WIN, WIN - When Business Works for Women, It Works for Everyone by Joanne Lipman

$32.99 AUD

Category: Sociology

Going beyond the message of Lean In and The Confidence Code, the editor in chief of the USA Today Network contends that to achieve parity in the office, women don't have to change-men do-and in this inclusive and realistic handbook, offers solutions to help professionals solve gender gap issues and achi eve parity at work.Companies with more women in senior leadership perform better by virtually every financial measure, and women employees help boost creativity and can temper risky behavior-such as the financial gambles behind the 2008 economic collapse. Yet in the United States, ninety-five percent of Fortune 500 chief executives are men, and women hold only seventeen percent of seats on corporate boards. More men are reaching across the gender divide, genuinely trying to reinvent the culture and transform the way we work together. Yet despite these good intentions, fumbles, missteps, frustration, and misunderstanding continue to inflict real and lasting damage on women's careers.What can the Enron scandal teach us about the way men and women communicate professionally? How does brain circuitry help explain men's fear of women's emotions at work? Why did Kimberly Clark blindly have an all-male team of executives in charge of their Kotex tampon line? In That's What She Said, veteran media executive Joanne Lipman raises these intriguing questions and more to explore problems and find workable solutions that individual managers, organizations, and government can employ to make work more equitable-and that will help men at home as well as at work.Filled with illuminating anecdotes and stories from Lipman's own journey to the top of a male-dominated industry, That's What She Said is a book about success that persuasively shows why empowering women as true equals is an essential goal for us all-and offers a roadmap for getting there. ...Show more

Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future by Paul Mason

$49.99 AUD

Category: Sociology

Over the past two centuries or so, capitalism has undergone continual change - economic cycles that lurch from boom to bust - and has always emerged transformed and strengthened. Surveying this turbulent history, Paul Mason wonders whether today we are on the brink of a change so big, so profound, that this time capitalism itself, the immensely complex system by which entire societies function, has reached its limits and is changing into something wholly new.At the heart of this change is information technology: a revolution that, as Mason shows, has the potential to reshape utterly our familiar notions of work, production and value, and to destroy an economy based on markets and private ownership - in fact, he contends, it is already doing so. Almost unnoticed, in the niches and hollows of the market system, whole swathes of economic life are changing. Goods and services that no longer respond to the dictates of neoliberalism are appearing, from parallel currencies and time banks, to cooperatives and self-managed online spaces. Vast numbers of people are changing their behaviour, discovering new forms of ownership, lending and doing business that are distinct from, and contrary to, the current system of state-backed corporate capitalism.In this groundbreaking book Mason shows how, from the ashes of the recent financial crisis, we have the chance to create a more socially just and sustainable global economy. Moving beyond capitalism, he shows, is no longer a utopian dream. This is the first time in human history in which, equipped with an understanding of what is happening around us, we can predict and shape, rather than simply react to, seismic change. 'An original, engaging, and bracingly articulated vision of real alternatives, it is sure to spark many vigorous debates, and they are precisely the ones we should be having.' Naomi Klein ...Show more

The Best of Myles by O'BRIEN, FLANN

$26.99 AUD

Category: Sociology

The Case for Working with Your Hands: Or Why Office Work is Bad for Us and Fixing Things Feels Good by Matthew B. Crawford

$29.95 AUD

Category: Sociology

It's time to rethink our attitudes to work. For too long we have convinced ourselves that the only jobs worth doing involve sitting at a desk. Generations of school-leavers head for university lacking the skills to fix or even understand the most basic technology. And yet many of us are not suited to of fice life, while skilled manual work provides one of the few and most rewarding paths to a secure living. Drawing on the work of our greatest thinkers, from Aristotle to Heidegger, from Karl Marx to Iris Murdoch, as well as on his own experiences as an electrician and motorcycle mechanic, Matthew Crawford's irreverent and inspiring manifesto will change the way you think about work forever. ...Show more

The War on Women by Sue Lloyd-Roberts

$32.99 AUD

Category: Sociology

Sue Lloyd-Roberts joined ITN in 1973 as a news trainee, she went on to become the UK's first female video-journalist, reporting alone from the bleak outposts of the former Soviet Union and China. With a 30-year-long career in human-rights journalism, she has travelled the globe and witnessed the worst a trocities inflicted on women. Observing first-hand the war on the female race, she's experienced and interacted with the brave ones who fight back. This is a breath-taking and visceral narrative, interweaving the real-life experiences of the heroines combating gross inequality. It is an examination of how women are treated across the globe: from the pay gap in the UK and the laundries in Ireland, to gender discrimination in Saudi Arabia and female genital mutilation in Africa. In a world where the issues facing women are so disparate, we're facing a war of varying extremities and this has created a breakdown in the feminist discourse. But through her extraordinary and unique experiences, Lloyd-Roberts starts to build a bigger picture with a pervasive perspective. The book delves into our history and takes us on a journey towards the analysis of the state of women's lives in modern-day society. This is a ground-breaking approach to a global problem; anecdotal evidence bridges the gap between different fights and gradually starts to knit together the battles being fought by the starkly different cultures across the world. ...Show more

GottlandMostly True Stories from Half of Czechoslovakia by Mariusz Szczygiel

$54.99 AUD

Category: European

"Extraordinary, hypnotizing and disturbing tales."A cultural history of Czechoslovakia, told through the stories of artists, writers, and performers whose lives were completely and often strangely altered by the various pressures of the times.The story of Eduard Kirchberger is one of the fascinating and absurd cases that this book collects: in the 1920s and '30s, Kirchberger was a writer of pulp fiction, the author of bestselling thrillers in which gruesome monsters preyed on helpless women. When the Communist government came to power in 1946, they banned genre fiction for ideological reasons, so Kirchberger reinvented himself as Karel Fabi n, author of equally lurid novels in which ruthless capitalist exploiters preyed on defenseless workers. It was a clever substitution that is indicative of the feints, dodges, compromises, and sleights of hand that the citizens of Czechoslovakia became accustomed to over the course of the twentieth century, during the eighty years between the founding of the nation and its peaceful dissolution in 1993.Elegantly written, Szczygiel's book captures the stories of authors, artists, signers, actors, and other prominent individuals whose lives were subject to extraordinary reversals, and who responded sometimes with dignity and courage, sometimes with bald opportunism, and often with a particularly wry Czech sense of humor--for instance, the peasant who, in 1939, as the Germans were advancing, said: "You can only die once. And if you die a little earlier, you're just dead for a little longer." From the Bata shoe empire to Kafka's niece, Szczygiel has dug into the archives and talked to the principals, where possible, and to their family members, descendants, journalists, writers (including Milan Kundera), historians, and ordinary citizens to assemble a unique and powerful testament to how strange things can actually get in the course of human affairs--and how individuals survive regardless. ...Show more

Advanced Australia the Politics of Ageing by Mark Butler

$27.99 AUD

Category: Sociology

Advanced Australia explores the politics of ageing in Australia. The addition of 25 years to average life expectancy in Australia over the past century is a monumental achievement, but many commentators are greeting the prospect of Australians living longer with horror. The ageing of Australia's baby bo omers will sharpen this debate, both because of the size of their generation, as well as their history of reshaping every phase of life in their own image. Ageing will dominate Australian politics for years to come, touching almost every area of policy - retirement incomes, housing, employment, urban design and more. Advanced Australia makes the case for a much more positive approach to ageing that celebrates the continuing contribution older Australians make to our community. ...Show more

Notes on Suicide by Simon Critchley & David Hume

$22.99 AUD

Category: Sociology

We have to look suicide in the face, long and hard, and see what features, what profile, what inherited character traits and wrinkles emerge.' 'This book is not a suicide note. Ten days after Edouard Leve handed in the manuscript of Suicide to his publisher in 2007, he hanged himself in his apart- ment. He was 42. Two years after Jean Amery's On Suicide was published in 1976, the author took an overdose of sleeping pills. He was 65. In 1960, some eighteen years after Albert Camus had raised and - so he thought - resolved the question of suicide in The Myth of Sisyphus, he was killed in a car accident. He is alleged to have said that dying in a car crash is the most absurd of all deaths. The absurdity of his death is compounded by the fact he had an unused train ticket in his pocket. He was 46. Let me say at the outset, at the risk of disappointing the reader, that I have no plans to kill myself. just yet. Nor do I wish to join the chorus of those who proclaim loudly against suicide and claim that the act of taking one's own life is irresponsible and selfish, even shameful and cowardly, that people must stay alive whatever the cost. Suicide, in my view, is neither a legal nor moral offence, and should not be seen as such. My intention here is to simply try to understand the phenomenon, the act itself, what precedes it and what follows. I'd like to consider suicide from the point of view of those who have made the leap, or have come close to it - we might even find that the capacity to take that leap is what picks us out as humans. I want to look at suicide closely, carefully, and perhaps a little coldly, without immediately leaping to judgements or asserting moral principles like the right to life or death. We have to look suicide in the face, long and hard, and see what features, what profile, what inherited character traits and wrinkles emerge. Perhaps what we see when we look closely is our own distorted reflection staring back at us.' ...Show more

The Future of Us: Demography Gets a Makeover by Liz Allen

$29.99 AUD

Category: Sociology

Demography is far more important than destiny. By tracing connections between a population’s past and present, demographers can foresee its future. The true wonder of demography, though, is not its ability to predict the future but to shape it. With energy and passion, demographer Liz Allen sets out the potential paths to make Australia better. Bold, fearless and revealing,The Future of Us does more than help you find your inner statistician. Looking beyond births, deaths and marriages, Allen takes apart inequality, migration, tax and home ownership. She also dissects how the word ‘population’ became so charged, daring to ask what Australia might look like in 20 years if we had zero immigration. The Future of Us gives demography a makeover and sets out future possibilities for a better us … just like a Choose Your Own Adventure, but for the nation. ‘Liz Allen’s romp around Australia’s demography is highly readable, and makes a compelling case for the benefits of immigration and the need for a comprehensive population policy.’  — Michelle Grattan ‘Put on that superpower cape. Liz Allen’s heartfelt study of how Australians live, die and migrate takes you from now to tomorrow and makes a plea for rethinking how we talk about migration and a renewed Australia. Forget the hate and hyperbole and replace it with hope.’ — Jenna Price ...Show more

Utopia Experiment by Dylan Evans

$29.99 AUD

Category: Sociology

In 2007 Dr Dylan Evans, a respected behavioural psychologist, and an expert on robots and artificial intelligence, was sectioned at a hospital in Aberdeen. The following morning he sat at breakfast with six other psychiatric inmates - one of whom was heavily tattooed and sporting bleeding knuckles - mus ing on the etiquette of introducing himself to his fellow patients. Was it OK to ask them why they were there? Should he explain his own story? The Utopia Experiment is Dylan Evans's account of how he abandoned his life in 2006, sold his house in the Cotswolds and its contents, and moved to the Black Isle in Scotland to found a self-sufficient community in a remote valley, with a group of acolytes he had recruited on-line. The project was called the Utopia Experiment, and the idea was to attempt to imagine, through real-life roleplaying, the conditions that might exist in the aftermath of society's collapse. As the months went by, what began as an experiment became deadly earnest. Factions formed with different views about the future of the human race, and competition and fighting broke out. The yurts they lived in leaked rain. The vegetables they farmed wouldn't grow. Dylan began to fear for his sanity, and then his life. This is the story of Evans's experiment in Utopia, but also an examination of the millenarian impulse - why do these doomsday scenarios fascinate us? Is there any sensible way we can prepare for the worst? ...Show more

Infidelity by Hugh Mackay

$29.99 AUD

Category: Sociology

Through a chance meeting at the Royal Academy, Tom Harper makes friends with Sarah Delacour. An esteemed scholar of children's rhymes, Sarah is beautiful, smart and charming. She is also the wife of a terminally ill millionaire, who keeps her close with the promise of a large inheritance. Tom falls deep ly in love with the Sarah, and waits for her to reciprocate. But while Sarah is brilliant at playing the role of a woman in love, her ultimate commitment is to securing a life of wealth and comfort, and Tom finds he cannot compete with what she already has on offer.Compassionate, insightful and beautifully written, Infidelity is a story about how we lose ourselves when seeking a genuine connection from within the maelstrom of sexual passion ...Show more

At Home: A Short History of Private Life Illustrated Edition by Bill Bryson

$59.95 AUD

Category: Sociology | Reading Level: very good

What does history really consist of? Centuries of people quietly going about their daily business - sleeping, eating, having sex, endeavouring to get comfortable. And where did all these normal activities take place? At home. This was the thought that inspired Bill Bryson to start a journey around the r ooms of his own house, an 1851 Norfolk rectory, to consider how the ordinary things in life came to be. And what he discovered are surprising connections to anything from the Crystal Palace to the Eiffel Tower, from scurvy to body-snatching, from bedbugs to the Industrial Revolution, and just about everything else that has ever happened, resulting in one of the most entertaining and illuminating books ever written about the history of the way we live, enhanced in this new edition by hundreds of stunning photographs and illustrations. ...Show more