The sacred history and profane present of a substance long seen as the essence of health and civilization.For millennia, fresh olive oil has been one of life's necessities-not just as food but also as medicine, a beauty aid, and a vital element of religious ritual. Today's researchers are continuing to confirm the remarkable, life-giving properties of true extra-virgin, and "extra-virgin Italian" has become the highest standard of quality.But what if this symbol of purity h...

**As Featured on What Now? with Trevor NoahFinalist for the 2024 New York Public Library's Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in JournalismInspiring and deeply distressing.” —Ezekiel J. Emanuel, author of Which Country Has the World’s Best Health Care?How did a lifesaving medical breakthrough become a for-profit enterprise that threatens many of the people it’s meant to save?**Six decades ago, visionary doctors achieved the impossible: the ...

**"A call to arms and to action, for anyone with a conscience, anyone alarmed about the decline of our democracy." — New York Times-bestselling author Wendell Potter"Powerful...His extensively reported tales of individual whistleblowers and their often cruel fates are compelling...They reveal what it can mean to live in an age of fraud." — The Washington Post"Tom Mueller's authoritative and timely book reveals what drives a few brave souls to expose and de...

Rural America is at a crossroads: either it will manage to sustain itself long-term, or—as current trends suggest—it will continue to disappear through depopulation and urbanization. There have been calls for economic redevelopment, but even with these proposals, J. Tom Mueller argues that policymakers, politicians, and academics rarely make a clear case for why rural America matters and is worth saving in the first place. In this provocative book, Mueller meets these issues head-on by pre...

Encountering hardship can leave us physically and mentally depleted. Yet somehow we must summon our inner strength and courage to persevere and allow ourselves to heal. Too we must maintain a sense of hope. Like a loving pet, hope is our faithful and abiding companion. No matter the circumstances, nurture your sense of hope. For as the ancient ones wisely said, “This too shall pass”.

Conservation planning involves targeted management practices and land use decision-making based on careful analysis of landscape limitations in order to protect soil and water resources. Developing solutions to conservation planning is of worldwide interest due to anticipated population growth, growing demand of feedstocks for biofuels, decreasing

Six decades ago, visionary doctors achieved the impossible: the humble kidney, acknowledged since ancient times to be as essential to life as the heart, became the first human organ to be successfully replaced with a machine. Yet huge dialysis corporations, ambitious doctor-entrepreneurs, and Beltway lobbyists soon turned this medical miracle into an early experiment in for-profit medicine—and one of the nation's worst healthcare catastrophes.With powerful insight and on-the-ground...

**"A call to arms and to action, for anyone with a conscience, anyone alarmed about the decline of our democracy." — New York Times-bestselling author Wendell Potter"Powerful...His extensively reported tales of individual whistleblowers and their often cruel fates are compelling...They reveal what it can mean to live in an age of fraud." — The Washington Post"Tom Mueller's authoritative and timely book reveals what drives a few brave souls to expose and de...

For millennia, fresh olive oil has been a necessity - for food, medicine, beauty, and religion. Today's researchers continue to confirm the remarkable, life-giving properties of true extra-virgin, and 'extra-virgin Italian' has become the highest standard of quality. But what if this symbol of purity has become deeply corrupt? Starting with an explosive article in The New Yorker, Tom Mueller has become the world's expert on olive oil and olive oil fraud - a story of globalization, deceptio...

A revealing history of the formative period when voices of dissent and innovation defied power and created visions of America still resonant today.The early decades of the nineteenth century saw the expansion of slavery, Native dispossession, and wars with Canada and Mexico. Mass immigration and powerful religious movements sent tremors through American society. But even as the powerful defended the status quo, others defied it: voices from the margins moved the ce...

**"**Narrator Peter Berkrot's vocal tone has a flinty mid-20th century quality that works well with this historical review of how demagogues in the U.S. have repeatedly exploited populism since the founding of the nation. Serious but never overwrought, he has a lovely way with phrasing that enhances the richness of these sentences while deftly moderating the undercurrent of alarm in the writing." -- AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award winnerWhat Happens to Democrac...

A landmark collection of Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Kolbert's most important pieces about climate change and the natural world"To be a well-informed citizen of Planet Earth," Rolling Stone has advised, "you need to read Elizabeth Kolbert." From her National Magazine Award-winning series The Climate of Man to her Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Sixth Extinction, Kolbert’s work has shaped the way we think about the environment in the t...