Since Descartes famously proclaimed, “I think, therefore I am,” science has often overlooked emotions as the source of a person’s true being. Even modern neuroscience has tended, until recently, to concentrate on the cognitive aspects of brain function, disregarding emotions. This attitude began to change with the publication of Descartes’ Error in 1995. Antonio Damasio—”one of the world’s …
Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them
The Boston Globe“Surprising and remarkable… Toggling between big ideas, technical details, and his personal intellectual journey, Greene writes a thesis suitable to both airplane reading and PhD seminars.”Our brains were designed for tribal life, for getting along with a select group of others (Us) and for fighting off everyone else (Them). But modern times have forced the world’s …
Pioneering research psychologist Roy F. Baumeister collaborates with New York Times science writer John Tierney to revolutionize our understanding of the most coveted human virtue: self-control. Drawing on cutting-edge research and the wisdom of real-life experts, Willpower shares lessons on how to focus our strength, resist temptation, and redirect our lives. It shows readers how to be realistic …
The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care
A New York Times BestsellerWith an Explanation of the 2010 Health Reform BillBringing to bear his talent for explaining complex issues in a clear, engaging way, New York Times bestselling author T. R. Reid visits industrialized democracies around the world–France, Britain, Germany, Japan, and beyond–to provide a revelatory tour of successful, affordable universal health care systems. Now updated with new statistics …
For over three decades, Ray Kurzweil has been one of the most respected and provocative advocates of the role of technology in our future. In his classic The Age of Spiritual Machines, he argued that computers would soon rival the full range of human intelligence at its best. Now he examines the next step in this inexorable evolutionary …
The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History
At the height of WWI, history’s most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But …
Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus
The most fatal virus known to science, rabies-a disease that spreads avidly from animals to humans-kills nearly one hundred percent of its victims once the infection takes root in the brain. In this critically acclaimed exploration, journalist Bill Wasik and veterinarian Monica Murphy chart four thousand years of the history, science, and cultural mythology of rabies. From Greek …
Extreme Medicine: How Exploration Transformed Medicine in the Twentieth Century
Little more than one hundred years ago, maps of the world still boasted white space: places where no human had ever trod. Within a few short decades the most hostile of the world’s environments had all been conquered. Likewise, in the twentieth century, medicine transformed human life. Doctors took what was routinely fatal and made it survivable. As …
A provocative history of violence—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Stuff of Thought and The Blank SlateBelieve it or not, today we may be living in the most peaceful moment in our species’ existence. In his gripping and controversial new work, New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows that despite the ceaseless news about …
The Walt Longmire Mystery Series Boxed Set Volumes 1-4 (Walt Longmire Mysteries)
The perfect gift for Longmire fans: A boxed set of the first four mysteries in the New York Times bestselling Longmire Mystery series With the hit television series Longmire capturing millions of viewers and Craig Johnson’s last four novels hitting the New York Times bestseller list, Walt Longmire is a name on everyone’s lips and has earned his star. As Longmire devotees …