"Bakan offers passionate argument and copious research in this compelling call for parents to stand up for their children."--Booklist (starred review) "Corporations have found a new resource to be mined for profit: our children. In this shocking and indelible behind-the-scenes journey, Joel Bakan, acclaimed author and award-winning maker of the renowned film and international bestselling book The Corporation, uncovers the astonishing degree to which companies exploit the special vulnerabilities of children, manipulate parents' fears, and operate with callous disregard for children's health and well-being. The number of children taking dangerous psychotropic drugs has skyrocketed as pharmaceutical companies employ insidious, often illegal tactics to inflate diagnoses of disorders and convince parents their children require medication. A highly sophisticated marketing industry deploys increasingly subtle and powerful tactics to play on children's intense emotions and desires and to lure them into obsessive consumerism. Computer game designers craft techniques to titillate children with sex and violence, while social media developers infiltrate and shape children's social and emotional worlds to compel them to spend more and more monetizable time online. America's schools are being transformed into profit centers while children are subjected to increasingly regimented teaching that thwarts curiosity and creativity, numbing the joy of learning. And children's chronic health problems, from asthma to cancer, autism, and birth defects, steadily escalate as thousands of new industrial chemicals are dumped into their environments. Nelson Mandela once sagely remarked that "there can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way it treats its children." The problem today, as Joel Bakan reveals, is that business interests have made protecting children extremely difficult. Corporations pump billions into rendering parents and governments powerless to shield children from an unrelenting commercial assault, with the result that after a century of progress, during which protective laws and regulations were widely promulgated, children are once again exposed to substantial harms at the hands of economic actors. Childhood Under Siege leaves no room for doubt that this assault on childhood is a major crisis of our time. A powerful manifesto for urgent change, it empowers us to shield our own children while offering concrete and realistic proposals for legal reforms that would protect all children from these predatory practices. "--Publisher's description

Three aliens set off to find a new planet for themselves but soon Bork and Gork have forgotten all of their mother's good advice and only Nklxwcyz builds a home safe enough to withstand the Big Bad Robot in this story reminiscent of "The Three Little Pigs."

"Look who's making dinner! Twenty-one of our favorite writers and chefs expound upon the joys--and perils--of feeding their families. Mario Batali's son boasts a preference for duck testicles. Peter Kaminsky's daughters won't eat anything at all. Mark Bittman reveals the four stages of learning to cook. Mark Kurlansky would love a woman to feed him, just once. Jim Harrison shows how good food and wine trump expensive cars and houses. Jesse Sheidlower searches for words to describe his vegetarianism to his kids. And Stephen King offers tips about what to cook when you don't feel like cooking. More men cook now than ever before, and this is the first book to celebrate those good eggs who toil behind the stove, trying to nourish and please. Their culinary adventures are accompanied by over sixty family-tested recipes, time-saving tips, and cookbook recommendations as well as an array of New Yorker cartoons. Plus, there are interviews with homestyle heroes cooking all across America--a fireman from Brooklyn, a football coach in Atlanta, a lawyer in Philadelphia, a bond trader in Los Angeles. What emerges is a book not just about food but about our changing families. It offers a newfound community for any man who proudly dons an apron and inspiration for those who have yet to pick up the spatula. "--