Sociology Science

In his most provocative and practical book yet, one of the foremost thinkers of our time redefines what it means to understand the world, succeed in a profession, contribute to a fair and just society, detect nonsense, and influence others. Citing examples ranging from Hammurabi to Seneca, Antaeus the Giant to Donald Trump, Nassim Nicholas Taleb shows how the willingness to accept one's own risks is an essential attribute of heroes, saints, and flourishing people in all walks of life.

A little over 100 years ago, East Africa was terra incognita to most whites: a land largely unmapped, sparsely settled by Europeans, and teeming with wildlife. It was the hunter-adventurer's paradise, and by the early 20th century, a small, lionhearted clan of explorers and big-game hunters began leading safaris there for money.

Groundbreaking scientific analysis that breaks the JFK assassination wide open! Did a shot from the "grassy knoll" kill President Kennedy? If so, was Oswald part of a conspiracy or an innocent patsy? Why have scientific experts who examined the evidence failed to put such questions to rest? In 2001, scientist Dr. Donald Byron Thomas published a peer-reviewed article that revived the debate over the finding by the House Select Committee on Assassinations that there had indeed been a shot from the grassy knoll, caught on a police dictabelt recording.

Author David Brooks explores the four commitments that define a life of meaning and purpose: to a spouse and family, to a vocation, to a philosophy or faith, and to a community. Our personal fulfillment depends on how well we choose and execute these commitments. Brooks looks at a range of people who have lived joyous, committed lives, and who have embraced the necessity and beauty of dependence. He gathers their wisdom on how to choose a partner, how to pick a vocation, how to live out a philosophy, and how we can begin to integrate our commitments into one overriding purpose.

Since the original publication of Nudge more than a decade ago, the title has entered the vocabulary of businesspeople, policy makers, engaged citizens, and consumers everywhere. The book has given rise to more than 200 "nudge units" in governments around the world and countless groups of behavioral scientists in every part of the economy. It has taught us how to use thoughtful "choice architecture" - a concept the authors invented - to help us make better decisions for ourselves, our families, and our society.

In a friendly, jargon-free style, sociologist and broadcaster Jay Gabler introduces you to sociology's history and basic methods, and - once you have your sociological lens adjusted - makes it clear how to survey the big questions of culture, gender, ethnicity, religion, politics, and crime with new eyes. You'll find everything you need to succeed in an introductory sociology class as well as to apply sociological ideas to give you extra insight into your personal and professional lives.

A relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing. Offering bold new ways of conceiving the present, Lauren Berlant describes the cruel optimism that has prevailed since the 1980s, as the social-democratic promise of the postwar period in the United States and Europe has retracted.

Are mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer is yes. Tracing the global history of inequality from the Stone Age to today, Walter Scheidel shows that inequality never dies peacefully. Inequality declines when carnage and disaster strike and increases when peace and stability return. The Great Leveler is the first book to chart the crucial role of violent shocks in reducing inequality over the full sweep of human history around the world.

New York Times best-selling psychologist Dr. Meg Jay uses real stories from real lives to provide smart, compassionate, and constructive advice about the crucial (and difficult) years we cannot afford to miss.

First comes a High, a period of confident expansion. Next comes an Awakening, a time of spiritual exploration and rebellion. Then comes an Unraveling, in which individualism triumphs over crumbling institutions. Last comes a Crisis—the Fourth Turning—when society passes through a great and perilous gate in history. William Strauss and Neil Howe will change the way you see the world—and your place in it. With blazing originality, The Fourth Turning illuminates the past, explains the present, and reimagines the future.

Exploring the sometimes hilarious, sometimes devastating impact of crowd behavior and trading trickery on the financial markets, this book brilliantly combines two all-time investment classics. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and Confusión de Confusiones take us from Tulipmania in 1634-when tulips actually traded at a higher price than gold - to the South Sea "bubble" of 1720, and beyond. Securities analyst and author Martin Fridson guides you on a quirky, entertaining, and intriguing journey back through time.

Polyamorous psychotherapist Jessica Fern breaks new ground by extending attachment theory into the realm of consensual nonmonogamy. Using her nested model of attachment and trauma, she expands our understanding of how emotional experiences can influence our relationships. Then, she sets out six specific strategies to help you move toward secure attachments in your multiple relationships.

"The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently," wrote David Graeber. A renowned anthropologist, activist, and author of such classic books as Debt and the breakout New York Times bestseller The Dawn of Everything (with David Wengrow), Graeber was as well-known for his sharp, lively essays as he was for his iconic role in the Occupy movement and his paradigm-shifting tomes.

In The Black Swan Taleb outlined a problem, and in Antifragile he offers a definitive solution: how to gain from disorder and chaos while being protected from fragilities and adverse events. For what Taleb calls the "antifragile" is actually beyond the robust, because it benefits from shocks, uncertainty, and stressors, just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension. The antifragile needs disorder in order to survive and flourish. Taleb stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary, and proposes that things be built in an antifragile manner.

Malcolm Gladwell has long relished the opportunity to skewer the upper echelons of higher education, from the institution of U.S. News & World Report’s Best College rankings to the LSATs to the luxe Bowdoin College cafeteria. I Hate the Ivy League: Riffs and Rants on Elite Education, upends the traditional thinking around how education should work and tries to get to the bottom of why we often reward the wrong people.

My Big TOE: Awakening, written by a nuclear physicist in the language of contemporary culture, unifies science and philosophy, physics and metaphysics, mind and matter, purpose and meaning, the normal and the paranormal. The entirety of human experience (mind, body, and spirit) including both our objective and subjective worlds is brought together under one seamless scientific understanding.

"It takes an entire lifetime to learn how to die", wrote the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca (c. 4 BC-65 AD). He counseled readers to "study death always", and took his own advice, returning to the subject again and again in all his writings, yet he never treated it in a complete work. How to Die gathers in one volume, for the first time, Seneca's remarkable meditations on death and dying. Edited and translated by James S. Romm, How to Die reveals a provocative thinker who speaks with a startling frankness about the need to accept death or even, under certain conditions, to seek it out.

The Body Code is a truly revolutionary method of holistic healing. Dr. Bradley Nelson, a globally renowned expert in bioenergetic medicine, has spent decades teaching his powerful self-healing method and training practitioners around the globe, but this is the first time his system of healing will be available to the general public in the form of The Body Code. The Body Code is based on the simple premise that the body is self-healing and knows what it needs in order to thrive and flourish.

This sweeping book is a systematic treatment of the historic transformation of the West from limited monarchy to unlimited democracy. Revisionist in nature, it reaches the conclusion that monarchy, with all its failings, is a lesser evil than mass democracy but outlines deficiencies in both as systems of guarding liberty.

At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes' still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only 3,000 years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion - and indeed our future.