This book combines cutting-edge findings in neuroscience with examples from history and the headlines to introduce the new science of cultural biology, born of advances in brain imaging, computer modeling, and genetics. Doctors Quartz and Sejnowski show how both our noblest and darkest traits are rooted in brain systems so ancient that we share them with insects. They then demystify the dynamic engagement between brain and world that makes us something far beyond the sum of our parts. The authors show how our humanity unfolds in precise stages as brain and world engage on increasingly complex levels. Their discussion embraces shaping forces as ancient as climate change over millennia and events as recent as the terrorism and heroism of September 11, and offers intriguing answers to some of our most enduring questions, including why we live together, love, kill -- and sometimes lay down our lives for others.

Nurturing Our Humanity offers a new perspective on our personal and social options in today's world, showing how we can build societies that support our great human capacities for consciousness, caring, and creativity. It brings together findings--largely overlooked--from the natural and social sciences debunking the popular idea that we are hard-wired for selfishness, war, rape, and greed. Its groundbreaking new approach reveals connections between disturbing trends like climate change denial and regressions to strongman rule. Moving past right vs. left, religious vs. secular, Eastern vs. Western, and other familiar categories that do not include our formative parent-child and gender relations, it looks at where societies fall on the partnership-domination scale. On one end is the domination system that ranks man over man, man over woman, race over race, and man over nature. On the other end is the more peaceful, egalitarian, gender-balanced, and sustainable partnership system. Nurturing Our Humanity explores how behaviors, values, and socio-economic institutions develop differently in these two environments, documents how this impacts nothing less than how our brains develop, examines cultures from this new perspective (including societies that for millennia oriented toward partnership), and proposes actions supporting the contemporary movement in this more life-sustaining and enhancing direction. It shows how through today's ever more fearful, frenzied, and greed-driven technologies of destruction and exploitation, the domination system may lead us to an evolutionary dead end. A more equitable and sustainable way of life is biologically possible and culturally attainable: we can change our course.

TV reporter Rachel Williamson helps Chief Sam Jenkins with a classic fraud investigation. However, the case puts Rachel in jeopardy, and her abduction by a mentally disturbed man changes her life forever.Eventually Jenkins uncovers a significant clue and leads a team deep into the Smoky Mountains to rescue his friend. But once Rachel is safely home, they discover her problems are far from over.

A bold argument that our "quest for cool" shapes modern culture and the global economy Like it or not, we live in an age of conspicuous consumption. In a world of brand names, many of us judge ourselves and others by the products we own. Teenagers broadcast their brand allegiances over social media. Tourists flock to Rodeo Drive to have their pictures taken in front of luxury stores. Soccer moms switch from minivans to SUVs to hybrids, while hip beer connoisseurs flaunt their knack for distinguishing a Kölsch from a pilsner. How did this pervasive desire for "cool" emerge, and why is it so powerful today that it is a prime driver of the global economy? In Cool, the neuroscientist and philosopher Steven Quartz and the political scientist Anette Asp bring together the latest findings in brain science, economics, and evolutionary biology to form a provocative theory of consumerism, revealing how the brain's "social calculator" and an instinct to rebel are the crucial missing links in understanding the motivations behind our spending habits. Applying their theory to everything from grocery shopping to the near-religious devotion of Harley-Davidson fans, Quartz and Asp explore how the brain's ancient decision-making machinery guides consumer choice. Using these revolutionary insights, they show how we use products to advertise ourselves to others in an often unconscious pursuit of social esteem. Surprising at every turn, Cool will change the way you think about money, status, desire, and choice.

Now available in eBook for the first time, Richard Yates's groundbreaking collection of short fiction. The stories in Liars in Love are concerned with troubled relations and the elusive nature of truth. Whether it be in the depiction of the complications of divorced families, grown-up daughters, estranged sisters, office friendships or fleeting love affairs, the pieces in this collection showcase Richard Yates's extraordinary gift for observation and his understanding of human frailty. In this collection, you'll discover some of the most influential and sharply observed short fiction of the 20th century, and find out why Richard Yates was a true American master.

From the bestselling author of "A Natural History of the Senses" "comes a playful, rewarding jaunt through the brain's chemical realities and emotional intangibles" ("Kirkus Reviews").

Humans are unique in their ability to reflect on themselves. Recently a number of scholars have pointed out that human self-conceptions have a history. Ideas of human nature in the West have always been shaped by the interplay of philosophy, theology, science, and technology. The fast pace of developments in the latter two spheres (neuroscience, genetics, artificial intelligence, biomedical engineering) call for fresh reflections on what it means, now, to be human, and for theological and ethical judgments on how we might shape our own destiny in the future. The leading scholars in this book offer fresh contributions to the lively quest for an account of ourselves that does justice to current developments in theology, science, technology, and philosophy.

Essays exploring humanity’s connection with the environment. Although the physical relationship between the natural world and individuals is quantifiable, the psychosocial effect of the former on the latter is often less tangible. What, for instance, is the connection between the environment in which we live and our creativity? How is our consciousness bounded and delimited by our materiality? And from whence does our idea of self and our belief in free will derive and when do our surroundings challenge these basic assumptions? Eco-critic Harold Fromm’s challenging exploration of these and related questions twines his own physical experiences and observations with insights gathered from both the humanities and the sciences. Writing broadly and personally, Fromm explores our views of nature and how we write about it. He ties together ecology, evolutionary psychology, and consciousness studies to show that our perceived separation from our surroundings is an illusory construct. He argues for a naturalistic vision of creativity, free will, and the literary arts unimpeded by common academic and professional restraints. At each point of this intellectual journey, Fromm is honest, engaging, and unsparing. Philosophical, critical, often personal, Fromm’s sweeping, interdisciplinary, and sometimes combative essays will change the way you think about your place in the environment. “How rare it is that a work of philosophical inquiry is written with the passion of a cri de coeur, but Harold Fromm’s brilliantly conceived The Nature of Being Human resonates with such uncanny depths. Here is an utterly engrossing first-person account of a harrowing pilgrimage into the 21st century and its disturbing revelations about humankind’s truest nature, in contrast to the comforting solicitudes of a “humanist” past. If the role of the philosopher is to force us to think, Harold Fromm is a born philosopher.” —Joyce Carol Oates “Fromm, an erudite, prolific author of numerous works ranging from ecocritical commentary to self-reflective discourses, presents a compilation of essays that illuminate his views regarding why most Americans seem oblivious to the destruction of their environment.” —Choice “Fromm’s journey from victim, to campaigner, to pioneer of eco-criticism (that is, the study of literature from an ecological viewpoint) is documented here, alongside challenging analyses of man’s place in nature, free will, our relationship with technology and more. Scholarly but engaging, Fromm is an environmentalist, but also a realist.” —Organic Gardener

How do the most extraordinary entrepreneurs create a bold vision for the future-and follow through against all setbacks? Visionaries like Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison are the stuff of legend. Yet we still fumble in describing what they actually do. Drawing on recent insights from neuroscience about the roles that intuition, emotional intelligence, and courage can play, Ten Steps Ahead reveals what makes visionaries tick and how they develop and use their extraordinary powers. We learn, for instance, ? how Richard Branson had the insight to trademark Virgin Galactic in the early 1990s, when private spaceflight was science fiction ? how Richard Feynman made breakthroughs in quantum mechanics by pretending he was an electron ? why Jeff Hawkins walked around with a block of wood and a chopstick to help design the first Palm Pilot Erik Calonius, who has interviewed many of the greatest living visionaries across disciplines and industries, weaves together their stories, highlights their shared attributes, and draws on science to help us understand what sets them apart and shows how we too can see (and make) the future. It's not that some people can magically see opportunities-it's that the rest of us are blind to the ones around us.

The Clems were a family living the American dream until their fifteen-year-old daughter Carren became addicted to Meth. Within two months of first taking the highly addictive drug, Carren had moved out of the family home, spent her entire savings on Meth and resorted to stealing, dealing and prostitution to pay for her habit. Told from both Carren's perspective and from the perspective of her father Ron, Loss of Innocence shares the shocking story of how a middle-class girl growing up in a stable home could get so lost. A former LA police officer, Ron describes how he went back to being a cop to try to rescue his daughter and how he suffered a heart attack in the street when he witnessed Carren selling herself to a drug dealer; Carren shares the events leading up to her first taste of drugs, and her descent into addiction with moving candour and dignity. Carren is now clean and sober, and in this frank, compelling book she and her family prove that there can be life after drug addiction.