Health History

Our world order is under pressure as never before. From new authoritarian regimes in the US, Turkey and Russia to the imminent breakup of the European Union and a social media awash with intolerance, things look set to fall apart just as abruptly as the Soviet Union did some 30 years ago. How did we get here, and what do we do now? In this searching new exploration of our crisis, Paul Mason argues that at its heart lies an attack on the idea of humanity itself.

In Pork Belly Tacos with a Side of Anxiety, Yvonne Castañeda shares vibrant stories of her childhood growing up in Miami as the daughter of humble immigrants from Mexico and Cuba … and how she came to develop an unhealthy relationship with food. To help ease her mami’s nervios, Yvonne becomes a perfectionist from a young age, achieving high grades at school and mastering the piano. But as her Cuban family members openly make comments about her puberty, Yvonne enters a new phase of self-consciousness that begins her obsession with weight.

Why do political leaders become entangled in so many sex scandals? How did the US military inadvertently help make San Francisco a mecca of gay culture? And what was the original purpose of vibrators? Find out the answers to all these questions and more as journalist Ross Benes delves into the complicated relationship between everyday human life - including religion, politics, and technology - and our sexuality.

On April 18, 1981, a ball game sprang eternal. What began as a modestly attended minor-league game between the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings became not only the longest ever played in baseball history, but something else entirely. The first pitch was thrown after dusk on Holy Saturday, and for the next eight hours the night seemed to suspend its participants between their collective pasts and futures, between their collective sorrows and joys....

What motivates those who commit violence in the name of political beliefs? Terrorism today is not solely the preserve of Islam, nor is it a new phenomenon. It emerges from social processes and conditions common to societies throughout modern history, and the story of its origins spans centuries, encompassing numerous radical and revolutionary movements. Marc Sageman is a forensic psychiatrist and government counter-terrorism consultant whose bestselling books provide a detailed, damning corrective to commonplace yet simplistic notions of Islamist terrorism.

Martin A. Lee traces the dramatic social history of marijuana, from its origins to its emergence in the 1960s as a defining force in a culture war that has never ceased. Lee describes how the illicit marijuana subculture overcame government opposition and morphed into a dynamic, multibillion-dollar industry. Colorful, illuminating, and at times irreverent, this is a fascinating listen for recreational users and patients, students and doctors, musicians and accountants, Baby Boomers and their kids, and anyone who has ever wondered about the secret life of this ubiquitous herb.

For much of recorded history, people considered the heart to be the most important organ in the body. In cultures around the world, the heart—not the brain—was believed to be the location of intelligence, memory, emotion, and the soul. Over time, views on the purpose of the heart have transformed. Modern medicine and science dismissed what was once the king of the organs as a mere blood pump subservient to the brain, yet the heart remains a potent symbol of love and health and an important part of our cultural iconography.

Dive into Evolutionary History, a mesmerizing journey through time, tracing the origins and development of all living beings. From the earliest single-celled organisms to the rise of Homo sapiens, this audiobook unravels the intricate tapestry of evolution with clarity and passion. Explore the wonders of life’s evolution across geological epochs, uncovering the secrets of adaptation, survival, and the remarkable journey of our ancestors.

Interweaving history, original reportage, and personal narrative, Pandemic explores the origin of epidemics, drawing parallels between the story of cholera - one of history's most disruptive and deadly pathogens - and the new pathogens that stalk humankind today, from Ebola and avian influenza to drug-resistant superbugs.

In Bite, zoologist Bill Schutt makes a surprising case: it is teeth that are responsible for the long-term success of vertebrates. The appearance of teeth, roughly half a billion years ago, was an adaptation that allowed animals with backbones, such as fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, dinosaurs and mammals—including us—to chow down in pretty much every conceivable environment.

We Band of Angelsis the story of women searching for adventure, caught up in the drama and danger of war. On the same day the Japanese Imperial Navy launched its surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, it also struck American bases in the Far East, chief among them the Philippines. That raid led to the first major land battle for America in World War II and, in the end, to the largest defeat and surrender of American forces.

Many people today are so dazzled by the long-term potential for artificial intelligence that they overlook the much clearer and more immediate potential for a new form of "collective intelligence": the intelligence of groups of people and computers working together. In Superminds, Thomas Malone explains what we need to do to take advantage of this potential. Groundbreaking and utterly fascinating, Superminds will change the way you work - both with others and with computers - for the better.

In Draining New Orleans, renowned geographer Richard Campanella recounts the epic challenges and ingenious efforts to dewater the Crescent City. With forays into geography, public health, engineering, architecture, politics, sociology, race relations, and disaster response, he chronicles the herculean attempts to "reclaim" the city's swamps and marshes and install subsurface drainage for massive urban expansion.

Fasting helps you enjoy a super-charged, healthy, happy long life. Fasting is the key to internal purification. Remember that all those inorganic chemicals must be passed out of your body or they can cause great damage. If the body's Vital Force drops too low then it can't force these inorganic chemicals through your eliminative systems. Then they remain in the body and can cause grave health damage in the future! If we are to get these poisons out of our bodies we must fast. By fasting we give our bodies a physiological rest. This rest builds Vital Force.

With the ongoing advancement of AI and other technologies, our world is becoming increasingly intelligent. From chatbots to innovations in brain-computer interfaces to the possibility of superintelligences leading to the Singularity later this century, our reality is being transformed before our eyes. This is commonly seen as the natural result of progress, but what if there's more to it than that? What if intelligence is an inevitability, an underlying property of the universe?

Generations of readers young and old, male and female, have fallen in love with the March sisters of this, Louisa May Alcott's most popular and enduring novel. Here are talented tomboy and author-to-be Jo, tragically frail Beth, beautiful Meg, and romantic, spoiled Amy - united in their devotion to each other and their struggles to survive in New England during the Civil War.

Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, as one judge described her, as "a coldly calculated criminal recidivist and serial killer." She had experienced a lifetime of murder, mayhem, and mental illness. She killed two boyfriends, including one whose body was stuffed in a freezer. And she was convicted in one of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's strangest cases: the Pizza Bomber case, in which a pizza deliveryman died when a bomb locked to his neck exploded after he robbed a bank in 2003 near Erie, Pennsylvania, Diehl-Armstrong's hometown.

Caroline Crampton’s life was upended at the age of seventeen, when she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a relatively rare blood cancer. After years of invasive treatment, she was finally given the all clear. But being cured of the cancer didn’t mean she felt well. Instead, the fear lingered, and she found herself always on the alert, braced for signs that the illness had reemerged.

Dr. Aribert Heim worked at the Mauthausen concentration camp for only a few months in 1941 but left a devastating mark. According to the testimony of survivors, Heim euthanized patients with injections of gasoline into their hearts. He performed surgeries on otherwise healthy people. Some recalled prisoners' skulls set out on his desk to display perfect sets of teeth. Yet in the chaos of the postwar period, Heim was able to slip away from his dark past and establish himself as a reputable doctor and family man in the resort town of Baden-Baden.

A father cleans up after his toddler and imagines a cup that won't spill. An engineer watches people using walkie-talkies and has an idea. A doctor figures out how to deliver patients to the operating room before they die. By studying inventions like these - the sippy cup, the cell phone, and an ingenious hospital bed - we can learn how people imagine their way around "impossible" problems to discover groundbreaking answers.