The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings
The book that launched America’s urban legend obsession!The Vanishing Hitchhiker was Professor Brunvand’s first popular book on urban legends, and it remains a classic. The culmination of twenty years of collection and research, this book is a must-have for urban legend …
An anthology of the most chilling urban legends of all time collected by the maestro himself. Urban legends are those strange, but seemingly credible tales that always happen to a friend of a friend. For the first time, Professor Jan Harold Brunvand, “who has achieved almost legendary status” (Choice), has collected the creepiest, most terrifying urban legends, many …
The definitive word on the subject from the dean of urban legend studies. We all know those stories that are too bizarre to be true―roasted babies, vanishing hitchhikers, scuba divers in trees―but have you heard about the ice man or the bullet baby? This comprehensive and compellingly readable reference work will answer all your urban legend questions, offering …
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the 1999 National Book Award for Nonfiction, finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize and the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize, Embracing Defeat is John W. Dower’s brilliant examination of Japan in the immediate, shattering aftermath of World War II. Drawing on a vast range of Japanese sources and illustrated with dozens of astonishing …
The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry
The national bestseller that reveals how we are descended from seven prehistoric women. In 1994 Bryan Sykes was called in as an expert to examine the frozen remains of a man trapped in glacial ice in northern Italy for over 5000 years―the Ice Man. Sykes succeeded in extracting DNA from the Ice Man, but even more important, writes …
Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science
Rethinking economics, from the inside out.In the wake of the financial crisis and the Great Recession, economics seems anything but a science. In this sharp, masterfully argued book, Dani Rodrik, a leading critic from within, takes a close look at economics to examine when it falls short and when it works, to give a surprisingly upbeat account of …
Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do (Issues of Our Time)
The acclaimed social psychologist offers an insider’s look at his research and groundbreaking findings on stereotypes and identity. Claude M. Steele, who has been called “one of the few great social psychologists,” offers a vivid first-person account of the research that supports his groundbreaking conclusions on stereotypes and identity. He sheds new light on American social phenomena from …
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory
“Morbid and illuminating” (Entertainment Weekly)―a young mortician goes behind the scenes of her curious profession. Most people want to avoid thinking about death, but Caitlin Doughty―a twenty-something with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the macabre―took a job at a crematory, turning morbid curiosity into her life’s work. Thrown into a profession of gallows humor …
Saving Gotham: A Billionaire Mayor, Activist Doctors, and the Fight for Eight Million Lives
The inside story of the most audacious public health campaign of the twenty-first century.In 2002, a dynamic doctor named Thomas Frieden became health commissioner of New York City. With support from the new mayor, billionaire Michael Bloomberg, Frieden and his health department team prohibited smoking in bars, outlawed trans fats in restaurants, and attempted to cap the size …
Then Comes Marriage: United States V. Windsor and the Defeat of DOMA
Roberta Kaplan’s gripping story of her defeat of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) before the Supreme Court.Renowned litigator Roberta Kaplan knew from the beginning that it was the perfect case to bring down the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer had been together as a couple, in sickness and in health, for …