What would happen if every human being on Earth disappeared? This isn't the story of how we might vanish it's the story of what happens to the world we leave behind.

"In 1950, Sam Walton, founder of the Wal- Mart empire, arrived in the Bible Belt town of Bentonville, Arkansas-population 2,900 white Christians-and found it suited him just fine. Six decades later, the town is headquarters to corporations and home to a population of 30,000, including blacks, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Marshall Islanders, and the fastest-growing Latino population in the country. Boom Town: How Wal-Mart Transformed an All-American Town...

ESCAPING POLYGAMY follows three sisters who left the Kingston clan, a secretive polygamist group in Utah known as the Order, and who now help loved ones and strangers break free of polygamy.

"After living in San Francisco for 15 years, journalist Gordon Young found himself yearning for his Rust Belt hometown: Flint, Michigan, the birthplace of General Motors and "star" of the Michael Moore documentary Roger & Me. Hoping to rediscover and help a place that once boasted one of the world's highest per capita income levels, but is now one of the country's most impoverished and dangerous cities, he returned to Flint with the intention of buying...

"Pink ribbons, red dresses, and greenwashing-American corporations are scrambling to tug at consumer heartstrings through cause-related marketing, corporate social responsibility, and ethical branding, tactics that can increase sales by as much as 74%. Harmless? Marketing insider Mara Einstein demonstrates in this penetrating analysis why the answer is a resounding "No!" In Compassion, Inc. she outlines how cause-related marketing desensitizes the...

"Randol Contreras came of age in the South Bronx during the 1980s, a time when the community was devastated by cuts in social services, a rise in arson and abandonment, and the rise of crack-cocaine. For this riveting book, he returns to the South Bronx with a sociological eye and provides an unprecedented insider's look at the workings of a group of Dominican drug robbers. Known on the streets as "Stickup Kids," these men raided and brutally tortured...

"Weighing In takes on the "obesity epidemic," challenging many widely held assumptions about its causes and consequences. Julie Guthman examines fatness and its relationship to health outcomes to ask if our efforts to prevent "obesity" are sensible, efficacious, or ethical. She also focuses the lens of obesity on the broader food system to understand why we produce cheap, over-processed food, as well as why we eat it. Guthman takes issue with the...

The Chrysalis Effect shows that the chaos and conflict experienced worldwide today are the result of a global cultural metamorphosis, one which has accelerated so rapidly in recent decades as to provoke fierce resistance. Many of the changes that have taken place in the last fifty years - the feminist movement, the rapid spread of democracy, the global economy, quantum physics, minority movements, the peace movement, the sexual revolution -are part...

"Playing to Win: Raising Children in a Competitive Culture follows the path of elementary school-age children involved in competitive dance, youth travel soccer, and scholastic chess. Why do American children participate in so many adult-run activities outside of the home, especially when family time is so scarce? By analyzing the roots of these competitive afterschool activities and their contemporary effects, Playing to Win contextualizes elementary...

"Hizmet"-or the Gulen Movement referring to name of the renowned Turkish scholar Fethullah Gulen-originated in 1970s' Turkey as a faith-inspired initiative to improve educational opportunities for a local community; since then, it has grown into a transnational educational, inter-cultural and interfaith movement. This book is intended to summarize and represent the conclusions of much of the academic work on Hizmet in a manner more easily accessible...