Given his lifetime assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas becomes the receiver of memories shared by only one other in his community and discovers the terrible truth about the society in which he lives.

"A call-center worker patiently troubleshoots a customer's broken printer, while a cartoon character in a corner of his screen chides him for sounding too unengaged. An exhausted Uber driver needs extra cash, so she accepts a pop-up Quest on her app: drive another three trips to get a $6 bonus. At home, her partner spends hundreds of hours combing through obscure forums about the QAnon conspiracy theory: uncovering clues and drawing connections feels...

An eminent engineer and historian tackles one of the most elemental aspects of life: how we experience and utilize physical force "Another gem from a master of technology writing."-Kirkus Reviews Force explores how humans interact with the material world in the course of their everyday activities. This book for the general reader also considers the significance of force in shaping societies and cultures. Celebrated author Henry Petroski delves...

"Around half of all people on earth use some form of social media. Social media is part of the fabric of life for billions of people. While it sometimes seems the bad outweighs the good, social media has taken a center role in the modern world"-- Around half of all people on earth use some form of social media. It has become a part of the fabric of life for billions of people. While it sometimes seems the bad outweighs the good, social media has...

Never before has so much been known about so many. CCTV cameras, TSA scanners, NSA databases, big data marketers, predator drones, "stop and frisk" tactics, Facebook algorithms, hidden spyware, and even old-fashioned nosy neighbors-surveillance has become so ubiquitous that we take its presence for granted. While many types of surveillance are pitched as ways to make us safer, almost no one has examined the unintended consequences of living under...

There are no secrets in Saintstone. From the second you're born, every achievement, every failing, every significant moment are all immortalized on your skin. There are honorable marks that let people know you're trustworthy. And shameful tattoos that announce you as a traitor. After her father dies, Leora finds solace in the fact that his skin tells a wonderful story. That is, until she glimpses a mark on the back of his neck . . . the symbol of...

"Felony conviction and mass incarceration attract considerable media attention these days, yet the most common criminal-justice encounters are for misdemeanors, not felonies, and the most common outcome is not prison. In the early 1990s, New York City launched an initiative under the banner of Broken Windows policing to dramatically expand enforcement against low-level offenses. Misdemeanorland is the first book to document the fates of the hundreds...

"A sweeping exposé of the U.S. government's alliance with data brokers, tech companies, and advertisers, and how their efforts are reshaping surveillance and privacy as we know it. Our modern world is awash in surveillance. Most of us are dimly aware of this-ever get the sense that an ad is "following" you around the internet?-but we don't understand the extent to which the technology embedded in our phones, computers, cars, and homes is part of...

"For decades China watchers argued that economic liberalization and increasing prosperity would bring democracy to the world’s most populous country. Instead, the Communist Party’s grip on power has only strengthened. Why? The answer, Minxin Pei argues, lies in the effectiveness of the Chinese surveillance state. And the source of that effectiveness is not just advanced technology like facial recognition AI and mobile phone tracking. These are...