"Daraya lies on the fringe of Damascus, just southwest of the Syrian capital. Yet for four years it lived in another world. Besieged by government forces early in the Syrian Civil War, its people were deprived of food, bombarded by heavy artillery, and under the constant fire of snipers. But deep beneath this scene of frightening devastation lay a hidden library. While the streets above echoed with shelling and rifle fire, the secret world below was...

Since it became widely available for public use in the early 1990s, the Internet has proven to be amazingly useful for facilitating communication, distributing information, and sharing knowledge. Human society has already been changed by the Internet, and as new technologies develop, even more opportunities will be available to people online. However, some people have concerns about technology and privacy, the availability of new technology to everyone,...

Contains fifteen articles that provide opposing viewpoints on issues related to the Internet, discussing whether the Internet benefits society, its effect on free speech, and user safety.

Lanier offers powerful and personal reasons for all of us to leave the dangers of online platforms behind. He has seen their tendency to bring out the worst in us, to make politics terrifying, to trick us with illusions of popularity and success, to twist our relationship with the truth, to disconnect us from other people. And he asks: How could the benefits of social media possibly outweigh the catastrophic losses to our personal dignity, happiness,...

"After an Oregon mother finds an SOS letter in a box of Halloween decorations, a story unfolds about the man who wrote it: a Chinese political prisoner, sentenced without trial to work grueling hours at a "reeducation" camp-manufacturing the products soldin our own big-box stores"--

Discusses how much influence a person's "emotional intelligence" has on their ability to succeed in their personal life and their career.

You are under surveillance right now... your cell phone provider tracks your location, your online and in-store purchasing patterns are recorded, Facebook can determine your sexual orientation without you ever mentioning it. Corporations use surveillance to manipulate the prices we're offered; governments use surveillance to discriminate, censor, and put people in danger worldwide. Schneier shows what we can do to reform our government surveillance...

Before there could be a revolution, there was a rebellion; before patriots, there were insurgents. Challenging and displacing decades of received wisdom, T. H. Breen's strikingly original book explains how ordinary Americans-most of them members of farm families living in small communities-were drawn into a successful insurgency against imperial authority. This is the compelling story of our national political origins that most Americans do not know....