After 16-year-old Freesia learnsNand tells her friendsNthat their perfect life on a luxurious tropical island is not real, she is banished from her virtual world to the "mainland," where people are ugly, school is hard, and families are dysfunctional.

A provocative perspective on the fragile fundamentals, and forces for resilience, in the Chinese economy, and a forecast for the future on alternate scenarios of collapse and ascendance.

“An interesting concept developed into an exciting read” (Kirkus Reviews)—the final novel in a groundbreaking international thriller trilogy about a deadly game that blurs the line between reality and fiction. Henrik “HP” Pettersson could never have imagined he’d become entwined in a chaotic and dangerous game of life and death when he picked up a lost cell phone on a commuter train. He thought he’d escaped. Now, his paranoia quickly grows to mania, as he is convinced that the Game Master and past characters are following him and that the police are watching him. HP decides he must finish one last assignment and expose the Game Master’s secrets once and for all—no matter the cost. What he uncovers is a potential link between his own father’s past and the Game— blurring the boundary between the virtual and reality more than ever. The shocking finale to the fast-paced trilogy that began with Game and Buzz, Bubble will leave you breathless as you witness the final showdown between HP and the Game Master.

Examines the 1990s as a period of tranquility and prosperity in the United States, with attention to popular culture, politics, higher education, and economic policy.

There has been much concern over the impact of partisan echo chambers and filter bubbles on public debate. Is this concern justified, or is it distracting us from more serious issues? Axel Bruns argues that the influence of echo chambers and filter bubbles has been severely overstated, and results from a broader moral panic about the role of online and social media in society. Our focus on these concepts, and the widespread tendency to blame platforms and their algorithms for political disruptions, obscure far more serious issues pertaining to the rise of populism and hyperpolarisation in democracies. Evaluating the evidence for and against echo chambers and filter bubbles, Bruns offers a persuasive argument for why we should shift our focus to more important problems. This timely book is essential reading for students and scholars, as well as anyone concerned about challenges to public debate and the democratic process.

From the author of Sticks & Stones, a novel about friendship, overcoming obstacles, and what it really means to understand the people around you. Twelve-year-old Sophie Mulvaney's world has been turned upside down. Mom lost her job at the TV station and broke up with Pratik, whom Sophie adored. Her teacher is making them do a special project about risk-taking, so Sophie gets roped into doing a triathlon. And to top it all off, she's started seeing bubbles above people's heads that tell her what these people are thinking. Seeing other people's thoughts seems like it should be cool, but it's actually just stressful. What does it mean that Pratik wishes she and Mom were with him to eat dinner? Is her best friend Kaya really going out with their other best friend, Rafael, whom Sophie also has a crush on? And can Sophie's mom ever go back to her old self? In this funny, heartwarming novel from Abby Cooper, BUBBLES shows readers that people are more than what they seem—or what they think.

Every week on the public radio show On the Media, the award-winning journalist Brooke Gladstone analyzes the media and how it shapes our perceptions of the world. Now, from her front-row perch on the day’s events, Gladstone brings her genius for making insightful, unexpected connections to help us understand what she calls—and what so many of us can acknowledge having—“trouble with reality.” Reality, as she shows us, was never what we thought it was—there is always a bubble, people are always subjective and prey to stereotypes. And that makes reality actually more vulnerable than we ever thought. Enter Donald J. Trump and his team of advisors. For them, as she writes, lying is the point. The more blatant the lie, the easier it is to hijack reality and assert power over the truth. Drawing on writers as diverse as Hannah Arendt, Walter Lippmann, Philip K. Dick, and Jonathan Swift, she dissects this strategy, straight out of the authoritarian playbook, and shows how the Trump team mastered it, down to the five types of tweets that Trump uses to distort our notions of what’s real and what’s not. And she offers hope. There is meaningful action, a time-tested treatment for moral panic. And there is also the inevitable reckoning. History tells us we can count on it. Brief and bracing, The Trouble with Reality shows exactly why so many of us didn’t see it coming, and how we can recover both our belief in reality—and our sanity.