This landmark reference is a comprehensive, one-stop, interdisciplinary resource that examines current, critical social issues in historical and global contexts. Nearly 150 in-depth, balanced, and thought-provoking articles cover a broad range of critically important topics: the environment, health, science, the media, ethnic conflicts, poverty, and immigration.

Alex and his friends from Artimé are stranded on a newly-discovered island, and they are not alone, while in Quill, his twin Aaron's power base grows as he joins with an unlikely ally in a risky plan to finally conquer Artimé.

In these newly collected essays, interviews, and speeches, world-renowned activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis illuminates the connections between struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world. Reflecting on the importance of black feminism, intersectionality, and prison abolitionism for today's struggles, Davis discusses the legacies of previous liberation struggles, from the Black Freedom Movement to the...

When young Gavir's sister is brutally killed, he escapes from slavery and sets out to explore the world and his own psychic abilities.

Alternate chapters follow teenagers Todd and Viola, who become separated as the Mayor's oppressive new regime takes power in New Prentisstown, a space colony where residents can hear each other's thoughts.

Todd Hewitt is the only boy in a town of men. Ever since the settlers were infected with the Noise germ, Todd can hear everything the men think, and they can hear everything he thinks. Todd is just a month away from becoming a man, but in the midst of the cacophony, he knows that the town is hiding something from him -- something so awful that Todd is forced to flee with only his dog, whose simple, loyal voice he hears too. With hostile men from the...

As a world-ending war surges to life around them, Todd and Viola face monstrous decisions, questioning all they have ever known as they try to step back from the darkness and find the best way to achieve peace.

"Hard Times is perhaps the archetypal Dickens novel, full as it is with family difficulties, estrangement, rotten values and unhappiness. It was published in 1854 and it is the story of the family of Thomas Gradgrind, and occurs in the imaginary Coketown, an industrial city inspired by Preston. Gradgrind is a man obsessed with misguided 'Utilitarian' values that make him trust facts, statistics and practicality more than emotion and is based upon...

As the Wanteds, Unwanteds, and Necessaries struggle to adjust to changes in their society, Mr. Today begins training fourteen-year-old Alex to replace him as Artime's leader one day while Alex's disgraced twin, Aaron, connives to take over Quill.

"W.H. Auden once wrote that "art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead." In his brilliant and compulsively readable new treatise BREAKING BREAD WITH THE DEAD, distinguished professor and author Alan Jacobs shows us that engaging with the great writings of the past might help us live less anxiously in the present. Today we are battling too much information, a society changing at lightning speed, algorithms aimed at shaping our every move,...