Psychology Philosophy

For kids and students, parents and teachers alike, How to Teach Kids Anything takes what academics know about education and pedagogy and translates it all into real-world skills and techniques. The learning brain works in very predictable ways, and we can use this to our advantage. Whether you are a student, tutor, professor, teacher, or even TA, understand how information takes hold and becomes useful.

Our ability to remake our world is unique among all living things. But where does our creativity come from, how does it work, and how can we harness it to improve our lives, schools, businesses, and institutions? The Runaway Species is a deep-dive into the creative mind, a celebration of the human spirit, and a vision of how we can improve our future by understanding and embracing our ability to innovate. Composer Anthony Brandt and neurologist David Eagleman seek to discover what lies at the heart of humanity's ability - and drive - to create.

Finding True Happiness attempts to help people to identify and then reach for happiness. As Aristotle noted 2,400 years ago, happiness is the one thing we can choose for its own sake - everything else is chosen for the sake of happiness.

In this profoundly significant book, author Michael Gurian synthesizes current knowledge and clearly demonstrates how this distinction in hard-wiring and socialized gender differences affects how boys and girls learn. Gurian presents a new way to educate our children based on brain science, neurological development, and chemical and hormonal disparities.

"Psychopathology of Everyday Life" is a book which passed through four editions in Germany and is considered the author's most popular work. With great ingenuity and penetration, the author throws much light on the complex problems of human behavior, and clearly demonstrates that the hitherto considered impassable gap between normal and abnormal mental states is more apparent than real. This translation is made of the fourth German edition.

Throughout history society has determined specific rules of engagement between adversaries in armed conflict. With advances in technology, from armor to in the Middle Ages to nerve gas in World War I to weapons of mass destruction in our own time, the rules have constantly evolved. Today, when killing the enemy can seem palpably risk-free and tantamount to playing a violent video game, what constitutes warfare? What is the effect of remote combat on individual soldiers? And what are the unforeseen repercussions that could affect us all?

The philosopher Susan Neiman argues that the absence of appealing models of maturity is not an accident: By describing life as a downhill process, we prepare young people to expect - and demand - very little from it. In Why Grow Up?, she challenges our culture of permanent adolescence, turning to thinkers including Kant, Rousseau, and Arendt to find a model of maturity that is not a matter of resignation. In growing up, we move from the boundless trust of childhood to the peculiar mixture of disappointment and exhilaration that comes with adolescence.

Let's take stock of young America. Compared to previous generations, American youth have more schooling (college enrollments have never been higher); more money ($100 a week in disposable income); more leisure time (five hours a day); and more news and information (Internet, The Daily Show, RSS feeds). What do they do with all that time and money? They download, upload, IM, post, chat, and network. (Nine of their top ten sites are for social networking.) They watch television and play video games (2 to 4 hours per day).

Shaun Gallagher offers an account of psychopathologies as disorders of the self. The Self and its Disorders develops an interdisciplinary approach to an "integrative" perspective in psychiatry. In contrast to some integrative approaches that focus on narrow brain-based conceptions, or on symptomology, this book takes its bearings from embodied and enactive conceptions of human experience.

Ron Ritchhart's new book, Cultures of Thinking in Action, takes the next step in helping listeners not only understand how a culture of thinking looks and feels, but also how to create it for themselves and their learners. Arguing that no set of practices or techniques alone is sufficient to create a culture of thinking in and of itself, Ritchhart explores the underlying beliefs that motivate the creation of cultures of thinking, presenting key mindsets every educator and leader needs to embrace.

Are we "noble in reason"? Perfect, in God's image? Far from it, says New York University psychologist Gary Marcus. In this lucid and revealing book, Marcus argues that the mind is not an elegantly designed organ but a "kluge", a clumsy, cobbled-together contraption. He unveils a fundamentally new way of looking at the human mind - think duct tape, not supercomputer - that sheds light on some of the most mysterious aspects of human nature.

Every day we are confronted with hundreds of choices that either make us feel confident and strong or rob us of the things we desire the most. When we lack confidence, we feel unworthy of having what we want, of speaking the truth, of making decisions that improve our lives. When we feel weak, helpless, or powerless, we lack the strength to ward off the thoughts of defeat, negativity, and fear that fill our minds and prevent us from moving forward and living in harmony with our deepest desires.

"It's the animal in us," we often hear when we've been bad. But why not when we're good? Primates and Philosophers tackles this question by exploring the biological foundations of one of humanity's most valued traits: morality.In this provocative book, primatologist Frans de Waal argues that modern-day evolutionary biology takes far too dim a view of the natural world, emphasizing our "selfish" genes.

Now more children are attending school while experiencing significant chronic and acute stressors. What can educators do to support students, help them learn, and ensure they reach their full potential? Trauma-informed schools are lauded as one way to address this challenge, but trauma-informed pedagogy can be hard to define and difficult to implement. Trauma-Responsive Pedagogy explores the research and practices around trauma-informed education in an easy-to-digest, actionable text that elevates the healing and wellness of both the children and the adults in our classrooms.

Everyone agrees that education is the key to creating a more just and equal world, and that our schools are broken and failing. Proposed reforms variously target incompetent teachers, corrupt union practices, or outdated curricula, but no one acknowledges a scientifically-proven fact that we all understand intuitively: academic potential varies between individuals, and cannot be dramatically improved.

In Creating Cultures of Thinking: The 8 Forces We Must Master to Truly Transform Our Schools, Ron Ritchhart, author of Making Thinking Visible, explains how creating a culture of thinking is more important to learning than any particular curriculum, and he outlines how any school or teacher can accomplish this by leveraging eight cultural forces: expectations, language, time, modeling, opportunities, routines, interactions, and environment.

Do you want to be more likable, respected, admired, loved, and adored? Do you feel like your being manipulated by others and doing things that you don't wish to do? In The Power Of Psychology, you’ll learn the forbidden secret psychological techniques that will turn your life upside-down and there won’t be any obstacles preventing you from gaining the respect and freedom that you want and deserve. I've broken them down to see exactly how you can use their findings to your advantage.

W. H. Auden once wrote that "art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead." In his brilliant and compulsively listenable new treatise, Alan Jacobs shows us that engaging with the strange and wonderful writings of the past might help us live less anxiously in the present - and increase what Thomas Pynchon once called our "personal density." Today we are battling too much information in a society changing at lightning speed, with algorithms aimed at shaping our every thought - plus a sense that history offers no resources, only impediments to overcome or ignore.

Inspire is a book about powerful forces that when applied in the classroom naturally cause students to want to listen, learn, and behave. These forces are presented in the form of principles that are the product of more than 30 years of testing and analysis of what really works in the classroom to drive and motivate even the most challenging students to exceptional behavior and greater academic success.

Far too often, our students attain only a superficial level of knowledge that fails to prepare them for deeper challenges in school and beyond. In Teaching for Deeper Learning, renowned educators and best-selling authors, Jay McTighe and Harvey F. Silver propose a solution: teaching students to make meaning for themselves.