Full AspenCat Catalog

"Early Warning opens in 1953 with the Langdons at a crossroads. Their stalwart patriarch Walter, who with his wife had sustained their Iowa farm for three decades, has suddenly died, leaving their five children looking to the future. Only one will remain to work the land, while the others scatter to Washington, DC, California, and everywhere in between. As the country moves out of postwar optimism through the Cold War, the social and sexual revolutions...

On their farm in Denby, Iowa, Rosanna and Walter Langdon abide by time-honored values that they pass on to their five wildly different yet equally remarkable children: Frank, the brilliant, stubborn first-born; Joe, whose love of animals makes him the natural heir to his family's land; Lillian, an angelic child who enters a fairy-tale marriage with a man only she will fully know; Henry, the bookworm who's not afraid to be different; and Claire, who...

Psychologists have discovered that our minds are ruled by two different systems, the rational mind and the emotional mind, that compete for control. The rational mind wants a beach body; the emotional mind wants that Oreo cookie. This tension can doom a change effort but if it is overcome, change can come quickly. The Heaths show how everyday people have united both minds and achieved dramatic results.

Presents advice for teenagers who desire to cultivate changes within their schools and communities and provides information on racism, animal and human rights, environmental issues, HIV/AIDS, school violence, and tolerance.

Describes some of the problems our technology has created for society and suggests some strategies for coping in the future.

Far and Away gathers Andrew Solomon's writings about places undergoing seismic political and cultural shifts, around the globe and across a generation. A testament to the importance of travel and bearing witness, it encompasses South Africa and Brazil, China and Romania, Guatemala and the Solomon Islands, exploring history as it unfolds, largely through the people who are creating and being shaped by it.

"The Sorrow Proper is a novel-length investigation of the anxiety that accompanies change. A group of aging librarians must decide whether to fight or flee from the end of print and the rise of electronic publications, while the parents of the young girl who died in front of the library struggle with their role in her loss. Anchored by the transposed stories of a photographer and his deaf mathematician lover each mourning the other's death, The Sorrow...

"With Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit makes a radical case for hope as a commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable. Drawing on her decades of activism and a wide reading of environmental, cultural, and political history, Solnit argued that radicals have a long, neglected history of transformative victories, that the positive consequences of our acts are not always immediately seen, directly knowable, or even measurable,...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming human society fundamentally and profoundly. Three of our most accomplished and deep thinkers come together to explore how A.I. could affect our relationship with knowledge, impact our worldviews, and change society and politics as profoundly as the ideas of the Enlightenment.

"You may know Emmanuel Acho as the host of groundbreaking video series 'Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man.' Or as a New York Times bestselling author. Or as an Emmy-winning television broadcaster. Or as a former linebacker for two NFL franchises. What you probably don’t know is that Emmanuel defines his own life with just one word: Illogical. Behind every triumph, every expression of his gifts, Acho has had to ignore what everyone around...