San Antonio College Library

Pollster Mark Penn argues that the biggest trends in America are microtrends, the smaller trends that go unnoticed or ignored. One million people can create new market for a business, spark a social movement, or effect political change. In 1996, a microtrend identified by Penn ("soccer moms") helped re-elect Clinton. Now, Penn identifies the new microtrends sweeping the world, from Extreme Commuters and Working Retired to Old New Dads, from Bourgeois...

A blend of travelogue, pop culture analysis, and memoir, former Dungeons and Dragons addict Ethan Gilsdorf tells of the quest that began in his geeky teenage past and ends in the online gaming future.

A Cultural History of Gardens presents an authoritative survey from ancient times to the present. This set of six volumes covers over 2500 years of gardens as physical, social and artistic spaces. This structure means readers can either have a broad overview of a period by reading a volume or follow a theme through history by reading the relevant chapter in each volume. Superbly illustrated, the full six volume set combines to present the most authoritative...

A landmark film in early sound production this is a left-wing satirical comedy about two ex-convicts, one of whom works his way up from salesman to factory owner. He oversees a highly mechanised operation where the workers are reduced to mere automatons. Blackmailed over his past, he joins up with his old cellmate, and the pair take to the road as tramps. Frequently acknowledged as the inspiration for Chaplin's "Modern times."

This book explores the steady decline in the status of the individual in recent years and addresses common misunderstandings about the concept of individuality. Drawing from psychology, neuroscience, technology, economics, philosophy, politics, and law, White explains how and why the individual has been devalued in the eyes of scholars, government leaders, and the public. He notes that developments in science have led to doubts about our cognitive...

Odessa isn't known to be a place big on dreams, but the Panthers help keep the hopes and dreams of this dusty town going. Socially and racially divided, its fragile economy follows the treacherous boom-bust path of the idol business. In bad times, the unemployment rate barrels out of control; in good times, its murder rate skyrockets. But every Friday night from September to December, when the Permian High School Panthers play football, this West...

"Every year, perhaps even every week, there is some new gadget, device, service, or other digital offering intended to make our lives easier, better, more fun, or more instantaneous--making it that much harder to question how anything digital can be bad for us. Digital has created some wonderful things and we can hardly imagine life without them. But digital--the most relentless social and economic juggernaut humanity has unleashed in centuries--is...

"This volume shows how nanotechnology takes on a wide range of socio-historically specific meanings in the context of globalization, across multiple localities, institutions and collaborations, through diverse industries, research labs, and government agencies and in a variety of discussions within the public sphere itself. It explores the early origins of nanotechnologies; the social, economic, and political organization of the field; and the cultural...

The latest developments in physics have the potential to radically revise our understanding of the universe: its make-up, its evolution and the fundamental forces that determine its operation. This work is an overview of these developments and a defense of the role of science in our lives. The author, is an expert on both particle physics (the study of the smallest objects we know of) and cosmology (the study of the largest). Throughout, she explains...