to be challenged, and lets himself find that some of their beliefs and fears reflect his own" (San Jose Mercury News).

Now in paperback, this book will have an audience well beyond "millenniamania," from science fiction fans to students of subculture, and anybody interested in way-out alternatives to the brave new world. -->

We all want to know what will happen to the earth and to those who come after us, our children and our grandchildren. Diane, seeking an answer, has gone to women visionaries and seers: women who channel the future and those who bring it to life in their writings: Sally Miller Gearhart, Sheri Tepper, and Marge Piercy. This is the time, Diane avers, for women to define what needs changing and begin to do the work. By women's power of thought and creation, we together can make a better world.

Uncertain Futures considers how economic actors visualize the future and decide how to act in conditions of radical uncertainty. It starts from the premise that dynamic capitalist economies are characterized by relentless innovation and novelty and hence exhibit an indeterminacy that cannot be reduced to measurable risk. The organizing question then becomes how economic actors form expectations and make decisions despite the uncertainty they face. This edited volume lays the foundations for a new model of economic reasoning by showing how, in conditions of uncertainty, economic actors combine calculation with imaginaries and narratives to form fictional expectations that coordinate action and provide the confidence to act. It draws on groundbreaking research in economic sociology, economics, anthropology, and psychology to present theoretically grounded empirical case studies. These demonstrate how grand narratives, central bank forward guidance, economic forecasts, finance models, business plans, visions of technological futures, and new era stories influence behaviour and become instruments of power in markets and societies. The market impact of shared calculative devices, social narratives, and contingent imaginaries underlines the rationale for a new form of narrative economics.

Because the Information Age is so extremely different from the Industrial Age, the socioeconomic systems that will evolve will be different as well. The systems based on capitalist market economies and socialist planned economies proved to be neither sustainable nor community based. The scholars who contributed to this volume, including Nobel Laureates and other leaders in diverse fields, consciously look to new socioeconomic systems that would be sustainable and would be community-based.

The failure of the Industrial Age is partly due to the education system peculiar to that age, which only values highly fragmented specialists, without questioning the interrelationships of professions and fragmented viewpoints. In the emerging Information Age, a new type of higher-education system, one focused on holistic viewpoints, is needed to unify fragmented professions. This and other future-oriented visionary perspectives emerge from this collection--one that will be of great value to all researchers and thinkers concerned with the new opportunities arising from the emerging Information Age.

Why do we continue to think about, imagine, and forecast the future despite believing we will probably be wrong? Why do we need to do so? What does the future mean, and how do we relate to it? Is it possible that Western societies condition their members into inability to cope with the future?

These and other fundamental questions are explored in "The Future Is Ours," which is written as an intermediate text for use in future-oriented modules within BA courses in International Business, Management, Urban Planning, and Environmental Politics.

The essays in this collection, written by some of the leading scholars in Popular Culture Studies, turn the page on the new millennium to see what are the directions of approach and the opportunities to be gained in recognition of the compelling need for studies in everyday cultures.

Global risks, mobilities and interdependencies transnationalize local life and working worlds. These processes lead to an inner globalization of societies in which worldwide constellations of "reflexive" (Ulrich Beck), "multiple" (Shmuel N. Eisenstadt), "entangled" (Shalini Randeria) and "global" (Arjun Appadurai) modernities simultaneously and immediately clash in social action: a process of cosmopolitanization in which "the global" is localized and "the local" is globalized in radical new ways. In this book, an international selection of prominent critical thinkers address this premise and provide their interpretations of imminent challenges, concomitant social dynamics and political implications.With contributions by Arjun Appadurai, Zygmunt Bauman, Ulrich Beck, Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim, Edgar Grande, Maarten Hajer, Ronald Hitzler, Wolf Lepenies, Anna Tsing, Angela McRobbie, Bruno Latour, Ted Nordhaus & Michael Shellenberger, Hans-Georg Soeffner, Natan Sznaider, Anja Weiss and Yunxiang Yan.

The time is the near future... The Intifada, the Palestinian revolt, intensifies throughout the West Bank and Gaza. Egypt breaks diplomatic relations with Israel. The combined air forces of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan and Egypt invade the skies over Israel. The sixth Arab-Israeli war has begun... South Korean student protesters, marching to the demilitarized zone separating their country from North Korea, are fired on by South Korean security forces, resulting in nearly 1,000 casualties and worldwide cries of protest. Wildly escalating tensions culminate in air and artillery strikes by North Korea against the South that launch, in turn, the second Korean War... The revolutionary Sandinista Front regains power in Nicaragua in a bloodless coup. With a renewed offensive by FMLN guerrillas in neighboring El Salvador, the Sandinistas establish a supporting land supply link to the rebels by mounting an offensive into Honduras. Once again, Central America is engulfed in war... Russia's controversial prime minister is assassinated as he addresses a special session of parliament. A resurgent KGB takes power and declares martial law. Mutinies erupt in army and air force units across the country ushering in the second Russian Revolution... Today we witness a harsh paradox: after the long-hoped-for end of the Cold War, concern for world security has, if anything, dramatically increased. Now, in Future Wars, Col. Trevor N. Dupuy one of America's foremost military analysts, examines ten world hotspots where war might break out in the next five years. With the assistance of a unique analytical tool developed by the author, a computerized combat simulation used in several defense ministries around theworld, Future Wars examines the following possible global flashpoints, the third Gulf War, the fourth India-Pakistan War, the Sandinista War, the war for Transylvania, the Libya-Egypt War, the second Korean War, the second war for Africa, the sixth Arab-Israeli War, the Russian Civil War and the Sino-Russian border war. Written with the authority of a top-ranked military analyst and the you-are-there immediacy of the best techno-thriller fiction, Future Wars gives a brief history of the region for each of these wars and describes its probable course - including a review of each side's military potential, a vividly detailed scenario of a typical engagement, and a prediction of what the outcome most likely would be. An educated speculation about what could happen and how, Future Wars may well prove to be one of the most important books for the uncertain and perilous years that lie ahead.

An electrifying collection of thought-provoking interviews from recent broadcasts of CBC Radio's Ideas. In these remarkable dialogues -- most of them in the company of Ideas host Paul Kennedy -- some of the great intellectuals of our time reflect, interject, and project on the course of human civilization, addressing topics such as social engineering and human rights, the directions of science and technology, the influence of art, music, and literature, and the quest for truth. Compiled and edited by Bernie Lucht, this volume explores the ideas of nineteen inspiring international and Canadian thinkers, including Louise Arbour, David Schindler, Jerome Kagan, John Gray, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, Leonore Tieffer, Nat Hentoff, Theodore Dalrymple, Mark Lilla, and many others.

* THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * * Future-proof yourself and your business by reading this book * Technological advances have benefited our world in immeasurable ways, but there is an ominous flipside. Criminals are often the earliest, and most innovative, adopters of technology and modern times have led to modern crimes. Today's criminals are stealing identities, draining online bank-accounts and wiping out computer servers. It's disturbingly easy to activate baby cam monitors to spy on families, pacemakers can be hacked to deliver a lethal jolt, and thieves are analyzing your social media in order to determine the best time for a home invasion. Meanwhile, 3D printers produce AK-47s, terrorists can download the recipe for the Ebola virus, and drug cartels are building drones. This is just the beginning of the tsunami of technological threats coming our way. In Future Crimes, Marc Goodman rips open his database of hundreds of real cases to give us front-row access to these impending perils. Reading like a sci-fi thriller, but based in startling fact, Goodman raises tough questions about the expanding role of technology in our lives. Future Crimes is a call to action for better security measures worldwide, but most importantly, will empower readers to protect themselves against these looming technological threats - before it's too late.

Maybe turn down the opinionated dial? Hari and Max weren't satisfied with their first attempt at parenthood, so they're giving it a second go. Only this time they've got a 30-day money back guarantee and an easy-to-follow construction manual. They're certain, as long as they follow it step-by-step, he's going to be perfect. This might be a little more complicated than the bed but still, I'm sure its the kind of thing we can crack on our own. Instructions for Correct Assembly premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs on 7 April 2018, in a production directed by Hamish Pirie.

*The classic New York Times Bestseller* 'Hugely enjoyable...it reads like a novel, a fantasy tale of rags and riches that happens to be true' Sunday Times 'A superb book... Lewis makes Silicon Valley as thrilling and intelligible as he made Wall Street in his best-selling Liar's Poker' Time 'A fascinating journey into the Wild West of American capitalism' Daily Telegraph __________ In the last years of the millennium, Michael Lewis sets out to find the world's most important technology entrepreneur, the man who embodies the spirit of the coming age. He finds him in Jim Clark, the billionaire who founded Netscape and Silicon Graphics and who now aims to turn the healthcare industry on its head with his latest billion-dollar project. Lewis accompanies Clark on the maiden voyage of his vast yacht and, on the sometimes hazardous journey, takes the reader on the ride of a lifetime through a landscape of geeks and billionaires. Through every brilliant anecdote and funny character sketch, Michael Lewis allows us an inside look at the world of the super-rich, whilst drawing a map of free enterprise in the twenty-first century. __________ From the author of the #1 bestseller THE BIG SHORT and the original business classic LIAR'S POKER comes the definitive 21st-century business story. 'A superb book. . . . Lewis makes Silicon Valley as thrilling and intelligible as he made Wall Street in his best-selling Liar's Poker.' Time

Up to now, modernization has always been conceived of, in contrast to the worlds of tradition and religion, as a liberation from the constraints of nature. What happens, however, if industrial society becomes a 'tradition' to itself? What if its own necessities, functional principles and fundamental concepts are undermined, broken up and demystified with the same ruthlessness as were the supposedly eternal truths of earlier epochs?

These questions are the focus of Ulrich Beck's Democracy without Enemies. The conflict of the future, he argues, will no longer be between East and West, between communism and capitalism, but between the countries, regions and groups involved in primary modernization and those that are attempting to relativize and reform the project of modernity self-critically, based on their experience of it. The conflict of the future will be between the two modernities which will battle over the compatibility of survival and human rights for all citizens of the earth.

Too often Indigenous peoples have been portrayed as being without a future, destined either to disappear or assimilate into settler society. This book asserts quite the opposite: Indigenous peoples are not in any sense "out of time" in our contemporary world. Shaping the Future on Haida Gwaii shows how Indigenous peoples in Canada not only continue to have a future, but are at work building many different futures - for themselves and for their non-Indigenous neighbours. Through the experiences of the Haida First Nation, this book explores these possible futures in detail, demonstrating how Haida ways of thinking about time, mobility, and political leadership are at the heart of contemporary strategies for addressing the dilemmas that come with life under settler colonialism.

Are paperclips going to destroy life as we know it?
What can Mickey Mouse teach us about how to programme AI?
Could a more rational approach to life be what saves us all?

This is a book about about a community of people who are trying to think rationally about intelligence and what insight they can and can't give us about the future of the human race. It explains why these people are worried about an AI apocalypse, why they might be right, and why they might be wrong. It is a book about the cutting edge of our thinking on intelligence and rationality right now by the people who stay up all night worrying about it.

About the book: An adventurous journey from the stone circle of Almendes in Portugal to the temples of Malta becomes a journey through a new hologram of history. Every event, every temple visit and also every difficulty is guided and thereby unexpected and unpredictable. Sabine Lichtenfels with her mediumistic talent shows simply and modestly what it means to travel in full trust in divine guidance. The temples of Malta act as antennae to the past for her and transmit descriptions and pictures of the culture that had once erected these buildings. This information gives a breathtaking view into a highly developed fulfilling and sensual life. And that at a time where we once thought that primitive people were running around with axes.At the center of this high archaic culture was care for all that lives. The strong current of Eros and the mutual joy between the genders was sacred to them. They knew neither private property nor separation. The body of the woman was like the body of the earth, nourishing and giving. Their religion was the celebration of life itself, from the first sunbeams in the morning until the sparking stars in the night. For thousands of years, their non-violent culture flourished, based on the friendship between the genders.For the author, this view into the past is simultaneously a start of a humane future. The temple of love is to be recreated in the light of modern knowledge, in practical life between men and women in model communities for a future without war.

If there is anything that distinguishes us from animals, it is our ability to understand that such a thing as the future exists and our willingness to try and look into it. But how have people through the ages gone about making predictions? What were their underlying assumptions, and what methods did they use? Have increased computer power and the newest algorithms improved our success in anticipating the future, or are we still only as good (or as bad) at it as our ancestors? From the ancients watching the flight of birds to the murky activities of Google and Facebook today, Seeing into the Future gives us an insight into the past, present and future of prediction.

'A timely and cogent reminder that history never ends and is about to be made' - Tim Marshall, author of Prisoners of Geography With the world already struggling to contain conflicts on several continents, with security and defence expenditure under huge pressure, it's time to think the unthinkable and explore what might happen. As former soldiers now working in defence strategy and conflict resolution, Paul Cornish and Kingsley Donaldson are perfectly qualified to guide us through a credible and utterly convincing 20/20 vision of the year 2020, from cyber security to weapons technology, from geopolitics to undercover operations. This book is of global importance, offering both analysis and creative solutions - essential reading both for decision-makers and everyone who simply wants to understand our future.

The world is changing fast. In this new edition of his much admired book, Patrick Dixon explores six major trends that we all need to adapt to: Fast--speed will be everything; Urban--how the emphasis on cities will intensify; Tribal--conflicts of culture and conscience, for example in Europe; Universal--the forces of globalism; Radical--the reaction against 20th century values; and Ethical--a new morality.