The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness


Susannah Cahalan - 2019
    Forced to remain inside until they'd "proven" themselves sane, all eight emerged with alarming diagnoses and even more troubling stories of their treatment. Rosenhan's study broke open the field of psychiatry, closing down institutions and changing mental health diagnosis forever. But, as Cahalan's new research shows, very little in this saga is exactly as it seems. What really happened behind those closed asylum doors, and what does it mean for our understanding of mental illness today?

From the Brink of the Drink: A Personal Story of Tribulations and Triumphs of Alcoholism


Karla Juvonen - 2020
    

Technically Food: Inside Silicon Valley's Mission to Change What We Eat


Larissa Zimberoff - 2021
    If you, like me, suspect they’re selling the sizzle more than the steak, read Technically Food for the real story.” —Dan Barber, the chef and co-owner of Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns   Eating a veggie burger used to mean consuming a mushy, flavorless patty that you would never confuse with a beef burger. But now products from companies like Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, Eat Just, and others that were once fringe players in the food space are dominating the media, menus in restaurants, and the refrigerated sections of our grocery stores. With the help of scientists working in futuristic labs––making milk without cows and eggs without chickens––start-ups are creating wholly new food categories. Real food is being replaced by high-tech.  Technically Food: Inside Silicon Valley’s Mission to Change What We Eat by investigative reporter Larissa Zimberoff is the first comprehensive survey of the food companies at the forefront of this booming business. Zimberoff pokes holes in the mania behind today’s changing food landscape to uncover the origins of these mysterious foods and demystify them. These sometimes ultraprocessed and secretly produced foods are cheered by consumers and investors because many are plant-based—often vegan—and help address societal issues like climate change, animal rights, and our planet’s dwindling natural resources. But are these products good for our personal health?   Through news-breaking revelations, Technically Food examines the trade-offs of replacing real food with technology-driven approximations. Chapters go into detail about algae, fungi, pea protein, cultured milk and eggs, upcycled foods, plant-based burgers, vertical farms, cultured meat, and marketing methods. In the final chapter Zimberoff talks to industry voices––including Dan Barber, Mark Cuban, Marion Nestle, and Paul Shapiro––to learn where they see food in 20 years.   As our food system leaps ahead to a sterilized lab of the future, we think we know more about our food than we ever did. But because so much is happening so rapidly, we actually know less about the food we are eating. Until now.

My Money My Way: Taking Back Control of Your Financial Life


Kumiko Love - 2022
    Previous budgeting methods haven't worked because they weren't designed by you or for you. Love's original strategies will help you define your goals and achieve them on your own terms. You will learn foundational practices such as:- How to harness your emotions to make authentic money decisions, instead of letting your emotions control you - How to create a budget based on what you need to spend, not what you think you should be spending - How to create a motivating debt pay-off plan that fits your life, not a plan that's too strict to succeedLove knows this better than anyone because she's lived it. Only a few years ago, she struggled to pay her $77,000 dollar debts down while making $24,000 per year as a single mom. Every financial plan she tried failed, so she made one that prioritized her family and her sanity. Today, she's living debt-free in her dream home, which she paid for in cash, and spends stress-free time with her son every day.Love has motivated millions of women to get in control of their financial futures. Her revolutionary yet practical and accessible approach will unlock the secrets of financial fulfillment so you never have to sweat living your best life ever again.

How to Win The Bachelor: The Secret to Finding Love and Fame on America's Favorite Reality Show


Chad Kultgen - 2022
    Now, discover the fascinating history of the show, uncover the ins and outs of the phenomenon that has become Bachelor Nation, and take a deeper look at what separates the winners from the losers. From how best to exit the limo on Night One, to strategies for making a run for the all-important First Impression Rose, to how to avoid being labeled a villain, this clear-eyed guide illustrates the rules and strategies any would-be contestant should know. The ultimate must-read for every fan, How to Win the Bachelor gives you an inside look at the franchise where The Rose holds all the power.

The Wonders


Elena Medel - 2020
    She worked as a housekeeper, a caregiver, a cleaner—somehow always taking care of someone else. Two generations later, during the Women’s March in 2018, Alicia was working at the snack shop in the Atocha train station when it overflowed with protesters and strikers. Women, so many women, were flooding the streets with their signs and chants. She couldn’t have known María was among them; she was on the clock. And later, she’d be looking for someone else, a man to take her away for a few hours, to make her forget. Anyone but her husband, with his pleas to go on bike rides together, to have children, to act like the other thirtysomething couples they knew.  Medel’s lyrical sensibility reveals her roots as a poet, but her fast-paced and expansive storytelling show she’s a novelist ahead of her time. With grit, texture, and mesmerizing prose, The Wonders launches an inimitable new voice in fiction.

Mean Little People


Paige Dearth - 2016
    When I was seven years old the bullies in my class almost killed me; my father was angry that I let it happen but he always hated me.At thirteen I went to prison for a crime I didn’t commit; it was the worst experience of my life.Living on the streets was hard; being part of a gang was harder.Oh, and I did find people to love along the way…and, I would do anything to protect them. Anything.**WARNING** 18+ Readers Only. Graphic content and subject matter. (This is a standalone novel)NOTE: Mean Little People was previously titled Born Mobster. The content remains the same.

Heartsick


Jessie StephensJessie Stephens - 2021
    And so we are left in the middle of the ocean, floating in a dinghy with no anchor, while the world waits for us to be okay again.'Claire has returned from London to the dust and familiarity of her childhood home, only to realise something is wrong with her partner Maggie.Patrick is a lonely uni student, until he meets Caitlin - but does she feel as connected as he does?Ana is happily married with three children. Then, one night, she falls in love with someone else.Based on three true stories, Heartsick is a compelling narrative nonfiction account of the many lows and occasional surprising highs of heartbreak. Bruising, beautiful, achingly specific but wholeheartedly universal, it reminds us that emotional pain can make us as it breaks us, and that storytelling has the ultimate healing power.

Rain: A Natural and Cultural History


Cynthia Barnett - 2015
    Yet this is the first book to tell the story of rain. Cynthia Barnett's  Rain begins four billion years ago with the torrents that filled the oceans, and builds to the storms of climate change. It weaves together science—the true shape of a raindrop, the mysteries of frog and fish rains—with the human story of our ambition to control rain, from ancient rain dances to the 2,203 miles of levees that attempt to straitjacket the Mississippi River. It offers a glimpse of our "founding forecaster," Thomas Jefferson, who measured every drizzle long before modern meteorology. Two centuries later, rainy skies would help inspire Morrissey’s mopes and Kurt Cobain’s grunge. Rain is also a travelogue, taking readers to Scotland to tell the surprising story of the mackintosh raincoat, and to India, where villagers extract the scent of rain from the monsoon-drenched earth and turn it into perfume. Now, after thousands of years spent praying for rain or worshiping it; burning witches at the stake to stop rain or sacrificing small children to bring it; mocking rain with irrigated agriculture and cities built in floodplains; even trying to blast rain out of the sky with mortars meant for war, humanity has finally managed to change the rain. Only not in ways we intended. As climate change upends rainfall patterns and unleashes increasingly severe storms and drought, Barnett shows rain to be a unifying force in a fractured world. Too much and not nearly enough, rain is a conversation we share, and this is a book for everyone who has ever experienced it.

How We'll Live on Mars


Stephen L. Petranek - 2014
    Now he makes the case that living on Mars is not just plausible, but inevitable.It sounds like science fiction, but Stephen Petranek considers it fact: Within twenty years, humans will live on Mars. We'll need to. In this sweeping, provocative book that mixes business, science, and human reporting, Petranek makes the case that living on Mars is an essential back-up plan for humanity and explains in fascinating detail just how it will happen.The race is on. Private companies, driven by iconoclastic entrepreneurs, such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Paul Allen, and Sir Richard Branson; Dutch reality show and space mission Mars One; NASA; and the Chinese government are among the many groups competing to plant the first stake on Mars and open the door for human habitation. Why go to Mars? Life on Mars has potential life-saving possibilities for everyone on earth. Depleting water supplies, overwhelming climate change, and a host of other disasters — from terrorist attacks to meteor strikes — all loom large. We must become a space-faring species to survive. We have the technology not only to get humans to Mars, but to convert Mars into another habitable planet. It will likely take 300 years to "terraform" Mars, as the jargon goes, but we can turn it into a veritable second Garden of Eden. And we can live there, in specially designed habitations, within the next twenty years.In this exciting chronicle, Petranek introduces the circus of lively characters all engaged in a dramatic effort to be the first to settle the Red Planet. How We'll Live on Mars brings firsthand reporting, interviews with key participants, and extensive research to bear on the question of how we can expect to see life on Mars within the next twenty years.

Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed


Carl Zimmer - 2011
    This fascinating book showcases hundreds of eye-catching tattoos that pay tribute to various scientific disciplines, from evolutionary biology and neuroscience to mathematics and astrophysics, and reveals the stories of the individuals who chose to inscribe their obsessions in their skin. Best of all, each tattoo provides a leaping-off point for bestselling essayist and lecturer Zimmer to reflect on the science in question, whether it's the importance of an image of Darwin's finches or the significance of the uranium atom inked into the chest of a young radiologist.

The Simulation Hypothesis


Rizwan Virk - 2019
    Riz is the Executive Director of Play Labs @ MIT, a video game startup incubator at the MIT Game Lab.Drawing from research and concepts from computer science, artificial intelligence, video games, quantum physics, and referencing both speculative fiction and ancient eastern spiritual texts, Virk shows how all of these traditions come together to point to the idea that we may be inside a simulated reality like the Matrix.The Simulation Hypothesis is the idea that our physical reality, far from being a solid physical universe, is part of an increasingly sophisticated video game-like simulation, where we all have multiple lives, consisting of pixels with its own internal clock run by some giant Artificial Intelligence. Simulation theory explains some of the biggest mysteries of quantum and relativistic physics, such as quantum indeterminacy, parallel universes, and the integral nature of the speed of light.Recently, the idea that we may be living in a giant video game has received a lot of attention:"There's a one in a billion chance we are not living in a simulation" -Elon Musk"I find it hard to argue we are not in a simulation." -Neil deGrasse Tyson"We are living in computer generated reality." -Philip K. DickVideo game technology has developed from basic arcade and text adventures to MMORPGs. Video game designer Riz Virk shows how these games may continue to evolve in the future, including virtual reality, augmented reality, Artificial Intelligence, and quantum computing. This book shows how this evolution could lead us to the point of being able to develop all encompassing virtual worlds like the Oasis in Ready Player One, or the simulated reality in the Matrix.While the idea sounds like science fiction, many scientists, engineers, and professors have given the Simulation Hypothesis serious consideration. Futurist Ray Kurzweil has popularized the idea of downloading our consciousness into a silicon based device, which would mean we are just digital information after all. Some, like Oxford lecturer Nick Bostrom, goes further and thinks we may in fact be artificially intelligent consciousness inside such a simulation already!But the Simulation Hypothesis is not just a modern idea. Philosophers like Plato have been telling us that we live in a "cave" and can only see shadows of the real world. Mystics of all traditions have long contended that we are living in some kind of "illusion "and that there are other realities which we can access with our minds. While even Judeo-Christian traditions have this idea, Eastern traditions like Buddhism and Hinduism make this idea part of their core tradition -- that we are inside a dream world ("Maya" or illusion, or Vishnu's Dream), and we have "multiple lives" playing different characters when one dies, continuing to gain experience and "level up" after completing certain challenges. Sounds a lot like a video game!Whether you are a computer scientist, a fan of science fiction like the Matrix movies, a video game enthusiast, or a spiritual seeker, The Simulation Hypothesis touches on all these areas, and you will never look at the world the same way again!

Seeing Further: Ideas, Endeavours, Discoveries and Disputes — The Story of Science Through 350 Years of the Royal Society


Bill BrysonJohn D. Barrow - 2010
    A twenty-eight year old — and not widely famous — Christopher Wren was giving a lecture on astronomy. As his audience listened to him speak, they decided that it would be a good idea to create a Society to promote the accumulation of useful knowledge.With that, the Royal Society was born. Since its birth, the Royal Society has pioneered scientific exploration and discovery. Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle, Joseph Banks, Humphry Davy, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, John Locke, Alexander Fleming — all were fellows.Bill Bryson’s favourite fellow was Reverend Thomas Bayes, a brilliant mathematician who devised Bayes’ theorem. Its complexity meant that it had little practical use in Bayes’ own lifetime, but today his theorem is used for weather forecasting, astrophysics and stock market analysis. A milestone in mathematical history, it only exists because the Royal Society decided to preserve it — just in case. The Royal Society continues to do today what it set out to do all those years ago. Its members have split the atom, discovered the double helix, the electron, the computer and the World Wide Web. Truly international in its outlook, it has created modern science.Seeing Further celebrates its momentous history and achievements, bringing together the very best of science writing. Filled with illustrations of treasures from the Society’s archives, this is a unique, ground-breaking and beautiful volume, and a suitable reflection of the immense achievements of science.

Immune: a Journey into the Mysterious System that Keeps You Alive


Philipp Dettmer - 2021
    Your head hurts. You're mildly annoyed as you get the kids ready for school and dress for work yourself. Meanwhile, an epic war is being fought, just below your skin. Millions are fighting and dying for you to be able to complain as you head out the door.So what, exactly, is your immune system?Second only to the human brain in its complexity, it is one of the oldest and most critical facets of life on Earth. Without it, you would die within days. In Immune, Philipp Dettmer, the brains behind the most popular science channel on YouTube, takes readers on a journey through the fortress of the human body and its defenses. There is a constant battle of staggering scale raging within us, full of stories of invasion, strategy, defeat, and noble self-sacrifice. In fact, in the time you've been reading this, your immune system has probably identified and eradicated a cancer cell that started to grow in your body.Each chapter delves into an element of the immune system, including defenses like antibodies and inflammation as well as threats like bacteria, allergies, and cancer, as Dettmer reveals why boosting your immune system is actually nonsense, how parasites sneak their way past your body's defenses, how viruses work, and what goes on in your wounds when you cut yourself.Enlivened by engaging graphics and immersive descriptions, Immune turns one of the most intricate, interconnected, and confusing subjects—immunology—into a gripping adventure through an astonishing alien landscape. Immune is a vital and remarkably fun crash course in what is arguably, and increasingly, the most important system in the body.

Notes from Deep Time: The Hidden Stories of the Earth Beneath Our Feet


Helen Gordon - 2021
    She gets to grips with the theory that explains how it all works - plate tectonics, a breakthrough as significant in its way as evolution or quantum mechanics, but much younger than either, and still with many secrets to reveal. And she looks to the future of our world, with or without us.On the cusp of what may be Earth's next cataclysmic transformation, it's time to understand how we fit into the big picture.