Life Theory

How will artificial intelligence affect crime, war, justice, jobs, society, and our very sense of being human? The rise of AI has the potential to transform our future more than any other technology - and there's nobody better qualified or situated to explore that future than Max Tegmark, an MIT professor who's helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial.

How often do we ask ourselves, "What will make me happy? What do I really want from life?" In A Life of One’s Own, Marion Milner explores these questions and embarks on a seven-year personal journey to discover what it is that makes her happy. Using her own personal diaries, kept over many years, she analyses moments of everyday life and discovers ways of being, of looking, of moving, that bring surprising joy - ways which can be embraced by anyone.

Carl Zimmer investigates one of the biggest questions of all: What is life? The answer seems obvious until you try to seriously answer it. Is the apple sitting on your kitchen counter alive, or is only the apple tree it came from deserving of the word? If we can’t answer that question here on Earth, how will we know when and if we discover alien life on other worlds? The question hangs over some of society’s most charged conflicts - whether a fertilized egg is a living person, for example, and when we ought to declare a person legally dead.

Gravity affects every aspect of our physical being, but there’s a psychological force just as powerful - yet almost nobody has heard of it. It’s responsible for bringing groups of people together and pulling them apart, making certain goals attractive to some and not to others, and fueling cycles of anxiety and conflict. In Wanting, Luke Burgis draws on the work of French polymath René Girard to bring this hidden force to light and reveals how it shapes our lives and societies.

Jimmy Carter, 39th president, Nobel Peace Prize winner, international humanitarian, fisherman, reflects on his full and happy life with pride, humor, and a few second thoughts.

Adler, along with Freud and Jung, created an entirely new branch of psychology, namely psychoanalysis. What Life Should Mean to You brings his conclusions to a popular audience. It covers adolescence, feelings of superiority and inferiority, the importance of cooperation, work, friendship, love, and marriage.

In Living a Feminist Life Sara Ahmed shows how feminist theory is generated from everyday life and the ordinary experiences of being a feminist at home and at work. Building on legacies of feminist of color scholarship in particular, Ahmed offers a poetic and personal meditation on how feminists become estranged from worlds they critique - often by naming and calling attention to problems - and how feminists learn about worlds from their efforts to transform them.

For over two-hundred years, capitalist systems have overtaken the global economy, spreading near-universal growth and opening the floodgates for limitless human potential. Yet something is going terribly wrong in the world economy. National bestselling author George Gilder explains how economics is not an incentive system but an information system. Redefining capitalism for the modern age, he reveals how free enterprise is a mind driven system, material resources are essentially as infinite as atoms, and what governs economic growth is human creativity.

Moving to America in 2008, Finnish journalist Anu Partanen quickly went from confident, successful professional to wary, self-doubting mess. She found that navigating the basics of everyday life - from buying a cell phone and filing taxes to education and childcare - was much more complicated and stressful than anything she encountered in her homeland. At first she attributed her crippling anxiety to the difficulty of adapting to a freewheeling new culture. But as she got to know Americans better, she discovered they shared her deep apprehension.

Brian Clegg was always fascinated by Isaac Asimov’s classic Foundation series of books, in which the future is predicted using sophisticated mathematical modeling of human psychology and behavior. Only much later did he realize that Asimov’s "psychohistory" had a real-world equivalent: game theory. Originating in the study of probabilistic gambling games that depend on a random source—the throw of a dice or the toss of a coin—game theory soon came to be applied to human interactions: essentially, what was the best strategy to win whatever you were doing?

Deep in the night, Matthew paces the house, unable to rest. Though his sixteen-year-old daughter, Holly, lies sleeping on the other side of the bedroom door, she is light years away from him. How can he bridge the gap between them when he can’t shake the emptiness he feels inside? Holly knows her father is drifting further from her; what she doesn’t understand is why. Could it be her fault that he seems intent on throwing everything away, including their relationship?

Consider a world without weather prediction. How would we know when to evacuate communities ahead of fires or floods, or figure out what to wear tomorrow? Until 40 years ago, we couldn’t forecast weather conditions beyond ten days. Renowned climate scientist Dr. Jagadish Shukla is largely to thank for modern weather forecasting. Born in rural India with no electricity, plumbing, or formal schools, he attended classes that were held in a cow shed. Shukla grew up amid turmoil: overwhelming monsoons, devastating droughts, and unpredictable crop yields.

For those struggling to find CISSP materials that bridge the gap between study and application, this guide delivers a solution with practical, scenario-based exam preparation. CISSP Practice Exams with Real-World Case Studies by Taimur Ijlal offers exactly what you need to succeed: realistic questions paired with in-depth case studies that mimic the real-world challenges you’ll face as a CISSP-certified professional.

A notable contribution to our understanding of ourselves. This audiobook explores the realm of human behavior in social situations and the way that we appear to others. Dr. Goffman uses the metaphor of theatrical performance as a framework. Each person in everyday social intercourse presents himself and his activity to others, attempts to guide and control the impressions they form of him, and employs certain techniques in order to sustain his performance, just as an actor presents a character to an audience.

In order to improve closeness and intimacy in all relationships, it is important to first understand the clear parallels between adult behavior and childhood experiences. Attachment Theory combines traditional teachings with knowledge of subconscious patterns to provide powerful tools for powerful change.

Author Lisa Bilyeu grew up in London, where she was always told her dreams of Hollywood were a little too big for a girl. Despite her first love of movie-making, Lisa moved to Los Angeles and became a housewife—for eight frickin’ years! How the heck did that happen? Radical Confidence is the “empowering, transformative, and practical” (Jay Shetty, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Like A Monk) story of how Lisa unpaused her life to cofound a company that went from zero to a billion dollars in just five years and became the leader in the world of personal development.

I Don’t Want to Be an Empath Anymore is a gift for the jaded empath searching for authenticity in spirituality, and spirituality in being authentic - something beyond the clichéd, positive affirmations that seem to invalidate our anger, sadness, and pain. When we feel broken - and when real damage has been done, it’s not always helpful to ignore our feelings and tell ourselves that we are perfect and whole.

Over the last 40 years our choices have narrowed, our opportunities have shrunk, and our lives have become governed by a handful of very large and very powerful corporations. Today, practically everything we buy, everywhere we shop, and every service we secure comes from a heavily concentrated market. This is a world where four major banks control most of our money, four airlines shuttle most of us around the country, and four major cell phone providers connect most of our communications.

Swindoll disarms the counter-attack of those who do not preach grace-filled living and claim that focusing on grace would fill our churches with wild, undisciplined people with no godliness in evidence. Yes, Swindoll says, teaching and preaching grace is risky. Some may push the limits and misuse their freedom. But grace is the message of the gospel…the good news of salvation. As Christians, we sing about God's amazing grace. We understand that we are saved by grace. Let's learn to live by grace! Discover how in The Grace Awakening.

For Mark Solms, one of the boldest thinkers in contemporary neuroscience, discovering how consciousness comes about has been a lifetime's quest. Scientists consider it the "hard problem" because it seems an impossible task to understand why we feel a subjective sense of self and how it arises in the brain. Venturing into the elementary physics of life, Solms has now arrived at an astonishing answer. In The Hidden Spring, he brings forward his discovery in accessible language and graspable analogies.