Beginning with the birth of dream research in the 1950s, award-winning science reporter Andrea Rock traces the brief but fascinating history of this emerging scientific field. She then takes us into modern sleep labs across the country, bringing the scientists to life as she interprets their intellectual breakthroughs and asks the questions that intrigue us all: Why do we remember only a fraction of our dreams? Why are dreams usually accompanied by intense emotion, such as fear or anxiety? Can we really control our dreams without waking up? Are universal dream interpretations valid? Is dreaming our way of consolidating long-term memories and filtering the day's mental detritus? Can dreams truly spark creative thought or help solve problems? Accessible and engaging, The Mind at Night shines a bright light on our nocturnal journeys, while revealing the crucial role dreams could play in penetrating the mystery of consciousness.

    With poetry and clarity, Nhat Hanh imparts comforting wisdom about the nature of suffering and its role in creating compassion, love, and joy – all qualities of enlightenment. Covering such significant teachings as the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, the Three Doors of Liberation, the Three Dharma Seals, and the Seven Factors of Awakening, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching is a radiant beacon on Buddhist thought for the initiated and uninitiated alike. “Thich Nhat Hanh shows us the connection between personal, inner peace, and peace on earth.”                                     – His Holiness the Dalai Lama “Thich Nhat Hanh is a real poet.”                                    – Robert Lowell

    Discussing philosophy's ability to clarifyour thoughts, he explains why such clarification depends on the development of philosophical theories, and how those theories can be tested by imaginative thought experiments, and compared against each other by standards similar to those used in the natural and social sciences. He also shows howlogical rigor can be understood as a way of enhancing the explanatory power of philosophical theories.Drawing on the history of philosophy to provide a track record of philosophical thinking's successes and failures, Williams overturns widely held dogmas about the distinctive nature of philosophy in comparison to the sciences, demystifies its methods, and considers the future of the discipline. Fromthought experiments, to deduction, to theories, this little book will cause you to totally rethink what philosophy is.

    Using the techniques and tools of cognitive behavioral approaches and Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy, Lynn Clark can help anyone learn to manage their troublesome emotions for a happier, more peaceful life. SOS Help for Emotions teaches adult readers what to do to manage feelings in ways that don't get them in trouble or hurt others. Concepts include: 11 common irrational beliefs and self-talk 10 cognitive distortions 5-step self-analysis and improvement process 5 "hot" connecting links 4 anger myths 3 major "musts" that shape our irrational behaviors self help sections for anxiety, anger, & depression An essential book for anyone teaching anger management and emotional skills. From Parents Press

    Kandel investigates The Disordered Mind to uncover what brain disorders reveal about human nature. This challenging study will not only help transform medical care but also encourage a new humanism based in part on the biological confirmation of individuality.Eric R. Kandel, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his foundational research into memory storage in the brain, is one of the pioneers of modern brain science. His work has helped shape our understanding of how learning and memory work. Building from this scientific research, Kandel explores one of the most fundamental questions we face: How does our mind, our individual sense of self, arise from the physical matter of the brain? The brain’s 86 billion neurons communicate with one another through very precise connections. If those connections are disrupted, the brain processes that give rise to our mind can become disordered, resulting in diseases such as depression, schizophrenia, Parkinson’s, and autism.The Disordered Mind illustrates how breakthrough studies of these disruptions can deepen our understanding of thought, feeling, behavior, memory, and creativity, and perhaps in the future will lead to the development of a unified theory of mind.

    In this morally courageous book, Geo Stone sets out to diminish the lack of awareness about suicide, from the tragedy of teenage suicide to the debate over assisted suicide.

    From Washington to Wall Street, the classroom to the workplace, unethical behavior is everywhere. None of us is immune, whether it's the white lie to head off trouble or padding our expense reports. In The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, award-winning, bestselling author Dan Ariely turns his unique insight and innovative research to the question of dishonesty.Generally, we assume that cheating, like most other decisions, is based on a rational cost-benefit analysis. But Ariely argues, and then demonstrates, that it's actually the irrational forces that we don't take into account that often determine whether we behave ethically or not. For every Enron or political bribe, there are countless puffed résumés, hidden commissions, and knockoff purses. In The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, Ariely shows why some things are easier to lie about; how getting caught matters less than we think; and how business practices pave the way for unethical behavior, both intentionally and unintentionally. Ariely explores how unethical behavior works in the personal, professional, and political worlds, and how it affects all of us, even as we think of ourselves as having high moral standards.But all is not lost. Ariely also identifies what keeps us honest, pointing the way for achieving higher ethics in our everyday lives. With compelling personal and academic findings, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty will change the way we see ourselves, our actions, and others.

    In How to Create a Mind, Kurzweil presents a provocative exploration of the most important project in human-machine civilization—reverse engineering the brain to understand precisely how it works and using that knowledge to create even more intelligent machines.Kurzweil discusses how the brain functions, how the mind emerges from the brain, and the implications of vastly increasing the powers of our intelligence in addressing the world’s problems. He thoughtfully examines emotional and moral intelligence and the origins of consciousness and envisions the radical possibilities of our merging with the intelligent technology we are creating.Certain to be one of the most widely discussed and debated science books of the year, How to Create a Mind is sure to take its place alongside Kurzweil’s previous classics which include Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever and The Age of Spiritual Machines.

    Revealing the latest findings in neuroscience and psychology, along with engaging examples of artists and innovators throughout history, the book shines a light on the practices and habits of mind that promote creative thinking. Kaufman and Gregoire untangle a series of paradoxes— like mindfulness and daydreaming, seriousness and play, openness and sensitivity, and solitude and collaboration – to show that it is by embracing our own contradictions that we are able to tap into our deepest creativity. Each chapter explores one of the ten attributes and habits of highly creative people: Imaginative Play * Passion * Daydreaming * Solitude * Intuition * Openness to Experience * Mindfulness * Sensitivity * Turning Adversity into Advantage * Thinking Differently With insights from the work and lives of Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Marcel Proust, David Foster Wallace, Thomas Edison, Josephine Baker, John Lennon, Michael Jackson, musician Thom Yorke, chess champion Josh Waitzkin, video-game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, and many other creative luminaries, Wired to Create helps us better understand creativity – and shows us how to enrich this essential aspect of our lives.

    The author’s final work, presented in a one-volume edition, is a rich, challenging analysis of man’s mental activity, considered in terms of thinking, willing, and judging.

    Much of this information is exaggerated if not wholly inaccurate. As a result, people who try to change their own troubling conditions often experience the frustration of mixed success, success followed by a relapse, or outright failure. To address this confusion, Martin Seligman has meticulously analyzed the most authoritative scientific research on treatments for alcoholism, anxiety, weight loss, anger, depression, and a range of phobias and obsessions to discover what is the most effective way to address each condition. He frankly reports what does not work, and pinpoints the techniques and therapies that work best for each condition, discussing why they work and how you can use them to make long lasting change. Inside you’ll discover the four natural healing factors for recovering from alcoholism; the vital difference between overeating and being overweight; the four therapies that work for depression, the pros and cons of anger--and much more. Wise, direct, and very useful, What You Can Change and What You Can’t will help anyone who seeks to change.

    This is the story of how a new concept—the mind—emerged as a potential solution, one that was part soul and part machine, but fully neither.In this groundbreaking work, award-winning historian George Makari shows how writers, philosophers, physicians, and anatomists worked to construct notions of the mind as not an ethereal thing, but a natural one. From the ascent of Oliver Cromwell to the fall of Napoleon, seminal thinkers like Hobbes, Locke, Diderot, and Kant worked alongside often-forgotten brain specialists, physiologists, and alienists in the hopes of mapping the inner world. Conducted in a cauldron of political turmoil, these frequently shocking, always embattled efforts would give rise to psychiatry, mind sciences such as phrenology, and radically new visions of the self. Further, they would be crucial to the establishment of secular ethics and political liberalism. Boldly original, wide-ranging, and brilliantly synthetic, Soul Machine gives us a masterful, new account of the making of the modern Western mind.

    Alvarez, "has permeated Western culture like a dye that cannot be washed out." Although the aims of this compelling, compassionate work are broadly cultural and literary, the narrative is rooted in personal experience: it begins with a long memoir of Sylvia Plath, and ends with an account of the author's own suicide attempt. Within this dramatic framework, Alvarez launches his enquiry into the final taboo of human behavior, and traces changing attitudes towards suicide from the perspective of literature. He follows the black thread leading from Dante through Donne and the romantic agony, to the Savage God at the heart of modern literature.

    The novel intricately weaves together three timelines: the story of Greyson’s travels (Rome, Israel, Santiago, Thailand, Uganda); the progressive unraveling of his own father seen through Greyson’s childhood eyes; and the intricacies and estrangements of his marriage. The entire narrative unfolds in the time it takes him undergo twelve 30-second electroshock treatments in a New York psychiatric ward.

    In Nobody’s Normal, anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker chronicles the progress and setbacks in the struggle against mental-illness stigma—from the eighteenth century, through America’s major wars, and into today’s high-tech economy.Grinker infuses the book with the personal history of his family’s four generations of involvement in psychiatry, including his grandfather’s analysis with Sigmund Freud, his own daughter’s experience with autism, and culminating in his research on neurodiversity. Drawing on cutting-edge science, historical archives, and cross-cultural research in Africa and Asia, Nobody’s Normal explains how we are transforming mental illness and offers a path to end the shadow of stigma. The preeminent historian of medicine, Sander Gilman, calls Nobody’s Normal “the most important work on stigma in more than half a century.”