Eric Holthaus offers a radical vision of our future, specifically how to reverse the short- and long-term effects of climate change over the next three decades. Anchored by world-class reporting, interviews with futurists, climatologists, biologists, economists, and climate change activists, it shows what the world could look like if we implemented radical solutions on the scale of the crises we face.

Most experts agree that we need to get to negative greenhouse gas emissions worldwide by the year 2050 in order to stave off the most catastrophic effects of climate change. It's a colossal challenge, but despite a lot of outright cynicism, it is possible. This is not a problem that can be solved halfway, however, or even 95% of the way. Yet no proposal is currently on the table that specifically addresses the full scope of solutions. This is why...

From two reporters for the Washington Post comes an account of the Trump administration's handling, and mishandling, of the coronavirus outbreak, a once-in-a-century pandemic that upended life across the globe that resulted in hundreds of thousands of lives lost, a cratered economy, and the remaking of the U.S. as an unwieldy pariah in the global hierarchy. "Since the day Donald Trump was elected, his critics warned that an unexpected crisis would...

"The election happened," remembers Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, then deputy secretary of the Department of Energy. "And then there was radio silence." Across all departments, similar stories were playing out: Trump appointees were few and far between; those that did show up were shockingly uninformed about the functions of their new workplace. Some even threw away the briefing books that had been prepared for them. Michael Lewis takes us into the engine...

The Welfare State Nobody Knows challenges a number of myths and half-truths about U.S. social policy. The American welfare state is supposed to be a pale imitation of "true" welfare states in Europe and Canada. Christopher Howard argues that the American welfare state is in fact larger, more popular, and more dynamic than commonly believed. Nevertheless, poverty and inequality remain high, and this book helps explain why so much effort accomplishes

...

-- The Gay Revolution The Gay Revolution In the words of the eyewitnesses who were there through the most critical events, The Gay Revolution paints a nuanced portrait of the LGBT civil rights movement. A defining account, this is the most complete and authoritative book of its kind.

"An award-winning journalist's intimate investigation of the true scope of domestic violence, revealing how the roots of America's most pressing social crises are buried in abuse that happens behind closed doors. We call it domestic violence. We call it private violence. Sometimes we call it intimate terrorism. But whatever we call it, we generally do not believe it has anything at all to do with us, despite the World Health Organization deeming it...

The authors, Figueres and Rivett-Carnac--the architects of the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement, outline two possible scenarios for the planet. In one, what life on Earth will be like by 2050 if we fail to meet the Paris targets for carbon dioxide emission reduction. In the other, what it will take to create and live in a carbon neutral, regenerative world. They argue for confronting the climate crisis head on, and present what governments, corporations,...

A "concise and utterly enlightening" look at why we can't wrap our minds around climate change (Publishers Weekly).

Are we deranged? Award-winning essayist and novelist Amitav Ghosh argues that future generations may think so. How else to explain our imaginative failure in the face of global warming? The Great Derangement examines our inability—at the level of literature, history, and politics—to...

"An eminent sociologist--and coauthor, with Aziz Ansari, of the #1 New York Times bestseller Modern Romance--makes the provocative case that the future of democratic societies rests not only on shared values but also on shared "social infrastructure": the libraries, childcare centers, bookstores, coffee shops, pools, and parks that promote crucial, sometimes life-saving connections between people who might otherwise fail to find common cause"-- "An...