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"At 35, Elsie Robinson feared she'd lost it all. She was reeling from a hostile divorce to a wealthy man that played out in tabloids across the country and she faced an uncertain future as the single mother of a chronically-ill son. She had no clear means of financial support, no college education or training. She'd hit a wall. At a time when it was thought that a woman's highest calling was to become a wife and mother, Elsie hungered for a different kind of life. She dreamed of becoming a professional writer and sacrificed everything in pursuit of a career in letters, going so far as to work a California gold mine to pay the bills. Through it all, she wrote-everything from features to essays to fiction. When the mine shut down, she moved to San Francisco in 1918-at the tail end of a world war and an influenza pandemic. Borrowing money to buy a pen and paper, she created a mock-up for a children's column, then barged into the Oakland Tribune to thrust it into the hands of the managing editor. He hired her on the spot. From there, her popular children's column led to a nationally-syndicated column for adults that ran six days a week for more than 30 years and had 50 million readers. She became the highest-paid female columnist employed by William Randolph Hearst, who personally edited her copy and negotiated her contracts. Told with drama and cinematic detail by bestselling author Julia Scheeres and award-winning journalist Allison Gilbert, Listen, World! is the first biography of this indefatigable woman, capturing what it means to take a gamble on happiness, stumble a few times, and ultimately land on your feet"--

A mathematician reveals the hidden beauty, power, and—yes—fun of algebra  What comes to mind when you think about algebra? For many of us, it’s memories of dull or frustrating classes in high school. Award-winning mathematics professor G. Arnell Williams is here to change that. Algebra the Beautiful is a journey into the heart of fundamental math that proves just how amazing this subject really is.  Drawing on lessons from twenty-five years of teaching mathematics, Williams blends metaphor, history, and storytelling to uncover algebra’s hidden grandeur. Whether you’re a teacher looking to make math come alive for your students, a parent hoping to get your children engaged, a student trying to come to terms with a sometimes bewildering subject, or just a lover of mathematics, this book has something for you. With a passion that’s contagious, G. Arnell Williams shows how each of us can grasp the beauty and harmony of algebra.

A revisionist history of medicine, in which blood plays the starring role

The riveting true story of an enslaved woman who liberated herself, her children, and a notorious jail for enslaved people in the Confederacy's capital, transforming the property into one of the nation's first HBCUs.

A bold new history of the origins and aftermath of the Texas Revolution, revealing how Indians, Mexicans, and Americans battled for survival in one of the continent's most diverse regions

A leading educational thinker argues that the American university is stuck in the past--and shows how we can revolutionize it to prepare students for our age of constant change

For centuries humankind has fantasized about life on Mars, whether its intelligent Martian life invading our planet (immortalized in H.G. Wellss The War of the Worlds) or humanity colonizing Mars (the late Ray Bradburys The Martian Chronicles). The Red Planets proximity and likeness to Earth make it a magnet for our collective imagination. Yet the question of whether life exists on Marsor has ever existed thereremains an open one. Science has not caught up to science fictionat least not yet.This summer we will be one step closer to finding the answer. On August 5th, Curiositya one-ton, Mini Cooper-sized nuclear-powered roveris scheduled to land on Mars, with the primary mission of determining whether the red planet has ever been physically capable of supporting life. In Getting to Mars, Roger Wiens, the principal investigator for the ChemCam instrument on the roverthe main tool for measuring Marss past habitabilitywill tell the unlikely story of the development of this payload and rover now blasting towards a planet 354 million miles from Earth.ChemCam (short for Chemistry and Camera) is an instrument onboard the Curiosity designed to vaporize and measure the chemical makeup of Martian rocks. Different elements give off uniquely colored light when zapped with a laser; the light is then read by the instruments spectrometer and identified. The idea is to use ChemCam to detect life-supporting elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen to evaluate whether conditions on Mars have ever been favorable for microbial life.This is not only an inside story about sending fantastic lasers to Mars, however. Its the story of a new era in space exploration. Starting with NASAs introduction of the Discovery Program in 1992, smaller, scrappier, more nimble missions won out as behemoth manned projects went extinct. This strategic shift presented huge opportunitiesbut also presented huge risks for shutdown and failure. And as Wiens recounts, his project came close to being closed down on numerous occasions. Getting to Mars is the inspiring account of how Wiens and his team overcame incredible challengeslogistical, financial, and politicalto successfully launch a rover in an effort to answer the eternal question: is there life on Mars?

Hofstadters collection of quirky essays is unified by its primary concern: to examine the way people perceive and think.

A leading historian argues that Johnny Cash was the most important political artist of his time

An acclaimed expert on race and gender illuminates the distinctive role that white women play in perpetuating racism, as well as the distinctive role they can play in dismantling it.

How military technology has transformed the world

In this insightful book, an underwater archaeologist and survival coach shows how understanding the collapse of civilizations can help us prepare for a troubled future.

Do antidepressants work? Of courseeveryone knows it. Like his colleagues, Irving Kirsch, a researcher and clinical psychologist, for years referred patients to psychiatrists to have their depression treated with drugs before deciding to investigate for himself just how effective the drugs actually were. Over the course of the past fifteen years, however, Kirschs researcha thorough analysis of decades of Food and Drug Administration datahas demonstrated that what everyone knew about antidepressants was wrong. Instead of treating depression with drugs, weve been treating it with suggestion.The Emperors New Drugs makes an overwhelming case that what had seemed a cornerstone of psychiatric treatment is little more than a faulty consensus. But Kirsch does more than just criticize: he offers a path society can follow so that we stop popping pills and start proper treatment for depression.

Europe, 19001914: a world adrift, a pulsating era of creativity and contradictions. The major topics of the day: terrorism, globalization, immigration, consumerism, the collapse of moral values, and the rivalry of superpowers. The twentieth century was not born in the trenches of the Somme or Passchendaelebut rather in the fifteen vertiginous years preceding World War I.In this short span of time, a new world order was emerging in ultimately tragic contradiction to the old. These were the years in which the political and personal repercussions of the Industrial Revolution were felt worldwide: Cities grew like never before as people fled the countryside and their traditional identities; science created new possibilities as well as nightmares; education changed the outlook of millions of people; mass-produced items transformed daily life; industrial laborers demanded a share of political power; and women sought to change their place in societyas well as the very fabric of sexual relations.From the tremendous hope for a new century embodied in the 1900 Worlds Fair in Paris to the shattering assassination of a Habsburg archduke in Sarajevo in 1914, historian Philipp Blom chronicles this extraordinary epoch year by year. Prime Ministers and peasants, anarchists and actresses, scientists and psychopaths intermingle on the stage of a new century in this portrait of an opulent, unstable age on the brink of disaster.Beautifully written and replete with deftly told anecdotes, The Vertigo Years brings the wonders, horrors, and fears of the early twentieth century vividly to life.

A 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 ones

Inspired by insights gained on the International Space Station, a NASA astronaut offers essential lessons to empower earthbound readers to fight climate change.

A superstar historian offers "the most comprehensive account of the GOP and its competing impulses," (Los Angeles Times) - now updated to cover Donald Trump's presidency

Thomas Sowell's incisive critique of the intellectuals' destructive role in shaping ideas about race in AmericaIntellectuals and Race is a radical book in the original sense of one that goes to the root of the problem. The role of intellectuals in racial strife is explored in an international context that puts the American experience in a wholly new light. The views of individual intellectuals have spanned the spectrum, but the views of intellectuals as a whole have tended to cluster. Indeed, these views have clustered at one end of the spectrum in the early twentieth century and then clustered at the opposite end of the spectrum in the late twentieth century. Moreover, these radically different views of race in these two eras were held by intellectuals whose views on other issues were very similar in both eras.Intellectuals and Race is not, however, a book about history, even though it has much historical evidence, as well as demographic, geographic, economic and statistical evidence-- all of it directed toward testing the underlying assumptions about race that have prevailed at times among intellectuals in general, and especially intellectuals at the highest levels. Nor is this simply a theoretical exercise. The impact of intellectuals' ideas and crusades on the larger society, both past and present, is the ultimate concern. These ideas and crusades have ranged widely from racial theories of intelligence to eugenics to "e;social justice"e; and multiculturalism. In addition to in-depth examinations of these and other issues, Intellectuals and Race explores the incentives, the visions and the rationales that drive intellectuals at the highest levels to conclusions that have often turned out to be counterproductive and even disastrous, not only for particular racial or ethnic groups, but for societies as a whole.

A major reassessment of one of the most important-and complex-political figures of the modern age

A panoramic survey of the interactions between American business and public policy, from J.P. Morgan to Lee Iacocca.

These pieces reflect the hardships faced by African Americans. Through allegorical stories and fictional encounters, dreams and dialogues, they present new perspectives on issues that concern Blacks. With a theme of Christian love, they offer African Americans hope in a racist world.

This bold book breaks new ground by making explicit and coherent the theoretical underpinnings of feminist therapy

Thoroughly revised and updated, this edition covers important new developments in the field, including the emergence of Critical Incident Stress Debriefing Teams, which help emergency service personnel survive the impact of critical incident stress. This edition also addresses the psychological aspects of proactive police work.

A noted feminist psychologist takes a fascinating look at the lived and ordinary experience of women to present the first psychology of women that integrates all aspects of experience, from the physical to the sociocultural.

With the publication of Running on Ritalin in 1998, Dr. Lawrence Diller established himself as the country's leading expert on the use of psychiatric drugs to treat children. Since then, parents have clamored for his expertise on psychological problems beyond ADD, drugs beyond Ritalin, and, most important, how to decide whether or not drugs really are the best option for their children. More and more parents are asking the simple question: Should I medicate my child? In this authoritative and plainspoken book, which features a detailed, easy-to-access "e;Quick Guide to Psychiatric Drugs,"e; Dr. Diller gives parents the tools they need to regain faith in their own judgment and make wise choices for their children.

"Why do so many smart, career-oriented, even ardently feminist women end up with nearly sole responsibility for running their households and raising their children? Why does it happen even in couples w"

ed by a host of "unknown others" in the militia movements of rural America.