Humans: from the beginning will appeal to anybody who reads about these discoveries, is intrigued by them, and would like to know more about prehistory. Now brought fully up to date for 2015, Humans: from the beginning is a single-volume guide to the human past. Drawing upon expert literature and the latest multi-disciplinary research, this rigorous but accessible book traces the whole of the human story from the first apes to the first cities. The end product of five years of research, it has also been planned from the ground up to take advantage of the eBook format and ease access to visual matter, references and glossary items. Humans: from the beginning is written for the non-specialist, but it is sufficiently comprehensive in scope, rigorous in content, and well-referenced to serve as an ideal ‘one-stop’ text not only for undergraduate students of relevant disciplines, but also to postgraduates, researchers and other academics seeking to broaden their knowledge. This 32-chapter work presents an even-handed coverage of topics including: • How climate change has long played a pivotal role in our affairs and those of our ancestors. • How humans evolved from apes at a time when the apes were facing extinction. • Why the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees (our closest living relatives) might have been more like a human than a chimpanzee. • A possible Asian rather than African origin for the earliest humans. • Why the Neanderthals were not the dimwits of popular imagination. • How language and modern human behaviour evolved: an examination of theories including those of Robin Dunbar, Steven Mithen and Derek Bickerton. • How the small group of modern humans that eventually colonised the whole of the non-African world might have started from Arabia rather than Africa. • David Lewis-Williams’ theory that the cave art of Ice Age Europe was linked to a shamanistic belief system that might be rooted in the very architecture of the human brain. • Why the Neolithic transition from hunter-gathering to agriculture was a lengthy process, with many down sides. • Colin Renfrew’s still-controversial theory that the spread of farming communities in Neolithic times was responsible for the languages now spoken in many parts of the world. • How an ‘Urban Revolution’ replaced egalitarian farming communities with socially-stratified kingdoms and city-states in just a few millennia. • How the complex, technological societies of today have much in common with not only the earliest states but much earlier primate societies.

    Intimacy and access make rebellion very dangerous.”In The Problem With Rich Women, Gloria Steinem explores how and why feminism failed to reach women in powerful families, and provides an urgent and persuasive argument for rebellion among upper-class women.The Problem With Rich Women was originally published in Ms., June 1986. Cover design by Adil Dara.

    More than just a biography, it relates Brady’s story while also establishing his prominent place in NFL history. By examining his skills and statistics in a variety of categories and comparing him to other great quarterbacks—including Peyton Manning, Joe Montana, Bart Starr, Johnny Unitas, Roger Staubach, and more—the guide makes a strong case for Brady as football’s best signal caller. Along the way, his best moments as a Patriot are revisited, from championship seasons and his favorite receivers to his relationship with legendary coach Bill Belichick. With detailed sidebars on Brady’s celebrity status, fashion sense, much-talked-about hair, and supermodel wife, this is a must-have for faithful New England fans and pro football buffs alike.

    “I smoked in my twenties. I preferred red wine to sparkling water. I ate too much milk chocolate. I liked limericks. I know all the wrong I’ve done. But also, more than any of that, I’ve always longed for children.” Yet there she was: successful, social, mostly happy, and not a mother. Knowing that her chances of becoming pregnant naturally were quickly fading, Finn decided to gamble: she—like some 85,000 other women in the U.S. each year—would attempt in vitro fertilization. Almost three years later, she’s still trying, and in the process has become an accidental pioneer (and, at times, a guinea pig) in the ever-evolving science of IVF.“The Baby Chase” is a primer for anyone contemplating or undergoing IVF. More than that, it’s a story of longing, hope—and hormones—that will appeal to all parents, present and future.Finn’s engaging and honest account sheds light on a subject that few people who undergo IFV are willing to talk about: what happens when the science doesn’t work. “Usually, it’s only the people who come out on the other side, beaming, with a baby on one hip, who speak up about IVF,” she writes. “We never hear from those IVF has failed - it’s too crushing to talk about. We don’t hear from men and women in the middle of treatment, either.... People like me.”

    Exceptionally up-to-date and rich in cross-national examples, Political Science offers an unbiased and thorough introduction to the basic concepts and theories of political science. With a critical look at the major theories, it exposes students to many ways of thinking, and challenges them to think critically. Emphasizing both U.S. and comparative politics provides students with a solid foundation for connecting their studies ot what is happening in the world around them.

    In 1985 Hans von Ohain, the scientist who pioneered Nazi Germany's efforts to build a jet plane, posed the question: 'Would World War II have occured if the Luftwaffe knew it faced operational British jets instead of Spitfires?' He immediately answered, 'I, for one, think not.'Frank Whittle, working-class outsider and self-taught enthusiast, had worked out the blueprint of a completely new type of engine in 1929, only for his ideas to be blocked by bureaucratic opposition until the outbreak of war in 1939. The importance of his work was recognized too late by the government for his revolutionary engine to play a major part in World War II. After the war Whittle's dream of civilian jet-powered aircraft became a reality and Britain enjoyed a golden age of 1950's jet-powered flight.Drawing on Whittle's extensive private papers, Campbell-Smith tells the story of a stoic and overlooked British hero, a tantalizing tale of 'what might have been'.

    The levels of inequality in the world today are on a scale that have not been seen in our lifetimes, yet the disparity between rich and poor has ramifications that extend far beyond mere financial means. In The Broken Ladder psychologist Keith Payne examines how inequality divides us not just economically; it also has profound consequences for how we think, how we respond to stress, how our immune systems function, and even how we view moral concepts such as justice and fairness.Research in psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics has not only revealed important new insights into how inequality changes people in predictable ways but also provided a corrective to the flawed view of poverty as being the result of individual character failings. Among modern developed societies, inequality is not primarily a matter of the actual amount of money people have. It is, rather, people's sense of where they stand in relation to others. Feeling poor matters--not just being poor. Regardless of their average incomes, countries or states with greater levels of income inequality have much higher rates of all the social maladies we associate with poverty, including lower than average life expectancies, serious health problems, mental illness, and crime.The Broken Ladder explores such issues as why women in poor societies often have more children, and why they have them at a younger age; why there is little trust among the working class in the prudence of investing for the future; why people's perception of their social status affects their political beliefs and leads to greater political divisions; how poverty raises stress levels as effectively as actual physical threats; how inequality in the workplace affects performance; and why unequal societies tend to become more religious. Understanding how inequality shapes our world can help us better understand what drives ideological divides, why high inequality makes the middle class feel left behind, and how to disconnect from the endless treadmill of social comparison.

     Christopher McKinlay has been featured in Wired Magazine for his groundbreaking analysis of OkCupid. For the first time he’s showing non-experts how to turn Internet dating on its head. This concise guide will show anyone (straight, gay, male or female) the procedure McKinlay used to meet his fiancee and how the same ideas can transform their lives and bring them from browsing to contact. One summer evening while logged into a supercomputer in Colorado waiting for a large computation, McKinlay was killing time on OkC when he was troubled by a problem: what if large groups of people responded to OkCupid’s personality questionnaire in statistically similar ways? He created custom software to scrape data from the site, collecting over 6,000,000 answers to OkC’s “match questions” from more than 20,000 real users. This data made clear he’d been using the site the wrong way. Based on his findings, McKinlay (a mathematics PhD), optimized his own profile. The transformation was profound. He went from showing a “match percentage” of 90% with a few hundred women in the L.A. area to showing 90% or higher with over 30,000 local women. Unsolicited messages from attractive strangers began flooding his inbox. With a foreword by Jon Finkel, McKinlay’s insightful how-to will teach you how to benefit from the buried statistical patterns of online romance.

    In A Generation of Sociopaths, Gibney examines the disastrous policies of the most powerful generation in modern history, showing how the Boomers ruthlessly enriched themselves at the expense of future generations.Acting without empathy, prudence, or respect for facts--acting, in other words, as sociopaths--the Boomers turned American dynamism into stagnation, inequality, and bipartisan fiasco. The Boomers have set a time bomb for the 2030s, when damage to Social Security, public finances, and the environment will become catastrophic and possibly irreversible--and when, not coincidentally, Boomers will be dying off. Gibney argues that younger generations have a fleeting window to hold the Boomers accountable and begin restoring America.

    The bad news is that these turn out to be the very things most discouraged by contemporary culture. This knotty dilemma is the subject of The Age of Absurdity - a wry and accessible investigation into how the desirable states of wellbeing and satisfaction are constantly undermined by modern life. Michael Foley examines the elusive condition of happiness common to philosophy, spiritual teachings and contemporary psychology, then shows how these are becoming increasingly difficult to apply in a world of high expectations. The common challenges of earning a living, maintaining a relationship and ageing are becoming battlegrounds of existential angst and self-loathing in a culture that demands conspicuous consumption, high-octane partnerships and perpetual youth. In conclusion, rather than denouncing and rejecting the age, Foley presents an entertaining strategy of not just accepting but embracing today's world - finding happiness in its absurdity.

    An unprecedented blend of science and art, Daniel Levitin's debut, This Is Your Brain on Music, delighted readers with an exuberant guide to the neural impulses behind those songs that make our heart swell. Now he showcases his daring theory of "six songs," illuminating how the brain evolved to play and listen to music in six fundamental forms—for knowledge, friendship, religion, joy, comfort, and love. Preserving the emotional history of our lives and of our species, from its very beginning music was also allied to dance, as the structure of the brain confirms; developing this neurological observation, Levitin shows how music and dance enabled the social bonding and friendship necessary for human culture and society to evolve. Blending cutting-edge scientific findings with his own sometimes hilarious experiences as a musician and music-industry professional, Levitin's sweeping study also incorporates wisdom gleaned from interviews with icons ranging from Sting and Paul Simon to Joni Mitchell, and David Byrne, along with classical musicians and conductors, historians, anthropologists, and evolutionary biologists. The result is a brilliant revelation of the prehistoric yet elegant systems at play when we sing and dance at a wedding or cheer at a concert—or tune out quietly with an iPod.

    From moral ethics to the philosophies of religions, The Philosophy Book sheds a light on the famous ideas and thinkers from the ancient world through the present day. Including theories from Pythagoras to Voltaire and Mary Wollstonecraft to Noam Chomsky, The Philosophy Book offers anyone with an interest in philosophy an essential resource to the great philosophers and the views that have shaped our society.

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    It was shortly before 19h00 when Don Steenkamp jumped out of the vehicle and ran into the station’s charge office, covered in blood, to announce that his parents and sister had been brutally shot and killed on the family farm, Naauwhoek. Although the killings were initially thought to be just another farm attack, months later a sixteen-year-old youth was arrested for the murders, setting in motion a chain of events that would grip South Africa, and divide the people of Griekwastad.Based on interviews with all the role-players, including the investigating officers on the case, the forensic and ballistic experts, and family and friends of the deceased, this is the riveting account of what really happened on Naauwhoek farm on that fateful day, as told by the reporter who followed the case from day one…

    His previous books, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Blank Slate, have catapulted him into the limelight as one of today's most important and popular science writers. Now, in The Stuff of Thought, Pinker marries two of the subjects he knows best: language and human nature. The result is a fascinating look at how our words explain our nature. What does swearing reveal about our emotions? Why does innuendo disclose something about relationships? Pinker reveals how our use of prepositions and tenses taps into peculiarly human concepts of space and time, and how our nouns and verbs speak to our notions of matter. Even the names we give our babies have important things to say about our relations to our children and to society. With his signature wit and style, Pinker takes on scientific questions like whether language affects thought, as well as forays into everyday life: why is bulk e-mail called spam and how do romantic comedies get such mileage out of the ambiguities of dating? The Stuff of Thought is a brilliantly crafted and highly readable work that will appeal to fans of readers of everything from The Selfish Gene and Blink to Eats, Shoots & Leaves.