Investigates the systems of infrastructure that sustain the world and the cultures of historical periods, following various elements, from electricity and pavement to water and waste disposal, back to their origins and people who operate them.

Whybrow takes us on a fascinating tour of self-discovery, drawing extensively upon his decades of experience as a psychiatrist and his broad knowledge of neuroscience and human behavior. Illustrated throughout with engaging personal stories, the book s trove of cutting-edge science is enriched by philosophical, historical, and cultural perspectives. --publisher marketing.

Reveals the tactics used by businesses to create consumer needs and desires for products that waste resources and finances in addition to undermining human values and independence.

Never Done is the first history of American housework. Beginning with a description of household chores of the nineteenth century-cooking at fireplaces and on cast-iron stoves, laundry done with wash boilers and flatirons, endless water hauling and fire tending-Susan Strasser demonstrates how industrialization transformed the nature of women's work. Lightening some tasks and eliminating the need for others, new commercial processes inexorably altered...

"When it comes to healthcare, bigger isn't always better. The early-1990s rise of "megaproviders"--large, hospital-based healthcare systems that have become the norm in American medicine--brought promises of accessibility, cost savings, and excellence to the American healthcare experience. Today's megaproviders, following three decades of growth and consolidation, receive as much as two-thirds of healthcare spending in the United States. Big Med examines...

"Antitrust law has very rarely been used by workers to challenge anticompetitive employment practices. Yet recent empirical research shows that labor markets are highly concentrated, and that employers engage in practices that harm competition and suppress wages. These practices include no-poaching agreements, wage-fixing, mergers, covenants not to compete, and misclassification of gig workers as independent contractors. This failure of antitrust...

"In 1995, the editor of the newsletter for the Royal Economic Society, who was a fan of Alistair Cooke's Letter from America on BBC Radio 4, suggested to Angus Deaton that he write a Letter about economic events in America. Twenty-five years later, Deaton, now a Nobel laureate and one of the world's most respected economists, submitted his fiftieth and final Letter from America. Over the years Deaton wrote about many topics, from the War on Terror...

The author of the bestselling "Words That Work" examines what Americans say they want, how their actions often contradict those claims, and what that means for businesses.

"The economics profession is belatedly confronting glaring gender inequality. Women are systematically underrepresented throughout the discipline, and those who do embark on careers in economics find themselves undermined in any number of ways. Women in the field report pervasive biases and barriers that hinder full and equal participation-and these obstacles take an even greater toll on women of color. How did economics become such a boys' club,...

"The Congressional Budget Office has laid out seven infrastructure categories: highways, public transit, wastewater treatment, water resources, air traffic control, airports, and municipal water supply. This book focuses on a broadened version of the first and, in many ways, most visible and historically significant category: roads and bridges, as well as their aquatic kin, the nineteenth-century canal. Also examined is US transportation policy from...