San Antonio College Library

In The Glass Cage, best-selling author Nicholas Carr digs behind the headlines about factory robots and self-driving cars, wearable computers and digitized medicine, as he explores the hidden costs of granting software dominion over our work and our leisure and reveals something we already suspect: shifting our attention to computer screens can leave us disengaged and discontented.

Two public health researchers prove that the recent economic crises around the world have had calamitous effects on people's health, citing increases in suicide rates, HIV transmissions, and heart disease during times of bad fiscal policy.

Traces tobacco's evolution from a necessity to a coveted commodity that would forever change the economy by documenting the history of this plant, from its use as a sacred calumet of the Plains Indians to the controversy surrounding it today. Tobacco was first cultivated and enjoyed by the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas, who used it for medicinal, religious, and social purposes long before the arrival of Columbus. But when Europeans began...

The conditions and issues of child labor are explored in a survey of 15 countries. Annotation. An unprecedented number of children around the world are working today. This volume is a must-have, up-to-date survey for student research. In the 15 examined countries, poverty, lack of education, gender inequity, the demands of the global marketplace, and easy sex tourism are key factors contributing to the child labor crisis. Each chapter depicts the...

"The Age of Spiritual Machines is no mere list of predictions but a prophetic blueprint for the future. Kurzweil guides us through the inexorable advances that will result in computers exceeding the memory capacity and computational ability of the human brain. According to Kurzweil, machines will achieve all this by 2020, with human attributes not far behind. We will begin to have relationships with automated personalities and use them as teachers,...

Historical background of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, and study of the position of the populations of the republics as minority groups of the USSR, with particular reference to the stalin era - covers the Turkish and mongol history of the region, demographic aspects and geographical aspects, political leadership, political problems, nationalist movements, nomadism and the social implications of suppression thereof...

"Ulrich Beck examines how work has become unstable in the modern world and presents a new vision for the future. Beck begins by describing how the traditional work society, with its lifelong job paths, is giving way to a much less stable world in which skills can be suddenly devalued, jobs obliterated, welfare cover reduced or eliminated. The West would appear to be heading towards a social structure of ambiguity and multiple activity that has hitherto...

Monograph on irregular migrants and illegal immigration trends in the Americas - discusses causes and related economic implications, political aspects, and social implications, the historical background, migration policies and demographic aspects, geographic distribution, occupational structure, legal status, etc., of aliens (incl. Refugees) in Canada, Latin America and the USA, and comments on legislation. Bibliography pp. 195 to 204, maps, references...

"The aim of this book is to portray the scientific community in the United States: to convey a sense of what It is like to be a scientist in American in a time when science become a form of established religion." - Preface.