Until fairly recently, only serial killers and lunatics had profiles. Yet today, almost everyone is profiled through social media, mobile phones, and a multitude of other methods. But where does the idea of “profiling” come from, how has it changed over time, and what are its implications? In this book, Andreas Bernard examines contemporary profiling’s roots in late-nineteenth-century criminology, psychology, and psychiatry. Data collection techniques previously used exclusively by police or to identify groups of people are now applied to all individuals in society. GPS transmitters and measuring devices are now unconsciously embraced to have fun, communicate, make money, or even find a partner. Drawing perceptive parallels between modern technologies and their antecedents, Bernard shows how we have unwittingly internalized what were once instruments of external control and repression. This illuminating genealogy of contemporary digital culture will be of interest to students and scholars in media and communication, and to anyone concerned about the power technologies hold over our lives.

2016 Books For A Better Life Award winner Drawing on the latest research and remarkable tales of forgiveness from around the world, journalist Megan Feldman explores how forgiveness, when practiced in the right ways, can save lives, make us happier and healthier, and lead to a better world. Veteran journalist Megan Feldman was still smarting over a bitter breakup when she began working on a feature article about a father named Azim who had truly forgiven the man who killed his son. She had found herself totally and completely unable to forgive her ex-boyfriend, and yet Azim had managed to forgive his own son’s murderer. Forgiveness has long been touted by religious leaders as a moral imperative. But Megan wanted to know exactly what it means from a scientific perspective, and why forgiving those who have wronged you is one of the best things you can do for yourself. In Triumph of the Heart, Feldman embarks on a quest to understand this complex idea, drawing on the latest research showing that forgiveness can provide a range of health benefits, from relieving depression to decreasing high blood pressure. The journey takes her from New Zealand and the Maori who practice their own form of restorative justice, to a principal in Baltimore who uses forgiveness techniques to eradicate violence in her school, and to recovered addicts who restarted their lives by seeking and receiving forgiveness. She travels to Rwanda to learn about forgiveness in the face of unthinkable atrocities. This book is a guide for how the practice of forgiveness can help us all in our search for a satisfying, fulfilling, good life.

Imperial Triumph presents the history of Rome at the height of its imperial power. Beginning with the reign of Hadrian in Rome and ending with the death of Julian the Apostate on campaign in Persia, it offers an intimate account of the twists and often deadly turns of imperial politics in which successive emperors rose and fell with sometimes bewildering rapidity. Yet, despite this volatility, the Romans were able to see off successive attacks by Parthians, Germans, Persians and Goths and to extend and entrench their position as masters of Europe and the Mediterranean. This books shows how they managed to do it. Professor Michael Kulikowski describes the empire's cultural integration in the second century, the political crises of the third when Rome's Mediterranean world became subject to the larger forces of Eurasian history, and the remaking of Roman imperial institutions in the fourth century under Constantine and his son Constantius II. The Constantinian revolution, Professor Kulikowski argues, was the pivot on which imperial fortunes turned - and the beginning of the parting of ways between the eastern and western empires.

"Opioids. Concussions. Obesity. Climate change. America is a country of everyday crises -- big, long-spanning problems that persist, mostly unregulated, despite their toll on the country's health and vitality. And for every case of government inaction on one of these issues, there is a set of familiar, doubtful refrains: The science is unclear. The data is inconclusive. Regulation is unjustified. It's a slippery slope. Is it? The Triumph of Doubt traces the ascendance of science-for-hire in American life and government, from its origins in the tobacco industry in the 1950s to its current manifestations across government, public policy, and even professional sports. Well-heeled American corporations have long had a financial stake in undermining scientific consensus and manufacturing uncertainty; in The Triumph of Doubt, former Obama and Clinton official David Michaels details how bad science becomes public policy -- and where it's happening today. Amid fraught conversations of "alternative facts" and "truth decay," The Triumph of Doubt wields its unprecedented access to shine a light on the machinations and scope of manipulated science in American society. It is an urgent, revelatory work, one that promises to reorient conversations around science and the public good for the foreseeable future"--Provided by publisher.

Our contemporary societies place more and more emphasis on the singular and the unique. The industrial societies of the early 20th century produced standardized products, cities, subjects and organizations which tended to look the same, but in our late-modern societies, we value the exceptional - unique objects, experiences, places, individuals, events and communities which are beyond the ordinary and which claim a certain authenticity. Industrial society’s logic of the general has been replaced by late modernity’s logic of the particular. In this major new book, Andreas Reckwitz examines the causes, structures and consequences of the society of singularities in which we now live. The transformation from industrial to cultural capitalism, the rise of digital technologies and their ‘culture machine’ and the emergence of an educated, urban new middle class form a powerful engine for the singularization of the social. In late modernity, what is singular is valorized and stirs the emotions, while what is general has to remain in the background, and this has profound social consequences. The society of singularities systematically produces devaluation and inequality: winner-takes-all markets, job polarization, the neglect of rural regions and the alienation of the traditional middle class. The emergence of populism and the rise of aggressive forms of nationalism which emphasize the cultural authenticity of one’s own people thus turn out to be the other side of singularization. This prize-winning book offers a new perspective on how modern societies have changed in recent decades and it will be of great value to anyone interested in the forces that are shaping our world today.

Campus Medius explores and expands the possibilities of digital cartography in cultural and media studies. Simon Ganahl documents the development of the project from a historical case study to a mapping platform. Based on the question of what a media experience is, the concepts of the apparatus (dispositif) and the actor-network are translated into a data model. A time-space of twenty-four hours in Vienna in May 1933, marked by a so-called »Turks Deliverance Celebration« (Türkenbefreiungsfeier), serves as an empirical laboratory. This Austrofascist rally is mapped from multiple perspectives and woven into media-historical networks, spanning from the seventeenth century up to the present day.