Seven Revolutions

Taking Sides presents current controversial issues in a debate-style format designed to stimulate student interest and develop critical thinking skills. Each issue is framed with an issue summary, an issue introduction, and a postscript. An instructor's manual with testing material is available online for each volume.

Global Issues is one in a series of over 65 volumes, each designed to provide convenient, inexpensive access to a wide range of current articles from some of the most respected magazines, newspapers, and journals published today. Global Issues are updated on a regular basis through a continuous monitoring of over 300 periodical sources. The articles selected are authored by prominent scholars, researchers, and commentators writing for a general audience. The Annual Editions volumes have a number of common organizational features designed to make them particularly useful in the classroom: a general introduction; an annotated table of contents; a topic guide; an annotated listing of selected World Wide Web sites; and a brief overview for each section. Each volume also offers an online Instructor's Resource Guide with testing materials.

At a time when events anywhere in the world have the potential to impact almost instantaneously on life in the most remote hamlet, village, or town, it is essential that students learn how to think globally. Paula Rothenberg's Beyond Borders is an interdisciplinary collection that brings today's most pressing global issues into the classroom. Designed to help prepare today's college students to assume their roles as members of an increasingly global community, this powerful collection includes 82 articles written by today's leading scholars, activists, and policymakers from around the world. In the tradition of Rothenberg's other widely acclaimed college texts, these highly readable, often gripping, articles are presented within a conceptual framework that encourages a thoughtful understanding of the complexities that have given rise to the issues they address. It has never been more important for students to learn to think critically about the world and their place in it. Beyond Borders is designed to help create such classroom conversations in courses across the disciplines. (http://bcs.worthpublishers.com/beyondborders/)

Freakonomics is a ground-breaking collaboration between\nLevitt and Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. They usually begin with a\nmountain of data and a simple, unasked question. Some of these questions concern lifeand-\ndeath issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. Thus the new field of\nstudy contained in this book: Freakonomics. (http://freakonomicsbook.com/)

Renowned\ninventor Kurzweil (The Age of Spiritual Machines) may be technology's most credibly\nhyperbolic optimist. Elsewhere he has argued that eliminating fat intake can prevent\ncancer; here, his quarry is the future of consciousness and intelligence. Humankind, it\nruns, is at the threshold of an epoch ("the singularity," a reference to the theoretical\nlimitlessness of exponential expansion) that will see the merging of our biology with the\nstaggering achievements of "GNR" (genetics, nanotechnology and robotics) to create a\nspecies of unrecognizably high intelligence, durability, comprehension, memory and so\non. The word "unrecognizable" is not chosen lightly: wherever this is heading, it won't look like us. Kurzweil's argument is necessarily twofold: it's not enough to argue that\nthere are virtually no constraints on our capacity; he must also convince readers that\nsuch developments are desirable. In essence, he conflates the wholesale transformation\nof the species with "immortality," for which read a repeal of human limit. In less capable\nhands, this phantasmagoria of speculative extrapolation, which incorporates a\nbewildering variety of charts, quotations, playful Socratic dialogues and sidebars, would\nbe easier to dismiss. But Kurzweil is a true scientist-a large-minded one at that-and\ngives due space both to "the panoply of existential risks" as he sees them and the many\npresumed lines of attack others might bring to bear. What's arresting isn't the degree to\nwhich Kurzweil's heady and bracing vision fails to convince-given the scope of his\nprojections, that's inevitable-but the degree to which it seems downright plausible.\n(Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights\nreserved.)

Banker to the Poor is an inspiring memoir of the birth of microcredit, written in a\nconversational tone that makes it both moving and enjoyable to read. The Grameen\nBank is now a $2.5 billion banking enterprise in Bangladesh, while the microcredit\nmodel has spread to over 50 countries worldwide, from the U.S. to Papua New Guinea,\nNorway to Nepal. Ever optimistic, Yunus travels the globe spreading the belief that\npoverty can be eliminated: "...the poor, once economically empowered, are the most\ndetermined fighters in the battle to solve the population problem; end illiteracy; and live\nhealthier, better lives. When policy makers finally realize that the poor are their\npartners, rather than bystanders or enemies, we will progress much faster that we do\ntoday." Dr. Yunus's efforts prove that hope is a global currency. (Reviewed by Shawn\nCarkonen)