Biologists have been trying to solve the mystery of how organisms have the ability to migrate and orient with such precision—especially since our own adventurous ancestors spread across the world without maps or instruments. O'Connor goes to the Arctic, the Australian bush, and the South Pacific to talk to masters of their environment who seek to preserve their traditions at a time when anyone can use a GPS to navigate.O'Connor explores the neurological basis of spatial orientation within the hippocampus. Without it, people inhabit a dream state, becoming amnesiacs incapable of finding their way, recalling the past, or imagining the future. Studies have shown that the more we exercise our cognitive mapping skills, the greater the grey matter and health of our hippocampus. O'Connor talks to scientists studying how atrophy in the hippocampus is associated with afflictions such as impaired memory, dementia, Alzheimer's Disease, depression, and PTSD.Wayfinding is a captivating book that charts how our species' profound capacity for exploration, memory, and storytelling results in topophilia, the love of place.

    Where would we be without bike helmets, baggies, toothbrushes, and pacemakers? But a century into our love affair with plastic, we’re starting to realize it’s not such a healthy relationship. Plastics draw on dwindling fossil fuels, leach harmful chemicals, litter landscapes, and destroy marine life. As journalist Susan Freinkel points out in this engaging and eye-opening book, we’re nearing a crisis point. We’ve produced as much plastic in the past decade as we did in the entire twentieth century. We’re drowning in the stuff, and we need to start making some hard choices. Freinkel gives us the tools we need with a blend of lively anecdotes and analysis. She combs through scientific studies and economic data, reporting from China and across the United States to assess the real impact of plastic on our lives. She tells her story through eight familiar plastic objects: comb, chair, Frisbee, IV bag, disposable lighter, grocery bag, soda bottle, and credit card. Her conclusion: we cannot stay on our plastic-paved path. And we don’t have to. Plastic points the way toward a new creative partnership with the material we love to hate but can’t seem to live without.

    What’s left of the American Dream has taken refuge in the 9.9% that lies just below the tip of extreme wealth. Collectively, the members of this group control more than half of the wealth in the country—and they are doing whatever it takes to hang on to their piece of the action in an increasingly unjust system. They log insane hours at the office and then turn their leisure time into an excuse for more career-building, even as they rely on an underpaid servant class to power their economic success and satisfy their personal needs. They have segregated themselves into zip codes designed to exclude as many people as possible. They have made fitness a national obsession even as swaths of the population lose healthcare and grow sicker. They have created an unprecedented demand for admission to elite schools and helped to fuel the dramatic cost of higher education. They channel their political energy into symbolic conflicts over identity in order to avoid acknowledging the economic roots of their privilege. And they have created an ethos of “merit” to justify their advantages. They are all around us. In fact, they are us—or what we are supposed to want to be. In this “captivating account” (Robert D. Putnam, author of Bowling Alone), Matthew Stewart argues that a new aristocracy is emerging in American society and it is repeating the mistakes of history. It is entrenching inequality, warping our culture, eroding democracy, and transforming an abundant economy into a source of misery. He calls for a regrounding of American culture and politics on a foundation closer to the original promise of America.

    How do we know which sounds should startle us, which should engage us, and which should turn us off?Why do we often fall asleep on train rides or in the car? Is there really a musical note that can make you sick to your stomach? Why do city folks have trouble sleeping in the country, and vice versa?In this fascinating exploration, research psychologist and sound engineer Seth Horowitz shows how our sense of hearing manipulates the way we think, consume, sleep, and feel.Starting with the basics of the biology, Horowitz explains why we hear what we hear, and in turn, how we've learned to manipulate sound: into music, commercial jingles, car horns, and modern inventions like cochlear implants, ultrasound scans, and the mosquito ringtone. Combining the best parts of This is Your Brain on Music and The Emotional Brain, this book gives new insight into what really makes us tick.

    But it wasn't always this way. Seven decades ago, sweating was "unladylike" and girls grew up believing that physical exertion would cause their uterus to "fall out." Most hid their muscle under sleeves and skirts. It was only in the Sixties that, thanks to a few forward-thinking fitness pioneers, women began to move en masse. When they did, journalist Danielle Friedman argues, they were participating in something subversive: the pursuit of physical strength and personal autonomy.In Let's Get Physical, Friedman reveals the fascinating hidden history of contemporary fitness culture, chronicling in vivid, cinematic prose how exercise evolved from a beauty tool sold almost exclusively as a way to "reduce" to one millions have harnessed as a path to mental, emotional, and physical well-being.Inspired by Friedman's viral article in New York Magazine's the Cut that unearthed the little-known origins of the popular barre workout, Let's Get Physical takes us into the workout studios and onto the mats of 20th century America to reclaim these forgotten origins. Each chapter uncovers the birth of an exercise movement that laid the groundwork for working out today: the radical post-war pitch for women to break a sweat, the invention of barre in the Swinging Sixties, jogging's path to liberation in the Seventies, the explosion of aerobic dancing in the Eighties, the rise of weight-training and yoga, and the ongoing push for a more socially just fitness culture--one that is inclusive of every body.Ultimately, Let's Get Physical tells the story of how, with the rise of late 20th century feminism, women discovered the joy of physical competence--and how, by moving together to transform fitness from a privilege into a right, we can create a more powerful sisterhood.

    Throughout history, culture has been shaped by these deaths; diaries and letters recorded them, and writers such as Louisa May Alcott, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Eugene O’Neill wrote about and mourned them. Not even the powerful and the wealthy could escape: of Abraham and Mary Lincoln’s four children, only one survived to adulthood, and the first billionaire in history, John D. Rockefeller, lost his beloved grandson to scarlet fever. For children of the poor, immigrants, enslaved people and their descendants, the chances of dying were far worse.The steady beating back of infant and child mortality is one of our greatest human achievements. Interweaving her own experiences as a medical student and doctor, Perri Klass pays tribute to groundbreaking women doctors like Rebecca Lee Crumpler, Mary Putnam Jacobi, and Josephine Baker, and to the nurses, public health advocates, and scientists who brought new approaches and scientific ideas about sanitation and vaccination to families. These scientists, healers, reformers, and parents rewrote the human experience so that—for the first time in human memory—early death is now the exception rather than the rule, bringing about a fundamental transformation in society, culture, and family life.

    Like many of us, the importance of a healthy, organic diet, physical activity, and lots of sleep were impressed upon Marta. As any parent, Marta's father wanted his child to live to be 100. When Marta became a parent herself, she found herself wanting the same thing for her own daughter: a long, healthy life. What's more, though, is that she wanted to live long enough to see her daughter blow out eighty candles on her birthday. And so, from the day her daughter was born, Marta fretted about what she and her family were eating. Smoothies, goji berries, flax seeds, organic fruits and vegetables. She fasted (and urged her husband to), considered keto, and ran a half-marathon. But then, Marta Zaraska, a science journalist, found scientific papers that shattered her long-held beliefs about aging and longevity. It turns out that, according to research, diet and exercise are not the most important things to work on to encourage your family's longevity--or your own. Instead, you should be concentrating on your social life and the kind of person you are, psychologically-speaking. Marta learned that a strong support network of family and friends lowers mortality risk by about 50 percent while exercise can lower that risk by 23 to 33 percent. She found that volunteering your free time is a foolproof way to lower your mortality rate by 22 percent, while certain health fads like turmeric haven't been shown to lower your mortality rate at all. Many more examples like this led Marta to her ultimate conclusion: you should be contemplating your purpose in life, not the best fitness tracker to buy. In Growing Young, Marta demonstrates that sociality and thought patterns--in combination with diet and exercise--matter the most. Through ten chapters that take her around the world, from the UK to Japan, from laboratories to "hugging centres," Marta investigates the various longevity lifestyles of different cultures in the hopes of prioritizing the longevity habits that will makes the most impact in our lives. Deeply researched and expertly reported, Growing Young will dramatically change the way you seek a longer, happier life.

    The Red Queen answers dozens of other riddles of human nature and culture -- including why men propose marriage, the method behind our maddening notions of beauty, and the disquieting fact that a woman is more likely to conceive a child by an adulterous lover than by her husband. Brilliantly written, The Red Queen offers an extraordinary new way of interpreting the human condition and how it has evolved.

    The news is full of archaeology: treasures found (British king under parking lot) and treasures lost (looters, bulldozers, natural disaster, and war). Archaeological research tantalizes us with possibilities (are modern humans really part Neandertal?). Where are the archaeologists behind these stories? What kind of work do they actually do, and why does it matter?Marilyn Johnson’s Lives in Ruins is an absorbing and entertaining look at the lives of contemporary archaeologists as they sweat under the sun for clues to the puzzle of our past. Johnson digs and drinks alongside archaeologists, chases them through the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and even Machu Picchu, and excavates their lives. Her subjects share stories we rarely read in history books, about slaves and Ice Age hunters, ordinary soldiers of the American Revolution, children of the first century, Chinese woman warriors, sunken fleets, mummies.What drives these archaeologists is not the money (meager) or the jobs (scarce) or the working conditions (dangerous), but their passion for the stories that would otherwise be buried and lost.

    From Pokémon to the rapper Eminem, pop-culture icons are not simply commercial pied pipers who practice mass hypnosis on our youth. Indeed, argues the author of this lively and persuasive paean to the power of popular culture, even trashy or violent entertainment gives children something they need, something that can help both boys and girls develop in a healthy way. Drawing on a wealth of true stories, many gleaned from the fascinating workshops he conducts, and basing his claims on extensive research, including interviews with psychologists and educators, Gerard Jones explains why validating our children's fantasies teaches them to trust their own emotions and build stronger selves.

    The twentieth century—a time of unprecedented progress—has produced a tremendous strain on the very elements that comprise life itself: This raises the key question of the twenty-first century: How much longer can this go on? With wit and erudition, Ronald Wright lays out a-convincing case that history has always provided an answer, whether we care to notice or not. From Neanderthal man to the Sumerians to the Roman Empire, A Short History of Progress dissects the cyclical nature of humanity's development and demise, the 10,000-year old experiment that we've unleashed but have yet to control. It is Wright's contention that only by understanding and ultimately breaking from the patterns of progress and disaster that humanity has repeated around the world since the Stone Age can we avoid the onset of a new Dark Age. Wright illustrates how various cultures throughout history have literally manufactured their own end by producing an overabundance of innovation and stripping bare the very elements that allowed them to initially advance. Wright's book is brilliant; a fascinating rumination on the hubris at the heart of human development and the pitfalls we still may have time to avoid.

    On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the wild, often unable to solve basic problems, like obtaining food, building shelters, or avoiding predators. On the other hand, human groups have produced innovative technologies, sophisticated languages, and complex institutions that have permitted us to successfully expand into environments across the globe. What has enabled us to dominate such a vast range of environments, more than any other species? As this book shows, the secret of our success lies not in our innate intelligence, but in our collective brains--in the ability of human groups to socially interconnect and learn from one another.Drawing insights from lost European explorers, clever chimpanzees, hunter-gatherers, neuroscientists, ancient bones, and the human genome, Joseph Henrich demonstrates how our collective brains have propelled our species' genetic evolution and shaped our biology. Our early capacities for learning from others produced many innovations, such as fire, cooking, water containers, plant knowledge, and projectile weapons, which in turn drove the expansion of our brains and altered our physiology, anatomy, and psychology in crucial ways. Further on, some collective brains generated and recombined powerful concepts, such as the lever, wheel, screw, and writing. Henrich shows how our genetics and biology are inextricably interwoven with cultural evolution, and that this particular culture-gene interaction has propelled our species on an extraordinary evolutionary trajectory.Tracking clues from our ancient past to the present, "The Secret of Our Success" explores how our cultural and social natures produce a collective intelligence that explains both our species' immense success and our human uniqueness.

    . . . Wonderland inspires grins and well-what-d'ya-knows" —The New York Times Book Review From the New York Times-bestselling author of How We Got to Now and Where Good Ideas Come From, a look at the world-changing innovations we made while keeping ourselves entertained. This lushly illustrated history of popular entertainment takes a long-zoom approach, contending that the pursuit of novelty and wonder is a powerful driver of world-shaping technological change. Steven Johnson argues that, throughout history, the cutting edge of innovation lies wherever people are working the hardest to keep themselves and others amused.Johnson's storytelling is just as delightful as the inventions he describes, full of surprising stops along the journey from simple concepts to complex modern systems. He introduces us to the colorful innovators of leisure: the explorers, proprietors, showmen, and artists who changed the trajectory of history with their luxurious wares, exotic meals, taverns, gambling tables, and magic shows.In Wonderland, Johnson compellingly argues that observers of technological and social trends should be looking for clues in novel amusements. You'll find the future wherever people are having the most fun.

    With profound empathy and meticulous research, Shaili Jain, M.D.—a practicing psychiatrist and PTSD specialist at one of America’s top VA hospitals, trauma scientist at the National Center for PTSD, and a Stanford Professor—shines a long-overdue light on the PTSD epidemic affecting today’s fractured world.Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder goes far beyond the horrors of war and is an inescapable part of all our lives. At any given moment, more than six million Americans are suffering with PTSD. Dr. Jain’s groundbreaking work demonstrates the ways this disorder cuts to the heart of life, interfering with one’s capacity to love, create, and work—incapacity brought on by a complex interplay between biology, genetics, and environment. Beyond the struggles of individuals, PTSD has a tangible imprint on our cultures and societies around the world.Since 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there has been a huge growth in the science of PTSD, a body of evidence that continues to grow exponentially. With this new knowledge have come dramatic advances in the effective treatment of this condition. Jain draws on a decade of her own clinical innovation and research and argues for a paradigm shift in how PTSD should be approached in the new millennium. She highlights the myriads of ways PTSD care is being transformed to make it more accessible, acceptable, and available to sufferers via integrated care models, use of peer support programs, and technology. By identifying those among us who are most vulnerable to developing PTSD, cutting edge medical interventions that hold the promise of preventing the onset of PTSD are becoming more of a reality than ever before.Combining vividly recounted patient stories, interviews with some of the world’s top trauma scientists, and her professional expertise from working on the frontlines of PTSD, The Unspeakable Mind offers a textured portrait of this invisible illness that is unrivaled in scope and lays bare PTSD's roots, inner workings, and paths to healing. This book is essential reading for understanding how humans can recover from unspeakable trauma. The Unspeakable Mind stands as the definitive guide to PTSD and offers lasting hope to sufferers, their loved ones, and health care providers everywhere.

    Both are naive risk-takers. I loved this book!” —Temple Grandin, author of Animals Make Us Human and Animals in Translation A revelatory investigation of human and animal adolescence and young adulthood from the New York Times bestselling authors of Zoobiquity.With Wildhood, Harvard evolutionary biologist Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and award-winning science writer Kathryn Bowers have created an entirely new way of thinking about the crucial, vulnerable, and exhilarating phase of life between childhood and adulthood across the animal kingdom. In their critically acclaimed bestseller, Zoobiquity, the authors revealed the essential connection between human and animal health. In Wildhood, they turn the same eye-opening, species-spanning lens to adolescent young adult life. Traveling around the world and drawing from their latest research, they find that the same four universal challenges are faced by every adolescent human and animal on earth: how to be safe, how to navigate hierarchy; how to court potential mates; and how to feed oneself. Safety. Status. Sex. Self-reliance. How human and animal adolescents and young adults confront the challenges of wildhood shapes their adult destinies. Natterson-Horowitz and Bowers illuminate these core challenges through the lives of four animals in the wild: Ursula, a young king penguin; Shrink, a charismatic hyena; Salt, a matriarchal humpback whale; and Slavc, a roaming European wolf. Through their riveting stories—and those of countless others, from adventurous eagles and rambunctious high schooler to inexperienced orcas and naive young soldiers—readers get a vivid and game-changing portrait of adolescent young adults as a horizontal tribe, sharing behaviors and challenges, setbacks and triumphs. Upending our understanding of everything from risk-taking and anxiety to the origins of privilege and the nature of sexual coercion and consent, Wildhood is a profound and necessary guide to the perilous, thrilling, and universal journey to adulthood on planet earth.