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Before the First World War, enthusiasm for a borderless world reached its height. International travel, migration, trade and progressive projects on matters ranging from women's rights to world peace reached a crescendo. Yet in the same breath, an undercurrent of reaction was growing, one that would surge ahead with the outbreak of war and its aftermath.In Against the World, a sweeping and ambitious work of history, acclaimed scholar Tara Zahra examines how nationalism, rather than internationalism, came to ensnare world politics in the early twentieth century. The air went out of the globalist balloon with the First World War as quotas were put on immigration and tariffs on trade, not only in the United States but across Europe, where war and disease led to mass societal upheaval. The "Spanish flu" heightened anxieties about porous national boundaries. The global impact of the 1929 economic crash and the Great Depression amplified a quest for food security in Europe and economic autonomy worldwide. Demands for relief from the instability and inequality linked to globalisation forged democracies and dictatorships alike, from Gandhi's India to America's New Deal and Hitler's Third Reich. Immigration restrictions, racially constituted notions of citizenship, anti-Semitism and violent outbursts of hatred of the "other" became the norm-coming to genocidal fruition in the Second World War.Millions across the political spectrum sought refuge from the imagined and real threats of the global economy in ways strikingly reminiscent of our contemporary political moment: new movements emerged focused on homegrown and local foods, domestically produced Hardbacking and other goods, and back-to-the-land communities. Rich with astonishing detail gleaned from Zahra's unparalleled archival research in five languages, Against the World is a poignant and thorough exhumation of the popular sources of resistance to globalisation. With anti-globalism a major tenet of today's extremist agendas, Zahra's arrestingly clearsighted and wide-angled account is essential reading to grapple with our divided present.

Over twelve novels and two collections Lydia Millet has emerged as a major American novelist. Hailed as "a writer without limits" (Karen Russell) and "a stone-cold genius" (Jenny Offill), Millet makes fiction that vividly evokes the ties between people and other animals and the crisis of extinction.Her exquisite new novel is the story of a man named Gil who walks from New York to Arizona to recover from a failed love. After he arrives, new neighbours move into the glass-walled house next door and his life begins to mesh with theirs. In this warmly textured, drily funny and philosophical account of Gil's unexpected devotion to the family, Millet explores the uncanny territory where the self ends and community begins-what one person can do in a world beset by emergencies.Dinosaurs is both sharp-edged and tender, an emotionally moving, intellectually resonant novel that asks: In the shadow of existential threat, where does hope live?

Five mysterious billionaires summoned Douglas Rushkoff to a desert resort for a private talk. The subject? How to survive the "Event": the societal collapse they know is coming. Rushkoff argues that these men were under the influence of The Mindset, a Silicon Valley-style certainty that they and their cohort can escape a disaster of their own making-as long as they have enough money and the right technology.Rushkoff traces the origins of The Mindset in science and technology through its current expression in missions to Mars, island bunkers, AI futurism, and the metaverse. Through fascinating characters-master programmers who want to remake the world as if redesigning a video game and bankers who return from Burning Man convinced incentivized capitalism will prevent environmental disasters-Rushkoff explains why those with the most power to change the world have no interest in doing so. He argues that the only way to survive the coming catastrophe is to ensure it doesn't happen by rediscovering community, mutual aid, and human interdependency.Anticipating the mass layoffs and institutional collapse that have recently rocked Silicon Valley, Rushkoff's Survival of the Richest is "a necessary and timely read" (Los Angeles Review of Books) with a prophetic message about the future of tech and our human community.

Sylvia Plath is an object of enduring cultural fascination-the troubled patron saint of confessional poetry, a writer whose genius is buried under the weight of her status as the quintessential literary sad girl. Emily Van Duyne-a superfan and scholar-radically reimagines the last years of Plath's life, confronts her suicide and the construction of her legacy. Drawing from decades of study on Plath and her husband, Ted Hughes, the chief architect of Plath's mythology; the life and tragic suicide of Assia Wevill, Hughes's mistress; newly available archival materials; and a deep understanding of intimate partner violence, Van Duyne seeks to undo the silencing of Sylvia Plath and resuscitate her as the hardworking, brilliant writer she was.

Discover the delicious world of white wine with profiles of all the must-know varieties and styles, from Albariño to Viognier, and dive deep into popular favourites, such as Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc. Peppered with engaging facts and figures, each chapter surveys one grape or style, featuring all-inclusive at-a-glance information that tells you what to expect in the glass, suggested food pairings and recommended wines, from cheerful bargains to worthy splurges. Detailed essays offer capsule histories of each variety or style, including its origins, favoured growing conditions, notable countries that produce it and typical characteristics. Winemakers and other industry experts share their wisdom alongside gorgeous photography that brings the regions, vineyards, grapes and bottles vividly to life. Complete with a handy checklist to track the delectable wines that you taste, White Wine is the perfect resource to help you enjoy the best white wines in the world.

With Germany in the World, award-winning historian David Blackbourn radically revises conventional narratives of German history, demonstrating the existence of a distinctly German presence in the world centuries before its unification-and revealing a national identity far more complicated than previously imagined. Blackbourn traces Germany's evolution from the loosely bound Holy Roman Empire of 1500 to a sprawling colonial power to a twenty-first-century beacon of democracy. Viewed through a global lens, familiar landmarks of German history-the Reformation, the Revolution of 1848, the Nazi regime-are transformed, while others are unearthed and explored, as Blackbourn reveals Germany's leading role in creating modern universities and its sinister involvement in slave-trade economies. A global history for a global age, Germany in the World is a bold and original account that upends the idea that a nation's history should be written as though it took place entirely within that nation's borders.

On a cold October night in 1942, SS guards at Sachsenhausen violently disbanded a rehearsal of a secret Jewish choir led by conductor Rosebery d'Arguto. Only one of its members survived the Holocaust. Yet their story survives, thanks to Aleksander Kulisiewicz. An amateur musician, he was not Jewish but struck up an unlikely friendship with d'Arguto in Sachsenhausen. D'Arguto tasked him with a mission: to save the musical heritage of the victims of the Nazi camps.In Sing, Memory, Makana Eyre recounts Kulisiewicz's extraordinary transformation from a Polish nationalist into a guardian of music and culture from the Nazi camps. Aided by an eidetic memory, Kulisiewicz preserved for posterity not only his own songs about life at the camp, but the music and poetry of dozens of other prisoners. Drawing on extensive archival research, Eyre tells this rich and affecting human story of musical resistance to the Nazi regime in full for the first time.

This NEW reader provides a more diverse selection of philosophers and ethical issues than any other book of its kind. Used on its own or as a companion to Jonathan Wolff's An Introduction to Moral Philosophy, it offers an ideal collection of important readings in moral theory and compelling issues in applied ethics. Smart pedagogy and an affordable price make it an outstanding value for students.

Known to his contemporaries primarily as an art critic, but ambitious to secure a more lasting literary legacy, Charles Baudelaire, a Parisian bohemian, spent much of the 1840s composing gritty, often perverse, poems that expressed his disgust with the banality of modern city life.First published in 1857, the book that collected these poems together, Les Fleurs du mal, was an instant sensation-earning Baudelaire plaudits and, simultaneously, disrepute. Only a year after Gustave Flaubert had endured his own public trial for published indecency (for Madame Bovary), a French court declared Les Fleurs du mal an offense against public morals and six poems within it were immediately suppressed (a ruling that would not be reversed until 1949, nearly a century after Baudelaire's untimely death). Subsequent editions expanded on the original, including new poems that have since been recognized as Baudelaire's masterpieces, producing a body of work that stands as the most consequential, controversial and influential book of poetry from the nineteenth century.Acclaimed translator and poet Aaron Poochigian tackles this revolutionary text with an ear attuned to Baudelaire's lyrical innovations-rendering them in "an assertive blend of full and slant rhymes and fluent iambs" (A. E. Stallings)-and an intuitive feel for the work's dark and brooding mood. Poochigian's version captures the incantatory, almost magical, effect of the original-reanimating for today's reader Baudelaire's "unfailing vision" that "trumpeted the space and light of the future" (Patti Smith).An introduction by Dana Gioia offers a probing reassessment of the supreme artistry of Baudelaire's masterpiece, and an afterword by Daniel Handler explores its continued relevance and appeal. Featuring the poems in English and French, this deluxe dual-language edition allows readers to commune both with the original poems and with these electric, revelatory translations.

For decades now, Adam Gopnik has been one of our most beloved writers, a brilliantly perceptive critic of art, food, France, and more. But recently, he became obsessed by a more fundamental matter, one he had often meditated on in The New Yorker: How do masters learn their miraculous skill, whether it was drawing a museum-ready nude or baking a perfect sourdough loaf? How could anyone become so good at anything? There seemed to be a fundamental mystery to mastery. Was it possible to unravel it?In The Real Work-the term magicians use for the accumulated craft that makes for a great trick-Gopnik becomes a dedicated student of several masters of their craft: a classical painter, a boxer, a dancing instructor, a driving instructor, and others. Rejecting self-help bromides and bullet points, he nevertheless shows that the top people in any field share a set of common qualities and methods. For one, their mastery is always a process of breaking down and building up-of identifying and perfecting the small constituent parts of a skill and the combining them for an overall effect greater than the sum of those parts. For another, mastery almost always involves intentional imperfection-as in music, where vibrato, a way of not quite landing on the right note, carries maximum expressiveness. Gopnik's simplest and most invigorating lesson, however, is that we are surrounded by mastery. Far from rare, mastery is commonplace, if we only know where to look: from the parent who can whip up a professional strudel to the social worker who-in one of the most personally revealing passages Gopnik has ever written-helps him master his own demons.Spirited and profound, The Real Work will help you understand how mastery can happen in your own life-and, significantly, why each of us relentlessly seeks to better ourselves in the first place.

Punching Bag is the compelling true story of a high school career defined by poverty and punctuated by outbreaks of domestic abuse. Rex Ogle, who brilliantly mapped his experience of hunger in Free Lunch, here describes his struggle to survive; reflects on his complex, often paradoxical relationship with his passionate, fierce mother; and charts the trajectory of his stepfather's anger. Hovering over Rex's story is the talismanic presence of his unborn baby sister.Through it all, Rex threads moments of grace and humour that act as beacons of light in the darkness. Compulsively readable, beautifully crafted and authentically told, Punching Bag is a remarkable memoir about one teenager's cycle of violence, blame and attempts to forgive his parents-and himself.

Checkers, backgammon, chess and Go. Poker, Scrabble and bridge. These seven games, ancient and modern, fascinate millions of people worldwide. In Seven Games, Oliver Roeder charts their origins and historical importance, the delightful arcana of their rules and the ways their design makes them pleasurable.Roeder introduces thrilling competitors, such as evangelical minister Marion Tinsley, who across fourty years lost only three games of checkers; Shusai, the Master, the last Go champion of imperial Japan, defending tradition against "modern rationalism" and an IBM engineer who created a backgammon programme so capable at self-learning that NASA used it on the space shuttle. He delves into the history and lore of each game: backgammon boards in ancient Egypt; the Indian origins of chess; how certain shells from a particular beach in Japan make the finest white Go stones.Beyond the cultural and personal stories, Roeder explores why games, seemingly trivial pastimes, speak so deeply to the human soul. He introduces an early philosopher of games, the aptly named Bernard Suits and visits an Oxford cosmologist who has perfected a computer that can effectively play bridge, a game as complicated as human language itself.Throughout, Roeder tells the compelling story of how humans, pursuing scientific glory and competitive advantage, have invented AI programmes better than any human player and what that means for the games-and for us. Funny, fascinating and profound, Seven Games is a story of obsession, psychology, history and how play makes us human.

In Three Dangerous Men, defense expert Seth Jones argues that the US is woefully unprepared for the future of global competition. While America has focused on building fighter jets, missiles, and conventional warfighting capabilities, its three principal rivals-Russia, Iran, and China-have increasingly adopted irregular warfare: cyber attacks, the use of proxy forces, propaganda, espionage, and disinformation to undermine American power.Jones profiles three pioneers of irregular warfare in Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran who adapted American techniques and made huge gains without waging traditional warfare: Russian Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov; the deceased Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani; and vice chairman of China's Central Military Commission Zhang Youxia. Each has spent his career studying American power and devised techniques to avoid a conventional or nuclear war with the US. Gerasimov helped oversee a resurgence of Russian irregular warfare, which included attempts to undermine the 2016 and 2020 US presidential elections and the SolarWinds cyber attack. Soleimani was so effective in expanding Iranian power in the Middle East that Washington targeted him for assassination. Zhang Youxia presents the most alarming challenge because China has more power and potential at its disposal.Drawing on interviews with dozens of US military, diplomatic, and intelligence officials, as well as hundreds of documents translated from Russian, Farsi, and Mandarin, Jones shows how America's rivals have bloodied its reputation and seized territory worldwide. Instead of standing up to autocratic regimes, Jones demonstrates that the United States has largely abandoned the kind of information, special operations, intelligence, and economic and diplomatic action that helped win the Cold War.In a powerful conclusion, Jones details the key steps the United States must take to alter how it thinks about-and engages in-competition before it is too late.

December 1803: A French invasion fleet is poised to cross the Channel and storm the beaches of southern England. A member of Napoleon's inner circle-disaffected by Napoleon's creeping tyranny-contacts the British naval intelligence service in hopes of defecting to London. His escape plan calls for a rendezvous at an international chess tournament in Frankfurt-a rare opportunity for him to travel outside France. Naval intelligence sends its top man-and best chess player-Captain Thomas Grey, to orchestrate the Frenchman's escape to England. But Grey's mission changes dramatically when the defector demands that his pro-Napoleon daughter come with him-expecting Grey to act not just as escort but kidnapper.The second novel in J. H Gelernter's already lauded Captain Grey series, Captain Grey's Gambit continues a story that is "smart, fast, twisty, and dangerous" (Lee Child) in a "richly imagined early nineteenth-century world" (Richard Snow).

A camera obscura reflects the world back but dimmer and inverted. Similarly, science has long viewed woman through a warped lens, one focused narrowly on her capacity for reproduction. As a result, there exists a vast knowledge gap when it comes to what we know about half of the bodies on the planet.That is finally changing. Today, a new generation of researchers is turning its gaze to the organs traditionally bound up in baby-making-the uterus, ovaries and vagina-and illuminating them as part of a dynamic, resilient and ever-changing whole. Welcome to Vagina Obscura, an odyssey into a woman's body from a fresh perspective, ushering in a whole new cast of characters.In Boston, a pair of biologists are growing artificial ovaries to counter the cascading health effects of menopause. In Melbourne, a urologist remaps the clitoris to fill in crucial gaps in female sexual anatomy. Given unparalleled access to labs and the latest research, journalist Rachel E. Gross takes readers on a scientific journey to the centre of a wonderous world where the uterus regrows itself, ovaries pump out fresh eggs and the clitoris pulses beneath the surface like a shimmering pyramid of nerves.This paradigm shift is made possible by the growing understanding that sex and gender are not binary; we all share the same universal body plan and origin in the womb. That's why insights into the vaginal microbiome, ovarian stem cells and the biology of menstruation don't mean only a better understanding of female bodies, but a better understanding of male, non-binary, transgender and intersex bodies-in other words, all bodies.By turns funny, lyrical, incisive and shocking, Vagina Obscura is a powerful testament to how the landscape of human knowledge can be rewritten to better serve everyone.

From ants scurrying under leaf litter to bees able to fly higher than Mount Kilimanjaro, insects are everywhere. Three out of every four of our planet's known animal species are insects. In The Insect Crisis, acclaimed journalist Oliver Milman dives into the torrent of recent evidence that suggests this kaleidoscopic group of creatures is suffering the greatest existential crisis in its remarkable 400-million-year history. What is causing the collapse of the insect world?  Why does this alarming decline pose such a threat to us? And what can be done to stem the loss of the miniature empires that hold aloft life as we know it?With urgency and great clarity, Milman explores this hidden emergency, arguing that its consequences could even rival climate change. He joins the scientists tracking the decline of insect populations across the globe, including the soaring mountains of Mexico that host an epic, yet dwindling, migration of monarch butterflies; the verdant countryside of England that has been emptied of insect life; the gargantuan fields of U.S. agriculture that have proved a killing ground for bees; and an offbeat experiment in Denmark that shows there aren't that many bugs splattering into your car windshield these days. These losses not only further tear at the tapestry of life on our degraded planet; they imperil everything we hold dear, from the food on our supermarket shelves to the medicines in our cabinets to the riot of nature that thrills and enlivens us. Even insects we may dread, including the hated cockroach, or the stinging wasp, play crucial ecological roles, and their decline would profoundly shape our own story.By connecting butterfly and bee, moth and beetle from across the globe, the full scope of loss renders a portrait of a crisis that threatens to upend the workings of our collective history. Part warning, part celebration of the incredible variety of insects, The Insect Crisis is a wake-up call for us all.

When her twenty-five-year marriage suddenly falls apart, journalist Florence Williams expects the loss to hurt. But when she starts feeling physically sick, losing weight and sleep, she sets out in pursuit of rational explanation. She travels to the frontiers of the science of "social pain" to learn why heartbreak hurts so much-and why so much of the conventional wisdom about it is wrong.Soon Williams finds herself on a surprising path that leads her from neurogenomic research laboratories to trying MDMA in a Portland therapist's living room, from divorce workshops to the mountains and rivers that restore her. She tests her blood for genetic markers of grief, undergoes electrical shocks while looking at pictures of her ex, and discovers that our immune cells listen to loneliness. Searching for insight as well as personal strategies to game her way back to health, she seeks out new relationships and ventures into the wilderness in search of an extraordinary antidote: awe.With warmth, daring, wit, and candor, Williams offers a gripping account of grief and healing. Heartbreak is a remarkable merging of science and self-discovery that will change the way we think about loneliness, health, and what it means to fall in and out of love.

As the sun lowered in the sky one Friday afternoon in April 2006, acclaimed author Donald Antrim found himself on the roof of his Brooklyn apartment building, afraid for his life. In this moving memoir, Antrim vividly recounts what led him to the roof and what happened after he came back down: two hospitalizations, weeks of fruitless clinical trials, the terror of submitting to ECT-and the saving call from David Foster Wallace that convinced him to try it-as well as years of fitful recovery and setback.Through a clear and haunting reckoning with the author's own story, One Friday in April confronts the limits of our understanding of suicide. Donald Antrim's personal insights reframe suicide-whether in thought or in action-as an illness in its own right, a unique consequence of trauma and personal isolation, rather than the choice of a depressed person.A necessary companion to William Styron's classic? Darkness Visible, this profound, insightful work sheds light on the tragedy and mystery of suicide, offering solace that may save lives.

James Watson and Francis Crick's 1953 discovery of the double helix structure of DNA is the foundation of virtually every advance in our modern understanding of genetics and molecular biology. But how did Watson and Crick do it-and why were they the ones who succeeded?In truth, the discovery of DNA's structure is the story of five towering minds in pursuit of the advancement of science, and for almost all of them, the prospect of fame and immortality: Watson, Crick, Rosalind Franklin, Maurice Wilkins, and Linus Pauling. Each was fascinating and brilliant, with strong personalities that often clashed. Howard Markel skillfully re-creates the intense intellectual journey, and fraught personal relationships, that ultimately led to a spectacular breakthrough. But it is Rosalind Franklin-fiercely determined, relentless, and an outsider at Cambridge and the University of London in the 1950s, as the lone Jewish woman among young male scientists-who becomes a focal point for Markel.The Secret of Life is a story of genius and perseverance, but also a saga of cronyism, misogyny, anti-Semitism, and misconduct. Drawing on voluminous archival research, including interviews with James Watson and with Franklin's sister, Jenifer Glynn, Markel provides a fascinating look at how science is done, how reputations are undone, and how history is written, and revised.A vibrant evocation of Cambridge in the 1950s, Markel also provides colorful depictions of Watson and Crick-their competitiveness, idiosyncrasies, and youthful immaturity-and compelling portraits of Wilkins, Pauling, and most cogently, Rosalind Franklin. The Secret of Life is a lively and sweeping narrative of this landmark discovery, one that finally gives the woman at the center of this drama her due.

Five stunningly large forests remain on Earth: the Taiga, extending from the Pacific Ocean across all of Russia and far-northern Europe; the North American boreal, ranging from Alaska's Bering seacoast to Canada's Atlantic shore; the Amazon, covering almost the entirety of South America's bulge; the Congo, occupying parts of six nations in Africa's wet equatorial middle; and the island forest of New Guinea, twice the size of California.These mega forests are vital to preserving global biodiversity, thousands of cultures and a stable climate, as economist John W. Reid and celebrated biologist Thomas E. Lovejoy argue convincingly in Ever Green. Mega forests serve an essential role in decarbonising the atmosphere-the boreal alone holds 1.8 trillion metric tons of carbon in its deep soils and peat layers, 190 years' worth of global emissions at 2019 levels-and saving them is the most immediate and affordable large-scale solution to our planet's most formidable ongoing crisis.Reid and Lovejoy offer practical solutions to address the biggest challenges these forests face, from vastly expanding protected areas, to supporting Indigenous forest stewards, to planning smarter road networks. In gorgeous prose that evokes the majesty of these ancient forests along with the people and animals who inhabit them, Reid and Lovejoy take us on an exhilarating global journey.

In Different, world-renowned primatologist Frans de Waal draws on decades of observation and studies of both human and animal behavior to argue that despite the linkage between gender and biological sex, biology does not automatically support the traditional gender roles in human societies. While humans and other primates do share some behavioral differences, biology offers no justification for existing gender inequalities.Using chimpanzees and bonobos to illustrate this point-two ape relatives that are genetically equally close to humans-de Waal challenges widely held beliefs about masculinity and femininity, and common assumptions about authority, leadership, cooperation, competition, filial bonds, and sexual behavior. Chimpanzees are male-dominated and violent, while bonobos are female-dominated and peaceful. In both species, political power needs to be distinguished from physical dominance. Power is not limited to the males, and both sexes show true leadership capacities.Different is a fresh and thought-provoking approach to the long-running debate about the balance between nature and nurture, and where sex and gender roles fit in. De Waal peppers his discussion with details from his own life-a Dutch childhood in a family of six boys, his marriage to a French woman with a different orientation toward gender, and decades of academic turf wars over outdated scientific theories that have proven hard to dislodge from public discourse. He discusses sexual orientation, gender identity, and the limitations of the gender binary, exceptions to which are also found in other primates.With humor, clarity, and compassion, Different seeks to broaden the conversation about human gender dynamics by promoting an inclusive model that embraces differences, rather than negating them.

Scholars and laymen alike have long projected their fantasies onto the great expanse of the global North, whether it be as a frozen no-man's-land, an icy realm of marauding Vikings, or an unspoiled cradle of prehistoric human life. Bernd Brunner reconstructs the encounters of adventurers, colonists, and indigenous communities that led to the creation of a northern "cabinet of wonders" and imbued Scandinavia, Iceland, and the Arctic with a perennial mystique.Like the mythological sagas that inspired everyone from Wagner to Tolkien, Extreme North explores both the dramatic vistas of the Scandinavian fjords and the murky depths of a Western psyche obsessed with Nordic whiteness. In concise but thoroughly researched chapters, Brunner highlights the cultural and political fictions at play from the first "discoveries" of northern landscapes and stories, to the eugenicist elevation of the "Nordic" phenotype (which in turn influenced America's limits on immigration), to the idealization of Scandinavian social democracy as a post-racial utopia. Brunner traces how crackpot Nazi philosophies that tied the "Aryan race" to the upper latitudes have influenced modern pseudoscientific fantasies of racial and cultural superiority the world over.The North, Brunner argues, was as much invented as discovered. Full of glittering details embedded in vivid storytelling, Extreme North is a fascinating romp through both actual encounters and popular imaginings, and a disturbing reminder of the power of fantasy to shape the world we live in.

In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, discover an island where they can make a life together. Over a century later, the Honeys' descendants and a diverse group of neighbors are desperately poor, isolated, and often hungry, but nevertheless protected from the hostility awaiting them on the mainland.During the tumultuous summer of 1912, Matthew Diamond, a retired, idealistic but prejudiced schoolteacher-turned-missionary, disrupts the community's fragile balance through his efforts to educate its children. His presence attracts the attention of authorities on the mainland who, under the influence of the eugenics-thinking popular among progressives of the day, decide to forcibly evacuate the island, institutionalize its residents, and develop the island as a vacation destination. Beginning with a hurricane flood reminiscent of the story of Noah's Ark, the novel ends with yet another Ark.In prose of breathtaking beauty and power, Paul Harding brings to life an unforgettable cast of characters: Iris and Violet McDermott, sisters raising three orphaned Penobscot children; Theophilus and Candace Larks and their brood of vagabond children; the prophetic Zachary Hand to God Proverbs, a Civil War veteran who lives in a hollow tree; and more. A spellbinding story of resistance and survival, This Other Eden is an enduring testament to the struggle to preserve human dignity in the face of intolerance and injustice.

If you've ever felt ineffective, invisible or inarticulate, chances are you weren't actually any of those things. Those feelings may instead have been the result of a lack of awareness we all seem to have for how our words, actions and even our mere presence affect other people.In You Have More Influence Than You Think social psychologist Vanessa Bohns draws from her original research to illustrate why we fail to recognise the influence we have, and how that lack of awareness can lead us to miss opportunities or accidentally misuse our power.Weaving together compelling stories with cutting edge science, Bohns answers the questions we all want to know (but may be afraid to ask): How much did she take to heart what I said earlier? Do they know they can push back on my suggestions? Did he notice whether I was there today? Will they agree to help me if I ask?Whether attending a meeting, sharing a post online or mustering the nerve to ask for a favour, we often assume our actions, input and requests will be overlooked or rejected. Bohns and her work demonstrate that people see us, listen to us and agree to do things for us much more than we realise-for better, and worse.You Have More Influence Than You Think offers science-based strategies for observing the effect we have on others, reconsidering our fear of rejection and even, sometimes, pulling back to use our influence less. It is a call to stop searching for ways to gain influence you don't have and to start recognising the influence you don't realise you already have.

From facial recognition-capable of checking us onto flights or identifying undocumented residents-to automated decision systems that inform everything from who gets loans to who receives bail, each of us moves through a world determined by data-empowered algorithms. But these technologies didn't just appear: they are part of a history that goes back centuries, from the birth of eugenics in Victorian Britain to the development of Google search.Expanding on the popular course they created at Columbia University, Chris Wiggins and Matthew Jones illuminate the ways in which data has long been used as a tool and a weapon in arguing for what is true, as well as a means of rearranging or defending power. By understanding the trajectory of data-where it has been and where it might yet go-Wiggins and Jones argue that we can understand how to bend it to ends that we collectively choose, with intentionality and purpose.

What good are the arts? Why should we care about the past? For millennia, humanity has sought to understand and transmit to future generations not just the "know-how" of life, but the "know-why"-the meaning and purpose of our existence, as expressed in art, architecture, religion, and philosophy. This crucial passing down of knowledge has required the radical integration of insights from the past and from other cultures. In Culture, acclaimed author, professor, and public intellectual Martin Puchner takes us on a breakneck tour through pivotal moments in world history, providing a global introduction to the arts and humanities in one engaging volume.From Nefertiti's lost city to the plays of Wole Soyinka; from the theaters of ancient Greece to Chinese travel journals to Arab and Aztec libraries; from a South Asian statuette found at Pompeii to a time capsule left behind on the Moon, Puchner tells the gripping story of human achievement through our collective losses and rediscoveries, power plays and heroic journeys, innovations, imitations, and appropriations. More than a work of history, Culture is an archive of humanity's most monumental junctures and a guidebook for the future of us humans as a creative species. Witty, erudite, and full of wonder, Puchner argues that the humanities are (and always have been) essential to the transmission of knowledge that drives the efforts of human civilization.