Anthropology Science

Racist pseudoscience is on the rise - fueling hatred, feeding nationalism, and seeping into our discourse on everything from sports to intelligence. Even the well-intentioned repeat stereotypes based on "science", because cutting-edge genetics are hard to grasp - and all too easy to distort. Paradoxically, misconceptions are multiplying amid today's unprecedented surge of research on human genetics. We've never had a clearer picture of who we are and where we come from, and the science, when accurately understood, is a powerful and definitive ally against racism.

More than 12,000 years ago, in one of the greatest triumphs of prehistory, humans colonized North America, a continent that was then truly a new world. Just when and how they did so has been one of the most perplexing and controversial questions in archaeology.

Can forests think? Do dogs dream? In this astonishing book, Eduardo Kohn challenges the very foundations of anthropology, calling into question our central assumptions about what it means to be human - and thus distinct from all other life forms. Based on four years of fieldwork among the Runa of Ecuador's Upper Amazon, Kohn draws on his rich ethnography to explore how Amazonians interact with the many creatures that inhabit one of the world's most complex ecosystems.

This insider's look at inherited wealth in the United States explores the complex meanings of money and success in American society with a new introduction that examines whether America's privileged class will be willing or able to play a leadership role in the twenty-first century.

When an unexpected medical crisis sends Naomi Wolf on a deeply personal journey to tease out the intersections between sexuality and creativity, she discovers, much to her own astonishment, an increasing body of scientific evidence that suggests that the vagina is not merely flesh, but an intrinsic component of the female brain - and thus has a fundamental connection to female consciousness itself.

If the history of the Earth were compressed down to a year, our species would arise in the last thirty minutes or so of the final hour. But life itself is not such a late arrival: It has existed on Earth for something like 3.7 billion years—most of our planet’s history and over a quarter of the age of the universe (as far as we can tell). What have these organisms—bacteria, animals, plants, and the rest—done in all this time? In Living on Earth, the philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith proposes a new way of understanding how the actions of living beings have shaped our planet.

"Comment la femme fait-elle l'apprentissage de sa condition, comment l'éprouve-t-elle, dans quel univers se trouve-t-elle enfermée, quelles évasions lui sont permises, voilà ce que je chercherai à décrire. Alors seulement nous pourrons comprendre quels problèmes se posent aux femmes qui, héritant d'un lourd passé, s'efforcent de forger un avenir nouveau."

From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution - a number one international best seller - that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human”.

Here, leading social philosopher Roman Krznaric unearths fascinating insights and inspiration from the last 1000 years of world history that could help us confront the most urgent challenges facing humanity in the twenty-first century. From bridging the inequality gap and keeping AI under control, to reviving our faith in democracy and avoiding ecological collapse, History for Tomorrow shows that history is not simply a means of understanding the past but a way of reimagining our relationship with the future.

There is no one better qualified than Jared Diamond - renowned expert in the fields of physiology and evolutionary biology and award-winning author - to explain the evolutionary forces that operated on our ancestors to make us sexually different. With wit and a wealth of fascinating examples, he explains how our sexuality has been as crucial as our large brains and upright posture in our rise to human status.

This first new translation of Kierkegaard's masterwork in a generation brings an essential work of modern philosophy to vivid life. While the majority of Kierkegaard's work leading up to The Concept of Anxiety dealt with the intersection of faith and knowledge, here the renowned Danish philosopher turns to the perennial question of sin and guilt. First published in 1844, this concise treatise identified - long before Freud - anxiety as a deep-seated human state, one that embodies the endless struggle with our own spiritual identities.

Carl Honoré has discovered a movement that is quickly working its way into the mainstream. Groups of people are developing a recipe for living better in a fast-paced, modern environment by striving for a new balance between fast and slow. In an entertaining and hands-on investigation of this new movement, Honoré takes us from a Tantric sex workshop in a trendy neighborhood in London, England, to Bra, Italy, the home of the Slow Food, Slow Cities and Slow Sex movements.

En la continuación de su best seller internacional La batalla cultural, el afamado escritor, politólogo y conferencista Agustín Laje presenta Generación idiota: Una crítica al adolescentecentrismo.

Join Aaron Mahnke, the host of the popular podcast Lore, as he explores some dreadful places and the history that haunts them. Mahnke takes us to Colorado and the palatial Stanley Hotel, where wealthy guests enjoyed views of the Rocky Mountains at the turn of the 20th century - and where, decades later, a restless author would awaken from a nightmare, inspired to write one of the most revered horror novels of all time. Mahnke also crosses land and sea to visit frightful sites with their own echoes of dark deeds, horrible tragedies, and shocking evil still resounding.

In this deeply researched, immersive history, Adam Kuper tells the story of how foreign and prehistoric peoples and cultures were represented in Western museums of anthropology. Originally created as colonial enterprises, their halls were populated by displays of plundered art, artifacts, dioramas, bones, and relics.

In 1945, Germany lay in ruins, morally and materially. Its citizens stood condemned by history, responsible for a horrifying genocide and war of extermination. But by the end of Angela Merkel’s tenure in 2021, Germany looked like the moral voice of Europe. How did a nation whose past has been marked by mass murder reinvent themselves, and how much? Trentmann tells this dramatic story of the German people from the middle of the Second World War through the Cold War and the division of East and West to the fall of the Berlin Wall and their struggle to find their place in the world today.

La storia di come le reti di informazione hanno fatto e disfatto il nostro mondo, dall’autore del bestseller mondiale Sapiens. Negli ultimi centomila anni, noi Sapiens abbiamo accumulato un enorme potere. Eppure, nonostante tutte le nostre scoperte, invenzioni e conquiste, oggi ci troviamo in una crisi esistenziale. Il mondo è sull’orlo del collasso ecologico. La disinformazione dilaga. E ci stiamo buttando a capofitto nell’era dell’intelligenza artificiale, una nuova rete di informazioni che minaccia di annientarci. Perché siamo così autodistruttivi?

They live in shadows - deep in the forest, late in the night, in the dark recesses of our minds. They're spoken of in stories and superstitions, relics of an unenlightened age, old wives' tales, passed down through generations. Yet no matter how wary and jaded we have become, as individuals or as a society, a part of us remains vulnerable to them: werewolves and wendigos, poltergeists and vampires, angry elves and vengeful spirits.

In 1994, Rwanda was the scene of the first acts since World War II to be legally defined as genocide. Two years later, Clea Koff, a twenty-three-year-old forensic anthropologist, left the safe confines of a lab in Berkeley, California, to serve as one of sixteen scientists chosen by the United Nations to unearth the physical evidence of the Rwandan genocide. Over the next four years, Koff’s grueling investigations took her across geography synonymous with some of the worst crimes of the twentieth century.

Jessica Carew Kraft, an urban wife and mom of two, was rooted in the modern world, complete with a high-powered career in tech and the sneaking suspicion that her lifestyle was preventing her and her family from truly thriving. Determined to find a better way, Jessica quit her job and set out to learn about "rewilding" from people who reject the comforts and convenience of civilization by using ancient tools and skills to survive. Along the way, she found an entire community walking the path back from our technology-focused, anxiety-ridden way of life to a simpler, more human experience.