An eye-opening tour of the political tricks that subvert scientific progress.

The Butter-Up and Undercut. The Certain Uncertainty. The Straight-Up Fabrication. Dave Levitan dismantles all of these deceptive arguments, and many more, in this probing and hilarious examination of the ways our elected officials attack scientific findings that conflict with their political agendas. The next time you hear a politician say, "Well, I’m not a scientist, but…," you’ll be ready.

“You’llnever think of bees, their keepers, or the fruits (and nuts) of their laborsthe same way again.” —Trevor Corson, author of The Secret Life of Lobsters

Award-winning journalist Hannah Nordhaus tells the remarkable story of John Miller, one of America’s foremost migratory beekeepers, and the myriad and mysterious epidemics threatening American honeybee populations. In luminous, razor-sharp prose, Nordhaus explores the vital role that honeybees play in American agribusiness, the maintenance of our food chain, and the very future of the nation. With an intimate focus and incisive reporting, in a book perfect for fans of Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire,and John McPhee’s Oranges, Nordhaus’s stunning exposé illuminates one the most critical issues facing the world today,offering insight, information, and, ultimately, hope....
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“[A] witty and beguiling meditation on weeds and their wily ways….You will never look at a weed, or flourish a garden fork, in the same way again.”
—Richard Holmes, author of The Age of Wonder

“In this fascinating, richly detailed book, Richard Mabey gives weeds their full due.”
—Carl Zimmer, author of Evolution

Richard Mabey, Great Britain’s Britain’s “greatest living nature writer” (London Times), has written a stirring and passionate defense of nature’s most unloved plants.  Weeds is a fascinating, eye-opening, and vastly entertaining appreciation of the natural world’s unappreciated wildflowers that will appeal to fans of David Attenborough, Robert Sullivan’s Rats, Amy Stewart’s Wicked Plants, and to armchair gardeners, horticulturists, green-thumbs, all those who stop to smell the flowers.

From the New York Times best-selling author of Cod and Salt, a definitive history of paper and the astonishing ways it has shaped today’s world.

Paper is one of the simplest and most essential pieces of human technology. For the past two millennia, the ability to produce it in ever more efficient ways has supported the proliferation of literacy, media, religion, education, commerce, and art; it has formed the foundation of civilizations, promoting revolutions and restoring stability. By tracing paper’s evolution from antiquity to the present, with an emphasis on the contributions made in Asia and the Middle East, Mark Kurlansky challenges common assumptions about technology’s influence, affirming that paper is here to stay. Paper will be the commodity history that guides us forward in the twenty-first century and illuminates our times.

In this “rich, fascinating portrait of extraordinary sensory awareness” (Kirkus), acclaimed neurologist Joel Salinas, M.D., tells his amazing true story of living and practicing medicine with mirror-touch synesthesia, a rare neurological trait that allows him to literally feel the emotional and physical experiences of other people. From the corridors of Massachusetts General to his personal life, Salinas offers readers remarkable insights about his trait, its gifts, and its often unforgiving complications, and teaches us how our brain, in all its wonder, continues to offer limitless possibilities for compassion and human potential.

 Beautifully written and wholly original, Mirror Touch is a moving account of an exceptional mind that challenges our understanding of what it means to be human—everything it means to think, to feel, and to be.

Top ten Sunday Times Bestseller

‘Engaging, ambitious and creative’ Guardian

Where are we? Are we alone? Who are we? Why are we here? What is our future?

Human Universe tackles some of the greatest questions that humans have asked to try and understand the very nature of ourselves and the Universe in which we live.

Through the endless leaps of human minds, it explores the extraordinary depth of our knowledge today and where our curiosity may lead us in the future. With groundbreaking insight it reveals how time, physics and chemistry came together to create a creature that can wonder at its own existence, blessed with an unquenchable thirst to discover not just where it came from, but how it can think, where it is going and if it is alone.

Accompanies the acclaimed BBC TV series.

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From breaking the law to breaking a promise, how do people lie and how can they be caught?

In this revised edition, Paul Ekman, a renowned expert in emotions research and nonverbal communication, adds a new chapter to present his latest research on his groundbreaking inquiry into lying and the methods for uncovering lies. Ekman has figured out the most important behavioral clues to deceit; he has developed a one-hour self-instructional program that trains people to observe and understand "micro expressions"; and he has done research that identifies the facial expressions that show whether someone is likely to become violent—a self-instructional program to train recognition of these dangerous signals has also been developed.

Telling Lies describes how lies vary in form and how they can differ from other types of misinformation that can reveal untruths. It discusses how a person’s body language, voice, and facial expressions can give away a lie but still fool professional lie hunters?even judges, police officers, drug enforcement agents, and Secret Service agents.

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From roots to canopy, a lush, verdant history of the making of California.

California now has more trees than at any time since the late Pleistocene. This green landscape, however, is not the work of nature. It’s the work of history. In the years after the Gold Rush, American settlers remade the California landscape, harnessing nature to their vision of the good life. Horticulturists, boosters, and civic reformers began to "improve" the bare, brown countryside, planting millions of trees to create groves, wooded suburbs, and landscaped cities. They imported the blue-green eucalypts whose tangy fragrance was thought to cure malaria. They built the lucrative "Orange Empire" on the sweet juice and thick skin of the Washington navel, an industrial fruit. They lined their streets with graceful palms to announce that they were not in the Midwest anymore.

To the north the majestic coastal redwoods inspired awe and invited exploitation. A resource in the state, the durable heartwood of these timeless giants became infrastructure, transformed by the saw teeth of American enterprise. By 1900 timber firms owned the entire redwood forest; by 1950 they had cl...
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For fans of Freakonomics and Thinking, Fast and Slow, here is a book by Hans Rosling, the scientist called "a true inspiration" by Bill Gates, that teaches us how to see the world as it truly is. 

Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of carrying only opinions for which you have strong supporting facts. When asked simple questions about global trends - what percentage of the world's population live in poverty; why the world's population is increasing; how many girls finish school - we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers. 

In Factfulness, professor of international health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two longtime collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective - from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse...
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In this hugely entertaining sequel to the New York Times bestselling memoir An Appetite for Wonder, Richard Dawkins delves deeply into his intellectual life spent kick-starting new conversations about science, culture, and religion and writing yet another of the most audacious and widely read books of the twentieth century—The God Delusion.

Called “one of the best nonfiction writers alive today” (Stephen Pinker) and a “prize-fighter” (Nature), Richard Dawkins cheerfully, mischievously, looks back on a lifetime of tireless intellectual adventure and engagement. Exploring the halls of intellectual inquiry and stardom he encountered after the publication of his seminal work, The Selfish Gene; affectionately lampooning the world of academia, publishing, and television; and studding the pages with funny stories about the great men and women he’s known, Dawkins offers a candid look at the events and ideas that encouraged him to shift his attention to the intersection of culture, religion, and science. He also invites the reader to look more closely at the brilliant succession of ten influential books that grew naturally out o...
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Brilliant but overlooked ideas you must know, as revealed by today’s most innovative minds 

What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known? That is the question John Brockman, publisher of the acclaimed science salon Edge.org (“The world’s smartest website”—The Guardian), presented to 205 of the world’s most influential thinkers from across the intellectual spectrum—award-winning physicists, economists, psychologists, philosophers, novelists, artists, and more. From the origins of the universe to the order of everyday life, This Idea Is Brilliant takes readers on a tour of the bold, exciting, and underappreciated scientific concepts that will enrich every mind. 

Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel JARED DIAMOND on the lost brilliance of common sense * Oxford evolutionary biologist RICHARD DAWKINS on how The Genetic Book of the Dead could reconstruct ecological history * philosopher REBECCA NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN on how to extend our grasp of reality beyond what we can see and touch * author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics CARLO ROVELLI on the interconnect...
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Pressure cookers have been around for generations, but are making a big comeback. Not to be confused with a pressure canner, the modern pressure cooker can be an automated all-in-one device, or a stove top cooker. Regardless of the technological advances, people are still intimidated by the pressurized contents and the possibility of having hot food explode out of the cooker. Idiot's Guides: Pressure Cooking gives you the tools you need to get the most from your pressure cooker-- all while feeling safe. This book covers:

* A comparison of pressure cooker types
* Detailed instructions and full-color photography on how to use stovetop and electric pressure cookers
* 120 pressure-cooker recipes, including family favorites, fast and easy international classics, one-pot meals, and paleo dishes
* Easy-to-scan details for each recipe, including pressure level, temperature, prep and cook times, ingredients, and nutrition
* Tools and techniques for converting favorite recipes to pressure cooker recipes
* Charts for cooking common foods, and time to add for frozen ingredients

“Impey combines the vision of a practicing scientist with the voice of a gifted storyteller.”—Dava Sobel

In this vibrant, eye-opening tour of milestones in the history of our universe, Chris Impey guides us through space and time, leading us from the familiar sights of the night sky to the dazzlingly strange aftermath of the Big Bang.

What if we could look into space and see not only our place in the universe but also how we came to be here? As it happens, we can. Because it takes time for light to travel, we see more and more distant regions of the universe as they were in the successively greater past. Impey uses this concept—"look-back time"—to take us on an intergalactic tour that is simultaneously out in space and back in time. Performing a type of cosmic archaeology, Impey brilliantly describes the astronomical clues that scientists have used to solve fascinating mysteries about the origins and development of our universe.

The milestones on this journey range from the nearby to the remote: we travel from the Moon, Jupiter, and the black hole at the heart of our galaxy all the way to the first star, the first ray of light, and ev...
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Not as patient as you think you are? Surprised by how quickly you lose your cool when someone shows you an imagined show of disrespect?

Become the person who you want to be.

There is little in this world that a family cannot endure, if endure they must. For we all have it within us to lose everything, absolutely everything, and still find strength in the most simple, beautiful things.

Pat and Mandy Retzlaff lived a hard but satisfying farming life in Zimbabwe. Working all hours of the day on their sprawling ranch and raising three boisterous children, they savored the beauty of the veld and the diverse wildlife that grazed the meadows outside their dining room window. After their children, the couple's true pride and joy were their horses.

But in early 2001, the Retzlaffs' lives were thrown into turmoil when armed members of President Robert Mugabe's War Veterans' Association began invading the farmlands owned by white Zimbabweans and violently reclaiming the land. Under the threat of death, the family was forced to flee, leaving behind a lifetime's possessions and becoming exiles in the only country they had ever called home.

As other families across the country fled, they left behind not only their homes but dozens of horses. Devoted animal lovers, Pat and Mandy—now essentially homeless themselves—vowed to save these h...
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The renowned science writer, mathematician, and bestselling author of Fermat's Last Theorem masterfully refutes the overreaching claims the "New Atheists," providing millions of educated believers with a clear, engaging explanation of what science really says, how there's still much space for the Divine in the universe, and why faith in both God and empirical science are not mutually exclusive.

A highly publicized coterie of scientists and thinkers, including Richard Dawkins, the late Christopher Hitchens, and Lawrence Krauss, have vehemently contended that breakthroughs in modern science have disproven the existence of God, asserting that we must accept that the creation of the universe came out of nothing, that religion is evil, that evolution fully explains the dazzling complexity of life, and more. In this much-needed book, science journalist Amir Aczel profoundly disagrees and conclusively demonstrates that science has not, as yet, provided any definitive proof refuting the existence of God.

Why Science Does Not Disprove God is his brilliant and incisive analyses of the theories and findings of such titans as Albert Einstein, ...
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"Insightful and filled with verve…electrifying." —Wall Street Journal

Hailed as "an astute book of enormous importance" (Sherwin Nuland), The Surgeons follows the team at one of the world's premier cardiac surgery and transplant centers. Given unprecedented access, Charles R. Morris recounts in thrilling detail a late-night against-the-clock "harvest run" to secure a precious transplantable organ, the heartbreaking story of a child's failed transplant, and more. Along the way, Morris reflects on how doctors really think, rising health care costs, and the future of health care in America.

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"Insightful and filled with verve…electrifying." —Wall Street Journal

Hailed as "an astute book of enormous importance" (Sherwin Nuland), The Surgeons follows the team at one of the world's premier cardiac surgery and transplant centers. Given unprecedented access, Charles R. Morris recounts in thrilling detail a late-night against-the-clock "harvest run" to secure a precious transplantable organ, the heartbreaking story of a child's failed transplant, and more. Along the way, Morris reflects on ...
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You Can Practically Steal These Simple Math Memory Tricks

If you've ever wanted to improve your ability to learn and memorize mathematical equations, formula, arithmetic and numbers by 100% ... 200% ... 300% (or more) using simple skills you can learn in under an hour (or less), then this may be the most important book you will ever read.

How To Learn And Memorize Math With Proven Strategies

Guess what?

You're wasting time listening to the standard advice about learning math. You can't continue with "random acts of learning" as you study simple math, calculus and statistics formulas - at least not for long. 

The truth is that learning math and remembering numbers can be incredibly simple. You just need to know how.

In How To Memorize Numbers, Equations And Simple Arithmetic, Anthony Metivier shows you everthing you need to develop the right skills, the right mindset and the right dedicated memorization strategy for memorizing any number or equation. Plus you'll learn how to find the right tempo for studying math to match your background and personal interests.

The key to learning and memorizi...
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"Enthralling." —Frans de Waal, New York Times Book Review

Survival of the fittest or survival of the nicest? Since the dawn of time man has contemplated the mystery of altruism, but it was Darwin who posed the question most starkly. From the selfless ant to the stinging bee to the man laying down his life for a stranger, evolution has yielded a goodness that in theory should never be.

Set against the sweeping tale of 150 years of scientific attempts to explain kindness, The Price of Altruism tells for the first time the moving story of the eccentric American genius George Price (1922–1975), as he strives to answer evolution's greatest riddle. An original and penetrating picture of twentieth century thought, it is also a deeply personal journey. From the heights of the Manhattan Project to the inspired equation that explains altruism to the depths of homelessness and despair, Price's life embodies the paradoxes of Darwin’s enigma. His tragic suicide in a squatter’s flat, among the vagabonds to whom he gave all his possessions, provides the ultimate contemplation on the possibility of genuine benevolence.

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"Fresh…solid…full of suspense and intrigue." —Publishers Weekly

Antoine Lavoisier reinvented chemistry, overthrowing the long-established principles of alchemy and inventing an entirely new terminology, one still in use by chemists. Madison Smartt Bell’s enthralling narrative reads like a race to the finish line, as the very circumstances that enabled Lavoisier to secure his reputation as the father of modern chemistry—a considerable fortune and social connections with the likes of Benjamin Franklin—also caused his glory to be cut short by the French Revolution.

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"Fresh…solid…full of suspense and intrigue." —Publishers Weekly

Antoine Lavoisier reinvented chemistry, overthrowing the long-established principles of alchemy and inventing an entirely new terminology, one still in use by chemists. Madison Smartt Bell’s enthralling narrative reads like a race to the finish line, as the very circumstances that enabled Lavoisier to secure his reputation as the father of modern chemistry—a considerable fortune and social connections with the likes of Benjamin Franklin—also caused his glory to be cut short by...
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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHORS

The science classic made more accessible
• More concise • Illustrated

FROM ONE OF THE MOST BRILLIANT MINDS OF OUR TIME COMES A BOOK THAT CLARIFIES HIS MOST IMPORTANT IDEAS
 
Stephen Hawking’s worldwide bestseller A Brief History of Time remains a landmark volume in scientific writing. But for years readers have asked for a more accessible formulation of its key concepts—the nature of space and time, the role of God in creation, and the history and future of the universe. A Briefer History of Time is Professor Hawking’s response.

Although “briefer,” this book is much more than a mere explanation of Hawking’s earlier work. A Briefer History of Time both clarifies and expands on the great subjects of the original, and records the latest developments in the field—from string theory to the search for a unified theory of all the forces of physics. Thirty-seven full-color illustrations enhance the text and make A Briefer History of Time an exhilarating and must-have addition in its own right to the great literature of science and ideas.

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Amazon.com Review

"Highly entertaining…Mabey gets us to look at life from the plants’ point of view." —Constance Casey, New York Times

The Cabaret of Plants is a masterful, globe-trotting exploration of the relationship between humans and the kingdom of plants by the renowned naturalist Richard Mabey.

A rich, sweeping, and wonderfully readable work of botanical history, The Cabaret of Plants explores dozens of plant species that for millennia have challenged our imaginations, awoken our wonder, and upturned our ideas about history, science, beauty, and belief. Going back to the beginnings of human history, Mabey shows how flowers, trees, and plants have been central to human experience not just as sources of food and medicine but as objects of worship, actors in creation myths, and symbols of war and peace, life and death.

Writing in a celebrated style that the Economist calls “delightful and casually learned,” Mabey takes readers from the Himalayas to Madagascar to the Amazon to our own backyards. He ranges through the work of writers, artists, and scientists such as da Vinci, Keats, Darwin, and van Gogh and across ...
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• Selecting a dog (what breed? male? female? puppy or older dog?) to fit your lifestyle
  
• Where to get--and where not to get--a dog
  
• Reading a pedigree
  
• Training your dog or puppy--when, where, and how
  
• The proper use of praise and ...
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The epic story of the scientists through the ages who have sought answers to life’s biggest mystery: How did it begin?

In this essential and illuminating history of Western science, Bill Mesler and H. James Cleaves II seek to answer the most crucial question in science: How did life begin? They trace the trials and triumphs of the iconoclastic scientists who have sought to solve the mystery, from Darwin’s theory of evolution to Crick and Watson’s unveiling of DNA. This fascinating exploration not only examines the origin-of-life question, but also interrogates the very nature of scientific discovery and objectivity.

New York Times Bestseller

Discover the critical link between your brain and the food you eat and change the way your brain ages, in this cutting-edge, practical guide to eliminating brain fog, optimizing brain health, and achieving peak mental performance from media personality and leading voice in health Max Lugavere.

After his mother was diagnosed with a mysterious form of dementia, Max Lugavere put his successful media career on hold to learn everything he could about brain health and performance. For the better half of a decade, he consumed the most up-to-date scientific research, talked to dozens of leading scientists and clinicians around the world, and visited the country’s best neurology departments—all in the hopes of understanding his mother’s condition.

Now, in Genius Foods, Lugavere presents a comprehensive guide to brain optimization. He uncovers the stunning link between our dietary and lifestyle choices and our brain functions, revealing how the foods you eat directly affect your ability to focus, learn, remember, create, analyze new ideas, and maintain a balanced moo...
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New York Times best-selling author Janice Kaplan examines the phenomenon of luck - and discovers the exciting ways you can grab opportunities and make luck for yourself every day.

After spending a year researching and experiencing gratitude for The Gratitude Diaries, Janice Kaplan is back to tackle another big, mysterious influence in all our lives: luck. And this time she's joined on her journey by coauthor Dr. Barnaby Marsh, a renowned academic who guides her exploration.

Together they uncover the unexpected, little-understood science behind what we call "luck", proving that many seemingly random events are actually under your - and everyone's - control. They examine the factors that made stars like Harrison Ford and Jonathan Groff so successful, and learn the real secrets that made Kate Spade and Warby Parker into global brands. Using original research, fascinating studies, and engaging interviews, Kaplan and Marsh reveal the simple techniques to create luck in love and marriage, business and career, and health, happiness, and family relationships. Their breakthrough insights prove that all of us - from CEOs to stay-at-home...
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"Uncommonly good…makes a compelling case that…intellectual curiosity not only changed Europe, but launched modernity." —Cleveland Plain Dealer

When Columbus first returned to Spain from the Caribbean, he dazzled King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella with exotic parrots, tropical flowers, and bits of gold. Inspired by the promise of riches, countless seafarers poured out of the Iberian Peninsula and wider Europe in search of spices, treasure, and land. Many returned with strange tales of the New World.

Curiosity began to percolate through Europe as the New World’s people, animals, and plants ruptured prior assumptions about the biblical description of creation. The Church, long fearful of challenges to its authority, could no longer suppress the mantra “Dare to know!”

Noblemen began collecting cabinets of curiosities; soon others went from collecting to examining natural objects with fresh eyes. Observation led to experiments; competing conclusions triggered debates. The foundations for the natural sciences were laid as questions became more multifaceted and answers became more complex. Carl Linneaus developed a classification sys...
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“One of the most important books I’ve ever read―an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.” – Bill Gates

“Hans Rosling tells the story of ‘the secret silent miracle of human progress’ as only he can. But Factfulness does much more than that. It also explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readers how to see it clearly.” ―Melinda Gates

Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts.

When asked simple questions about global trends―what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school―we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers.

In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal Continue Reading

Combining cutting-edge neuroscience with the latest discoveries on the human microbiome, a practical guide in the tradition of Wheat Belly and Grain Brain that conclusively demonstrates the inextricable, biological link between mind and body.

We have all experienced the connection between our mind and our gut—the decision we made because it “felt right”; the butterflies in our stomach before a big meeting; the anxious stomach rumbling when we’re stressed out. While the dialogue between the gut and the brain has been recognized by ancient healing traditions, including Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine, Western medicine has failed to appreciate the complexity of how the brain, gut, and more recently, the microbiome—the microorganisms that live inside us—communicate with one another. In The Mind-Gut Connection, Dr. Emeran Mayer, executive director of the UCLA Center for Neurobiology of Stress, offers a revolutionary look at this developing science, teaching us how to harness the power of the mind-gut connection to take charge of our health.

The Mind-Gut Connection shows how to keep the brain-gut communication clear and balanced ...
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The story—and the science—of nature's greatest engine.

Whether we blink an eye, lift a finger, throw a spear or a ball, walk, run, or merely breathe, we are using muscle. Although muscles differ little in appearance and performance across the animal kingdom, they accomplish tasks as diverse as making flies fly, rattlesnakes rattle, and squid shoot their tentacles.

Our everyday activities turn on the performance of nature's main engine: we may breathe harder going uphill, but we put more strain on our muscles walking downhill. Those of us who are right-handed can tighten screws and jar lids more forcibly than we can loosen them. In Prime Mover we're treated to the story of how form and performance make these things happen—how nature does her work.

Steven Vogel's talents as both scientist and writer shine in this masterful narrative of biological ingenuity, as he relates the story—and science—of nature's greatest engine.

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Kari Byron—former host of the wildly popular, iconic cult classic MythBusters—shows how to crash test your way through life, no lab coat required.

Kari Byron’s story hasn’t been a straight line. She started out as a broke artist living in San Francisco, writing poems on a crowded bus on the way to one of her three jobs. Many curve balls, unexpected twists, and yes, literal and figurative explosions later, and she’s one of the world’s most respected women in science entertainment, blowing stuff up on national television and getting paid for it! In Crash Test Girl, Kari reveals her fascinating life story on the set of MythBusters and beyond. With her signature gusto and roll-up-your-sleeves enthusiasm, she invites readers behind the duct tape and the dynamite, to the unlikely friendships and low-budget sets that turned a crazy idea into a famously inventive show with a rabid fanbase.

The truth is, Mythbusters was never meant to be a science show. But attaching a rocket to a car, riding a motorcycle on water, or lighting 500 pounds of coffee creamer on fire requires a decent understanding of chemist...
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In The Hidden Life of Deer, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, the New York Times bestselling author of The Hidden Life of Dogs, turns her attention to wild deer, and the many lessons we can learn by observing nature. A narrative masterpiece and a naturalist’s delight, The Hidden Life of Deer is based on the twelve months Thomas, a renowned anthropologist, spent studying the local deer population near her home in New Hampshire.

With information for patients and practitioners on optimizing mitochondrial function for greater health and longevity

Why do we age? Why does cancer develop? What's the connection between heart failure and Alzheimer's disease, or infertility and hearing loss? Can we extend lifespan, and if so, how? What is the Exercise Paradox? Why do antioxidant supplements sometimes do more harm than good? Many will be amazed to learn that all these questions, and many more, can be answered by a single point of discussion: mitochondria and bioenergetics.

In Mitochondria and the Future of Medicine, Naturopathic Doctor Lee Know tells the epic story of mitochondria, the widely misunderstood and often-overlooked powerhouses of our cells. The legendary saga began over two billion years ago, when one bacterium entered another without being digested, which would evolve to create the first mitochondrion. Since then, for life to exist beyond single-celled bacteria, it's the mitochondria that have been responsible for this life-giving energy. By understanding how our mitochondria work, in fact, it is possible to add years to our lives, and life to our yea...
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A sweeping, global history of the rise of the factory and its effects on society.

We live in a factory-made world: modern life is built on three centuries of advances in factory production, efficiency, and technology. But giant factories have also fueled our fears about the future since their beginnings, when William Blake called them "dark Satanic mills." Many factories that operated over the last two centuries―such as Homestead, River Rouge, and Foxconn―were known for the labor exploitation and class warfare they engendered, not to mention the environmental devastation caused by factory production from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution up to today.

In a major work of scholarship that is also wonderfully accessible, celebrated historian Joshua B. Freeman tells the story of the factory and examines how it has reflected both our dreams and our nightmares of industrialization and social change. He whisks readers from the textile mills in England that powered the Industrial Revolution and the factory towns of New England to the colossal steel and car plants of twentieth-century America, Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union and on to to...
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Find what you were born for and discover your unique edge.
Live your life, not someone else’s.

Lack clarity and direction? Finish this book with epiphanies and a clear plan.

Learn the true science behind personality and identity.

A Splendid Table Staff Book Pick of the Year



"Estabrook, a reporter of iron constitution and persistence, has dug deep into the truth about the American pork industry without losing his sense of humor and humanity." —Christopher Kimball, Wall Street Journal

In Pig Tales, New York Times best-selling author of Tomatoland Barry Estabrook turns his attention to the dark side of the American pork industry. Drawing on personal experiences raising pigs as well as sharp investigative instincts, Estabrook covers the range of the human-porcine experience. He shows how these intelligent creatures are all too often subjected to lives of suffering in confinement and squalor, sustained on a drug-laced diet just long enough to reach slaughter weight. But Estabrook also reveals how it is possible to raise pigs responsibly and respectfully, benefiting producers and consumers—as well as some of the top chefs in America.

Provocative, witty, and deeply informed, Pig Tales is bound to spark conversation at dinner tables across America.

A fascinating account of the breakthrough ideas that transformed probability and statistics

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, gamblers and mathematicians transformed the idea of chance from a mystery into the discipline of probability, setting the stage for a series of breakthroughs that enabled or transformed innumerable fields, from gambling, mathematics, statistics, economics, and finance to physics and computer science. This book tells the story of ten great ideas about chance and the thinkers who developed them, tracing the philosophical implications of these ideas as well as their mathematical impact.

Persi Diaconis and Brian Skyrms begin with Gerolamo Cardano, a sixteenth-century physician, mathematician, and professional gambler who helped develop the idea that chance actually can be measured. They describe how later thinkers showed how the judgment of chance also can be measured, how frequency is related to chance, and how chance, judgment, and frequency could be unified. Diaconis and Skyrms explain how Thomas Bayes laid the foundation of modern statistics, and they explore David Hume’s problem of induction, Andrey Kolmogorov’s gene...
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In this illustrated history, Steven Johnson explores the history of innovation over centuries, tracing facets of modern life (refrigeration, clocks, and eyeglass lenses, to name a few) from their creation by hobbyists, amateurs, and entrepreneurs to their unintended historical consequences. Filled with surprising stories of accidental genius and brilliant mistakes—from the French publisher who invented the phonograph before Edison but forgot to include playback, to the Hollywood movie star who helped invent the technology behind Wi-Fi and Bluetooth—How We Got to Now investigates the secret history behind the everyday objects of contemporary life.
 
In his trademark style, Johnson examines unexpected connections between seemingly unrelated fields: how the invention of air-conditioning enabled the largest migration of human beings in the history of the species—to cities such as Dubai or Phoenix, which would otherwise be virtually uninhabitable; how pendulum clocks helped trigger the ...
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An entertainment and tech insider—YouTube’s chief business officer—delivers the first detailed account of the rise of YouTube, the creative minds who have capitalized on it to become pop culture stars, and how streaming video is revolutionizing the media world.

In the past ten years, the internet video platform YouTube has changed media and entertainment as profoundly as the invention of film, radio, and television did, more than six decades earlier. Streampunks is a firsthand account of this upstart company, examining how it evolved and where it will take us next.

Sharing behind-the-scenes stories of YouTube’s most influential stars—Streampunks like Tyler Oakley, Lilly Singh, and Casey Neistat—and the dealmakers brokering the future of entertainment like Scooter Braun and Shane Smith, Robert Kyncl uses his experiences at three of the most innovative media companies, HBO, Netflix, and YouTube, to tell the story of streaming video and this modern pop culture juggernaut. Collaborating with Google speechwriter Maany Peyvan, Kyncl explains how the new rules of entertainment are being written and how and why the media landscape is radically changing, while giving...
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• Brief chapter-by-chapter summaries Continue Reading

Cat behaviorist and star of Animal Planet's hit television show My Cat from Hell, Jackson Galaxy, a.k.a. "Cat Daddy," isn't what you might expect for a cat expert (as The New York Times noted, with his goatee and tattoos, he "looks like a Hells Angel"). Yet Galaxy's ability to connect with even the most troubled felines -- not to mention the stressed-out humans living in their wake -- is awe-inspiring. In this book, Galaxy tells the poignant story of his thirteen-year relationship with a petite gray-and-white short-haired cat named Benny, and gives singular advice for living with, caring for, and loving the feline in your home.

When Benny arrived in his life, Galaxy was a down-and-out rock musician with not too much more going on than a part-time job at an animal shelter and a drug problem. Benny's previous owner brought the cat to the shelter in a cardboard box to give him up. Benny had seen better days --- his pelvis had just been shattered by the wheels of a car -- and his owner insisted he'd been "unbondable" from day one. Nothing could have been further from the truth. An inspiring account of two broken beings who fixed each other, Continue Reading

What if everything you think you know about getting older and staying healthy is wrong? Ed Park, M.D., offers the revolutionary idea that disease and aging in humans all arises from a single source: genetic errors caused by shortening of telomeres, or the sequences of DNA at the ends of our chromosomes. Telomeres naturally wear down over time, and thus when cells replicate (as they do all the time in our bodies), they’re creating progressively poorer-quality duplicates of themselves, like making a Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox. Ultimately, the body deteriorates, resulting in a range of ailments, many of which we associate with aging—from diabetes to hypertension to macular degeneration to cancer.

Happily, Ed tells us, it’s possible to slow or even reverse this process and effectively turn back the clock. In The Telomere Miracle, he explains cutting-edge science in a lively style, using illustrations and metaphors ranging from auto parts to superheroes. Then he shows readers how they can intervene in the aging process by boosting the activity of the enzyme telomerase naturally by understanding and optimizing six key areas of breathing, mindset, sleep, e...
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Etched in Stone is a quick, easy guide to archeological proofs that bolster one's faith and encourages believers of all ages.

Christians are under attack like never before. Have you ever heard anyone say, "The Bible is just a fairytale. There is no physical evidence to support for any of it!" This is the kind of fire today's Christians come under all the time.

Christianity is certainly based on faith, but haven't you ever thought how wonderful it would be to have something tangible to point to that corroborates the Sacred Scriptures? That is what Etched in Stone: Archeological Discoveries that Prove the Bible is all about.

Etched in Stone showcases more than 60 archeological discoveries that will make it clear that the stories of the Bible are historical and factual events that occurred at a real time and in real places. Now you can have something tangible to show that

• The Israelites really did have to make bricks without straw,
• There really was a city called Nazareth,
• The walls of Jericho really did fall down,
• King David really did exist,
• Nebuchadnezzar wasn't just a made-...
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If Darwin were to examine the evidence today using modern science, would his conclusions be the same?

Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, published over 150 years ago, is considered one of history’s most influential books and continues to serve as the foundation of thought for evolutionary biology. Since Darwin’s time, however, new fields of science have immerged that simply give us better answers to the question of origins. With a Ph.D. in cell and developmental biology from Harvard University, Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson is uniquely qualified to investigate what genetics reveal about origins.

The Origins Puzzle Comes Together

If the science surrounding origins were a puzzle, Darwin would have had fewer than 15% of the pieces to work with when he developed his theory of evolution. We now have a much greater percentage of the pieces because of modern scientific research. As Dr. Jeanson puts the new pieces together, a whole new picture emerges, giving us a testable, predictive model to explain the origin of species.

A New Scientific Revolution Begins

Poker champion turned business consultant Annie Duke teaches you how to get comfortable with uncertainty and make better decisions as a result. 

In Super Bowl XLIX, Seahawks coach Pete Carroll made one of the most controversial calls in football history: With 26 seconds remaining, and trailing by four at the Patriots' one-yard line, he called for a pass instead of a handing off to his star running back. The pass was intercepted, and the Seahawks lost. Critics called it the dumbest play in history. But was the call really that bad? Or did Carroll actually make a great move that was ruined by bad luck? 

Even the best decision doesn't yield the best outcome every time. There's always an element of luck that you can't control, and there is always information that is hidden from view. So the key to long-term success (and avoiding worrying yourself to death) is to think in bets: How sure am I? What are the possible ways things could turn out? What decision has the highest odds of success? Did I land in the unlucky 10% on the strategy that works 90% of the time? Or is my success attributable to dumb luck rather than great decision making? 

Annie ...
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"Richard Reeves, in his wonderfully lucid style, renders the genius of Ernest Rutherford, who exposed the inner workings of the atom. A great experimentalist and mentor, Rutherford gave birth to the atomic age in his labs, and Reeves captures the drama, personalities, and science." —Walter Isaacson

Born in colonial New Zealand, Ernest Rutherford grew up on the frontier—a different world from Cambridge, to which he won a scholarship at the age of twenty-four. His work revolutionized modern physics. Among his discoveries were the orbital structure of the atom and the concept of the "half-life" of radioactive materials. Rutherford and the young men working under him were the first to split the atom, unlocking tremendous forces—forces, as Rutherford himself predicted, that would bring us the atomic bomb. In Richard Reeves's hands, Rutherford comes alive, a ruddy, genial man and a pivotal figure in scientific history.

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"Richard Reeves, in his wonderfully lucid style, renders the genius of Ernest Rutherford, who exposed the inner workings of the atom. A great experimentalist and mentor, Rutherford gave birth to the atomic age in hi...
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Now on audio! The best-selling exposé that ends the decades-old controversy surrounding the infamous and mysterious crash of an unidentified aircraft at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947.

Backed by documents declassified through the Freedom of Information Act, Colonel Philip J. Corso (Ret.), a member of President Eisenhower's National Security Council and former head of the Foreign Technology Desk in the US Army, has come forward to reveal his personal stewardship of alien artifacts from the Roswell crash. He tells us how he spearheaded the army's reverse-engineering project that led to today's integrated circuit chips, fiber optics, lasers, and super-tenacity fibers and "seeded" the Roswell alien technology to giants of American industry. Laying bare the US government's shocking role in the Roswell incident - what was found, the cover-up, and how they used alien artifacts to change the course of 20th-century history - The Day After Roswell is an extraordinary memoir that forces us to reconsider not only the past but also our role in the universe.

“A sparkling, thought-provoking account of sexual differences. Whether you’re a man or a woman, you’ll find his conclusions gripping.”—Jared Diamond

There is a human genetic fluke that is surprisingly common, due to a change in a key pair of chromosomes. In the normal condition the two look the same, but in this disorder one is malformed and shrunken beyond recognition. The result is a shortened life span, higher mortality at all ages, an inability to reproduce, premature hair loss, and brain defects variously resulting in attention deficit, hyperactivity, conduct disorder, hypersexuality, and an enormous excess of both outward and self-directed aggression.

It is called maleness.

Melvin Konner traces the arc of evolution to explain the relationships between women and men. With patience and wit he explores the knotty question of whether men are necessary in the biological destiny of the human race. He draws on multiple, colorful examples from the natural world—such as the mating habits of the octopus, black widow, angler fish, and jacana—and argues that maleness in humans is hardly necessary to the survival of the species.

...
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When should you adopt an aggressive business strategy? How do we make decisions when we don’t have all the information? What makes international environmental cooperation possible?

Game theory is the study of how we make a decision when the outcome of our moves depends on the decisions of someone else. Economists Ivan and Tuvana Pastine explain why, in these situations, we sometimes cooperate, sometimes clash, and sometimes act in a way that seems completely random.

Stylishly brought to life by award-winning cartoonist Tom Humberstone, Game Theory will help readers understand behaviour in everything from our social lives to business, global politics to evolutionary biology. It provides a thrilling new perspective on the world we live in.

Learn the holistic way to heal with Crystals for Beginners

Balancing mind, body, and soul often feels impossible, but it doesn’t have to be a struggle. Holistic healing methods with crystals can help harness energies and establish a positive and healthy lifestyle. In Crystals for Beginners, intuitive energy healer and author Karen Frazier walks readers through the basics of how to become our best selves using crystals. In these pages, you’ll learn how to heal, find balance and everyday wellness with crystals. Crystals for Beginners is your go-to reference guide for healing your way to greater health and happiness.

Crystals for Beginners provides:

• Crystal Healing 101 covering everything from how to start your crystal collection to healing methods
• Crystal Profiles featuring in-depth information at how, where, and when to use 10 essential crystals and 40 others
• Crystal Remedies identifying the most effective crystals for a given issue and demonstrating the different ways to use them

Prescriptions for crystals include: Ab...
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Amazon.com Review

Amazon.com Review

Two leaders in the field of genetics—a bioethicist-health lawyer and an obstetrician-gynecologist geneticist—answer the most pressing questions about the application of new genetics to our universal medicine and what personalized medicine means for individual healthcare.

Breakthroughs in genetic research are changing modern medicine and pharmaceuticals. But what are these changes and how do they affect our individual care? Genomic Messages examines these groundbreaking changes and the questions they raise: What kind of specific medical innovation do we have to look forward to now and tomorrow? How will this “flood” of genetic messages change our lives, our interaction with our physicians and our healthcare system?

Groundbreaking and provocative, Genomic Messages fuses the often conflicting worlds of medicine and law to provide information and insight that will impact the health choices of every one of us, from how medicine is practiced to concepts of privacy, confidentiality, and informed consent. Ultimately, it reveals how genetic information is changing how we think about ourselves, our health, and our future.

“This Will Change Everything offers seemingly radical but actually feasible ideas with the potential to change the world.”—Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel

Editor John Brockman continues in the same vein as his popular compilations What Are You Optimistic About and What Have You Changed Your Mind About with This Will Change Everything. Brockman asks 150 intellectual superstars “what game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?” Their fascinating responses are collected here, from bestselling author of Atonement Ian McEwan to Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek to electronic music pioneer Brian Eno to writer, actor, director, and activist Alan Alda.

The principles of physics lie behind many of the ways animals go about their daily lives. Scientists have discovered that the way cats and dogs lap up liquids can be explained by the laws of surface tension, how ants navigate is due to polarized light, and why pistol shrimps can generate enough force to destroy aquarium glass using their ”elbows!”

Each of Furry Logic's six chapters tackles a separate branch of physics and, through more than 30 animal case studies, examines each creature's key features before describing the ways physics is at play in its life, how the connection between physics and animal behavior was discovered, and what remains to be found out. Science journalists Matin Durrani and Liz Kalaugher make the incredible interdisciplinary world of animals accessible to all, in an enthralling and entertaining read.

Between the ages of twelve and twenty-four, the brain changes in important and, at times, challenging ways. In Brainstorm, the renowned psychiatrist and bestselling author of Parenting from the Inside Out, The Whole-Brain Child, and Mindsight, Daniel Siegel busts a number of commonly held myths about adolescence - for example, that it is merely a stage of "immaturity" filled with often "crazy" behavior - to reveal how it is in fact a vital time in our lives in terms of charting the course for the adults we ultimately become. According to Siegel, during adolescence we learn important skills, such as how to leave home and enter the larger world, how to connect deeply with others, and how to safely experiment and take risks, thereby creating strategies for dealing with the world's increasingly complex problems.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • "Reveals how we can all surpass our perceived physical limits." —Adam Grant

Limits are an illusion: a revolutionary book that reveals the secrets of accessing your hidden extra potential

Foreword by Malcolm Gladwell

The capacity to endure is the key trait that underlies great performance in virtually every field—from a 100-meter sprint to a 100-mile ultramarathon, from summiting Everest to acing final exams or completing any difficult project. But what if we all can go farther, push harder, and achieve more than we think we’re capable of?

Blending cutting-edge science and gripping storytelling in the spirit of Malcolm Gladwell—who contributes the book’s foreword—award-winning journalist Alex Hutchinson reveals that a wave of paradigm-altering research over the past decade suggests the seemingly physical barriers you encounter as set as much by your brain as by your body. This means the mind is the new frontier of endurance—and that the horizons of performance are much more elastic than we once thought.

But, of course, it’s not “all in your head.” For each...
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Audie Award Winner, Multi-Voiced Performance, 2014

World War Z: The Complete Edition (Movie Tie-in Edition): An Oral History of the Zombie War is a new version of Max Brooks' episodic zombie novel. The abridged versions of the original stories are now joined with new, unabridged recordings of the episodes that were not included in the original (abridged) version of the audiobook. These additional episodes feature a star-studded cast of narrators to coincide with the upcoming release of the film.

New narrators include Academy Award-winning director Martin Scorsese, Spiderman star Alfred Molina, The Walking Dead creator Frank Darabont, rapper Common, Firefly star Nathan Fillion, Shaun of the Dead's Simon Pegg, and members of the casts of Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Heroes and more! Max Brooks will be reprising his role as The Interviewer.

The original abridged edition, released in 2006, won an Audie Award for Best Multi-Voiced Performance. Original cast members include Alan Alda, Mark Hamill, Carl & Rob Reiner, and John Turturro.

In this new classic of apocalyptic fiction that feels all too ...
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“Thought-provoking…[Allen] writes without sanctimony and never simplifies the people in his book or the moral issues his story inevitably raises." —Wall Street Journal

Few diseases are more gruesome than typhus. Transmitted by body lice, it afflicts the dispossessed—refugees, soldiers, and ghettoized peoples—causing hallucinations, terrible headaches, boiling fever, and often death. The disease plagued the German army on the Eastern Front and left the Reich desperate for a vaccine. For this they turned to the brilliant and eccentric Polish zoologist Rudolf Weigl.

In the 1920s, Weigl had created the first typhus vaccine using a method as bold as it was dangerous for its use of living human subjects. The astonishing success of Weigl’s techniques attracted the attention and admiration of the world—giving him cover during the Nazi’s violent occupation of Lviv. His lab soon flourished as a hotbed of resistance. Weigl hired otherwise doomed mathematicians, writers, doctors, and other thinkers, protecting them from atrocity. The team engaged in a sabotage campaign by sending illegal doses of the vaccine into the Polish ghettos while shipping ga...
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"A fresh and highly visual tour through Einstein's astonishing legacy." —Brian Greene

There's no better short book that explains just what Einstein did than Einstein's Cosmos. Keying Einstein's crucial discoveries to the simple mental images that inspired them, Michio Kaku finds a revealing new way to discuss his ideas, and delivers an appealing and always accessible introduction to Einstein's work.

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"A fresh and highly visual tour through Einstein's astonishing legacy." —Brian Greene

There's no better short book that explains just what Einstein did than Einstein's Cosmos. Keying Einstein's crucial discoveries to the simple mental images that inspired them, Michio Kaku finds a revealing new way to discuss his ideas, and delivers an appealing and always accessible introduction to Einstein's work.

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“An urgent and at times terrifying dispatch from a distinguished reporter who has given heart and soul to his subject.”—Hampton Sides

In The End of Plenty, award-winning environmental journalist Joel K. Bourne Jr. puts our fight against devastating world hunger in dramatic perspective. He travels the globe to introduce a new generation of farmers and scientists on the front lines of the next green revolution. He visits corporate farmers trying to restore Ukraine as Europe's breadbasket, a Canadian aquaculturist, the agronomist behind the world's largest organic sugarcane plantation, and many other extraordinary farmers, large and small, who are racing to stave off catastrophe as climate change disrupts food production worldwide.

A Financial Times Best Book of the Year and a Finalist for the PEN / E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award.

Updated with 12 new diagrams and examples

Would you like to have better solutions to your problems? Struggling to understand why things went wrong when you did everything right?

Using Art Effectively to Teach the Toughest Topics in A&P

Fundamentals of Anatomy & Physiology helps students succeed in the challenging A&P course with an easy-to-understand narrative, precise visuals, and steadfast accuracy. With the 11th Edition, the author team draws from recent research exploring how students use and digest visual information to help students use art more effectively to learn A&P.  New book features encourage students to view and consider figures in the textbook, and new narrated videos guide students through complex physiology figures to help them deconstruct and better understand complicated processes. Instructors can also request a new handbook by Lori Garrett, entitled The Art of Teaching A&P: Six Easy Lessons to Improve Student Learning , which explores some of the most common challenges encountered when using art to teach A&P, alongside strategies to address these challenges.

Also Available with Mastering A&P

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Amazon.com Review

For all introductory physical geology courses.

Learning Objective-driven textbook, using augmented reality to bring geology to life

With its strong readability and engaging, instructive illustrations, this trusted bestseller returns with a hybrid and streamlined focus on core principles. Earth: An Introduction to Physical Geology maintains a learning objective-driven approach throughout each chapter: The text provides readers with a structured learning path, tied to learning objectives with opportunities for readers to demonstrate their understanding at the end of each section. The authors’ emphasis on currency and relevance includes the latest thinking in the field, particularly in the dynamic area of plate tectonics.

The 12th Edition, Pearson Science’s first augmented reality, hybrid textbook, uses the BouncePages image recognition app (FREE on both iOS and Android stores) to connect readers' digital devices to the print textbook, enhancing their reading and learni...
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For one-semester courses in Preparatory Chemistry

Builds 21st century and problem solving skills, preparing students for success

Now in its 6th Edition, the best-selling Introductory Chemistry continues to encourage student interest by showing how chemistry manifests in students’ daily lives. Author Nivaldo Tro draws upon his classroom experience as an award-winning instructor to extend chemistry from the laboratory to the student’s world, capturing student attention with relevant applications and an engaging writing style. The text provides a superior teaching and learning experience, enabling deep conceptual understanding, fostering the development of problem-solving skills, and encouraging interest in chemistry with concrete examples. Extending chemistry from the lab to the student’s world, the text reveals that anyone can master chemistry.

Refined to meet its purpose of teaching relevant skills, the 6th Edition includes new questions, data, and sections to help ...
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Continue Reading The Danger Within Us: America's Untested, Unregulated Medical Device Industry and One Man's Battle to Survive It html by Jeanne Lenzer (336 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review "Before you get anything implanted in your body, read this book." - Shannon Brownlee, author of Overtreated Did you know... - Medical interventions have become the third leading cause of death in America. - An estimated 10 percent of Americans are implanted with medical devices -- like pacemakers, artificial hips, cardiac stents, etc. - The overwhelming majority of high-risk implanted devices have never undergone a single clinical trial. In THE DANGER WITHIN US, award-winning journalist Jeanne Lenzer brings these horrifying statistics to life through the story of one working class man who, after his "cure" nearly kills him, ends up in a battle for justice against the medical establishment. His crusade leads Lenzer on a journey through the dark underbelly of the medical device industry, a fascinating and disturbing world that hasn't been written about before. What Lenzer exposes will shock readers: rampant corruption, elaborate cover-ups, shameless profiteering, and astonishing lack of oversight, all of which leads to dangerous devices (from arti... Continue Reading Evolution: Making Sense of Life html by Carl Zimmer and Douglas Emlen (752 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Science writer Carl Zimmer and evolutionary biologist Douglas Emlen have produced a thoroughly revised new edition of their widely praised evolution textbook. Emlen, an award-winning evolutionary biologist at the University of Montana, has infused Evolution: Making Sense of Life with the technical rigor and conceptual depth that today’s biology majors require. Zimmer, an award-winning New York Times columnist, brings compelling storytelling to the book, bringing evolutionary research to life. Students will learn the fundamental concepts of evolutionary theory, such as natural selection, genetic drift, phylogeny, and coevolution. The book also drives home the relevance of evolution for disciplines ranging from conservation biology to medicine. With riveting stories about evolutionary biologists at work everywhere from the Arctic to tropical rainforests to hospital wards, the book is a reading adventure designed to grab the imagination of students, showing them exactly why it is that evolution makes such brilliant sense of life. ... Continue Reading Developmental Biology html by Scott F. Gilbert and Michael J. F. Barresi (500 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review A classic gets a new coauthor and a new approach: Developmental Biology, Eleventh Edition, keeps the excellent writing, accuracy, and enthusiasm of the Gilbert Developmental Biology book, streamlines it, adds innovative electronic supplements, and creates a new textbook for those teaching Developmental Biology to a new generation. Several new modes of teaching are employed in the new Gilbert and Barresi textbook. The videos explaining development--as well as those from Mary Tyler's Vade Mecum--are referenced throughout the book, and several other valuable new elements have been added. Additional updates include: * An increased emphasis on stem cells, which are covered extensively and early in the book. * Sex determination and gametogenesis, instead of being near the end of the volume, are up front, prior to fertilization. * Greatly expanded coverage of neural development, comprising a unit unto itself. * Coverage of new experiments on morphogenesis and differentiation, as well as new techniques such as CRISPR. For Students Companion Website Significantly enhanced... Continue Reading Organic Chemistry As a Second Language: Second Semester Topics html by David R. Klein (400 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Readers continue to turn to Klein's Organic Chemistry As a Second Language: Second Semester Topics, 4th Edition because it enables them to better understand fundamental principles, solve problems, and focus on what they need to know to succeed. The fourth edition explores the major principles in the field and explains why they are relevant. It is written in a way that clearly shows the patterns in organic chemistry so that readers can gain a deeper conceptual understanding of the material. Topics are presented clearly in an accessible writing style along with numerous hands-on problem solving exercises. ... Continue Reading Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth html by Jim Baggott (353 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review From acclaimed science author Jim Baggot, a lively, provocative, and “intellectually gratifying” critique of modern theoretical physics (The Economist).   Where does one draw the line between solid science and fairy-tale physics? Jim Baggott argues that there is no observational or experimental evidence for many of the ideas of modern theoretical physics: super-symmetric particles, super strings, the multiverse, the holographic principle, or the anthropic cosmological principle. Unafraid to challenge prominent theorists, Baggott offers engaging portraits of many central figures of modern physics, including Stephen Hawking, Paul Davies, John D. Barrow, Brian Greene, and Leonard Susskind. Informed, comprehensive, and balanced, Farewell to Reality discusses the latest ideas about the nature of physical reality while clearly distinguishing between fact and fantasy, providing essential and entertaining reading for everyone interested in what we know and don’t know about the nature of the universe and reality itself.   ... Continue Reading Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (King Legacy) html by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (256 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., isolated himself from the demands of the civil rights movement, rented a house in Jamaica with no telephone, and labored over his final manuscript. In this prophetic work, which has been unavailable for more than ten years, he lays out his thoughts, plans, and dreams for America's future, including the need for better jobs, higher wages, decent housing, and quality education. With a universal message of hope that continues to resonate, King demanded an end to global suffering, asserting that humankind-for the first time-has the resources and technology to eradicate poverty.... Continue Reading Writing Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get Funded html by Joshua Schimel (240 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review As a scientist, you are a professional writer: your career is built on successful proposals and papers. Success isn't defined by getting papers into print, but by getting them into the reader's consciousness. Writing Science is built upon the idea that successful science writing tells a story. It uses that insight to discuss how to write more effectively. Integrating lessons from other genres of writing with those from the author's years of experience as author, reviewer, and editor, the book shows scientists and students how to present their research in a way that is clear and that will maximize reader comprehension. The book takes an integrated approach, using the principles of story structure to discuss every aspect of successful science writing, from the overall structure of a paper or proposal to individual sections, paragraphs, sentences, and words. It begins by building core arguments, analyzing why some stories are engaging and memorable while others are quickly forgotten, and proceeds to the elements of story structure, showing how the structures scientists and researchers use in papers and proposals fit into classical models. The book targets ... Continue Reading Geometry For Dummies html by Mark Ryan (377 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Hit the geometry wall? Get up and running with this no-nonsense guide! Does the thought of geometry make you jittery? You're not alone. Fortunately, this down-to-earth guide helps you approach it from a new angle, making it easier than ever to conquer your fears and score your highest in geometry. From getting started with geometry basics to making friends with lines and angles, you'll be proving triangles congruent, calculating circumference, using formulas, and serving up pi in no time. Geometry is a subject full of mathematical richness and beauty. But it's a subject that bewilders many students because it's so unlike the math they've done before—it requires the use of deductive logic in formal proofs. If you're having a hard time wrapping your mind around what that even means, you've come to the right place! Inside, you'll find out how a proof's chain of logic works and even discover some secrets for getting past rough spots along the way. You don't have to be a math genius to grasp geometry, and this book helps you get un-stumped in a hurry! Find out how to decode complex geometry proofs Learn to reason deductively and inductively <... Continue Reading Algebra I For Dummies (For Dummies (Math & Science)) html by Mary Jane Sterling (355 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Algebra I For Dummies, 2nd Edition (9781119293576) was previously published as Algebra I For Dummies, 2nd Edition (9780470559642). While this version features a new Dummies cover and design, the content is the same as the prior release and should not be considered a new or updated product. Factor fearlessly, conquer the quadratic formula, and solve linear equations There's no doubt that algebra can be easy to some while extremely challenging to others. If you're vexed by variables, Algebra I For Dummies, 2nd Edition provides the plain-English, easy-to-follow guidance you need to get the right solution every time! Now with 25% new and revised content, this easy-to-understand reference not only explains algebra in terms you can understand, but it also gives you the necessary tools to solve complex problems with confidence. You'll understand how to factor fearlessly, conquer the quadratic formula, and solve linear equations. Includes revised and updated examples and practice problems Provides explanations and practical examples that mirror today's teaching methods Other titles by Sterling: Al... Continue Reading Chemistry For Dummies (For Dummies (Math & Science)) html by John T. Moore (356 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Chemistry For Dummies, 2nd Edition (9781119293460) was previously published as Chemistry For Dummies, 2nd Edition (9781118007303). While this version features a new Dummies cover and design, the content is the same as the prior release and should not be considered a new or updated product. See how chemistry works in everything from soaps to medicines to petroleum We're all natural born chemists. Every time we cook, clean, take a shower, drive a car, use a solvent (such as nail polish remover), or perform any of the countless everyday activities that involve complex chemical reactions we're doing chemistry! So why do so many of us desperately resist learning chemistry when we're young? Now there's a fun, easy way to learn basic chemistry. Whether you're studying chemistry in school and you're looking for a little help making sense of what's being taught in class, or you're just into learning new things, Chemistry For Dummies gets you rolling with all the basics of matter and energy, atoms and molecules, acids and bases, and much more! Tracks a typical chemistry course, giving you step-by-step lessons you can ea... Continue Reading Organic Chemistry As a Second Language: First Semester Topics, 4th Edition html by David R. Klein (400 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Helps develop the skills needed to solve a variety of problem types. Presents the fundamental topics clearly with an informal, friendly tone. Describes the how-to of problem solving, including approaching problems strategically. Discusses the relationship between concepts and puts topics in context. Covers important areas such as resonance, nomenclature, conformations, substitution reactions, synthesis and more. ... Continue Reading Physics I For Dummies (For Dummies (Math & Science)) html by Steven Holzner (380 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review The fun and easy way to get up to speed on the basic concepts of physics For high school and undergraduate students alike, physics classes are recommended or required courses for a wide variety of majors, and continue to be a challenging and often confusing course. Physics I For Dummies tracks specifically to an introductory course and, keeping with the traditionally easy-to-follow Dummies style, teaches you the basic principles and formulas in a clear and concise manner, proving that you don't have to be Einstein to understand physics! Explains the basic principles in a simple, clear, and entertaining fashion New edition includes updated examples and explanations, as well as the newest discoveries in the field Contains the newest teaching techniques If just thinking about the laws of physics makes your head spin, this hands-on, friendly guide gets you out of the black hole and sheds light on this often-intimidating subject. Product Description The fun and easy way to get up to speed on the basic concepts of physics For high school and undergraduate students alike, physi... Continue Reading Statistics For Dummies (For Dummies (Math & Science)) html by Deborah J. Rumsey (379 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Statistics For Dummies, 2nd Edition (9781119293521) was previously published as Statistics For Dummies, 2nd Edition (9780470911082). While this version features a new Dummies cover and design, the content is the same as the prior release and should not be considered a new or updated product. The fun and easy way to get down to business with statistics Stymied by statistics? No fear? this friendly guide offers clear, practical explanations of statistical ideas, techniques, formulas, and calculations, with lots of examples that show you how these concepts apply to your everyday life. Statistics For Dummies shows you how to interpret and critique graphs and charts, determine the odds with probability, guesstimate with confidence using confidence intervals, set up and carry out a hypothesis test, compute statistical formulas, and more. Tracks to a typical first semester statistics course Updated examples resonate with today's students Explanations mirror teaching methods and classroom protocol Packed with practical advice and real-world problems, Statistics For Dummies ... Continue Reading Calculus For Dummies (For Dummies (Math & Science)) html by Mark Ryan (351 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Calculus For Dummies, 2nd Edition (9781119293491) was previously published as Calculus For Dummies, 2nd Edition (9781118791295). While this version features a new Dummies cover and design, the content is the same as the prior release and should not be considered a new or updated product. Slay the calculus monster with this user-friendly guide Calculus For Dummies, 2nd Edition makes calculus manageable—even if you're one of the many students who sweat at the thought of it. By breaking down differentiation and integration into digestible concepts, this guide helps you build a stronger foundation with a solid understanding of the big ideas at work. This user-friendly math book leads you step-by-step through each concept, operation, and solution, explaining the "how" and "why" in plain English instead of math-speak. Through relevant instruction and practical examples, you'll soon learn that real-life calculus isn't nearly the monster it's made out to be. Calculus is a required course for many college majors, and for students without a strong math foundation, it can be a real barrier to graduation. Breaking that barrier down me... Continue Reading Anatomy and Physiology For Dummies (For Dummies (Math & Science)) html by Erin Odya and Maggie A. Norris (361 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Learn about the human body from the inside out Some people think that knowing about what goes on inside the human body can sap life of its mystery—which is too bad for them. Anybody who's ever taken a peak under the hood knows that the human body, and all its various structures and functions, is a realm of awe-inspiring complexity and countless wonders. The dizzying dance of molecule, cell, tissue, organ, muscle, sinew, and bone that we call life can be a thing of breathtaking beauty and humbling perfection. Anatomy & Physiology For Dummies combines anatomical terminology and function so you'll learn not only names and terms but also gain an understanding of how the human body works. Whether you're a student, an aspiring medical, healthcare or fitness professional, or just someone who's curious about the human body and how it works, this book offers you a fun, easy way to get a handle on the basics of anatomy and physiology. Understand the meaning of terms in anatomy and physiology Get to know the body's anatomical structures—from head to toe Explore the body's systems and how they interact to keep us alive Gain insig... Continue Reading A Mathematician's Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form html by Paul Lockhart (144 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review “One of the best critiques of current mathematics education I have ever seen.”—Keith Devlin, math columnist on NPR’s Morning Edition A brilliant research mathematician who has devoted his career to teaching kids reveals math to be creative and beautiful and rejects standard anxiety-producing teaching methods. Witty and accessible, Paul Lockhart’s controversial approach will provoke spirited debate among educators and parents alike and it will alter the way we think about math forever. Paul Lockhart, has taught mathematics at Brown University and UC Santa Cruz. Since 2000, he has dedicated himself to K-12 level students at St. Ann’s School in Brooklyn, New York. ... Continue Reading The Diet Trap Solution: Train Your Brain to Lose Weight and Keep It Off for Good html by Judith S. Beck PhD (261 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review The New York Times bestselling author of The Beck Diet Solution teams up with her daughter and colleague at the Beck Institute for Cognitive Behavior to teach readers how to think their way thin, offering practical, proven tools for escaping common diet traps for good. Most diet programs work at first. But then life happens—stress, bad habits, holidays, travel—and we revert to bad habits, and the weight comes back. In this invaluable book, Dr. Judith Beck offers the solution to break free from these common diet traps and keep the weight off for life. Dr. Beck explains that when it comes to losing weight, it’s not just about what we eat. It’s also about how we think. To consistently eat differently, we must learn to think differently. Diets fail us because they don’t offer effective strategies for overcoming the common traps—emotional eating, social pressure, dining out—that can derail us. Now, she and her daughter, Deborah Beck Busis, share the techniques they have successfully used with thousands of clients, revealing how to overcome the thoughts and behaviors that have held us back. With The Diet Trap Solution, readers on any die... Continue Reading Dirty Genes: A Breakthrough Program to Treat the Root Cause of Illness and Optimize Your Health html by Ben Lynch ND. (384 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Instant National Bestseller After suffering for years with unexplainable health issues, Dr. Ben Lynch discovered the root cause—“dirty” genes. Genes can be “born dirty” or merely “act dirty” in response to your environment, diet, or lifestyle—causing lifelong, life-threatening, and chronic health problems, including cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disorders, anxiety, depression, digestive issues, obesity, cancer, and diabetes. Based on his own experience and successfully helping thousands of clients, Dr. Lynch shows you how to identify and optimize both types of dirty genes by cleaning them up with targeted and personalized plans, including healthy eating, good sleep, stress relief, environmental detox, and other holistic and natural means. Many of us believe our genes doom us to the disorders that run in our families. But Dr. Lynch reveals that with the right plan in place, you can eliminate symptoms, and optimize your physical and mental health—and ultimately rewrite your genetic destiny.     ... Continue Reading Jewels: A Secret History html by Victoria Finlay (496 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Throughout history, precious stones have inspired passions and poetry, quests and curses, sacred writings and unsacred actions. In this scintillating book, journalist Victoria Finlay embarks on her own globe-circling search for the real stories behind some of the gems we prize most. Blending adventure travel, geology, exciting new research, and her own irresistible charm, Finlay has fashioned a treasure hunt for some of the most valuable, glamorous, and mysterious substances on earth. With the same intense curiosity and narrative flair she displayed in her widely-praised book Color, Finlay journeys from the underground opal churches of outback Australia to the once pearl-rich rivers of Scotland; from the peridot mines on an Apache reservation in Arizona to the remote ruby mines in the mountains of northern Burma. She risks confronting scorpions to crawl through Cleopatra’s long-deserted emerald mines, tries her hand at gem cutting in the dusty Sri Lankan city where Marco Polo bartered for sapphires, and investigates a rumor that fifty years ago most of the world’s amber was mined by prisoners in a Soviet gulag. Jewels is a unique and often exhilaratin... Continue Reading The Dialogues: Conversations about the Nature of the Universe (MIT Press) html by Clifford V. Johnson (246 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review A series of conversations about science in graphic form, on subjects that range from the science of cooking to the multiverse. Physicist Clifford Johnson thinks that we should have more conversations about science. Science should be on our daily conversation menu, along with topics like politics, books, sports, or the latest prestige cable drama. Conversations about science, he tells us, shouldn't be left to the experts. In The Dialogues, Johnson invites us to eavesdrop on a series of nine conversations, in graphic-novel form -- written and drawn by Johnson -- about "the nature of the universe." The conversations take place all over the world, in museums, on trains, in restaurants, in what may or may not be Freud's favorite coffeehouse. The conversationalists are men, women, children, experts, and amateur science buffs. The topics of their conversations range from the science of cooking to the multiverse and string theory. The graphic form is especially suited for physics; one drawing can show what it would take many words to explain. In the first conversation, a couple meets at a costume party; they speculate about a scientist with superhero p... Continue Reading Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life html by Dacher Keltner (353 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review “A fact-filled, fun, and enlightened peek into our minds and hearts.” —Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence In this startling study of human emotion, Dacher Keltner investigates an unanswered question of human evolution: If humans are hardwired to lead lives that are "nasty, brutish, and short," why have we evolved with positive emotions like gratitude, amusement, awe, and compassion that promote ethical action and cooperative societies? Illustrated with more than fifty photographs of human emotions, Born to Be Good takes us on a journey through scientific discovery, personal narrative, and Eastern philosophy. Positive emotions, Keltner finds, lie at the core of human nature and shape our everyday behavior—and they just may be the key to understanding how we can live our lives better. Some images in this ebook are not displayed owing to permissions issues. Product Description “A fact-filled, fun, and enlightened peek into our minds and hearts.” —Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence In this startling study of human emotion, Dacher Keltner investigates an unanswered question of hum... Continue Reading UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record html by Leslie Kean (354 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review An Air Force major is ordered to approach a brilliant UFO in his Phantom jet over Tehran. He repeatedly attempts to engage and fire on unusual objects heading right toward his aircraft, but his missile control is locked and disabled. Witnessed from the ground, this dogfight becomes the subject of a secret report by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.   In Belgium, an Air Force colonel investigates a series of widespread sightings of unidentified triangular objects, and he sends F-16s to attempt a closer look. Many hundreds of eyewitnesses, including on-duty police officers, file reports, and a spectacular photograph of an unidentifiable craft is retrieved and analyzed.   Here at home, a retired chief of the FAA’s Accidents and Investigations Division reveals the agency’s response to a thirty-minute encounter between an aircraft and a gigantic UFO over Alaska, which occurred during his watch and is documented on radar.   Now all three of these distinguished men have written breathtaking, firsthand accounts about these extraordinary incidents. They are joined by Air Force generals and a host of high-level sources—including Fife Symington III, ... Continue Reading In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines html by Stanley Karnow (536 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Traces the history of the Philippines, discusses the influence of Spain and the United States, and looks at the problems facing the Philippines today. Product Description Traces the history of the Philippines, discusses the influence of Spain and the United States, and looks at the problems facing the Philippines today.... Continue Reading The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Incerto) html by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (444 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review The Black Swan is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are Fooled by Randomness, Antifragile, and The Bed of Procrustes. A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives.   Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don’t know. We are, therefore, unable to truly e... Continue Reading Anatomy & Physiology: The Unity of Form and Function html by Kenneth S. Saladin Dr. (1248 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Master the story of Anatomy & Physiology with Saladin's Anatomy & Physiology: The Unity of Form and Function! Saladin's A&P helps students make connections by telling a story that will intrigue, engage, and inspire them. Saladin expertly weaves together science, clinical applications, history and evolution of the body with vibrant photos and art to convey the beauty and excitement of the subject. A consistent set of chapter learning tools helps students identify and retain key concepts while the stunning visual program provides a realistic view of body structures and processes. Saladin's text requires no prior knowledge of college chemistry or cell biology, and is designed for a two-semester A&P course. ... Continue Reading How the States Got Their Shapes html by Mark Stein (354 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Why does Oklahoma have that panhandle? Did someone make a mistake? We are so familiar with the map of the United States that our state borders seem as much a part of nature as mountains and rivers. Even the oddities—the entire state of Maryland(!)—have become so engrained that our map might as well be a giant jigsaw puzzle designed by Divine Providence. But that's where the real mystery begins. Every edge of the familiar wooden jigsaw pieces of our childhood represents a revealing moment of history and of, well, humans drawing lines in the sand. How the States Got Their Shapes is the first book to tackle why our state lines are where they are. Here are the stories behind the stories, right down to the tiny northward jog at the eastern end of Tennessee and the teeny-tiny (and little known) parts of Delaware that are not attached to Delaware but to New Jersey. How the States Got Their Shapes examines: Why West Virginia has a finger creeping up the side of Pennsylvania Why Michigan has an upper peninsula that isn't attached to Michigan Why some Hawaiian islands are not Hawaii Why Texas and California a... Continue Reading The Runaway Species: How human creativity remakes the world html by David Eagleman and Anthony Brandt (305 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review “The authors look at art and science together to examine how innovations―from Picasso’s initially offensive paintings to Steve Jobs’s startling iPhone―build on what already exists and rely on three brain operations: bending, breaking and blending. This manifesto of sorts shows how both disciplines foster creativity.” ―The Wall Street Journal The Runaway Species is a deep-dive into the creative mind, a celebration of the human spirit, and a vision of how we can improve our future by understanding and embracing our ability to innovate. Anthony Brandt and David Eagleman seek to answer the question: what lies at the heart of humanity’s ability—and drive—to create? Our ability to remake our world is unique among all living things. But where does our creativity come from, how does it work, and how can we harness it to improve our lives, schools, businesses, and institutions? Brandt and Eagleman examine hundreds of examples of human creativity through dramatic storytelling and stunning images in this beautiful, full-color volume. By drawing out what creative acts have in common and viewing them through the lens of... Continue Reading The Healing Self: A Revolutionary New Plan to Supercharge Your Immunity and Stay Well for Life html by Deepak Chopra M.D. and Rudolph E. Tanzi Ph.D. (304 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review After collaborating on two major books featured as PBS specials, Super Brain and Super Genes, Chopra and Tanzi now tackle the issue of lifelong health and heightened immunity. We are the midst of a new revolution.  For over twenty-five years Deepak Chopra, M.D. and Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D. have revolutionized medicine and how we understand our minds and our bodies—Chopra, the leading expert in the field of integrative medicine; Tanzi, the pioneering neuroscientist and discoverer of genes that cause Alzheimer's Disease. After reaching millions of people around the world through their collaborations on the hugely successful Super Brain and Super Genes books and public television programs, the New York Times bestselling authors now present a groundbreaking, landmark work on the supreme importance of our immune system in relation to our lifelong health.  In the face of environmental toxins, potential epidemics, superbugs, and the accelerated aging process, the significance of achieving optimum health has never been more crucial—and the burden to achieve it now rests on individuals making the right... Continue Reading Cræft: An Inquiry Into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts html by Alexander Langlands (352 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review An archaeologist takes us into the ancient world of traditional crafts to uncover their deep, original histories. In the midst of a seemingly endless supply of mass-manufactured products, we find ourselves nostalgic for products bearing the mark of authenticity―hand-made furniture, artisan breads, craft beers, and other goods produced by human hands. What often goes unnoticed is the transformation of our understanding of craft―or rather, craeft―in the wake of industrialization. In Craeft, archaeologist and medieval historian Alexander Langlands argues that our modern understanding of craft only skims the surface. His journeys from his home in Wales have taken him along the Atlantic seaboard of Europe, from Spain through France and England to Scotland and Iceland in search of the lost meaning of craft. Reaching as far back as the Neolithic period, he combines deep history with scientific analyses and personal anecdotes. We follow the author as he herds sheep, keeps bees, tans hides, spins wool, and thatches roofs. We learn that scythes work much better on tall grass than the latest model of weed trimmers, that you can spin w... Continue Reading Genetics: A Conceptual Approach html by Benjamin A. Pierce (976 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Note: This is a Standalone book and does not include Access Card/Code. With Genetics: A Conceptual Approach, Ben Pierce brings a master teacher’s experiences to the introductory genetics textbook, clarifying this complex subject by focusing on the big picture of genetics concepts and how those concepts connect to one another. The new edition continues the Pierce tradition of pedagogical excellence and scientific currency. ... Continue Reading Dad, Why Are You A Global Warming Denier?: A Short Story That’s Right for the Times html by Bob Tisdale (95 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review I penned the following short-story, set in the year 2017, as a series of conversations between a twentysomething daughter and her mid-50s father. The father is a heretic of the church of catastrophic human-induced global warming/climate change. The daughter, Anna, is a believer. This work includes quotes from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and a well-respected politician. It also includes 22 illustrations, most of which are in color. And there are hyperlinks for those of you using Kindle readers where hyperlinks will work. ... Continue Reading Alaska: Saga of a Bold Land html by Walter R. Borneman (644 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review The history of Alaska is filled with stories of new land and new riches -- and ever present are new people with competing views over how the valuable resources should be used: Russians exploiting a fur empire; explorers checking rival advances; prospectors stampeding to the clarion call of "Gold!"; soldiers battling out a decisive chapter in world war; oil wildcatters looking for a different kind of mineral wealth; and always at the core of these disputes is the question of how the land is to be used and by whom. While some want Alaska to remain static, others are in the vanguard of change. Alaska: Saga of a Bold Land shows that there are no easy answers on either side and that Alaska will always be crossing the next frontier. ... Continue Reading Adam's Task: Calling Animals by Name html by Vicki Hearne (300 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review A groundbreaking exploration of the enduring bond between humans and their animal companions.   Audubon magazine named Adam’s Task one of the thirteen most significant nature books published in the last hundred years, and Susan Sontag hailed it as a “fascinating, incisive work of moral imagination.” Vicki Hearne’s innovative masterpiece on animal training brings our perennial discussion of the human-animal relationship to a whole new level.   Based on her studies of literary criticism and philosophy, as well as extensive hands-on experience in training, Hearne believes that animals are far more intelligent than we assume. In fact, they are capable of developing an understanding of “the good,” a moral code that influences their motives and actions. Drawing on an eclectic range of influences—Nietzsche, T. S. Eliot, Disney animal trainer William Koehler, and the Biblical Book of Genesis, among others—Hearne brilliantly interweaves personal anecdotes with philosophical meditations. The end result is an entirely new system of animal training that contradicts modern animal behavioral research and that, as her examples show, is ast... Continue Reading The Cities That Built the Bible html by Robert Cargill (352 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review For many, the names Bethlehem, Babylon, and Jerusalem are known as the setting for epic stories from the Bible featuring rustic mangers, soaring towers, and wooden crosses. What often gets missed is that these cities are far more than just the setting for the Bible and its characters—they were instrumental to the creation of the Bible as we know it today. Robert Cargill, Assistant Professor of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Iowa, is an archeologist, Bible scholar, and host of numerous television documentaries, such as the History Channel series Bible Secrets Revealed. Taking us behind-the-scenes of the Bible, Cargill blends archaeology, biblical history, and personal journey as he explores these cities and their role in the creation of the Bible. He reveals surprising facts such as what the Bible says about the birth of Jesus and how Mary’s Virgin Birth caused problems for the early church. We’ll also see how the God of the Old Testament was influenced by other deities, that there were numerous non-biblical books written about Moses, Jacob, and Jesus in antiquity, and how far more books were left out of the Bible than were let in duri... Continue Reading Build Me an Ark: A Life with Animals html by Brenda Peterson (320 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review "Peterson writes of nature with an intimacy that tugs at the reader's deep memory." —Orion This is the story of a life and spirit guided by animals. Brenda Peterson was raised in the High Sierras on a national forest lookout station, and wildlife had a daily, defining influence on her life. Peterson explores her deep connection with animals, from watching grizzlies in Montana's Rockies, to keeping Siberian huskies as pets in New York City, to her work for the restoration of wild wolves. Her lively storytelling bridges the worlds of human and animal, as she fascinates us with intimate stories of her studies of wild dolphins, whales, and orcas. Peterson reveals how animal bonds have enriched her life and led her toward a wider epiphany: As a species we cannot live without other animals. Amazon.com Review In this unusual and captivating memoir, we find a woman who grew up in the wilderness as the daughter of a forest service ranger. From an early age Brenda Peterson built intimate relationships with wild animals, forest floors, and even old growth elder trees. As a result, she has adventures aplenty, but she does not follow the swashbuckling... Continue Reading The Critical Mind: Make Better Decisions, Improve Your Judgment, and Think a Step Ahead of Others html by Zoe McKey (184 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Always be on top of things and never be tricked. Spot inconsistencies and lies, and apply logic to your daily life. If you want to become a critical, effective, and rational thinker instead of an irrational and snap-judging one, this book is for you. Critical thinking skills strengthen your decision making muscle, speed up your analysis and judgment, and help you spot errors easily. The Critical Mind offers a thorough introduction to the rules and principles of critical thinking. You will find widely usable and situation-specific advice on how to critically approach your daily life, business, friendships, opinions, and even social media. Critical thinking not only saves you time but saves you money and helps you prevent misunderstanding and disappointment. •Learn the main elements of critical thinking. •The theories and practices of the best critical thinkers of the world. •Tips to keep your brain in good shape and receptive to analysis. •Solve your problems with critical thinking. •Become a quicker and better decision maker. Continue Reading The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat, and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet html by Nina Teicholz Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Dish up the red meat, eggs, and whole milk! In this well-researched and captivating narrative, veteran food writer Nina Teicholz proves how everything we've been told about fat is wrong. For decades, Americans have cut back on red meat and dairy products full of "bad" saturated fats. We obediently complied with nutritional guidelines to eat "heart healthy" fats found in olive oil, fish, and nuts, and followed a Mediterranean diet heavy on fruits, vegetables, and grains. Yet the nation's health has declined. What is going on? In The Big Fat Surprise, Teicholz reveals how 60 years of nutrition science has gotten it so wrong: how overzealous researchers have made basic scientific mistakes that, through a mix of ego and bias, allow dangerous misrepresentations to become dogma, and how scientists who dared oppose this consensus have been ostracized. For eight years, Teicholz has pored over the massive research literature and interviewed hundreds of leading experts to unravel the shockingly distorted claims of nutrition studies. She brings these researchers to life and shows how their ambitions, loyalties, and rivalries have undermined a field of research... Continue Reading Why You Eat What You Eat: The Science Behind Our Relationship with Food html by Rachel Herz PhD Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Why You Eat What You Eat examines the sensory, psychological, neuroscientific, and physiological factors that influence our eating habits. Rachel Herz uncovers the fascinating and surprising facts that affect food consumption: bringing reusable bags to the grocery store encourages us to buy more treats; our beliefs about food affect the number of calories we burn; TV alters how much we eat; and what we see and hear changes how food tastes. Herz reveals useful techniques for managing cravings, such as resisting repeated trips to the buffet table, and how aromas can be used to curb overeating. Why You Eat What You Eat mixes the social with the scientific to uncover how psychology, neurology, and physiology shape our relationship with food and how food alters the relationships we have with ourselves and with one another. ... Continue Reading Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress html by Steven Pinker (576 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "My new favorite book of all time." --Bill Gates If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs ... Continue Reading Amazon Fire HD 8 with Alexa: Simple User Guide How To Use Your All-New Fire HD 8 Tablet with Alexa to the Fullest (Tips And Tricks, Kindle Fire HD 8 & 10, New Generation) html by Alexa Montgomery (73 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Amazon Fire HD 8 with Alexa Sale price. You will save 66% with this offer. Please hurry up! Simple User Guide How To Use Your All-New Fire HD 8 Tablet with Alexa to the Fullest With the release of the newest version of the Fire HD 8, Amazon has further expanded its line of affordable tablet options, updating the system and hardware to be an even better value than previous iterations of the device. Especially with the addition of Alexa voice control to the device’s capabilities, Fire tablets are an even better value than they were before. If you want to know everything that you can do with a Fire tablet—and what’s changed from the previously released versions—the information in this book will fill you in on all the details. Here is a preview of what you'll learn: How to set up your Fire tablet for most efficient use Information on the device’s construction and operating system Finding and installing apps for the Fire Advice for managing your own content on the device Information on Alexa’s voice control capabilities on the Fire The F... Continue Reading Ask a Science Teacher: 250 Answers to Questions You've Always Had About How Everyday Stuff Really Works html by Larry Scheckel (369 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Fun and fascinating science is everywhere, and it’s a cinch to learn—just ask a science teacher! We’ve all grown so used to living in a world filled with wonders that we sometimes forget to wonder about them: What creates the wind? Do fish sleep? Why do we blink? These are common phenomena, but it’s a rare person who really knows the answers—do you? All too often, the explanations remain shrouded in mystery—or behind a haze of technical language. For those of us who should have raised our hands in science class but didn’t, Larry Scheckel comes to the rescue. An award-winning science teacher and longtime columnist for his local newspaper, Scheckel is a master explainer with a trove of knowledge. Just ask the students and devoted readers who have spent years trying to stump him! In Ask a Science Teacher, Scheckel collects 250 of his favorite Q&As. Like the best teachers, he writes so that kids can understand, but he doesn’t water things down— he’ll satisfy even the most inquisitive minds. Topics include: •The Human Body •Earth Science •Astronomy •Chemistry Physics •Technology •Zoology<... Continue Reading Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies -- and What It Means toBe Human html by Joel Garreau (400 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review In Radical Evolution, bestselling author Joel Garreau, a reporter and editor for the Washington Post, shows us that we are at an inflection point in history. As you read this, we are engineering the next stage of human evolution. Through advances in genetic, robotic, information and nanotechnologies, we are altering our minds, our memories, our metabolisms, our personalities, our progeny–and perhaps our very souls. Taking us behind the scenes with today's foremost researchers and pioneers, Garreau reveals that the super powers of our comic-book heroes already exist, or are in development in hospitals, labs, and research facilities around the country -- from the revved up reflexes and speed of Spider-Man and Superman, to the enhanced mental acuity and memory capabilities of an advanced species. Over the next fifteen years, Garreau makes clear, these enhancements will become part of our everyday lives. Where will they lead us? To heaven–where technology’s promise to make us smarter, vanquish illness and extend our lives is the answer to our prayers? Or will they lead us, as some argue, to hell — where unrestrained technology brings about ... Continue Reading Megafire: The Race to Extinguish a Deadly Epidemic of Flame html by Michael Kodas (395 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review A brilliant exploration of the rising phenomenon of megafires—forest fires of alarming scale, intensity, and devastation—that explains the science of what is causing them and captures the danger and heroism of those who fight them In Megafire, a world-renowned journalist and forest fire expert travels to the most dangerous and remote wildernesses, as well as to the backyards of people faced with these environmental disasters, to look at the heart of this phenomenon and witness firsthand the heroic efforts of the firefighters and scientists racing against time to stop it—or at least to tame these deadly flames. From Colorado to California, China to Canada, the narrative hopscotches the globe and takes readers to the frontlines of the battle both on the ground and in the air, and in the laboratories, universities, and federal agencies where this issue rages on. Through this prism of perspectives, Kodas zeroes in on a handful of the most terrifying and tumultuous of these environmental disasters in recent years—the Yarnell Hill Fire in Arizona that took the lives of nineteen elite “hotshot” firefighters, the Waldo Canyon Fire that ov... Continue Reading The Longevity Diet: Discover the New Science Behind Stem Cell Activation and Regeneration to SlowAging, Fight Disease, and Optimize Weight html by Valter Longo (317 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review The internationally renowned, clinically tested, revolutionary diet program to lose weight, fight disease, and live a longer, healthier life.   Can what you eat determine how long, and how well, you live? The clinically proven answer is yes, and The Longevity Diet is easier to follow than you'd think. The culmination of 25 years of research on aging, nutrition, and disease across the globe, this unique program lays out a simple solution to living to a healthy old age through nutrition. The key is combining the healthy everyday eating plan the book outlines, with the scientifically engineered fasting-mimicking diet, or FMD; the FMD, done just 3-4 times a year, does away with the misery and starvation most of us experience while fasting, allowing you to reap all the beneficial health effects of a restrictive diet, while avoiding negative stressors, like low energy and sleeplessness. Valter Longo, director of the Longevity Institute at USC and the Program on Longevity and Cancer at IFOM in Milan, designed the FMD after making a series of remarkable discoveries in mice, then in humans, indicating that specific diets can activate stem cells and promote... Continue Reading What To Do When Machines Do Everything: How to Get Ahead in a World of AI, Algorithms, Bots, and Big Data html by Malcolm Frank, Paul Roehrig, and Ben Pring (225 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review “Refreshingly thought-provoking…” – The Financial Times The essential playbook for the future of your business What To Do When Machines Do Everything is a guidebook to succeeding in the next generation of the digital economy. When systems running on Artificial Intelligence can drive our cars, diagnose medical patients, and manage our finances more effectively than humans it raises profound questions on the future of work and how companies compete. Illustrated with real-world cases, data, and insight, the authors provide clear strategic guidance and actionable steps to help you and your organization move ahead in a world where exponentially developing new technologies are changing how value is created. Written by a team of business and technology expert practitioners—who also authored Code Halos: How the Digital Lives of People, Things, and Organizations are Changing the Rules of Business—this book provides a clear path to the future of your work. The first part of the book examines the once in a generation upheaval most every organization will soon face as systems of intelligence go mainstream. The authors argue tha... Continue Reading What Is Your Dangerous Idea?: Today’s Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable (Edge Question Series) html by John Brockman (339 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review The world's leading scientific thinkers explore bold, remarkable, perilous ideas that could change our lives—for better . . . or for worse . . . From Copernicus to Darwin, to current-day thinkers, scientists have always promoted theories and unveiled discoveries that challenge everything society holds dear; ideas with both positive and dire consequences. Many thoughts that resonate today are dangerous not because they are assumed to be false, but because they might turn out to be true. What do the world's leading scientists and thinkers consider to be their most dangerous idea? Through the leading online forum Edge (www.edge.org), the call went out, and this compelling and easily digestible volume collects the answers. From using medication to permanently alter our personalities to contemplating a universe in which we are utterly alone, to the idea that the universe might be fundamentally inexplicable, What Is Your Dangerous Idea? takes an unflinching look at the daring, breathtaking, sometimes terrifying thoughts that could forever alter our world and the way we live in it. Contributors include Daniel C. Dennett • Jared Diamond ... Continue Reading Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong-and the New Research That's Rewriting the Story html by Angela Saini (226 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review What science has gotten so shamefully wrong about women, and the fight, by both female and male scientists, to rewrite what we thought we knew For hundreds of years it was common sense: women were the inferior sex. Their bodies were weaker, their minds feebler, their role subservient. No less a scientist than Charles Darwin asserted that women were at a lower stage of evolution, and for decades, scientists—most of them male, of course—claimed to find evidence to support this. Whether looking at intelligence or emotion, cognition or behavior, science has continued to tell us that men and women are fundamentally different. Biologists claim that women are better suited to raising families or are, more gently, uniquely empathetic. Men, on the other hand, continue to be described as excelling at tasks that require logic, spatial reasoning, and motor skills. But a huge wave of research is now revealing an alternative version of what we thought we knew. The new woman revealed by this scientific data is as strong, strategic, and smart as anyone else. In Inferior, acclaimed science writer Angela Saini weaves together a fascinating—and ... Continue Reading Slim by Design: Mindless Eating Solutions for Everyday Life html by Brian Wansink (320 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review In Slim by Design, leading behavioral economist, food psychologist, and bestselling author Brian Wansink introduces groundbreaking solutions for designing our most common spaces—schools, restaurants, grocery stores, and home kitchens, among others—in order to make positive changes in how we approach and manage our diets. Anyone familiar with Wansink’s Mindless Eating knows this is not a typical diet book. Wansink shares his scientific approach to eating, providing insight and information, so we can all make better choices when it comes to food. The pioneer of the Small Plate Movement, Brian Wansink presents compelling research conducted at the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University by way of cartoons, drawings, charts, graphs, floor plans, and more. Slim by Design offers innovative ways to make healthy eating mindlessly easy. ... Continue Reading The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't html by Nate Silver (556 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review One of Wall Street Journal's Best Ten Works of Nonfiction in 2012   New York Times Bestseller “Not so different in spirit from the way public intellectuals like John Kenneth Galbraith once shaped discussions of economic policy and public figures like Walter Cronkite helped sway opinion on the Vietnam War…could turn out to be one of the more momentous books of the decade.” —New York Times Book Review   "Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise is The Soul of a New Machine for the 21st century." —Rachel Maddow, author of Drift "A serious treatise about the craft of prediction—without academic mathematics—cheerily aimed at lay readers. Silver's coverage is polymathic, ranging from poker and earthquakes to climate change and terrorism." —New York Review of Books Nate Silver built an innovative system for predicting baseball performance, predicted the 2008 election within a hair’s breadth, and became a national sensation as a blogger—all by the time he was thirty. He solidified his standing a... Continue Reading The Theoretical Minimum: What You Need to Know to Start Doing Physics html by Leonard Susskind and George Hrabovsky (258 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review A Wall Street Journal Best Book of 2013 If you ever regretted not taking physics in college--or simply want to know how to think like a physicist--this is the book for you. In this bestselling introduction, physicist Leonard Susskind and hacker-scientist George Hrabovsky offer a first course in physics and associated math for the ardent amateur. Challenging, lucid, and concise, The Theoretical Minimum provides a tool kit for amateur scientists to learn physics at their own pace. ... Continue Reading Magnitude: The Scale of the Universe html by Megan Watzke and Kimberly Arcand (192 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review In the tradition of illustrated science bestsellers, like Thing Explainer and harkening back to the classic film The Powers of Ten, this unique, fully-illustrated, four-color book explores and visualizes the concept of scale in our universe. In Magnitude, Kimberly Arcand and Megan Watzke take us on an expansive journey to the limits of size, mass, distance, time, temperature in our universe, from the tiniest particle within the structure of an atom to the most massive galaxy in the universe; from the speed at which grass grows (about 2 to 6 inches a month) to the speed of light. Fully-illustrated with four-color drawings and infographics throughout and organized into sections including Size and Amount (Distance, Area, Volume, Mass, Time, Temperature), Motion and Rate (Speed, Acceleration, Density, Rotation), and Phenomena and Processes (Energy, Pressure, Sound, Wind, Computation), Magnitude shows us the scale of our world in a clear, visual way that our relatively medium-sized human brains can easily understand.... Continue Reading An Ocean View 2018 Calendar html by Willow Creek Press Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review “The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper,” wrote Annie Dillard, “I cannot quite make it out.” Watch the ocean in this full color, twelve month calendar featuring magnificent seascapes and hear it talk to you as well. The large format wall calendar features six bonus months of July through December 2017; daily grids with ample room for jotting reminders; moon phases; U.S. and international holidays.... Continue Reading Audubon Nature: A Birder's Wall Calendar 2018 html by Workman Publishing (28 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Audubon Nature is the definitive wall calendar for nature lovers, birders, environmentalists, and travel enthusiasts alike. Here are glorious sites in nature—and the birds that inhabit them—across seasons and locales. Discover the beauty of a Trumpeter Swan gliding in Wonder Lake, Denali National Park. Behold the amazing Dalmatian Pelicans at Lake Kerkini, Greece. Take a peek at the secretive Northern Goshawk sitting among aspens in Dixie National Forest, Utah. Printed on responsibly sourced paper, this wall calendar provides transporting and awe-inspiring views of the great outdoors. ... Continue Reading The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness html by Todd Rose Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Are you above average? Is your child an A student? Is your employee an introvert or an extrovert? Every day we are measured against the yardstick of averages, judged according to how close we come to it or how far we deviate from it. The assumption that metrics comparing us to an average-like GPAs, personality test results, and performance review ratings-reveal something meaningful about our potential is so ingrained in our consciousness that we don't even question it. That assumption, says Harvard's Todd Rose, is spectacularly-and scientifically-wrong. In The End of Average, Rose, a rising star in the new field of the science of the individual, shows that no one is average. Not you. Not your kids. Not your employees. This isn't hollow sloganeering-it's a mathematical fact with enormous practical consequences. But while we know people learn and develop in distinctive ways, these unique patterns of behaviors are lost in our schools and businesses, which have been designed around the mythical "average person". This average-size-fits-all model ignores our differences and fails at recognizing talent. It's time to change it. <... Continue Reading Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs: A Popular History of Ancient Egypt html by Barbara Mertz Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review In this updated version of the classic of popular Egyptology, Barbara Mertz combines a doctorate in Egyptology at the famed Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago with a life-long enthusiasm for ancient Egypt. Her love of the subject is contagious and makes her the perfect guide to ancient Egypt for the student, the layman, and those who plan to visit -- or have visited -- the Nile Valley.... Continue Reading 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed html by Eric H. Cline Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review In 1177 B.C., marauding groups known only as the "Sea Peoples" invaded Egypt. The pharaoh's army and navy managed to defeat them, but the victory so weakened Egypt that it soon slid into decline, as did most of the surrounding civilizations. After centuries of brilliance, the civilized world of the Bronze Age came to an abrupt and cataclysmic end. Kingdoms fell like dominoes over the course of just a few decades. No more Minoans or Mycenaeans. No more Trojans, Hittites, or Babylonians. The thriving economy and cultures of the late second millennium B.C., which had stretched from Greece to Egypt and Mesopotamia, suddenly ceased to exist, along with writing systems, technology, and monumental architecture. But the Sea Peoples alone could not have caused such widespread breakdown. How did it happen? In this major new account of the causes of this "First Dark Ages", Eric Cline tells the gripping story of how the end was brought about by multiple interconnected failures, ranging from invasion and revolt to earthquakes, drought, and the cutting of international trade routes. Bringing to life the vibrant multicultural world of these great civilizations, he draws a sweep... Continue Reading Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus html by Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review A maddened creature, frothing at the mouth, lunges at an innocent victim-and with a bite, transforms its prey into another raving monster. It's a scenario that underlies our darkest tales of supernatural horror, but its power derives from a very real virus, a deadly scourge known to mankind from our earliest days. In this fascinating exploration, journalist Bill Wasik and veterinarian Monica Murphy chart four thousand years in the history, science, and cultural mythology of rabies. The most fatal virus known to science, rabies kills nearly 100 percent of its victims once the infection takes root in the brain. A disease that spreads avidly from animals to humans, rabies has served as a symbol of savage madness and inhuman possession throughout history. Today, its history can help shed light on the wave of emerging diseases-from AIDS to SARS to avian flu-with origins in animal populations. From Greek myths to zombie flicks, from the laboratory heroics of Louis Pasteur to the contemporary search for a lifesaving treatment, Rabid is a fresh, fascinating, and often wildly entertaining look at one of mankind's oldest and most fearsome foes. Bill Wa... Continue Reading The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control html by Walter Mischel Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Renowned psychologist Walter Mischel, designer of the famous Marshmallow Test, explains what self-control is and how to master it. A child is presented with a marshmallow and given a choice: Eat this one now, or wait and enjoy two later. What will she do? And what are the implications for her behavior later in life? The world's leading expert on self-control, Walter Mischel has proven that the ability to delay gratification is critical for a successful life, predicting higher SAT scores, better social and cognitive functioning, a healthier lifestyle and a greater sense of self-worth. But is willpower prewired, or can it be taught? In The Marshmallow Test, Mischel explains how self-control can be mastered and applied to challenges in everyday life - from weight control to quitting smoking, overcoming heartbreak, making major decisions, and planning for retirement. With profound implications for the choices we make in parenting, education, public policy and self-care, The Marshmallow Test will change the way you think about who we are and what we can be. ... Continue Reading Vagina: Revised and Updated html by Naomi Wolf (410 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review An astonishing work of cutting–edge science and cultural history from one of our most respected cultural critics and thinkers, Naomi Wolf, author of the modern classic The Beauty Myth When an unexpected medical crisis sends Naomi Wolf on a journey to tease out the intersections between sexuality and creativity, she discovers—much to her own astonishment—an increasing body of scientific evidence that documents new insights about female sexual response. These breakthrough discoveries show that the vagina, clitoris, and labia—the female sexual centers—are not "merely flesh," but directly affect the female brain, and that the female brain directly affects, in newly documented ways, the vagina and female sexual centers. The vagina thus has a fundamental relationship to female consciousness itself. Utterly enthralling and totally fascinating, Vagina draws on this set of insights about "the mind-vagina connection" to reveal new information about what women really need, on many different levels, and considers what sexual relationships—and a woman's relationship to her self, as well as to her own desire and pleasure—transformed by these insights, may look... Continue Reading The Longevity Diet: Discover the New Science Behind Stem Cell Activation and Regeneration to Slow Aging, Fight Disease, and Optimize Weight html by Valter Longo (320 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review The internationally renowned, clinically tested, revolutionary diet program to lose weight, fight disease, and live a longer, healthier life.   Can what you eat determine how long, and how well, you live? The clinically proven answer is yes, and The Longevity Diet is easier to follow than you'd think. The culmination of 25 years of research on aging, nutrition, and disease across the globe, this unique program lays out a simple solution to living to a healthy old age through nutrition. The key is combining the healthy everyday eating plan the book outlines, with the scientifically engineered fasting-mimicking diet, or FMD; the FMD, done just 3-4 times a year, does away with the misery and starvation most of us experience while fasting, allowing you to reap all the beneficial health effects of a restrictive diet, while avoiding negative stressors, like low energy and sleeplessness. Valter Longo, director of the Longevity Institute at USC and the Program on Longevity and Cancer at IFOM in Milan, designed the FMD after making a series of remarkable discoveries in mice, then in humans, indicating that specific diets can activate stem cells and promote reg... Continue Reading Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World html by Christopher Steiner Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review The rousing story of the last gasp of human agency and how today's best and brightest minds are endeavoring to put an end to it. It used to be that to diagnose an illness, interpret legal documents, analyze foreign policy, or write a newspaper article you needed a human being with specific skills - and maybe an advanced degree or two. These days, high-level tasks are increasingly being handled by algorithms that can do precise work not only with speed but also with nuance. These "bots" started with human programming and logic, but now their reach extends beyond what their creators ever expected. In this fascinating, frightening audiobook, Christopher Steiner tells the story of how algorithms took over - and shows why the "bot revolution" is about to spill into every aspect of our lives, often silently, without our knowledge. The May 2010 "Flash Crash" exposed Wall Street's reliance on trading bots to the tune of a 998-point market drop and $1 trillion in vanished market value. But that was just the beginning. In Automate This, we meet bots that drive cars, pen haikus, and write music mistaken for Bach's. They listen in on our customer service calls ... Continue Reading Introducing Statistics: A Graphic Guide (Introducing...) html by Eileen Magnello (176 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review From the medicine we take, the treatments we receive, the aptitude and psychometric tests given by employers, the cars we drive, the clothes we wear to even the beer we drink, statistics have given shape to the world we inhabit. For the media, statistics are routinely 'damning', 'horrifying', or, occasionally, 'encouraging'. Yet, for all their ubiquity, most of us really don't know what to make of statistics. Exploring the history, mathematics, philosophy and practical use of statistics, Eileen Magnello - accompanied by Bill Mayblin's intelligent graphic illustration - traces the rise of statistics from the ancient Babylonians, Egyptians and Chinese, to the censuses of Romans and the Greeks, and the modern emergence of the term itself in Europe. She explores the 'vital statistics' of, in particular, William Farr, and the mathematical statistics of Karl Pearson and R.A. Fisher.She even tells how knowledge of statistics can prolong one's life, as it did for evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, given eight months to live after a cancer diagnoses in 1982 - and he lived until 2002. This title offers an enjoyable, surprise-filled tour through a subject that is both fascinat... Continue Reading Introducing Stephen Hawking: A Graphic Guide (Introducing...) html by J.P. McEvoy (176 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Stephen Hawking is the world-famous physicist with a cameo in "The Simpsons on his CV", but outside his academic field his work is little understood. To the public he is a tragic figure - a brilliant scientist and author of the 9 million-copy-selling "A Brief History of Time", and yet confined to a wheelchair and almost completely paralysed. Hawking's major contribution to science has been to integrate the two great theories of 20th-century physics - Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. J.P. McEvoy and Oscar Zarate's brilliant graphic guide explores Hawking's life, the evolution of his work from his days as a student, and his breathtaking discoveries about where these fundamental laws break down or overlap, such as on the edge of a Black Hole or at the origin of the Universe itself.... Continue Reading Introducing Relativity: A Graphic Guide (Introducing...) html by Bruce Bassett (176 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review It is now more than a century since Einstein's theories of Special and General Relativity began to revolutionise our view of the universe. Beginning near the speed of light and proceeding to explorations of space-time and curved spaces, "Introducing Relativity" plots a visually accessible course through the thought experiments that have given shape to contemporary physics. Scientists from Newton to Hawking add their unique contributions to this story, as we encounter Einstein's astounding vision of gravity as the curvature of space-time and arrive at the breathtakingly beautiful field equations. Einstein's legacy is reviewed in the most advanced frontiers of physics today - black holes, gravitational waves, the accelerating universe and string theory. This is a superlative, fascinating graphic account of Einstein's strange world and how his legacy has been built upon since.... Continue Reading Introducing Mindfulness: A Practical Guide (Introducing...) html by Tessa Watt (226 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Mindfulness is growing in popularity as a technique which teaches us to appreciate our life.This Practical Guide explores how to listen to your body to reduce stress and anxiety in all areas of your life; how to focus better at work by becoming more aware of what is happening in the present, and how to enjoy life more by bringing mindfulness into everyday actions. Free of jargon but full of straightforward advice, case studies and step-by-step instructions, this is the perfect concise start to making you happier, more focused and stress-free. Product Description Mindfulness is growing in popularity as a technique which teaches us to appreciate our life.This Practical Guide explores how to listen to your body to reduce stress and anxiety in all areas of your life; how to focus better at work by becoming more aware of what is happening in the present, and how to enjoy life more by bringing mindfulness into everyday actions. Free of jargon but full of straightforward advice, case studies and step-by-step instructions, this is the perfect concise start to making you happier, more focused and stress-free.... Continue Reading Deviate: The Science of Seeing Differently html by Beau Lotto Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Beau Lotto, the world-renowned neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and two-time TED speaker, takes us on a tour of how we perceive the world - and how disrupting it leads us to create and innovate. Perception is the foundation of human experience, but few of us understand why we see what we do, much less how. By revealing the startling truths about the brain and its perceptions, Beau Lotto shows that the next big innovation is not a new technology: It is a new way of seeing. In his first major book, Lotto draws on over two decades of pioneering research to explain that our brain didn't evolve to see the world accurately. It can't! With clear and comprehensive explanations of the science behind how our perceptions operate, Deviate will revolutionize the way you see yourself, others, and the world. With this new understanding of how the brain functions, Deviate is not just an illuminating account of the neuroscience of thought, behavior, and creativity: It is a call to action, enlisting listeners in their own journey of self-discovery. ... Continue Reading Wonders of the Universe (Wonders Series) html by Brian Cox and Andrew Cohen (256 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Experience our universe as you've never seen it before 13.7 billion years old. 93 billion light-years across. It contains over 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of billions of stars. This infinite, vast and complex Universe has been the subject of human fascination and scientific exploration for thousands of years. The wonders of the Universe might seem alien to us and impossible to understand, but away from the telescopes, the labs and the white coats, Professor Brian Cox uses the evidence found in the natural world on Earth to brilliantly explain the truth of the cosmos. Professor Cox will show how the vast and unfathomable phenomena of deep space can be explained, and even experienced, by re-examining the familiar here on Earth. He is determined to answer the most profound questions we can ask about ourselves and the world in which we live, but in a uniquely understandable way. The laws of light, gravity, time, matter and energy that govern us here on Earth are the same as those applied in the Universe. Using his expert knowledge and his infectious enthusiasm, Professor Cox shows us that if we can understand the impact of these governing law... Continue Reading Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets html by Luke Dittrich (480 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review “Oliver Sacks meets Stephen King”* in this propulsive, haunting journey into the life of the most studied human research subject of all time, the amnesic known as Patient H.M. For readers of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks comes a story that has much to teach us about our relentless pursuit of knowledge. Winner of the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award • Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • New York Post • NPR • The Economist • New York • Wired • Kirkus Reviews • BookPage In 1953, a twenty-seven-year-old factory worker named Henry Molaison—who suffered from severe epilepsy—received a radical new version of the then-common lobotomy, targeting the most mysterious structures in the brain. The operation failed to eliminate Henry’s seizures, but it did have an unintended effect: Henry was left profoundly amnesic, unable to create long-term memories. Over the next sixty years, Patient H.M., as Henry was known, became the most studied individual in the history of neuroscience, a human guinea pig who would teach us... Continue Reading Introducing Evolutionary Psychology: A Graphic Guide (Introducing...) html by Dylan Evans and Oscar Zarate (176 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review How did the mind evolve? How does the human mind differ from the minds of our ancestors, and from the minds of our nearest relatives, the apes? What are the universal features of the human mind, and why are they designed the way they are? If our minds are built by selfish genes, why are we so cooperative? Can the differences between male and female psychology be explained in evolutionary terms? These questions are at the centre of a rapidly growing research programme called evolutionary psychology.... Continue Reading Introducing Epigenetics: A Graphic Guide (Introducing...) html by Cath Ennis (176 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Epigenetics is the most exciting field in biology today, developing our understanding of how and why we inherit certain traits, develop diseases and age, and evolve as a species.   This non-fiction comic book introduces us to genetics, cell biology and the fascinating science of epigenetics, which is rapidly filling in the gaps in our knowledge, allowing us to make huge advances in medicine. We’ll look at what identical twins can teach us about the epigenetic effects of our environment and experiences, why certain genes are 'switched on' or off at various stages of embryonic development, and how scientists have reversed the specialization of cells to clone frogs from a single gut cell.   In Introducing Epigenetics, Cath Ennis and Oliver Pugh pull apart the double helix, examining how the epigenetic building blocks and messengers that interpret and edit our genes help to make us, well, us. ... Continue Reading Introducing Psychology: A Graphic Guide (Introducing...) html by Nigel Benson (180 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review What is psychology? When did it begin? Where did it come from? How does psychology compare with related subjects such as psychiatry and psychotherapy? To what extent is it scientific? "Introducing Psychology" answers all these questions and more, explaining what the subject has been in the past and what it is now. The main "schools" of thought and the sections within psychology are described, including Introspection, Biopsychology, Psychoanalysis, Behaviourism, Comparative (Animal) Psychology, Cognitive Approaches (including the Gestalt movement), Social Psychology, Developmental Psychology and Humanism. The key figures covered include: Freud, Pavlov, Skinner, Bandura, Piaget, Bowlby, Maslow and Rogers, as well as many lesser-known but important psychologists.... Continue Reading Introducing Artificial Intelligence: A Graphic Guide (Introducing...) html by Henry Brighton (176 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Half a century of research has resulted in machines capable of beating the best human chess players, and humanoid robots that can interact. But can machines really think? Is the mind just a complicated computer program?  Introducing Artificial Intelligence focuses on the issues behind one of science's most difficult problems. ... Continue Reading Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 html by Michio Kaku (483 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Imagine, if you can, the world in the year 2100. In Physics of the Future, Michio Kaku—the New York Times bestselling author of Physics of the Impossible—gives us a stunning, provocative, and exhilarating vision of the coming century based on interviews with over three hundred of the world’s top scientists who are already inventing the future in their labs. The result is the most authoritative and scientifically accurate description of the revolutionary developments taking place in medicine, computers, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, energy production, and astronautics. In all likelihood, by 2100 we will control computers via tiny brain sensors and, like magicians, move objects around with the power of our minds. Artificial intelligence will be dispersed throughout the environment, and Internet-enabled contact lenses will allow us to access the world's information base or conjure up any image we desire in the blink of an eye. Meanwhile, cars will drive themselves using GPS, and if room-temperature superconductors are discovered, vehicles will effortlessly fly on a cushion of air, coasting on powerful ... Continue Reading Pocket Pigs Wall Calendar 2018 html by Richard Austin (28 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review The heart-melting, bestselling Pocket Pigs Calendar is back. Each month, Pennywell Farm’s famously tiny teacup pigs attend to their favorite hobbies—hemming clothes on a sewing machine, carrying clubs to a big game of golf, peeping through a telescope—in appropriately tiny proportions. Pigs checking email, pigs snuggling in flower bushels, pigs getting chummy with other farm animals. Sure, you’d like to carry these pocket-size friends around in your palm; a close second best is admiring them on your wall year-round.   ... Continue Reading Introducing Logic: A Graphic Guide (Introducing...) html by Dan Cryan, Sharron Shatil, and Bill Mayblin (176 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Logic is the backbone of Western civilization, holding together its systems of philosophy, science and law. Yet despite logic's widely acknowledged importance, it remains an unbroken seal for many, due to its heavy use of jargon and mathematical symbolism.This book follows the historical development of logic, explains the symbols and methods involved and explores the philosophical issues surrounding the topic in an easy-to-follow and friendly manner. It will take you through the influence of logic on scientific method and the various sciences from physics to psychology, and will show you why computers and digital technology are just another case of logic in action.... Continue Reading Introducing Quantum Theory: A Graphic Guide (Introducing...) html by J.P. McEvoy and Oscar Zarate (176 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Quantum theory confronts us with bizarre paradoxes which contradict the logic of classical physics. At the subatomic level, one particle seems to know what the others are doing, and according to Heisenberg's "uncertainty principle", there is a limit on how accurately nature can be observed. And yet the theory is amazingly accurate and widely applied, explaining all of chemistry and most of physics. "Introducing Quantum Theory" takes us on a step-by-step tour with the key figures, including Planck, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg and Schrodinger. Each contributed at least one crucial concept to the theory. The puzzle of the wave-particle duality is here, along with descriptions of the two questions raised against Bohr's "Copenhagen Interpretation" - the famous "dead and alive cat" and the EPR paradox. Both remain unresolved.... Continue Reading Winged Obsession: The Pursuit of the World's Most Notorious Butterfly Smuggler html by Jessica Speart (339 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review One of the world's most beautiful endangered species, butterflies are as lucrative as gorillas, pandas, and rhinos on the black market. In this cutthroat $200 million business, no one was more successful—or posed a greater ecological danger—than Yoshi Kojima, the kingpin of butterfly smugglers. In Winged Obsession, author Jessica Speart tells the riveting true story of rookie U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agent Ed Newcomer's determined crusade to halt the career of a brazen and ingenious criminal with an almost supernatural sixth sense for survival. But the story doesn't end there. Speart chronicles her own attempts, while researching the book, to befriend Kojima before betraying him—unaware that the cagey smuggler had his own plans to make the writer a player in his illegal butterfly trade. Product Description One of the world's most beautiful endangered species, butterflies are as lucrative as gorillas, pandas, and rhinos on the black market. In this cutthroat $200 million business, no one was more successful—or posed a greater ecological danger—than Yoshi Kojima, the kingpin of butterfly smugglers. In Winged Obsession, author Jess... Continue Reading Long for This World: The Strange Science of Immortality html by Jonathan Weiner (323 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review “[A] searching and surprisingly witty look at the scientific odds against tomorrow.” —Timothy Ferris Jonathan Weiner—winner of the  Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and one of the most distinguished popular science writers in America—examines “the strange science of immortality” in Long for This World. A fast-paced, sure-to-astonish scientific adventure from “one of our finest science journalists” (Jonah Lehrer), Weiner’s Long for This World addresses the ageless question, “Is there a se... Continue Reading UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record html by Leslie Kean (352 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review An Air Force major is ordered to approach a brilliant UFO in his Phantom jet over Tehran. He repeatedly attempts to engage and fire on unusual objects heading right toward his aircraft, but his missile control is locked and disabled. Witnessed from the ground, this dogfight becomes the subject of a secret report by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.   In Belgium, an Air Force colonel investigates a series of widespread sightings of unidentified triangular objects, and he sends F-16s to attempt a closer look. Many hundreds of eyewitnesses, including on-duty police officers, file reports, and a spectacular photograph of an unidentifiable craft is retrieved and analyzed.   Here at home, a retired chief of the FAA’s Accidents and Investigations Division reveals the agency’s response to a thirty-minute encounter between an aircraft and a gigantic UFO over Alaska, which occurred during his watch and is documented on radar.   Now all three of these distinguished men have written breathtaking, firsthand accounts about these extraordinary incidents. They are joined by Air Force generals and a host of high-level sources—including Fife Symington III, former gover... Continue Reading Botanicals Notebook Collection html by Rifle Paper Co. (64 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Perfect for the handbag or the desktop, these three colorful notebooks feature foil-stamped covers and vintage-inspired interiors. The entire package is bound together with baker s twine.... Continue Reading The Quantum Rules: How the Laws of Physics Explain Love, Success, and Everyday Life html by Kunal K. Das (321 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review A New York Times Best Seller! Here is a book to lead you through the fascinating intersections of life and physics with humor and intelligence. Find out how the laws of physics define every aspect of our lives and society, from human nature and relationships to geopolitical issues like financial markets, globalization and immigration. The Quantum Rules is a different kind of physics book, as easy to read as a novel and directly relevant for everyday life issues that affect us all. It is not meant to dazzle you with unproven speculations that have no bearing on your life. Rather, The Quantum Rules will familiarize you with the important and established laws at the heart of physics, in a way never done before – by showing how the defining patterns of our lives, our behavior and our society already follow similar rules. Never took an interest in science before? No problem! you will still understand everything and find plenty to relate to. A scientist or a science junkie? You will find a different perspective on things you may already know. Best of all, you will discover how to have meaningful conversations about physics ... Continue Reading American Seafood: Heritage, Culture & Cookery From Sea to Shining Sea html by Barton Seaver (528 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review "Barton Seaver's American Seafood is a comprehensive and inspirational exploration of lesser known species and rekindles an awareness of the people, places, and histories of our oceans." --Eric Ripert, Chef & Co-Owner of Le Bernardin With the growing trend to reintroduce US-caught seafood into our culinary lexicon, this trustworthy reference from prestigious writer, chef, and sustainability advocate Barton Seaver will be the go-to source for home cooks, culinary students, professional chefs, and anyone fascinated by American food culture. American Seafood looks at maritime history, including Native American fisheries; fishing technology (including aquaculture); the effect of imports on our diet, economy, and the health of our seas; the biology of taste; and the evolution of seafood cuisine, from Pine Bark Stew, red and white chowder, Po' Boys, and Clam Bakes, to Baltimore Crab Cakes, Planked Salmon, Oysters Rockefeller, and Sushi. And although this is not a cookbook, Barton Seaver presents invaluable information on traditional culinary arts and his favorite ideas for taste pairings and preferred methods for cooking seafood. An index of... Continue Reading Why Do Men Have Nipples?: Hundreds of Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Martini html by Mark Leyner and Billy Goldberg (224 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Is There a Doctor in the House? Say you’re at a party. You’ve had a martini or three, and you mingle through the crowd, wondering how long you need to stay before going out for pizza. Suddenly you’re introduced to someone new, Dr. Nice Tomeetya. You forget the pizza. Now is the perfect time to bring up all those strange questions you’d like to ask during an office visit with your own doctor but haven’t had the guts (or more likely the time) to do so. You’re filled with liquid courage . . . now is your chance! If you’ve ever wanted to ask a doctor . . . •How do people in wheelchairs have sex? •Why do I get a killer headache when I suck down my milkshake too fast? •Can I lose my contact lens inside my head forever? •Why does asparagus make my pee smell? •Why do old people grow hair on their ears? •Is the old adage “beer before liquor, never sicker, liquor before beer . . .” really true? . . . then Why Do Men Have Nipples? is the book for you. Compiled by Billy Goldberg, an emergency medicine physician, and Mark Leyner, bestselling author and well-known satirist, Why ... Continue Reading Lunar 2018 Wall Calendar: A Glow-in-the-Dark Calendar for the Lunar Year html by Universe Publishing (24 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Each glow-in-the-dark page of Lunar 2018 Wall Calendar showcases extraordinary photographs of the lunar surface, lunar phenomena, and the moon against spectacular earthly landscapes while illuminating the phases of the moon for every day of the year. Expert captions describe features of the lunar surface, local cosmic phenomena such as eclipses and occultations, and our moon's special relationship to the Earth and other celestial bodies. Printed with special luminescent ink, 365 glow-in-the-dark moons let you track the phases of the moon throughout the year.... Continue Reading How to Defeat Your Own Clone: And Other Tips for Surviving the Biotech Revolution html by Kyle Kurpinski and Terry D. Johnson (194 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Send in the clones! On second thought, maybe not.   CAN IT READ MY MIND? WILL IT BE EVIL? HOW DO I STOP IT?   Find out the answers to these and other burning questions in this funny, informative, and ingenious book from two bioengineering experts who show you how to survive—and thrive—in a new age of truly weird science. For decades, science fiction has been alerting us to the wonders and perils of our biotech future—from the prospects of gene therapy to the pitfalls of biological warfare. Now that future looms before us. Don’t panic! This book is all you need to prepare for the new world that awaits us, providing indispensable cautionary advice on topics such as   • bioenhancements: They’re not just for cyborgs anymore. • DNA sequencing and fingerprinting: What’s scarier than the government having your DNA on file? Try having it posted on the Internet. • human cloning: Just like you, only stronger, smarter, and more attractive. In other words: more dangerous. Our future may be populated by designer babies, genetically enhanced supersoldiers, and one (or more!) of your genetic duplicat... Continue Reading The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus: The Mathematics of Christmas html by Thomas Oléron Evans and Hannah Fry (160 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review The perfect stocking stuffer for mathophiles―math has never been merrier.  How do you apply game theory to select who should be on your Christmas shopping list? What equations should you use to decorate the Christmas tree? Will calculations show Santa is getting steadily thinner―shimmying up and down chimneys for a whole night―or fatter―as he munches on cookies and milk in billions of houses across the world? In The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus, distinguished mathematicians Hannah Fry and Thomas Oléron Evans demonstrate, with eminently readable clarity, how applied mathematics are so thoroughly interwoven throughout our everyday lives by explaining mathematical concepts through one very merry motif: Christmas. In their quest to provide mathematical proof for the existence of Santa, the authors take readers on a festive journey through a traditional holiday season, wherein every activity, from wrapping presents to playing board games to cooking the perfect turkey, is painstakingly and hilariously analyzed. Because who hasn’t always wondered how to set up a mathematically perfect Secret Santa?  Lighthearted and di... Continue Reading Fire in the Heart: A Memoir of Friendship, Loss, and Wildfire html by Mary Emerick (256 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review FIRE IN THE HEART is a powerful memoir by a woman, once a shy, insecure schoolgirl, who reinvented herself as a professional wildland fire fighter. Determined to forge herself into a stronger, braver person, Mary climbs to heights she never imagined for herself, eventually directing blazes across the country. Filled with literal struggles for survival, tough choices and Mary's burning passion for what she does, Fire in the Heart, is an unflinching account of one woman's relationship with fire. But when she loses someone she loves to the famous Storm King Mountain forest fire in Colorado, which killed fourteen firefighters, Mary faces the hardest choice of her life; to stay in the game or turn back and try to find the woman she used to be. It is both a thrilling memoir about life-threatening work and a meditation on identity, strength, bravery, bonds, and survivor's guilt. ... Continue Reading Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North America html by Kenn Kaufman (392 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review In 2000 Houghton Mifflin first published the Kaufman Focus Guide to the Birds of North America. Critically acclaimed for its innovative design, the Kaufman guide began introducing a new generation to birding. In 2005, this new Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North America is now the most up-to-date field guide, including dozens of changes by the American Ornithologists’ Union in official names of birds; the addition of new species to reflect the latest scientific discoveries; and dozens of updated range maps. Additional information helps beginning birdwatchers get started, all in the same compact format that has made this guide the easiest to use for fast identification in the field. Amazon.com Review World-renowned birder Kenn Kaufman addresses a long-running paradox of bird field guides with his Focus Guide. While beginning birdwatchers prefer photographic guides like those by Donald Stokes, the physical traits that make identification easier are more readily discerned in the idealized paintings of illustrative guides like those by Roger Tory Peterson and National Geographic. Kaufman's groundbreaking work combines the best of both approaches by ... Continue Reading I Spy Numbers html by Jean Marzollo (32 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review An I Spy 8x8 at $3.99! I SPY NUMBERS is based on the bestselling I SPY LITTLE NUMBERS. Toddlers and preschoolers can search photos from the original I Spy series for numbers to help them learn counting and basic math skills. Simple picture clues and rhyming riddles guide the youngest readers through 12 interactive, fun-filled spreads. ... Continue Reading Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain html by Antonio Damasio (384 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review A leading neuroscientist explores with authority, with imagination, and with unparalleled mastery how the brain constructs the mind and how the brain makes that mind conscious.   Antonio Damasio has spent the past thirty years researching and and revealing how the brain works. Here, in his most ambitious and stunning work yet, he rejects the long-standing idea that consciousness is somehow separate from the body, and presents compelling new scientific evidence that posits an evolutionary perspective. His view entails a radical change in the way the history of the conscious mind is viewed and told, suggesting that the brain’s development of a human self is a challenge to nature’s indifference. This development helps to open the way for the appearance of culture, perhaps one of our most defining characteristics as thinking and self-aware beings. From the Trade Paperback edition. Product Description A leading neuroscientist explores with authority, with imagination, and with unparalleled mastery how the brain constructs the mind and how the brain makes that mind conscious.   Antonio Damasio has spent the past thirty yea... Continue Reading Whole Earth Discipline: Why Dense Cities, Nuclear Power, Transgenic Crops, Restored Wildlands, and Geoengineering Are Necessary html by Stewart Brand (350 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review An icon of the environmental movement outlines a provocative approach for reclaiming our planet According to Stewart Brand, a lifelong environmentalist who sees everything in terms of solvable design problems, three profound transformations are under way on Earth right now. Climate change is real and is pushing us toward managing the planet as a whole. Urbanization?half the world?s population now lives in cities, and eighty percent will by midcentury?is altering humanity?s land impact and wealth. And biotechnology is becoming the world?s dominant engineering tool. In light of these changes, Brand suggests that environmentalists are going to have to reverse some longheld opinions and embrace tools that they have traditionally distrusted. Only a radical rethinking of traditional green pieties will allow us to forestall the cataclysmic deterioration of the earth?s resources. Whole Earth Discipline shatters a number of myths and presents counterintuitive observations on why cities are actually greener than countryside, how nuclear power is the future of energy, and why genetic engineering is the key to crop and land management. With a comb... Continue Reading Extraordinary Chickens 2018 Wall Calendar html by Stephen Green-Armytage (24 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Featuring the fanciest, funniest, and freakiest fowl, this bestselling calendar has fans across the globe. From elegant plumage to comical combs, this charming calendar includes many previously unpublished photographs of the most incredible chickens ever. ... Continue Reading The Rock From Mars: A True Detective Story on Two Planets html by Kathy Sawyer (416 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review In this riveting book, acclaimed journalist Kathy Sawyer reveals the deepest mysteries of space and some of the most disturbing truths on Earth. The Rock from Mars is the story of how two planets and the spheres of politics and science all collided at the end of the twentieth century. It began sixteen million years ago. An asteroid crashing into Mars sent fragments flying into space and, eons later, one was pulled by the Earth’s gravity onto an icy wilderness near the southern pole. There, in 1984, a geologist named Roberta Score spotted it, launching it on a roundabout path to fame and controversy. In its new home at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, the rock languished on a shelf for nine years, a victim of mistaken identity. Then, in 1993, the geochemist Donald “Duck” Mittlefehldt, unmasked the rock as a Martian meteorite. Before long, specialist Chris Romanek detected signs of once-living organisms on the meteorite. And the obscure rock became a rock star. But how did nine respected investigators come to make such startling claims about the rock that they triggered one of the most venomous scientific battles in modern memory? The na... Continue Reading Optical Physics for Babies (Baby University) html by Chris Ferrie (24 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Simple explanations of complex ideas for your future genius! Written by an expert, Optical Physics for Babies is a colorfully simple introduction to the principles of linear optics. Babies (and grownups!) will learn the difference between reflection and refraction and why both are necessary to create wonderful things like rainbows. With a tongue-in-cheek approach that adults will love, this installment of the Baby University board book series is the perfect way to introduce basic concepts to even the youngest scientists. After all, it's never too early to become a physicist! Baby University: It only takes a small spark to ignite a child's mind.... Continue Reading The Llama Sutra: An Off-Colour Adult Colouring Book: Lecherous Llamas, Suggestive Sloths & Uncouth Unicorns In Flagrante Delicto: A Kama Sutra Themed ... Mindful Meditation & Art Color Therapy) html by Honey Badger Adult Coloring Books and Honey Badger Adult Colouring Books (76 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review 2017 GIFT IDEAS | COLOURING BOOKS FOR GROWN-UPS | HUMOROUS Waking up is the second hardest thing in the morning. ---The Honey Badger The Llama Sutra is an Off-Colour adult coloring book written by a group of deviant Sloths, Llamas & Unicorns. Featuring 35 coloring pages full of Lecherous Llamas, Suggestive Sloths & Uncouth Unicorns In Flagrante Delicto. Laugh your a** off as you color this hilarious and irreverent coloring book for adults only. Honey Badger Don't Give a Sh*t! Product Details: For adult only (NOT FOR CHILDREN) Silky matte finish cover design Printed single sided on bright white paper Perfect for all coloring and paint mediums High quality 60 pound paper stock with full page designs Large format 8.5" wide x 11.0" tall coloring pages ... Continue Reading 2018 Horses Wall Calendar (Mead) html by Mead Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Decorate your planning space with the grace of the horse in 2018.... Continue Reading The Inner Life of Animals: Love, Grief, and Compassion―Surprising Observations of a Hidden World html by Peter Wohlleben (272 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review "Like The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben's The Inner Life of Animals will rock your world. Surprising, humbling, and filled with delight, this book shows us that animals think, feel and know in much the same way as we do--and that their lives are, to them, as precious as ours are to us." —Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus Through vivid stories of devoted pigs, two-timing magpies, and scheming roosters, The Inner Life of Animals weaves the latest scientific research into how animals interact with the world with Peter Wohlleben's personal experiences in forests and fields. Horses feel shame, deer grieve, and goats discipline their kids. Ravens call their friends by name, rats regret bad choices, and butterflies choose the very best places for their children to grow up. In this, his latest book, Peter Wohlleben follows the hugely successful The Hidden Life of Trees with insightful stories into the emotions, feelings, and intelligence of animals around us. Animals are different from us in ways that amaze us—and they are also much closer to us than we ever would have th... Continue Reading Healthy Brain, Happy Life: A Personal Program to to Activate Your Brain and Do Everything Better html by Wendy Suzuki and Billie Fitzpatrick (323 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review A neuroscientist transforms the way we think about our brain, our health, and our personal happiness in this clear, informative, and inspiring guide—a blend of personal memoir, science narrative, and immediately useful takeaways that bring the human brain into focus as never before, revealing the powerful connection between exercise, learning, memory, and cognitive abilities. Nearing forty, Dr. Wendy Suzuki was at the pinnacle of her career. An award-winning university professor and world-renowned neuroscientist, she had tenure, her own successful research lab, prestigious awards, and international renown. That’s when to celebrate her birthday, she booked an adventure trip that forced her to wake up to a startling reality: despite her professional success, she was overweight, lonely, and tired and knew that her life had to change.  Wendy started simply—by going to an exercise class. Eventually, she noticed an improvement in her memory, her energy levels, and her ability to work quickly and move from task to task easily. Not only did Wendy begin to get fit, but she also became sharper, had more energy, and her memory improved.  Being a neuroscientist... Continue Reading The Bucolic Plague: How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers: An Unconventional Memoir (P.S.) html by Josh Kilmer-Purcell (323 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review “I adore the Beekman boys’ story. Their unlikely story of love, the land, and a herd of goats is hilariously honest. If these two can go from Manhattan to a goat farm in upstate New York, then I can’t help feeling there is hope for us all.” –Alice Waters “Kilmer-Purcell’s genius lies in his ability to blindside the reader with heart-wrenching truths in the midst of the most outlandish scenarios. He makes you laugh until you care.” — Armistead Maupin Michael Perry (Coop, Truck: A Love Story) meets David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim) in this follow-up to Josh Kilmer-Purcell’s beloved New York Times bestselling debut memoir, I Am Not Myself These Days—another riotous, moving, and entirely unique story of his attempt to tackle the next phase of life with his partner… on a goat farm in upstate New York. Amazon.com Review Eric Poole and Josh Kilmer-Purcell: Author One-on-One Eric Poole is the secret love child of Fran Lebowitz and David Sedaris. But oddly taller. The author of Where's ... Continue Reading Isaac Asimov's Guide to Earth and Space html by Isaac Asimov (288 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review A thrilling nonfiction tour of the cosmos that brings the universe down to Earth, from one of the all-time masters of science fiction.   No one makes sense out of science like Isaac Asimov. Are you puzzled by pulsars? Baffled by black holes? Bewildered by the big bang? If so, here are succinct, crystal-clear answers to more than one hundred of the most significant questions about the essential nature of the universe—questions that have fired the imagination since the beginning of history.   Over the course of this fantastic voyage, the origins, the discoveries, and the stunning achievements of astronomy will unfold before your eyes. You will experience close encounters with giant planets, exploding stars, distant galaxies, and more. For anyone who has ever asked the ultimate questions, who has ever looked up at the sky and asked What in heaven is going on?, Isaac Asimov’s unique vision, skill, and authority will bring the big picture into focus.   “A fine introduction to modern astronomical theory.”—Library Journal Product Description A thrilling nonfiction tour of the cosmos that brings the universe... Continue Reading 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Turning Points in Ancient History) html by Eric H. Cline (258 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review In 1177 B.C., marauding groups known only as the "Sea Peoples" invaded Egypt. The pharaoh's army and navy managed to defeat them, but the victory so weakened Egypt that it soon slid into decline, as did most of the surrounding civilizations. After centuries of brilliance, the civilized world of the Bronze Age came to an abrupt and cataclysmic end. Kingdoms fell like dominoes over the course of just a few decades. No more Minoans or Mycenaeans. No more Trojans, Hittites, or Babylonians. The thriving economy and cultures of the late second millennium B.C., which had stretched from Greece to Egypt and Mesopotamia, suddenly ceased to exist, along with writing systems, technology, and monumental architecture. But the Sea Peoples alone could not have caused such widespread breakdown. How did it happen? In this major new account of the causes of this "First Dark Ages," Eric Cline tells the gripping story of how the end was brought about by multiple interconnected failures, ranging from invasion and revolt to earthquakes, drought, and the cutting of international trade routes. Bringing to life the vibrant multicultural world of these great civilizations, he draws a sweepi... Continue Reading Quantum Entanglement for Babies (Baby University) html by Chris Ferrie (24 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Simple explanations of complex ideas for your future genius! Written by an expert, Quantum Entanglement for Babies is a colorfully simple introduction to one of nature's weirdest phenomenons. Babies (and grownups!) will learn about the wild world of quantum particles. With a tongue-in-cheek approach that adults will love, this installment of the Baby University board book series is the perfect way to introduce basic concepts to even the youngest scientists. After all, it's never too early to become a quantum physicist! Baby University: It only takes a small spark to ignite a child's mind.... Continue Reading Adorable Hedgehogs Mini 2018: 16 Month Calendar Includes September 2017 Through December 2018 html by Editors of Rock Point (24 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Call them a pincushion with legs, a pinecone, a prickly pear, a hedgie, a pog, an urchin, or a quill kid, but hedgehogs are bundles of cute. These endearing woodland creatures will charm you with their uniquely expressive features, mild mannered disposition, and adorable snuffle grunts--all in spite of their spiky exteriors. The Hedgehogs Mini 2018 calendar is 7" x 7" and 16 months of remarkably delightful hedgehog images and notable facts will have these exotic fellows rolling straight into your heart. ... Continue Reading The Magic School Bus Lost In The Solar System html by Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen (40 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review To celebrate its 20th anniversary, Scholastic is re-releasing the ten original Magic School Bus titles in paperback. With updated scientific information, the bestselling science series ever is back! The fieldtrip to the planetarium is foiled when the museum turns out to be closed, but Ms. Frizzle saves the day. The Magic School Bus turns into a spaceship and takes the class on a trip zooming through the atmosphere, to the Moon, and beyond! With up-to-date facts about the solar system, revised for this edition. ... Continue Reading The Case for a Creator: A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence That Points Toward God (Strobel, Lee) html by Lee Strobel (362 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review My road to atheism was paved by science . . . But, ironically, so was my later journey to God.”—Lee StrobelDuring his academic years, Lee Strobel became convinced that God was outmoded, a belief that colored his ensuing career as an award-winning journalist at the Chicago Tribune. Science had made the idea of a Creator irrelevant—or so Strobel thought.But today science is pointing in a different direction. In recent years, a diverse and impressive body of research has increasingly supported the conclusion that the universe was intelligently designed. At the same time, Darwinism has faltered in the face of concrete facts and hard reason.Has science discovered God? At the very least, it’s giving faith an immense boost as new findings emerge about the incredible complexity of our universe. Join Strobel as he reexamines the theories that once led him away from God. Through his compelling and highly readable account, you’ll encounter the mind-stretching discoveries from cosmology, cellular biology, DNA research, astronomy, physics, and human consciousness that present astonishing evidence in The Case for a Creator. Amazon.com Review Are Christianity and science incompati... Continue Reading 2018 Wolves Wall Calendar (Mead) html by Mead Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Decorate your planning space with these hauntingly noble creatures.... Continue Reading Blank Comic Book Notebook: Create Your Own Comic Book Strip, Variety of Templates For Comic Book Drawing, (Super Hero Comics)-[Professional Binding] html by Blank Comic Book and Art for Kids (82 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review The Blank Comic Book Notebook: (Fun! Blank Comic Books) Draw your own Comics - Fun for all ages Variety of Templates for hours of fun 100 pages of blank comic book panels for cartoon / comic book drawing Durable cover to protect your book Printed on paper perfect for fine tip pens, colored pencils and markers. Notebook Measures 8.5" x 11" (21.59 x 27.94 cm) - Large / Big - Format Designed in the USA Buy With Confidence ***** Love it! Can't wait to give it to my constantly doodling son for Christmas. ***** It fits my grandsons needs wonderfully. He has a knack for writing comics, I just wanted to make it easier for him by providing the already pre made cartoon boxes! ***** Very good quality. Arrived on time. Perfect for my daughter who loves doodling comics and her fidget spinner . ***** Great gift for teenagers and adults. Fun for sketching or drawing to make your own little comic strips. Continue Reading Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?: . . . and Other Questions from the Astronomers' In-box at the VaticanObservatory html by Guy Consolmagno and Paul Mueller (306 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Witty and thought provoking, two Vatican astronomers shed provocative light on some of the strange places where religion and science meet. “Imagine if a Martian showed up, all big ears and big nose like a child’s drawing, and he asked to be baptized. How would you react?”                                                                          – Pope Francis, May, 2014   Pope Francis posed that question – without insisting on an answer! – to provoke deeper reflection about inclusiveness and diversity in the Church. But it's not the first time that question has been asked. Brother Guy Consolmagno and Father Paul Mueller hear questions like that all the time. They’re scientists at the Vatican Observatory, the official astronomical research institute of the Catholic Church. In Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial? they explore a variety of questions at the crossroads of faith and reason: How do you reconcile the The Big Bang with Genesis? Was the Star of Bethlehem just a pious religious story or an actual description of astronomical events? What really went down between Galileo and the Catholic Church... Continue Reading The Astronomy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained html by DK (352 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review An essential guide to milestone developments in astronomy, telling the story of our ideas about space, time, and the physics of the cosmos-from ancient times to the present day. From planets and stars to black holes and the Big Bang, take a journey through the wonders of the universe. Featuring topics from the Copernican Revolution to the mind-boggling theories of recent science, The Astronomy Book uses flowcharts, graphics, and illustrations to help clarify hard-to-grasp concepts and explain almost 100 big astronomical ideas. Covering the biographies of key astronomers through the ages such as Ptolemy, Galileo, Newton, Hubble, and Hawking, The Astronomy Book details their theories and discoveries in a user-friendly format to make the information accessible and easy to follow. ... Continue Reading The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life html by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson (409 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Human beings are primates, and primates are political animals. Our brains, therefore, are designed not just to hunt and gather, but also to help us get ahead socially, often via deception and self-deception. But while we may be self-interested schemers, we benefit by pretending otherwise. The less we know about our own ugly motives, the better - and thus we don't like to talk or even think about the extent of our selfishness. This is "the elephant in the brain." Such an introspective taboo makes it hard for us to think clearly about our nature and the explanations for our behavior. The aim of this book, then, is to confront our hidden motives directly - to track down the darker, unexamined corners of our psyches and blast them with floodlights. Then, once everything is clearly visible, we can work to better understand ourselves: Why do we laugh? Why are artists sexy? Why do we brag about travel? Why do we prefer to speak rather than listen? Our unconscious motives drive more than just our private behavior; they also infect our venerated social institutions such as Art, School, Charity, Medicine, Politics, and Religion. In fact, these institutions are in many way... Continue Reading Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words html by Albert Einstein (286 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review An inspiring collection of essays, in which Albert Einstein addresses the topics that fascinated him as a scientist, philosopher, and humanitarian Divided by subject matter—“Science,” “Convictions and Beliefs,” “Public Affairs,” etc.—these essays consider everything from the need for a “supranational” governing body to control war in the atomic age to freedom in research and education to Jewish history and Zionism to explanations of the physics and scientific thought that brought Albert Einstein world recognition. Throughout, Einstein’s clear, eloquent voice presents an idealist’s vision and relays complex theories to the layperson. Einstein’s essays share his philosophical beliefs, scientific reasoning, and hopes for a brighter future, and show how one of the greatest minds of all time fully engaged with the changing world around him. This authorized ebook features rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. ... Continue Reading Culture: Leading Scientists Explore Civilizations, Art, Networks, Reputation, and the Online Revolution (Best of Edge Series) html by John Brockman (307 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review "Theway Brockman interlaces essays about research on the frontiers of science withones on artistic vision, education, psychology and economics is sure to buzzany brain." —Chicago Sun-Times, on This Will Change Everything Launchinga hard-hitting new series from Edge.org and Harper Perennial, editor JohnBrockman delivers this cutting-edge master class covering everything you needto know about Culture. With original contributions by the world’sleading thinkers and scientists, including Jared Diamond, Daniel C. Dennett,Brian Eno, Jaron Lanier,Nicholas Christakis, and others, Culture offers a mind-expanding primeron a fundamental topic. Unparalleled in scope, depth, insight and quality, Edge.org’s Culture is not to be missed. ... Continue Reading Energy and Civilization: A History (MIT Press) html by Vaclav Smil (568 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review A comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society throughout history, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel--driven civilization. "I wait for new Smil books the way some people wait for the next 'Star Wars' movie. In his latest book, Energy and Civilization: A History, he goes deep and broad to explain how innovations in humans' ability to turn energy into heat, light, and motion have been a driving force behind our cultural and economic progress over the past 10,000 years. -- Bill Gates, Gates Notes, Best Books of the Year Energy is the only universal currency; it is necessary for getting anything done. The conversion of energy on Earth ranges from terra-forming forces of plate tectonics to cumulative erosive effects of raindrops. Life on Earth depends on the photosynthetic conversion of solar energy into plant biomass. Humans have come to rely on many more energy flows -- ranging from fossil fuels to photovoltaic generation of electricity -- for their civilized existence. In this monumental history, Vaclav Smil provides a comprehensive account of how energy has sha... Continue Reading Dogma 2018 Wall Calendar: A Dog's Guide to Life - Ron Schmidt (CA0126) html by Ron Schmidt (36 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Were pawsitive - Dogma is one of our bestselling titles, proving that it truly is a dog's life! Nationally recognized photographer Ron Schmidt gives dog lovers a visual treat with his charming photos paired with what can only be described as doggone brilliant maxims. This calendar has gone entirely to the dogs - and you're going to love every minute of it!... Continue Reading Goats in Trees 2018 12 x 12 Inch Monthly Square Wall Calendar, Best Calendar Funny Farm Animals (English, French and Spanish Edition) html by BrownTrout Publishers (28 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review You can call them silly goats if you like, but these groups of goats are wise. In arid regions like Morocco, nimble goats go where vegetation is plentiful, to treetops. Witness: Goats in Trees. Baaaah! Goat lovers will delight in this square wall calendar.... Continue Reading A Hundred Billion Trillion Stars html by Seth Fishman (40 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review “This picture book is one in a gazillion.”—Jane O’Connor, the New York Times–bestselling author of the Fancy Nancy series Did you know that the earth is covered in three trillion trees? And that seven billion people weigh about the same as ten quadrillion ants? Our world is full of constantly changing numbers, from a hundred billion trillion stars in space to thirty-seven billion rabbits on Earth. Can you imagine that many of anything? The playful illustrations from New York Times–bestselling artist Isabel Greenberg and the friendly, straightforward voice of author Seth Fishman illuminate some of the biggest numbers in the universe—a hundred billion trillion stars—and the smallest—one unique and special YOU. Here is a book for story time, for science time, for math time, for bedtime, and all the times in between. Perfect for curious children, classrooms eager for STEM content, and readers who have devoured Ada Twist, Scientist and How Much Is a Million? ... Continue Reading Elephant Dawn html by Sharon Pincott (360 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review In 2001, Sharon Pincott traded her privileged life as a high-flying corporate executive to start a new one with the Presidential Elephants of Zimbabwe. She was unpaid, untrained, self-funded and arrived with the starry-eyed idealism of most foreigners during early encounters with Africa. For thirteen years - the worst in Zimbabwe's volatile history - this intrepid Australian woman lived in the Hwange bush fighting for the lives of these elephants, forming an extraordinary and life-changing bond with them. Now remote from Robert Mugabe's rule, Sharon writes without restraint sequentially through the years, taking us on a truly unforgettable ride of hope and heartbreak, profound love and loss, adversity and new beginnings. This is the haunting, all-encompassing story we've been waiting for. Powerfully moving, sometimes disturbing and often very funny, Elephant Dawn is a celebration of love, courage and honour amongst our greatest land mammals. With resilience beyond measure, Sharon earns the supreme right to call them family. [The book includes 32 pages of colour photographs.] ... Continue Reading The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes from a Climate-Changed Planet html by Heidi Cullen (352 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review From Heidi Cullen, one of America’s foremost experts on weather and climate change and a senior research scientist with Climate Central, comes The Weather of the Future, a fascinating and provocative book that predicts what different parts of the world will look like in the year 2050 if current levels of carbon emissions are maintained. ... Continue Reading The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist html by Neil Degrasse Tyson (203 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review From the author of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry and the host of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, a memoir about growing up and a young man's budding scientific curiosity. This is the absorbing story of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s lifelong fascination with the night sky, a restless wonder that began some thirty years ago on the roof of his Bronx apartment building and eventually led him to become the director of the Hayden Planetarium. A unique chronicle of a young man who at one time was both nerd and jock, Tyson’s memoir could well inspire other similarly curious youngsters to pursue their dreams. Like many athletic kids he played baseball, won medals in track and swimming, and was captain of his high school wrestling team. But at the same time he was setting up a telescope on winter nights, taking an advanced astronomy course at the Hayden Planetarium, and spending a summer vacation at an astronomy camp in the Mojave Desert. Eventually, his scientific curiosity prevailed, and he went on to graduate in physics from Harvard and to earn a Ph.D. in astrophysics from Columbia. There followed postdoctoral research at Princeton.... Continue Reading 2018 National Parks Wall Calendar (Mead) html by Mead Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Decorate your planning space with these classic images of U.S. national parks.... Continue Reading Ocean: A Photicular Book html by Dan Kainen and Carol Kaufmann (28 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review A New York Times bestseller, Ocean is like being on a dive. Using Photicular technology, each image is like a 3-D movie on the page, delivering a rich, fluid visual experience. Open the book, and the reader is swept into the magic of an underwater world, face-to-face with a floating Yellow-Banded Sweetlips; with a glow-in-the-dark Deep-Sea Anglerfish; with a Sea Horse swaying in balletic motion; with a Sand Tiger Shark gliding along the ocean floor, its gaze haunting, its hook-toothed mouth gulping open and closed. The text by Carol Kaufmann enchants with its descriptions of coral reefs; a journey on Alvin, the 17-ton submersible; and a meditation on our oceans. Then, for each creature, she writes a lively and informative essay, along with vital statistics—size, habitat, range, diet, and more. The Photicular process uses an innovative lenticular technology, sliding lenses, and original four-color video imagery. The result is like a movie in your hands—the dance of life in a book. ... Continue Reading Wild: Endangered Animals in Living Motion (Photicular) html by Dan Kainen and Kathy Wollard (24 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Come face to face with our vanishing wildlife. Using unique Photicular technology, Wild brings to vivid life the animals who are under threat of extinction. It turns abstract numbers and names into touching and unforgettable images. From the cover panda, lazily munching on leaves, to an albatross swooping its magnificent wings, to the hovering bumblebee, among the most critical of threatened animals in terms of its effect on the global food supply, Wild captures eight endangered animals in living motion. We see gorillas at play, a rhinoceros and its baby trotting across the savanna, a pangolin skittering along the landscape, an elephant bathing in a river. An opening essay explores the environmental and economic threats to animal populations and how conservationists are working to slow—and when they can, reverse—the damage. Profiles of each animal accompany the images, which are warm, accessible, and friendly. Wild joins four other books in the Photicular series—Safari, Ocean, Polar, and Jungle—with over 2 million copies sold.   ... Continue Reading Audubon Songbirds and Other Backyard Birds Picture-A-Day Calendar 2018 html by National Audubon Society (28 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Any birder—expert or rookie—can appreciate the sheer breadth of beauty covered in Audubon Songbirds Picture-A-Day wall calendar. Admire the plumage and poise of these gorgeous creatures through the seasons. A Yellow Warbler landing on a crabapple branch midsong. A Cedar Waxwing perched on a blossoming plum tree. A Carolina Chickadee amid golden fall foliage. Each month features a collection of birds, with photographs for nearly every day of the month, plus informative texts highlighting the subtleties, variations, and most distinct attributes of each bird, and bringing their habits and natural habitats to life. ... Continue Reading The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why html by Amanda Ripley (290 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review It lurks in the corner of our imagination, almost beyond our ability to see it: the possibility that a tear in the fabric of life could open up without warning, upending a house, a skyscraper, or a civilization. Today, nine out of ten Americans live in places at significant risk of earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, terrorism, or other disasters. Tomorrow, some of us will have to make split-second choices to save ourselves and our families. How will we react? What will it feel like? Will we be heroes or victims? Will our upbringing, our gender, our personality–anything we’ve ever learned, thought, or dreamed of–ultimately matter?      Amanda Ripley, an award-winning journalist for Time magazine who has covered some of the most devastating disasters of our age, set out to discover what lies beyond fear and speculation. In this magnificent work of investigative journalism, Ripley retraces the human response to some of history’s epic disasters, from the explosion of the Mont Blanc munitions ship in 1917–one of the biggest explosions before the invention of the atomic bomb–to a plane crash in England in 1985 that mystified investigators for years,... Continue Reading The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World html by Tim Harford (272 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Life sometimes seems illogical. Individuals do strange things: take drugs, have unprotected sex, mug each other. Love seems irrational, and so does divorce. On a larger scale, life seems no fairer or easier to fathom: Why do some neighborhoods thrive and others become ghettos? Why is racism so persistent? Why is your idiot boss paid a fortune for sitting behind a mahogany altar? Thorny questions–and you might be surprised to hear the answers coming from an economist. But Tim Harford, award-winning journalist and author of the bestseller The Undercover Economist, likes to spring surprises. In this deftly reasoned book, Harford argues that life is logical after all. Under the surface of everyday insanity, hidden incentives are at work, and Harford shows these incentives emerging in the most unlikely places. Using tools ranging from animal experiments to supercomputer simulations, an ambitious new breed of economist is trying to unlock the secrets of society. The Logic of Life is the first book to map out the astonishing insights and frustrating blind spots of this new economics in a way that anyone can enjoy. The Lo... Continue Reading Beyond Biocentrism: Rethinking Time, Space, Consciousness, and the Illusion of Death html by Robert Lanza (226 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Biocentrism shocked the world with a radical rethinking of the nature of reality. But that was just the beginning. In Beyond Biocentrism, acclaimed biologist Robert Lanza, one of TIME Magazine’s "100 Most Influential People in 2014," and leading astronomer Bob Berman, take the reader on an intellectual thrill-ride as they re-examine everything we thought we knew about life, death, the universe, and the nature of reality itself. The first step is acknowledging that our existing model of reality is looking increasingly creaky in the face of recent scientific discoveries. Science tells us with some precision that the universe is 26.8 percent dark matter, 68.3 percent dark energy, and only 4.9 percent ordinary matter, but must confess that it doesn’t really know what dark matter is and knows even less about dark energy. Science is increasingly pointing toward an infinite universe but has no ability to explain what that really means. Concepts such as time, space, and even causality are increasingly being demonstrated as meaningless. All of science is based on information passing through our consciousness b... Continue Reading 20 Makey Makey Projects for the Evil Genius html by Aaron Graves and Colleen Graves (224 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review 20 fun and inventive Makey Makey projects for Makers from beginner to expert This hands-on guide is filled with DIY projects that show readers, step-by-step, how to start creating and making cool inventions with the Makey Makey invention kit. Each project features easy-to-follow, fully-illustrated instructions and detailed photographs of the finished gadget. Readers will see how to apply these skills and start building their own Makey Makey projects. 20 Makey Makey Projects for the Evil Genius starts off with very approachable introductory projects, making it a great starting point for beginners. It then builds to more challenging projects, allowing more experienced users to go further by incorporating technologies like Raspberry Pi, Processing and Scratch programming, 3D Printing, and creating wearable electronics with Makey Makey. Projects are divided into four categories: “Fun and Games,” Interactive,” Hacks and Pranks,” and “Makey Makey Go.” • No prior programming or technical experience is required • Basic enough for beginners, but challenging enough for advanced makers • Written by two educators who believe in fostering crea... Continue Reading 2018 Animal Memes Wall Calendar (Mead) html by Mead Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Need a laugh? Enjoy these monthly viral images of animals and share with your friends.... Continue Reading The Black Hole War: My Battle to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics html by Leonard Susskind Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review What happens when something is sucked into a black hole? Does it disappear? Three decades ago, a young physicist named Stephen Hawking claimed it did-and in doing so put at risk everything we know about physics and the fundamental laws of the universe. Most scientists didn't recognize the import of Hawking's claims, but Leonard Susskind and Gerard t'Hooft realized the threat, and responded with a counterattack that changed the course of physics. THE BLACK HOLE WAR is the thrilling story of their united effort to reconcile Hawking's revolutionary theories of black holes with their own sense of reality-effort that would eventually result in Hawking admitting he was wrong, paying up, and Susskind and t'Hooft realizing that our world is a hologram projected from the outer boundaries of space. A brilliant book about modern physics, quantum mechanics, the fate of stars and the deep mysteries of black holes, Leonard Susskind's account of the Black Hole War is mind-bending and exhilarating reading.... Continue Reading Bird Bingo html by (160 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review This beautifully illustrated bingo game features 64 species of birds from around the world. Spot all kinds of birds—from the robin to the puffin and the kookaburra to the splendid fairywren—mark them off on your card and bingo! Contains 64 superbly illustrated bird tokens, one board, 12 bingo cards, and brightly colored counters for you to mark up your card, as well as a leaflet containing basic information and a few quirky traits for all of the birds featured.... Continue Reading Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human html by Richard Wrangham Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Ever since Darwin and The Descent of Man, the existence of humans has been attributed to our intelligence and adaptability. But in Catching Fire, renowned primatologist Richard Wrangham presents a startling alternative: our evolutionary success is the result of cooking. In a groundbreaking theory of our origins, Wrangham shows that the shift from raw to cooked foods was the key factor in human evolution. When our ancestors adapted to using fire, humanity began. Once our hominid ancestors began cooking their food, the human digestive tract shrank and the brain grew. Time once spent chewing tough raw food could be sued instead to hunt and to tend camp. Cooking became the basis for pair bonding and marriage, created the household, and even led to a sexual division of labor. Tracing the contemporary implications of our ancestors’ diets, Catching Fire sheds new light on how we came to be the social, intelligent, and sexual species we are today. A pathbreaking new theory of human evolution, Catching Fire will provoke controversy and fascinate anyone interested in our ancient origins—or in our modern eating habits. ... Continue Reading Leonardo's Brain: Understanding da Vinci's Creative Genius html by Leonard Shlain Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Bestselling author Leonard Shlain explores the life, art, and mind of Leonardo da Vinci, seeking to explain his singularity by looking at his achievements in art, science, psychology, and military strategy (yes), and then employing state of the art left-right brain scientific research to explain his universal genius. Shlain shows that no other person in human history has excelled in so many different areas as Da Vinci and he peels back the layers to explore the how and the why. Leonardo's Brain uses Da Vinci as a starting point for an exploration of human creativity. With his lucid style, and his remarkable ability to discern connections in a wide range of fields, Shlain brings the listener into the world of history's greatest mind. Shlain asserts that Leonardo's genius came from a unique creative ability that allowed him to understand and excel in a wide range of fields. From here Shlain jumps off and discusses the history and current research on human creativity that revolves around the right brain-left brain split. Most of us now know that there is a split between the right and the left side of the brain; the left primarily controls our rational ... Continue Reading Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are html by Frans de Waal Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Visit the author's Web site at www.ourinnerape.com It’s no secret that humans and apes share a host of traits, from the tribal communities we form to our irrepressible curiosity. We have a common ancestor, scientists tell us, so it’s natural that we act alike. But not all of these parallels are so appealing: the chimpanzee, for example, can be as vicious and manipulative as any human. Yet there’s more to our shared primate heritage than just our violent streak. In Our Inner Ape, Frans de Waal, one of the world’s great primatologists and a renowned expert on social behavior in apes, presents the provocative idea that our noblest qualities—generosity, kindness, altruism—are as much a part of our nature as are our baser instincts. After all, we share them with another primate: the lesser-known bonobo. As genetically similar to man as the chimpanzee, the bonobo has a temperament and a lifestyle vastly different from those of its genetic cousin. Where chimps are aggressive, territorial, and hierarchical, bonobos are gentle, loving, and erotic (sex for bonobos is as much about pleasure and social bonding as it is about reproduction). While the paralle... Continue Reading The Perfect Horse html by Elizabeth Letts Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review From the number-one New York Times best-selling author of The Eighty-Dollar Champion, the remarkable story of the heroic rescue of priceless horses in the closing days of World War II. In the chaotic last days of the war, a small troop of battle-weary American soldiers captures a German spy and makes an astonishing find - his briefcase is empty but for photos of beautiful white horses that have been stolen and kept on a secret farm behind enemy lines. Hitler has stockpiled the world's finest purebreds in order to breed the perfect military machine - an equine master race. But with the starving Russian army closing in, the animals are in imminent danger of being slaughtered for food. With only hours to spare, one of the army's last great cavalrymen, American colonel Hank Reed, makes a bold decision - with General George Patton's blessing - to mount a covert rescue operation. Racing against time, Reed's small but determined force of soldiers, aided by several turncoat Germans, steals across enemy lines in a last-ditch effort to save the horses. Pulling together this multistranded story, Elizabeth Letts introduces us to an unforget... Continue Reading The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery html by Sam Kean Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review The author of the best seller The Disappearing Spoon reveals the secret inner workings of the brain through strange-but-true stories. Early studies of the human brain used a simple method: Wait for misfortune to strike - strokes, seizures, infectious diseases, horrendous accidents - and see how victims coped. In many cases their survival was miraculous, if puzzling. Observers were amazed by the transformations that took place when different parts of the brain were destroyed, altering victims' personalities. Parents suddenly couldn't recognize their own children. Pillars of the community became pathological liars. Some people couldn't speak but could still sing. In The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons, Sam Kean travels through time with stories of neurological curiosities: Phantom limbs, Siamese twin brains, viruses that eat patients' memories, blind people who see through their tongues. He weaves these narratives together to create a story of discovery that reaches back to the 1500s and the high-profile jousting accident that inspired this book's title.* With the lucid, masterful explanations and razor-sharp wit his fans have come to expect,... Continue Reading Spy Science: 40 Secret-Sleuthing, Code-Cracking, Spy-Catching Activities for Kids html by Jim Wiese (128 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Sh-h-h-h-h-h!! Top Secret... Crack the code of superspy science fun! Make your own spy sunglasses * Write messages with invisible ink * Hook up a secret alarm, and much more! Discover how spies use science to keep--or uncover--top secrets. Learn how to go under cover, master Morse code, and even build devices to see and hear through walls! These and dozens of other fun-filled activities give you an inside look at the science behind spy gadgets and tricks of the trade. All the activities are completely safe and can be done with everyday stuff from around the house.... Continue Reading Science in Seconds for Kids: Over 100 Experiments You Can Do in Ten Minutes or Less html by Jean Potter (144 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Make lightning in your room! Keep paper dry under water! Lose weight by going upstairs! See colors that aren't there! Experience the magic of science with these quick, easy experiments and activities from Jean Potter. You can complete each activity in ten fun-filled minutes or less. Clear, step-by-step instructions and illustrations help you get it right every time. The projects help you learn about everything from why eggs aren't round to how submarines surface and submerge. You will find most of the required materials already in your home, backyard, or neighborhood, and you can perform the experiments practically anywhere. The 108 activities in this book cover twelve different subject areas, including air, animals, energy, gravity, magnetism, light, the human body, and much more. You'll make a rainbow right on your floor, pop a balloon with a magnifying glass, make a coffee can roll back to you after you've pushed it away, and bend water as it streams from your faucet--all with the help of a leading educator. Children Ages 8-12... Continue Reading The Science Chef: 100 Fun Food Experiments and Recipes for Kids html by Joan D'Amico and Karen E. Drummond (180 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review What melts in your mouth and not in your hands, plumps when you cook it, and comes in more than forty-eight scrumptious flavors? Give up? The correct answer is: Science! With The Science Chef you'll learn loads of basic science by doing fun, easy-to-perform cooking projects. And you get to eat the results when you're finished! Why do onions make you cry? How does yeast make bread rise? What makes popcorn pop, whipped cream frothy, and angel food cake fluffy? You'll discover the scientific answers to these and dozens of other tasty mysteries when you prepare kid-tested recipes for everything from Cinnamon Toast and Basic Baked Potatoes to Stromboli Pizzoli and Monkey Bread. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced cook, you can become a great Science Chef. All 100 experiments and recipes require only common ingredients and standard kitchen utensils. And The Science Chef includes rules for kitchen safety and cleanup, plus a complete nutrition guide.... Continue Reading The Demon Under The Microscope html by Thomas Hager Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Fast-paced, suspenseful, and utterly satisfying, The Demon Under the Microscope is a sweeping history of the discovery of the first antibiotic and its dramatic effect on the world of medicine and beyond.The Nazis discovered it. The Allies won the war with it. It conquered diseases, changed laws, and single-handedly launched the era of antibiotics. This incredible discovery was sulfa, the first antibiotic medication. In The Demon Under the Microscope Thomas Hager chronicles the dramatic history of the drug that shaped modern medicine.Sulfa saved millions of lives-among them Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr.-but its real effects are even more far reaching. Sulfa changed the way new drugs were developed, approved and sold; transformed the way doctors treated patients; and ushered in the era of modern medicine. The very concept that chemicals created in a lab could cure disease revolutionized medicine, taking it from the treatment of symptoms and discomfort to the eradication of the root cause of illness. A strange and vibrant story, The Demon Under the Microscope illuminates the colorful characters, corporate strategy, individual idealism, careful plan... Continue Reading The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health html by David R. Montgomery and Anne Bikle Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review A riveting exploration of how microbes are transforming the way we see nature and ourselves - and could revolutionize agriculture and medicine. Prepare to set aside what you think you know about yourself and microbes. Good health - for people and for plants - depends on Earth's smallest creatures. The Hidden Half of Nature tells the story of our tangled relationship with microbes and their potential to revolutionize agriculture and medicine, from garden to gut. When David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé decide to restore life into their barren yard by creating a garden, dead dirt threatens their dream. As a cure, they feed their soil a steady diet of organic matter. The results impress them. In short order, the much-maligned microbes transform their bleak yard into a flourishing Eden. Beneath their feet, beneficial microbes and plant roots continuously exchange a vast array of essential compounds. The authors soon learn that this miniaturized commerce is central to botanical life's master strategy for defense and health. They are abruptly plunged further into investigating microbes when Biklé is diagnosed with cancer. Here, they discover an unse... Continue Reading The Story of Sushi: An Unlikely Saga of Raw Fish and Rice html by Trevor Corson Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Everything you never knew about sushi: its surprising origins, the colorful lives of its chefs, and the bizarre behavior of the creatures that compose it. Trevor Corson takes us behind the scenes at America's first sushi-chef training academy, as eager novices strive to master the elusive art of cooking without cooking. He delves into the biology and natural history of the edible creatures of the sea, and tells the fascinating story of an Indo-Chinese meal reinvented in 19th-century Tokyo as a cheap fast food. He reveals the pioneers who brought sushi to the United States and explores how this unlikely meal is exploding into the American heartland just as the long-term future of sushi may be unraveling. The Story of Sushi is at once a compelling tale of human determination and a delectable smorgasbord of surprising food science, intrepid reporting, and provocative cultural history. ... Continue Reading Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat html by Bee Wilson Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Since prehistory, humans have braved the business ends of knives, scrapers, and mashers, all in the name of creating something delicious - or at least edible. In Consider the Fork, award-winning food writer and historian Bee Wilson traces the ancient lineage of our modern culinary tools, revealing the startling history of objects we often take for granted. Charting the evolution of technologies from the knife and fork to the gas range and the sous-vide cooker, Wilson offers unprecedented insights into how we've prepared and consumed food over the centuries - and how those basic acts have changed our societies, our diets, and our very selves. ... Continue Reading On Intelligence html by Jeff Hawkins and Sandra Blakeslee Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review From the inventor of the PalmPilot comes a new and compelling theory of intelligence, brain function, and the future of intelligent machines Jeff Hawkins, the man who created the PalmPilot, Treo smart phone, and other handheld devices, has reshaped our relationship to computers. Now he stands ready to revolutionize both neuroscience and computing in one stroke, with a new understanding of intelligence itself. Hawkins develops a powerful theory of how the human brain works, explaining why computers are not intelligent and how, based on this new theory, we can finally build intelligent machines. The brain is not a computer, but a memory system that stores experiences in a way that reflects the true structure of the world, remembering sequences of events and their nested relationships and making predictions based on those memories. It is this memory-prediction system that forms the basis of intelligence, perception, creativity, and even consciousness. In an engaging style that will captivate audiences from the merely curious to the professional scientist, Hawkins shows how a clear understanding of how the brain works will make it possi... Continue Reading The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company html by David A. Price Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review The Pixar Touch is a lively chronicle of Pixar Animation Studios' history and evolution, and the "fraternity of geeks" who shaped it. With the help of visionary businessman Steve Jobs and animating genius John Lasseter, Pixar has become the gold standard of animated filmmaking, beginning with a short special effects shot made at Lucasfilm in 1982 all the way up through the landmark films Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Wall-E, and others. David A. Price goes behind the scenes of the corporate feuds between Lasseter and his former champion, Jeffrey Katzenberg, as well as between Steve Jobs and Michael Eisner. And finally he explores Pixar's complex relationship with the Walt Disney Company as it transformed itself into the $7.4 billion jewel in the Disney crown.  /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;... Continue Reading 438 Days: An Extraordinary True Story of Survival at Sea html by Jonathan Franklin Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review 438 Days is the miraculous account of the man who survived alone and adrift at sea longer than anyone in recorded history - as told to journalist Jonathan Franklin in dozens of exclusive interviews. On November 17, 2012, Salvador Alvarenga left the coast of Mexico for a two-day fishing trip. A vicious storm killed his engine, and the current dragged his boat out to sea. The storm picked up and blasted him west. When he washed ashore on January 29, 2014, he had arrived in the Marshall Islands, 9,000 miles away - equivalent to traveling from New York to Moscow round trip. For 14 months, Alvarenga survived constant shark attacks. He learned to catch fish with his bare hands. He built a fish net from a pair of empty plastic bottles. Taking apart the outboard motor, he fashioned a huge fishhook. Using fish vertebrae as needles, he stitched together his own clothes. He considered suicide on multiple occasions - including offering himself up to a pack of sharks. But Alvarenga never failed to invent an alternative reality. He imagined a method of survival that kept his body and mind intact long enough for the Pacific Ocean to toss him up on a remote,... Continue Reading Locally Laid: How We Built a Plucky, Industry-changing Egg Farm - from Scratch html by Lucie B. Amundsen (317 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review How a Midwestern family with no agriculture experience went from a few backyard chickens to a full-fledged farm—and discovered why local chicks are better. When Lucie Amundsen had a rare night out with her husband, she never imagined what he’d tell her over dinner—that his dream was to quit his office job (with benefits!) and start a commercial-scale pasture-raised egg farm. His entire agricultural experience consisted of raising five backyard hens, none of whom had yet laid a single egg.   To create this pastured poultry ranch, the couple scrambles to acquire nearly two thousand chickens—all named Lola. These hens, purchased commercially, arrive bereft of basic chicken-y instincts, such as the evening urge to roost. The newbie farmers also deal with their own shortcomings, making for a failed inspection and intense struggles to keep livestock alive (much less laying) during a brutal winter. But with a heavy dose of humor, they learn to negotiate the highly stressed no-man’s-land known as Middle Agriculture. Amundsen sees firsthand how these midsized farms, situated between small-scale operations and mammoth factory farms, are vital to rebuild... Continue Reading Spineless: The Science of Jellyfish and the Art of Growing a Backbone html by Juli Berwald (352 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review “Part travelogue, part memoir, part deep-dive (literally) into the world of jellyfish... Spineless can serve as inspiration for any of us to reclaim a creative space in the midst of family life.” —NPR A former ocean scientist goes in pursuit of the slippery story of jellyfish, rediscovering her passion for marine science and the sea’s imperiled ecosystems. Jellyfish have been swimming in our oceans for well over half a billion years, longer than any other animal that lives on the planet. They make a venom so toxic it can kill a human in three minutes. Their sting—microscopic spears that pierce with five million times the acceleration of gravity—is the fastest known motion in the animal kingdom. Made of roughly 95 percent water, some jellies are barely perceptible virtuosos of disguise, while others glow with a luminescence that has revolutionized biotechnology. Yet until recently, jellyfish were largely ignored by science, and they remain among the most poorly understood of ocean dwellers. More than a decade ago, Juli Berwald left a career in ocean science to raise a family in landlocked Austin, Texas, but jellyfish drew her back ... Continue Reading In Search of Schrodinger's Cat: Quantum Physics And Reality html by John Gribbin (318 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Quantum theory is so shocking that Einstein could not bring himself to accept it. It is so important that it provides the fundamental underpinning of all modern sciences. Without it, we'd have no nuclear power or nuclear weapons, no TV, no computers, no science of molecular biology, no understanding of DNA, no genetic engineering. In Search of Schrodinger's Cat tells the complete story of quantum mechanics, a truth stranger than any fiction. John Gribbin takes us step by step into an ever more bizarre and fascinating place, requiring only that we approach it with an open mind. He introduces the scientists who developed quantum theory. He investigates the atom, radiation, time travel, the birth of the universe, superconductors and life itself. And in a world full of its own delights, mysteries and surprises, he searches for Schrodinger's Cat - a search for quantum reality - as he brings every reader to a clear understanding of the most important area of scientific study today - quantum physics. In Search of Schrodinger's Cat is a fascinating and delightful introduction to the strange world of the quantum - an essential element in understanding today's world. Continue Reading Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World html by Jill Jonnes (464 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review In the final decades of the nineteenth century, three brilliant and visionary titans of America’s Gilded Age—Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George Westinghouse—battled bitterly as each vied to create a vast and powerful electrical empire. In Empires of Light, historian Jill Jonnes portrays this extraordinary trio and their riveting and ruthless world of cutting-edge science, invention, intrigue, money, death, and hard-eyed Wall Street millionaires. At the heart of the story are Thomas Alva Edison, the nation’s most famous and folksy inventor, creator of the incandescent light bulb and mastermind of the world’s first direct current electrical light networks; the Serbian wizard of invention Nikola Tesla, elegant, highly eccentric, a dreamer who revolutionized the generation and delivery of electricity; and the charismatic George Westinghouse, Pittsburgh inventor and tough corporate entrepreneur, an industrial idealist who in the era of gaslight imagined a world powered by cheap and plentiful electricity and worked heart and soul to create it. Edison struggled to introduce his radical new direct current (DC) technology into the hurly-burly of New York Cit... Continue Reading Ubiquity: Why Catastrophes Happen html by Mark Buchanan (290 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Critically acclaimed science journalist, Mark Buchanan tells the fascinating story of the discovery that there is a natural structure of instability woven into the fabric of our world, which explains why catastrophes-- both natural and human-- happen. Scientists have recently discovered a new law of nature and its footprints are virtually everywhere-- in the spread of forest fires, mass extinctions, traffic jams, earthquakes, stock-market fluctuations, the rise and fall of nations, and even trends in fashion, music and art. Wherever we look, the world is modelled on a simple template: like a steep pile of sand, it is poised on the brink of instability, with avalanches-- in events, ideas or whatever-- following a universal pattern of change. This remarkable discovery heralds what Mark Buchanan calls the new science of 'ubiquity', a science whose secret lies in the stuff of the everyday world. Combining literary flair with scientific rigour, this enthralling book documents the coming revolution by telling the story of the researchers' exploration of the law, their ingenious work and unexpected insights. Buchanan reveals that we are witnessing the... Continue Reading Kiss the Ground: How the Food You Eat Can Reverse Climate Change, Heal Your Body & Ultimately Save Our World html by Josh Tickell (352 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Discover the hidden power soil has to reverse climate change, and how a regenerative farming diet not only delivers us better health and wellness, but also rebuilds our most precious resource—the very ground that feeds us. Josh Tickell, one of America’s most celebrated documentary filmmakers and director of Fuel, has dedicated most of his life to saving the environment. Now, in Kiss the Ground, he explains an incredible truth: by changing our diets to a soil-nourishing, regenerative agriculture diet, we can reverse global warming, harvest healthy, abundant food, and eliminate the poisonous substances that are harming our children, pets, bodies, and ultimately our planet. Through fascinating and accessible interviews with celebrity chefs, ranchers, farmers, and top scientists, this remarkable book, soon to be a full-length documentary film narrated by Woody Harrelson, will teach you how to become an agent in humanity’s single most important and time sensitive mission. Reverse climate change and effectively save the world—all through the choices you make in how and what to eat.... Continue Reading Inconvenient Facts: The science that Al Gore doesn't want you to know html by Gregory Wrightstone (158 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review You have been inundated with reports from media, governments, think tanks and ''experts'' saying that our climate is changing for the worse and it is our fault. Increases in droughts, heat waves, tornadoes and poison ivy - to name a few - are all blamed on our ''sins of emissions'' from burning fossil fuels and increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Yet, you don't quite buy into this human-caused climate apocalypse. You aren't sure about the details because you don't have all the facts and likely aren't a scientist. Inconvenient Facts was specifically created for you. Writing in plain English and providing easily understood charts and figures, Gregory Wrightstone presents the science to assess the basis of the threatened Thermageddon. The book's 60 ''inconvenient facts'' come from government sources, peer-reviewed literature or scholarly works, set forth in a way that is lucid and entertaining. The information likely will challenge your current understanding of many apocalyptic predictions about our ever dynamic climate. You will learn that the planet is improving, not in spite of increasing CO2 and rising temperature, but because of it. The very fram... Continue Reading The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood html by Sy Montgomery (240 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review “Christopher Hogwood came home on my lap in a shoebox. He was a creature who would prove in many ways to be more human than I am.” –from The Good Good Pig A naturalist who spent months at a time living on her own among wild creatures in remote jungles, Sy Montgomery had always felt more comfortable with animals than with people. So she gladly opened her heart to a sick piglet who had been crowded away from nourishing meals by his stronger siblings. Yet Sy had no inkling that this piglet, later named Christopher Hogwood, would not only survive but flourish–and she soon found herself engaged with her small-town community in ways she had never dreamed possible. Unexpectedly, Christopher provided this peripatetic traveler with something she had sought all her life: an anchor (eventually weighing 750 pounds) to family and home. The Good Good Pig celebrates Christopher Hogwood in all his glory, from his inauspicious infancy to hog heaven in rural New Hampshire, where his boundless zest for life and his large, loving heart made him absolute monarch over a (mostly) peaceable kingdom. At first, his domain included only Sy’s cosseted hens and her beautiful... Continue Reading The Hundred Dresses html by Eleanor Estes (96 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review Eleanor Estes’s The Hundred Dresses won a Newbery Honor in 1945 and has never been out of print since. At the heart of the story is Wanda Petronski, a Polish girl in a Connecticut school who is ridiculed by her classmates for wearing the same faded blue dress every day. Wanda claims she has one hundred dresses at home, but everyone knows she doesn’t and bullies her mercilessly. The class feels terrible when Wanda is pulled out of the school, but by that time it’s too late for apologies. Maddie, one of Wanda’s classmates, ultimately decides that she is "never going to stand by and say nothing again." This powerful, timeless story has been reissued with a new letter from the author’s daughter Helena Estes, and with the Caldecott artist Louis Slobodkin’s original artwork in beautifully restored color. Amazon.com Review Wanda Petronski lives way up in shabby Boggins Heights, and she doesn't have any friends. Every day she wears a faded blue dress, which wouldn't be too much of a problem if she didn't tell her schoolmates that she had a hundred dresses at home--all silk, all colors, and velvet, too. This lie--albeit understandable in light of her dress-obsessed... Continue Reading The Planets: Photographs from the Archives of NASA html by Nirmala Nataraj (256 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review This magnificent volume offers a rich visual tour of the planets in our solar system. More than 200 breathtaking photographs from the archives of NASA are paired with extended captions detailing the science behind some of our cosmic neighborhood's most extraordinary phenomena. Images of newly discovered areas of Jupiter, fiery volcanoes on Venus, and many more reveal the astronomical marvels of space in engrossing detail. Anyone with an interest in science, astronomy, and the mysteries of the universe will delight in this awe-inspiring guide to the wonders of the solar system.... Continue Reading The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell's Secret html by Seth Shulman (256 pages) Download PDF Check Amazon Price Book Review "[A] page-turner…The Telephone Gambit is solid history, and Seth Shulman makes it as much fun to read as an Agatha Christie whodunit." —John Steele Gordon, Wall Street Journal Throughout his career, Alexander Graham Bell, one of the world’s most famous inventors, was plagued by a secret: he stole the key idea behind the invention of the telephone. While researching at MIT, science journalist Seth Shulman scrutinized Bell’s journals and within them found the smoking gun, a hint of deeply buried historical deception. Bell furtively—and illegally—copied part of Elisha Gray’s patent caveat in the race to secure what would become the most valuable U.S. patent ever issued. Delving further into Bell’s story, Shulman unearths the surprising truth behind the telephone—and with it, a tale of romance, corruption, and unchecked ambition. The Telephone Gambit challenges the reputation of an icon of invention, rocks the foundation of a corporate behemoth, and offers a probing meditation on how little we know about our own history. Amazon.com Review Amazon Best of the Month, January 2008: Seth Shulman closely examine... Continue Reading How to Analyze People: The Ultimate Guide to Human Psychology, Body Langu