Wellness Culture

A hilarious look at the eating habits of the fit and famous - from Gwyneth's goji berry and quail egg concoctions to Jackie Kennedy's baked potato and Beluga caviar regimen - Rebecca Harrington leaves no cabbage soup unstirred in her wickedly funny, wildly absurd quest to diet like the stars. Elizabeth Taylor mixed cottage cheese and sour cream; Madonna subsisted on "sea vegetables;" and Marilyn Monroe drank raw eggs whipped with warm milk.

We entertain ourselves with modest risk - the scary movie, the party full of strangers, the weekend in Vegas. But when it comes to our careers, when self-identity and security hang in the balance, most of us don't like to play the odds very aggressively. While some of us are natural born thrill seekers, the majority of us are hardwired to avoid risk. But, Anne Kreamer argues, in the current workplace, that very avoidance could be putting us in a far more precarious position than we know.

What do we think about when we think about play? A pastime? Games? Childish activities? The opposite of work? Think again: If we are happy and well rested, we may approach even our daily tasks in a playful way, taking the attitude of play without the activity of play. So what, then, is play? In Play Matters, Miguel Sicart argues that to play is to be in the world; playing is a form of understanding what surrounds us and a way of engaging with others. Play goes beyond games; it is a mode of being human.

As human beings, we are fascinated by what makes us tick. We know that nature gave us certain biological appetites to ensure our survival, among those the need for water, food, sex, and love, but meeting these alone is not enough to ensure happiness. Scientists, and now managers, are realizing that people have a biological need to experience social rewards like praise, the thrill of innovation, and the satisfaction of acquiring new skills.

What happened to Generation X? Millenials dominate our Facebook feeds and people bang on about the baby boomers - but what about us? The lost generation, the middle youth, the middle child of today. Are we still cool? Generation X? Remember them? The kids who believed they'd never grow up. The generation Douglas Coupland immortalised in his novel of the same name.

Republic of Outsiders is about the growing number of Americans who disrupt the status quo: outsiders who seek to redefine a wide variety of fields, from film and mental health to diplomacy and music, from how we see gender to what we eat. They include professional and amateur filmmakers crowd-sourcing their work, transgender and autistic activists, and Occupy Wall Street’s alternative bankers.”

Susie Bright celebrates the first amendment, lesbianism, single motherhood, and fantasizes an eventful night with Dan Quayle in this uninhibited and quirky collection of essays, articles, and book reviews written over the past few years. Offbeat and sexy, Bright defends Madonna, attacks Dr. Ruth, and is snubbed by Camille Paglia herself in this rather amazing and outspoken collection.

Che ci fanno Emmanuel Lévinas e Slavoj Žižek, maestri del pensiero contemporaneo, accanto a Rocco Siffredi e Moana Pozzi, protagonisti di ben altre imprese? Che cosa rende il pop porno, e quindi l'osceno, lo scandaloso, degno oggetto di riflessione filosofica? Cos'è, in una parola, la pornosofia? Dopo aver sgombrato il campo dalla critica politicamente ed eticamente corretta della pornografia, l'autore indaga il nesso fra corpo, amore, perversione, democrazia e, infine, ricerca filosofica.

Business is personal. A statement on life as a business owner. Being the leader of your own life is the greatest lesson in business. Your business is personal, as it is yours. We live in a fast-paced, overconnected world. Relying on your own instincts and knowing the dreams you hold for your version of success, ambition and happiness will ensure you have the life you want and not the life you compare yourself with.

Art and science are famous opposites. Contemporary innovation mostly keeps them far apart. But in this book, David Edwards, world-renowned inventor; Harvard professor of the practice of idea translation; creator of breathable insulin, edible food packaging, and digital scents, reveals that the secret to creating very new things of lasting benefit, including innovations we will need to sustain human life on the planet, lies in perceiving art and science as one.

How do Tiffany Haddish, Tom Hanks, Meryl Stree,p and Apple’s Tim Cook turn us on, and why do some other public figures drive us crazy and turn us off? And who are the behind-the-scenes gurus who help public figures turn us on or off? Steven Goldstein, a civil rights leader who has worked in politics, business and entertainment, breaks down the industry of creating likeability and how public figures manufacture likeability - and how they sometimes destroy it through scandals.

Modern mythologies are everywhere. Where once geek culture was niche and hidden, fandom characters and stories have blasted their way into our cineplexes, bookstores, and streaming systems. They help us make sense of our daily lives - and they can also help us heal. Mental health therapists and Starship Therapise podcast hosts Larisa A. Garski and Justine Mastin offer a self-help guide to the mental health galaxy for those who have been left out in more traditional therapy spaces: geeks, nerds, gamers, cosplayers, introverts, and all of their friends.

In Kidney to Share, Martha Gershun tells the story of her decision to donate a kidney to a stranger. She takes listeners through the complex process by which such donors are vetted to ensure that they are physically and psychologically fit to take the risk of a major operation. Gershun and Lantos analyze the differences that arise depending on whether the organ comes from a living donor or one who has died. They observe the expertise and the shortcomings of doctors, nurses, and other professionals and describe the burdens that we place on people who are willing to donate.

Monsters of the Upside Down, beware! Travis Langley (author of the acclaimed Batman and Psychology) returns with a group of expert contributors to explore these and other questions to shine a light on true human nature through the Netflix series and cultural phenomenon Stranger Things.

The Girl at the Baggage Claim is a provocative and important study of the different ideas easterners and westerners have about the self and society and what this means for current debates in art, education, geopolitics, and business. Never have East and West come as close as they are today, yet we are still baffled by one another. Is our mantra "To thine own self be true"? Or do we believe we belong to something larger than ourselves - a family, a religion, a troop - that claims our first allegiance?

Over the past decade, our understanding of the cognition of literature has been transformed by scientific discoveries, such as the mirror neuron system and its role in empathy. Addressing questions such as why we care so deeply about fictional characters, what brain activities are sparked when we read literature, and how literary works and scholarship can inform the cognitive sciences, this book surveys the exciting recent developments in the field of cognitive literary studies.

Driving is a fact of life. We are all spending more and more time on the road, and traffic is an issue we face everyday. This audiobook will make you think about it in a whole new light.

Teen Spirit offers a novel and provocative perspective on how we came to be living in an age of political immaturity and social turmoil. Award-winning author Paul Howe argues it's because a teenage mentality has slowly gripped the adult world.

The COVID-19 pandemic is the most significant health emergency of our time. Writing from Italy in lockdown, physicist and novelist Paolo Giordano explains how disease spreads in our interconnected world.

Normative Psychoanalysis: How the Oedipal Dogma Shapes Consumer Culture' (Scholarly Articles, Vol. 14) is a critique of Sigmund Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex. This study demonstrates that Freudian psychoanalysis, applied to children, is not permissive, but castrative; in addition, it is normative and actually a tool for forging the ideal consumer child within a consumer culture that is based on the economic paradigm of total consumption.