Search results for ""Basic Books""

What keeps us going when times get tough? How have the leaders and unsung heroes of world-changing political movements persevered in the face of cynicism, fear, and seemingly overwhelming odds? In The Impossible Will Take a Little While , they answer these questions in their own words, creating a conversation among some of the most visionary and eloquent voices of our times. Ten years after his original edition, Paul Rogat Loeb has comprehensively updated this classic work on what it's like to go up against Goliath- whether South African apartheid, Mississippi segregation, Middle East dictatorships, or the corporations driving global climate change. Without sugarcoating the obstacles, these stories inspire the hope to keep moving forward.Think of this book as a conversation among some of the most visionary and eloquent voices of our times- or any time: Contributors include Maya Angelou, Diane Ackerman, Marian Wright Edelman, Wael Ghonim, Václav Havel, Paul Hawken, Seamus Heaney, Jonathan Kozol, Tony Kushner, Audre Lorde, Nelson Mandela, Bill McKibben, Bill Moyers, Pablo Neruda, Mary Pipher, Arundhati Roy, Dan Savage, Desmond Tutu, Alice Walker, Cornel West, Terry Tempest Williams, and Howard Zinn

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From its invention as a cocaine-laced patent medicine in the Gilded Age to its globe-drenching ubiquity as the ultimate symbol of consumer capitalism in the twenty-first century, Coca-Cola's dramatic history unfolds as the ultimate business saga. In this fully revised and expanded edition of For God, Country & Coca-Cola , Mark Pendergrast looks at America's cultural, social, and economic history through the bottom of a green glass Coke bottle and tells the captivating story of the world's most recognizable consumer product.

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Stern contends that the motherhood experience is simultaneously universal and intensely personal, and it affects the emotional, psychological realm of experience as well as the physical being of the mother. He chronicles the subjective aspects of motherhoodthe thoughts, feelings, and fearsto produce a generalized picture of the motherhood experience.

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Genius . With hints of madness and mystery, moral license and visionary force, the word suggests an almost otherworldly power: the power to create, to divine the secrets of the universe, even to destroy. Yet the notion of genius has been diluted in recent times. Today, rock stars, football coaches, and entrepreneurs are labeled'geniuses,' and the word is applied so widely that it has obscured the sense of special election and superhuman authority that long accompanied it.As acclaimed historian Darrin M. McMahon explains, the concept of genius has roots in antiquity, when men of prodigious insight were thought to possess,or to be possessed by,demons and gods. Adapted in the centuries that followed and applied to a variety of religious figures, including prophets, apostles, sorcerers, and saints, abiding notions of transcendent human power were invoked at the time of the Renaissance to explain the miraculous creativity of men like Leonardo and Michelangelo.Yet it was only in the eighteenth century that the genius was truly born, idolized as a new model of the highest human type. Assuming prominence in figures as varied as Newton and Napoleon, the modern genius emerged in tension with a growing belief in human equality. Contesting the notion that all are created equal, geniuses served to dramatize the exception of extraordinary individuals not governed by ordinary laws. The phenomenon of genius drew scientific scrutiny and extensive public commentary into the 20th century, but it also drew religious and political longings that could be abused. In the genius cult of the Nazis and the outpouring of reverence for the redemptive figure of Einstein, genius achieved both its apotheosis and its Armageddon.The first comprehensive history of this elusive concept, Divine Fury follows the fortunes of genius and geniuses through the ages down to the present day, showing how,despite its many permutations and recent democratization,genius remains a potent force in our lives, reflecting modern needs, hopes, and fears.

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A virtualist is a doctor who specializes in virtual medicine. She uses tools like VR headsets, spatial acoustics, haptic feedback, and even olfactory mimicry to induce reactions in patients' bodies that help treat a variety of physiological and psychological conditions, from chronic pain, to compulsive behavior, without the use of pharmaceuticals or surgical techniques. Virtualists don't exist yet, but after reading VRx they just might. In recent years, scientists have established that people's perceptions - their subjective experiences of the world - influence how their bodies work. We typically have little control over our perceptions, particularly when we are sick. But what could we do if we did? In VRx Brennan Spiegel introduces readers to a new kind of medicine, called virtual therapeutics, answering exactly this question, using technology that is already available.It works through two basic but powerful psychological concepts: embodied cognition, the idea that thought processes involve the whole body, not just the brain; and presence, the ability of virtual reality to trick your body into thinking it's somewhere that it isn't, or can do something that it can't usually do. VRx takes readers on a mindbending journey through the ways in which these deep connections between our minds and our bodies are being put to good use. We learn about the woman who endures an exceptionally painful labor by completing breathing exercises on a digital beach, the schizophrenic patient who literally confronts the demon inside his head, the burn victims who are able to manage their pain better after traversing snowy virtual landscapes, and the doctor who confronted his own fear of mortality by watching himself die. Brimming with extraordinary stories of the power of virtual therapeutics to treat both physical and psychological conditions, VRx offers nothing short of a completely new way of healing.

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Whenever we turn on the TV, flip a page in a magazine, or glance at a flyer in the grocery store, we are constantly bombarded with nutritional advice. Almond products can boost your memory! Milk helps build up your bones! Cereal is part of a doctor-approved balanced breakfast for growing girls and boys! Study after study tells us what we should eat, how much, and when. Words like "superfood" and "guilt free" convince us that we're making the right choice when we pluck an item off the shelf and head for the checkout line. We count on nutrition science to guide us through the overwhelming choices in our local grocery store and helps us make the best decisions for our health.Except it often doesn't. Many of these studies we rely on to make decisions are not funded by unbiased third parties-they're actually funded by companies seeking to buoy their own products. As renowned food expert Marion Nestle reveals in Unsavory Truth, most nutrition societies, committees, and departments are actually in the food industry's pocket. Whether it's a study claiming moderate exercise is enough to cancel out the calories in sugary sodas (backed by Coca-Cola) or a report about how blueberries can reduce the risk of erectile dysfunction (backed by the US Highbush Blueberry Council), the food industry has learned how to turn selective disclosure and partisan probes into major profit. Like Big Pharma has corrupted medical science, so Big Food has corrupted nutrition. In a nation where more than two-thirds of adults and one-third of children are considered overweight or obese, it's never been more important to put our public health first. With stricter legislation for food companies and researchers, stricter policies for societies and journals, and better consumer education, Nestle argues that we have a fighting chance to get our country's nutrition back on track.With riveting prose and unmatched investigative rigor, Unsavory Truth reveals how big food companies took over nutrition science-and how we can take it back.

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Sperm Wars turns the conventional thinking about the biology of sex on its head. Evolutionary biologist Robin Baker argues that human sexuality follows certain laws, and all of those laws are governed by one thing: sperm warfare. In the interest of promoting competition between sperm to fertilize the same egg, evolution has built men to conquer and monopolize women while women, without ever knowing they are doing it, seek the best genetic input on offer from potential sexual partners. In this book, Baker reveals, through a series of provocative fictional scenes, the far-reaching implications of sperm competition: ten percent of children are not fathered by their "fathers;" less than one percent of a man's sperm is capable of fertilizing anything (the rest is there to fight off all other men's sperm); "smart" vaginal mucus encourages some sperm but blocks others; and a woman is far more likely to conceive through a casual fling than through sex with her regular partner. From infidelity, to homosexuality, to the female orgasm, Sperm Wars turns on every light in the bedroom. Two decades after its initial publication, this classic of popular science will still surprise, entertain, and even shock.

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When NASA Astronaut Nicole Stott first saw the Earth from space, she was filled with awe. Our shared home was a brilliant blue marble, with a razor thin atmosphere protecting billions of people, including everyone she loved. She realized that we are all bound together on this fragile planet. When she came back to earth, she knew she had to share this vision to help protect it.Stott knows the scale of the daunting task at hand-and yet, she believes we can set aside our differences and work together to tackle the most challenging planetary problems humanity has ever faced. She knows this, because she's seen it happen, on the International Space Station. Throughout her book, Stott imparts hard-won lessons in high-stakes problem solving, survival, and responding to crisis in space. On a space station, astronauts can't wait for someone else to handle a rescue; and when it comes to our earthbound problems, Stott learned that everyone should live like a crewmember, not like a passenger. In space, where everyone survives in a closed system, everything is local-and Stott discovered that in a profound way, the same is true back at home. Back to Earth distills these lessons and more into seven principles that can be practiced by each and every one of us to make much-needed change.In addition to sharing stories from her own spaceflight, Stott offers eye-opening insights from scientists and changemakers already sparking meaningful change in their communities and around the globe. She explores the complexities and splendor of the earth's biodiversity, and what it takes to preserve it, with both pioneering scientists on earth and engineers working to enable life in space. She meets with activists who use their time in space to advocate for clean water, and with executives who quit their corporate positions and use their global reach to become environmental leaders.Through her stirring call to action, Nicole Stott reveals how we each have the power to respect the Earth and one another-and to change our own lives in the process. And, while we're at it, we might just save humanity.

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Some people are naturally creative and others aren't, right? Wrong. In this classic book on creativity, James Adams takes a unique approach to generating ideas and solving problems that has captivated, inspired, and guided thousands of people from all walks of life to new heights of creativity-whether you are a writer with writers block, or a businesswoman struggling to come up with a new organizational structure. More than three decades after its original publication, Conceptual Blockbusting has never been more relevant, powerful, or fresh. Integrating insights from the worlds of psychology, engineering, management, art, and philosophy, Adams identifies the key blocks (perceptual, emotional, cultural, environmental, intellectual, and expressive) that prevent us from realizing the full potential of our fertile minds. Employing unconventional exercises and other interactive elements, Adams shows individuals, teams, and organizations how to overcome these blocks, embrace alternative ways of thinking about complex problems, and celebrate the joy of creativity. Completely revised and updated with the latest cognitive science and addressing new subjects such as changes in technology, creativity in large groups, and sustaining creativity over time, Conceptual Blockbusting will introduce a new generation of readers to a world of new possibilities.

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In the past decade, Paul Halpern has brought readers three stunning histories of science -- Einstein's Dice and Schroedinger's Cats, The Quantum Labyrinth, and Synchronicity -- that reveal the twisted, bizarre, and illuminating stories of physics' greatest thinkers and ideas. In Flashes of Creation, Halpern turns to what might be the biggest story of them all: the discovery of the origins of the universe and everything in it.Today, the Big Bang is so deeply entrenched in our understanding of the universe that to doubt it would seem crazy. And that is pretty much what has happened to the last major opponent of the theory, British astronomer Fred Hoyle. If anyone knows his name today, they probably think he went off the deep end-or at least was so very wrong for so long as to seem completely obtuse. But the hot-headed Hoyle saw himself as a crusader for physics, defending scientific progress from a band of charlatans. His doggedness was equalled by one man alone: Russian-American physicist George Gamow, who saw the idea of the Big Bang as essential to explaining where the Universe came from, and why it's full of the matter that surrounds us. The stakes were high! And the ensuing battle, waged in person and through the media over decades, was as fiery as the cosmic cataclysm the theory describes.Most of us might guess who turned out to be right (Gamow, mostly) and who noisily spun out of control as the evidence against his position mounted (Hoyle). Unfortunately for Hoyle, he is mostly remembered for giving the theory the silliest name he could think of: "The Big Bang." But as Halpern so eloquently demonstrates, even the greatest losers in physics -- including those who seem as foolish and ornery as Fred Hoyle -- have much to teach us, about boldness, imagination, and even the universe itself.

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In The Case for Trump, acclaimed historian and political commentator Victor Davis Hanson explains how a celebrity businessman with no political or military experience triumphed over sixteen well-qualified Republican rivals, a Democrat with a quarter-billion-dollar war chest, and a hostile media and Washington establishment to become President of the United States--and an extremely successful president at that. Hanson sets Trump in his broad political and social context to explain Trump's and ongoing political appeal to a broad swath of American voters. Growing anger at globalization, a stalled economy, immigration, costly and unfruitful overseas interventions, perceived poor trade deals, and political correctness meant by 2016 that if there were not a loud Trump outsider, he would likely have had to be invented. Trump and Trump alone saw a political opening in defending the forgotten working classes of the interior, who were alienated not only by Democrats but by elite republican candidates. (In 2012, one Republican taxi driver explained his decision to sit out the election altogether: "Geez, Romney came to Michigan wearing his wing-tips with starched jeans!")And despite the apocalyptic imaginings of both the Left and the Never Trump Right, one year into his presidency Trump boasts an impressive record of achievement of a kind rarely attained by an incoming president. Trump has realized economic and foreign policy results not seen in a generation, cutting through stasis and dismantling a corrupt old order.Hanson is not naïve about Trump's self-destructive behavior (the relentless tweeting, the threats to fire Mueller and so on) but ultimately sees him as a kind of tragic political hero, something out a Sophocles play or an American Western. His accomplishments are a direct result of his personal excesses--the fact that he is not traditionally presidential has enabled him to bring long-overdue changes in foreign and domestic policy. We could not survive a series of presidencies as volatile as Trump's, Hanson acknowledges. But "given the direction of the country over the last 16 years, half the population, the proverbial townspeople of the western, wanted some outsider, even with a dubious past, to ride in and do things that most normal politicians not only would not but could not do -- before exiting stage left or riding off into the sunset."

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David R. Roediger has been in the vanguard of the study of race and labor in American history for decades. He first came to prominence as the author of The Wages of Whiteness, a classic study of racism in the development of a white working class in nineteenth-century America. In Working Toward Whiteness, Roediger continues that history into the twentieth century. He recounts how ethnic groups considered white today-including Jewish-, Italian-, and Polish-Americans-were once viewed as undesirables by the WASP establishment in the United States. They eventually became part of white America, through the nascent labor movement, New Deal reforms, and a rise in home-buying. Once assimilated as fully white, many of them adopted the racism of those whites who formerly looked down on them as inferior. From ethnic slurs to racially restrictive covenants-the real estate agreements that ensured all-white neighborhoods-Roediger explores the mechanisms by which immigrants came to enjoy the privileges of being white in America. A disturbing, necessary, masterful history, Working Toward Whiteness uses the past to illuminate the present. In an Introduction to the 2018 edition, Roediger considers the resonance of the book in the age of Trump, showing how Working Toward Whiteness remains as relevant as ever even though most migrants today are not from Europe.

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Human history is full of the stories of peasants, subjects, and tribes. Yet the concept of the "citizen" is historically rare-and was among America's most valued ideals for over two centuries. But without shock treatment, warns historian Victor Davis Hanson, American citizenship as we have known it may soon vanish.In The Dying Citizen, Hanson outlines the historical forces that led to this crisis. The evisceration of the middle class over the last fifty years has made many Americans dependent on the federal government. Open borders have undermined the idea of allegiance to a particular place. Identity politics have eradicated our collective civic sense of self. And a top-heavy administrative state has endangered personal liberty, along with formal efforts to weaken the Constitution.As in the revolutionary years of 1848, 1917, and 1968, 2020 ripped away our complacency about the future. But in the aftermath, we as Americans can rebuild and recover what we have lost. The choice is ours.

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"With a fine combination of humor, compassion and vast knowledge, Talya Miron-Shatz offers clear and useful guidance for the hardest decisions of life."-Daniel Kahneman, Nobel award-winning author of Thinking, Fast and SlowA top expert on decision-making explains why it's so hard to make good choices-and what you and your doctor can do to make better onesIn recent years, we have gained unprecedented control over choices about our health. But these choices are hard and often full of psychological traps. As a result, we're liable to misuse medication, fall for pseudoscientific cure-alls, and undergo needless procedures.In Your Life Depends on It, Talya Miron-Shatz explores the preventable ways we make bad choices about everything from nutrition to medication, from pregnancy to end-of-life care. She reveals how the medical system can set us up for success or failure and maps a model for better doctor-patient relationships.Full of new insights and actionable guidance, this book is the definitive guide to making good choices when you can't afford to make a bad one.

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Marie "Missy" Mattingly Meloney was born in 1878, in an America where women couldn't vote and had extremely limited political power. By the time she died in 1943, women had been voting for over two decades and were a recognised political block. This seems like an inevitability but in many ways it was Missy who created the idea of the female demographic. As a journalist, editor and political adviser, Missy is responsible for bringing women into American political culture as recognised consumers of political content, as a voting demographic to be targeted and reckoned with and as political operatives in their own right. Even before the passage of the 19th Amendment, Missy was carving out space for women in politics. As Editor-in-Chief of three major women's periodicals (at a time when few women held positions of such power), Missy forced publishers to recognise women writers and readers as cohorts worth taking seriously. She was aware of the purchasing power of women but also of the hole in the market for publications that spoke directly to them in a serious way. As a woman's editor, she made it increasingly acceptable for women to engage with politics as consumers, authors and journalists. In the process, she brought women writers to the mainstream and helped get women in the door of political and war reporting. Thanks to her instincts about how to appeal to women as a political cohort, she became the first campaign adviser to target them as a demographic. Hoover called her in to help him figure out how to appeal to women voters and gave her an official post in his administration. Informally, she was the first female political adviser to Coolidge, Bill Donovan and even FDR, despite being a political operative for the Republican Party. At the same time, Missy was a major player herself in early 20th century history. She was friend and confidante to artists, authors, diplomats and dictators-it was to her that Mussolini first confided his plans to invade Ethiopia. She was Marie Curie's publicist and she secured the funding for Mount Rushmore. Missy did all this and so much more, without ruffling any feathers. No firebrand or militant suffragette, Missy worked behind the scenes, making connections and gently influencing those in power. And so history has forgotten her. In this first biography of Missy Meloney, historian Julie Des Jardins restores Missy to her rightful place in history-as a trailblazer who transformed America.

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The Texas Revolution has long been cast as an epic episode in the origins of the American West. As the story goes, larger-than-life figures like Sam Houston, David Crockett, and William Barret Travis fought to free Texas from repressive Mexican rule. In Unsettled Land, historian Sam Haynes reveals the reality beneath this powerful creation myth. He shows how the lives of ordinary people-white Americans, Mexicans, Native Americans, and those of African descent-were upended by extraordinary events over twenty-five years. After the battle of San Jacinto, racial lines snapped taut as a new nation, the Lone Star republic, sought to expel Indians, marginalize Mexicans, and tighten its grip on the enslaved. This is a revelatory and essential new narrative of a major turning point in the history of North America.

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It's the dream scenario for many of us after a long week: having the house completely to ourselves. No partners, no parents, no kids, no pets. But as we settle into the couch, something stirs: maybe a mouse darts out from under a cupboard, or a fly buzzes lazily past the window. We're not actually alone at all. Until quite recently, no one had taken the life that lives with us very seriously: until Rob Dunn and his team decided to take a closer look. Upon investigating the terra incognita of our homes, they discovered that there are nearly 200,000 species living in our bedrooms, kitchens, living areas, bathrooms, and basements. Some of these species can kill us. Some benefit us. And some seem simply benign. But almost all of them were completely unknown--and they've been living alongside us the whole time.In Never Home Alone, biologist Rob Dunn takes us to the edge of biology's latest frontier: our own homes. Every house is a wilderness--from the Egyptian meal moths in our cupboards, to the camel crickets living in the basement, to the antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus waiting on the kitchen counter, thousands of species of insects, bacteria, fungi, and plants live literally under our noses. As we have become increasingly obsessed with cleaning and sterilizing our homes and separating our living spaces from nature, we have unwittingly cultivated an entirely new playground for evolution. Unfortunately, this means that we have created a range of new parasites, from antibiotic-resistant microbes to nearly impossible to kill cockroaches, to threaten ourselves with. At the same time, many of the more helpful organisms--such as microbes that can protect us from autoimmune diseases or promote healthy digestion, or the centipedes that can hunt down those pesky roaches--are caught in the crosshairs. If we're not careful, the "healthier" we try to make our homes, the more likely we'll be putting our own health at risk.A rich natural history and a thrilling scientific investigation, Rob Dunn's Never Home Alone shows us that if are to truly thrive in our homes, we must learn to welcome the unknown guests that have been there the whole time.

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"I don't think there is anyone in the academy these days capable of more patient and attentive reading of the constitutional text than Akhil Amar."--Jeremy Waldron, New York Review of BooksIn The Constitution Today, Akhil Reed Amar, America's preeminent constitutional scholar, considers the biggest and most bitterly contested debates of the last two decades and provides a passionate handbook for thinking constitutionally about today's headlines. Amar shows how the Constitution's text, history, and structure are crucial repositories of collective wisdom, providing specific rules and grand themes relevant to every organ of the American body politic.Prioritizing sound constitutional reasoning over partisan preferences, Amar makes the case for diversity-based affirmative action and a right to have a gun in one's home for self-defense, and the case against spending caps on independent political advertising and bans on same-sex marriage. He explains what's wrong with presidential dynasties, advocates a "nuclear option" to restore majority rule in the Senate, and suggests ways to reform the Supreme Court. And he revisits three dramatic constitutional conflicts--the impeachment of Bill Clinton, the contested election of George W. Bush, and the fight over Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act.Leading readers through the questions at stake in each episode while outlining his abiding views regarding the Constitution's letter, its spirit, and the direction constitutional law must go, Amar offers an essential guide for anyone seeking to understand America's Constitution and its relevance today.

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An irreverent and kaleidoscopic cartoon history of Latino life, culture, and politics, now revised and updated for its twenty-fifth anniversary In Latino USA, Latin American and Latino scholar Ilan Stavans captures the joys, nuances, and multiple dimensions of Latino culture within the context of the English language. Combining the solemnity of so-called serious literature and history with the inherently theatrical and humorous form of comics, this cartoon history of Latinos includes Columbus, the Alamo, Desi Arnaz, West Side Story, Castro, Guevara, the Bay of Pigs, Neruda, the Mariel boatlift, Selena, Sonia Sotomayor, and much more.     To embrace the sweep of Hispanic civilization and its riot of types, archetypes, and stereotypes, Stavans deploys a series of “cliché figurines” as narrators, including a toucan (displayed regularly in books by García Márquez, Allende, and others), the beloved Latin

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"At once erudite and colloquial" (New Yorker), this book provides an accessible introduction to the joys and challenges of poetry In Don't Read Poetry, poet and literary critic Stephanie Burt offers an accessible introduction to the seemingly daunting task of reading, understanding, and appreciating poetry. Burt dispels preconceptions about poetry and explains how poems speak to one another-and how they can speak to our lives. She shows readers how to find more poems once they have some poems they like, and how to connect the poetry of the past to the poetry of the present. Burt moves seamlessly from Shakespeare and other classics to the contemporary poetry circulated on Tumblr and Twitter. She challenges the assumptions that many of us make about "poetry," whether we think we like it or think we don't, in order to help us cherish-and distinguish among-individual poems.A masterful guide to a sometimes confounding genre, Don't Read Poetry will instruct and delight ingénues and cognoscenti alike.

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A New York Times–bestselling astrophysicist and a Nobel laureate take us on 'a mesmerizing exploration' (Jennifer Doudna) to discover how and where the universe breathed itself into life  For a long time, scientists have wondered how life has emerged from inanimate chemistry, and whether Earth is the only place where it exists. Charles Darwin speculated about life on Earth beginning in a warm little pond. Some of his contemporaries believed that life existed on Mars. It once seemed inevitable that the truth would be known by now.    It is not. For more than a century, the origins and extent of life have remained shrouded in mystery. But, as Mario Livio and Jack Szostak reveal in Is Earth Exceptional?, the veil is finally lifting. The authors describe how life’s building blocks—from RNA to amino acids and cells—could have emerged from the chaos of Earth’s early existence. They then apply the knowle

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The remarkable story of how African Americans transformed Atlanta, the former heart of the Confederacy, into today's Black mecca Atlanta is home to some of America's most prominent Black politicians, artists, businesses, and HBCUs. Yet, in 1861, Atlanta was a final contender to be the capital of the Confederacy. Sixty years later, long after the Civil War, it was the Ku Klux Klan's sacred "Imperial City." America's Black Capital chronicles how a center of Black excellence emerged amid virulent expressions of white nationalism, as African Americans pushed back against Confederate ideology to create an extraordinary locus of achievement. What drove them, historian Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar shows, was the belief that Black uplift would be best advanced by forging Black institutions. America's Black Capital is an inspiring story of Black achievement against all odds, with effects that reached far beyond Georgia, shaping the nation's popular culture, public policy, and politics.

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The 'deep and impactful' story of the American stadium (Howard Bryant, author of Full Dissidence)—from the first wooden ballparks to today’s glass and steel mega-arenas—revealing how it has made, and remade, American life. Stadiums are monuments to recreation, sports, and pleasure. Yet from the earliest ballparks to the present, stadiums have also functioned as public squares. Politicians have used them to cultivate loyalty to the status quo, while activists and athletes have used them for anti-fascist rallies, Black Power demonstrations, feminist protests, and much more.   In this book, historian Frank Guridy recounts the contested history of play, protest, and politics in American stadiums. From the beginning, stadiums were political, as elites turned games into celebrations of war, banned women from the press box, and enforced racial segregation. By the 1920s, they also became important sites of protest as activists i

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Evolution has, ever since its inception, been one of the most ideologically fraught fields in all of science. It has given birth to the myth about biological racial “types,” with distinct rankings of “genetic superiority”. Evolution has always been mistrusted by religious fundamentalists, contributing to a rise in creationist education that dovetails with the mass scientific illiteracy we see today. And today the coronavirus is mutating into ever more dangerous strands because huge swaths of the population have rejected the science that predicted this outcome if people remained unvaccinated. With so much fear and misunderstanding, it is crucial to set the record straight. Enter evolutionary biologist Joseph Graves. In A Voice in the Wilderness, he makes the case that widespread understanding of evolution is crucial to solving all these problems. Graves shows how the science of evolution can lead us to new paths of achieving social unity. He refutes common, pseudoscientific misconceptions that undergird racism, homophobia, sexism, classism, and more—all issues on which many perceive evolutionary biology to be a reactionary force. He shows how evolution can either make pandemics better, or—if its lessons are unheeded—worse. And he tackles the political and religious objections to the study of evolution as well. Graves' own experience powers much of the narrative. As a pioneering Black biologist, a leftist, and a Christian, Graves uses his personal story from a child of the Jim Crow south to a major researcher leader in his field to rewrite his field—and show how it can be a force not for reaction, but for justice. Provocative and timely, A Voice in the Wilderness is at once a powerful work of scientific antiracism and a moving history of a trailblazing life.

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Between 250,000 and 500,000 boy soldiers fought in the U.S. Civil War. Many more children were exposed to the war's ravages in their home towns,in Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Columbia, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Harper's Ferry, Richmond, and Vicksburg,and during Sherman's March to the Sea. Based on eyewitness accounts of 120 children, ages four to sixteen, Reluctant Witnesses tells their story of the war: their experience of the hardships they endured and how they managed to cope. Their voices speak of courage and despair, of horror and heroism, and of the bonds of family and community and the powers of faith that helped them survive. Their diaries, letters, and reminiscences are a testimony to the astonishing resiliency in the face of great adversity and their extraordinary capacity to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives. Like children of contemporary wars, these children from the Union and the Confederacy speak to us across centuries without hate but with the stubborn hope that peace might prevail in the end.

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Inspired by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and Bertrand Russell and David Hilbert's pursuit of the fundamental rules of mathematics, some of the most brilliant minds of the generation came together in post-World War I Vienna to present the latest theories in mathematics, science, and philosophy and to build a strong foundation for scientific investigation. Composed of such luminaries as Kurt Gödel and Rudolf Carnap, and stimulated by the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper, the Vienna Circle left an indelible mark on science. Exact Thinking in Demented Times tells the often outrageous, sometimes tragic, and never boring stories of the men who transformed scientific thought. A revealing work of history, this landmark book pays tribute to those who dared to reinvent knowledge from the ground up.

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In 1119, the people of the Near East came together in an epic clash of horses, swords, sand, and blood that would decide the fate of the city of the Aleppo-and the eastern Crusader states. Fought between tribal Turkish warriors on steppe ponies, Arab foot soldiers, Armenian bowmen, and European knights, the battlefield was the amphitheatre into which the people of Eurasia poured their full gladiatorial might. Carrying a piece of the true cross before them, the Frankish army advanced, anticipating a victory that would secure their dominance over the entire region. But the famed Frankish cavalry charge failed them, and the well-arranged battlefield dissolved into a melee. Surrounded by enemy forces, the crusaders suffered a colossal defeat. With their advance in Northern Syria stalled, the momentum of the crusader conquest began to evaporate, and would never be recovered.

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Creativity has long been thought of as an individual gift, best pursued alone; schools, organizations, and whole industries are built on this idea. But what if this most common belief about how creativity works is wrong? In this revised and expanded edition, psychologist Keith Sawyer tears down some of the most popular myths about creativity and erects new principles in their place. He reveals that creativity is always collaborative-even when you're alone. Sawyer draws on compelling stories of inventions and innovations: the inventors of the ATM, the mountain bike, and open source operating systems, among others, to demonstrate the freewheeling ways of true innovation. He shares the results of his own acclaimed research on jazz ensembles, improv groups, and conversation analysis, to show us how to be more creative in collaborative group settings, how to change organizational dynamics for the better, and how to tap into our own reserves of creativity. Now with a new chapter on web-based developments that have made collaboration central to everyone's lives, this revised and updated edition is a must read for anyone seeking to thrive and succeed by tapping into collaborative creativity

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When the US Constitution won widespread popular approval in 1788, it was the culmination of decades of passionate argument about legal and political first principles-a furious debate over the nature of government and the rights and duties of citizens that boiled over into Revolution. But ratification hardly ended America's constitutional conversation. For the next fifty years, both ordinary Americans and statesmen like George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson continued to wrestle with weighty constitutional questions, from the halls of government to the pages of newspapers. Should the nation's borders be pushed beyond its original footprint? Should America allow slavery to spread westward? Where did Indian tribes fit into the picture? Women? Free blacks? What rule should the Constitution's then-weakest branch, led for more than thirty years by Chief Justice John Marshall, play in these resolving such questions? In The Words That Made Us, celebrated Constitutional scholar Akhil Reed Amar tells the story of America's constitutional conversation during its first eighty years-from its birth in 1760 through the 1830s, when the last of America's early leaders died and bequeathed this boisterous and sophisticated conversation to posterity. Amar traces the threads of Constitutional discourse, uniting history and law in a vivid and sweeping narrative that seeks both to reveal this history anew and to make clear who was right and who was wrong on the biggest legal issues confronting early America. Without proper popular understanding of the Constitution, America and the world suffer. In The Words That Made Us, Amar offers an essential history of the Constitution's formative decades and an indispensable guide for anyone seeking to understand America's Constitution and its relevance today.

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Fights about the fate of the state of Israel, and the Zionist movement that gave birth to it, have long been a staple of both Jewish and American political culture. But despite these arguments' significance to American politics, American Jewish life, and to Israel itself, no one has ever systematically examined their history and explained why they matter. In We Are Not One, historian Eric Alterman traces this debate from its nineteenth-century origins. Following Israel's 1948-1949 War of Independence (called the "nakba" or "catastrophe" by Palestinians), few Americans, including few Jews, paid much attention to Israel or the challenges it faced. Following the 1967 Six-Day War, however, almost overnight support for Israel became the primary component of American Jews' collective identity. Over time, Jewish organizations joined forces with conservative Christians and neoconservative pundits and politicos to wage a tenacious fight to define Israel's image in the US media, popular culture, Congress, and college campuses. Deeply researched, We Are Not One reveals how our consensus on Israel and Palestine emerged and why, today, it is fracturing.

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