After five years of extensive research involving thousands of people who have pets and work with animals, Dr. Sheldrake proves conclusively what many pet owners already know: there is a strong connection between humans and animals that defies present-day scientific understanding. This remarkable book deserves a place next to the most beloved and valuable books on animals, including When Elephants Weep, Dogs Never Lie About Love, and The Hidden Life of Dogs.

    Nothing less than a manifesto for a new social and psychological revolution to save our threatened planet, this book is a summary of the penetrating thought of Eric Fromm. His thesis is that two modes of existence struggle for the spirit of humankind: the having mode, which concentrates on material possessions, power, and aggression, and is the basis of the universal evils of greed, envy, and violence; and the being mode, which is based on love, the pleasure of sharing, and in productive activity. To Have Or to Be? is a brilliant program for socioeconomic change.>

    Soon enough, she is happily ensconced in the daily workings of his family. And not only that: Stella is treated like a family member—in ways that dogs of his youth were not. Spending humanlike sums on vet bills, questioning her diet and exercise regimens, contemplating her happiness—how had this all come to pass, when the dogs from Homans’s childhood seemed quite content living mostly out in the yard?In What’s a Dog For?, Homans explores the dog’s complex and prominent place in our world and how it came to be. Evolving from wild animals to working animals to nearly human members of our social fabric, dogs are now the subject of serious scientific studies concerning pet ownership, evolutionary theory, and even cognitive science. From new insights into what makes dogs so appealing to humans to the health benefits associated with owning a dog, Homans investigates why the human-canine relationship has evolved so rapidly—how dogs moved into our families, our homes, and sometimes even our beds in the span of a generation, becoming a $53 billion industry in the United States in the process.As dogs take their place as coddled family members and their numbers balloon to more than seventy-seven million in the United States alone, it’s no surprise that canine culture at large is also undergoing a massive transformation. They are now subject to many of the same questions of rights and ethics as people, and the politics of dogs are more tumultuous and public than ever— with fierce moral battles raging over kill shelters, puppy mills, and breed standards. Incorporating interviews and research from scientists, activists, breeders, and trainers, What’s a Dog For? investigates how dogs have reached this exalted status and why they hold such fascination for us. With one paw in the animal world and one paw in the human world, it turns out they have much to teach us about love, death, and morality—and ultimately, in their closeness and difference, about what it means to be human.

    The more we notice and listen to what our dogs are trying to tell us, the more we can improve our relationship with our best friends, helping them to feel safe and happy.

    Men from Aristotle to Freud have insisted that women are freakish creatures, capable of immense destruction. Maybe they are. And maybe that’s a good thing.... Sady Doyle, hailed as “smart, funny and fearless” by the Boston Globe, takes readers on a tour of the female dark side, from the biblical Lilith to Dracula’s Lucy Westenra, from the T-Rex in Jurassic Park to the teen witches of The Craft. She illuminates the women who have shaped our nightmares: Serial killer Ed Gein’s “domineering” mother Augusta; exorcism casualty Anneliese Michel, starving herself to death to quell her demons; author Mary Shelley, dreaming her dead child back to life. These monsters embody patriarchal fear of women, and illustrate the violence with which men enforce traditionally feminine roles. They also speak to the primal threat of a woman who takes back her power. In a dark and dangerous world, Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers asks women to look to monsters for the ferocity we all need to survive. “Some people take a scalpel to the heart of media culture; Sady Doyle brings a bone saw, a melon baller, and a machete.”—Andi Zeisler, author of We Were Feminists Once

    

     Where are we? Who are we? Are our emotions, our beliefs, and our hopes and dreams ultimately meaningless out there in the void? Does human purpose and meaning fit into a scientific worldview?In short chapters filled with intriguing historical anecdotes, personal asides, and rigorous exposition, readers learn the difference between how the world works at the quantum level, the cosmic level, and the human level--and then how each connects to the other.  Carroll's presentation of the principles that have guided the scientific revolution from Darwin and Einstein to the origins of life, consciousness, and the universe is dazzlingly unique.Carroll shows how an avalanche of discoveries in the past few hundred years has changed our world and what really matters to us. Our lives are dwarfed like never before by the immensity of space and time, but they are redeemed by our capacity to comprehend it and give it meaning.The Big Picture is an unprecedented scientific worldview, a tour de force that will sit on shelves alongside the works of Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Daniel Dennett, and E. O. Wilson for years to come.

    Stengers and Prigogine show how the two great themes of classic science, order and chaos, which coexisted uneasily for centuries, are being reconciled in a new and unexpected synthesis.

    With wisdom, humor, and scientific aplomb, medical students and sex educators Nina Brochmann and Ellen Støkken Dahl take readers on a fascinating journey of female sexual organs and sexual health--from the clitoris to contraception to cervical cancer.More than a user's manual, this book is demystification, and tribute to the vagina that we have been waiting for. The Wonder Down Under is filled with astonishing, important, and little-known information--relayed with both medical expertise and genuine empathy. Did you know, for instance, that female and male sex organs are merely variations on the same basic structure? Or that there's no such thing as a virginity test--because a broken hymen is not a meaningful indicator of whether or not someone's had sex?Brochmann and Dahl have written a tour-de-force about the biology, anatomy, and reality of the female body, stopping along the way to explain how misinformation and silence about the vagina have been harmful to women over time. The Wonder Down Under makes crucial contributions to the discussion: the book was an instant bestseller that sold out in its native Norway in just three days. Since then it has been acquired by publishers in more than two dozen countries around the world.The Wonder Down Under is a joyful and indispensable book that will educate readers of all kinds and equip a new generation to make informed choices about their sexual health and happiness.

    Let's face it, comparing cats and dogs is like, well, like comparing apples and oranges. They are different, and they have different needs. A dog is a pack animal that needs a leader. By nature a dog expects to get rubbed and wrestled with. Dogs like to horse around. A cat does not. A cat is a solitary predator and needs its space. But what both cats and dogs do need is your love and attention. Just because a cat is, by nature, independent doesn't mean that he or she doesn't need your praise or physical affection. There are a lot of myths about cats -- like the one above -- that lead to their mistreatment. By learning more about what makes a cat a cat, you will be better able to give your feline the space, care, and love that he or she needs. And this sentiment couldn't be truer when it comes to training your cat. Hitting or yelling at your cat when he scratches his claws on your nice new couch just doesn't make sense. Your cat is only being a cat. He needs to scratch his nails so they can stay healthy and strong. Also, scratching helps a cat relieve stress and relax. Imagine being yelled at and hit for sprawling out on the couch with a magazine and a glass of nice red wine after a long day's work. You must align your training expectations with your cat's needs if you want to have a happy, well-trained cat. Johnson-Bennett advises you to "get on her level emotionally, physically, and mentally in order to map out an effective training plan." She outlines three basic methods for training: positive reinforcement (rewarding kitty for good behavior), remote control (spraying kitty with a water gun when she jumps on the kitchen counter), and redirection (getting kitty to scratch on a scratching post instead of your expensive couch). By using these training methods in the first place, you will get a head start in establishing good behavior, and in the process you and your cat will become closer.If you want to learn more about your cat and what you can do to strengthen and enjoy your relationship with each other, then Think Like a Cat should really be on your reading list. From years of experience as a vet technician and as an adoring cat owner, Johnson-Bennett knows her stuff. And she covers it all in this book -- from grooming, training, health, and nutrition to emergency care, games, and toys. So get ready to hear a lot more purring around the house!—Jen Forman

    Since the age of six, when Orlean wrote and illustrated a book called Herbert the Near-Sighted Pigeon, she’s been drawn to stories about how we live with animals, and how they abide by us. Now, in On Animals, she examines animal-human relationships through the compelling tales she has written over the course of her celebrated career.These stories consider a range of creatures—the household pets we dote on, the animals we raise to end up as meat on our plates, the creatures who could eat us for dinner, the various tamed and untamed animals we share our planet with who are central to human life. In her own backyard, Orlean discovers the delights of keeping chickens. In a different backyard, in New Jersey, she meets a woman who has twenty-three pet tigers—something none of her neighbors knew about until one of the tigers escapes. In Iceland, the world’s most famous whale resists the efforts to set him free; in Morocco, the world’s hardest-working donkeys find respite at a special clinic. We meet a show dog and a lost dog and a pigeon who knows exactly how to get home.Equal parts delightful and profound, enriched by Orlean’s stylish prose and precise research, these stories celebrate the meaningful cross-species connections that grace our collective existence.

    Mark Forsyth – author of the Sunday Times Number One bestseller The Etymologicon – reveals in this essay, specially commissioned for Independent Booksellers Week, the most valuable thing about a really good bookshop.Along the way he considers the wisdom of Donald Rumsfeld, naughty French photographs, why Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy would never have met online, and why only a bookshop can give you that precious thing – what you never knew you were looking for.

    Sixty-six million years ago, the Earth’s most fearsome creatures vanished. Today they remain one of our planet’s great mysteries. Now The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs reveals their extraordinary, 200-million-year-long story as never before.In this captivating narrative (enlivened with more than seventy original illustrations and photographs), Steve Brusatte, a young American paleontologist who has emerged as one of the foremost stars of the field—naming fifteen new species and leading groundbreaking scientific studies and fieldwork—masterfully tells the complete, surprising, and new history of the dinosaurs, drawing on cutting-edge science to dramatically bring to life their lost world and illuminate their enigmatic origins, spectacular flourishing, astonishing diversity, cataclysmic extinction, and startling living legacy. Captivating and revelatory, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs is a book for the ages.Brusatte traces the evolution of dinosaurs from their inauspicious start as small shadow dwellers—themselves the beneficiaries of a mass extinction caused by volcanic eruptions at the beginning of the Triassic period—into the dominant array of species every wide-eyed child memorizes today, T. rex, Triceratops, Brontosaurus, and more. This gifted scientist and writer re-creates the dinosaurs’ peak during the Jurassic and Cretaceous, when thousands of species thrived, and winged and feathered dinosaurs, the prehistoric ancestors of modern birds, emerged. The story continues to the end of the Cretaceous period, when a giant asteroid or comet struck the planet and nearly every dinosaur species (but not all) died out, in the most extraordinary extinction event in earth’s history, one full of lessons for today as we confront a “sixth extinction.”Brusatte also recalls compelling stories from his globe-trotting expeditions during one of the most exciting eras in dinosaur research—which he calls “a new golden age of discovery”—and offers thrilling accounts of some of the remarkable findings he and his colleagues have made, including primitive human-sized tyrannosaurs; monstrous carnivores even larger than T. rex; and paradigm-shifting feathered raptors from China.An electrifying scientific history that unearths the dinosaurs’ epic saga, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs will be a definitive and treasured account for decades to come.

    Breathtaking in its range and erudition, it explores Shiite festivals and the English Civil war, the finger exercises of monkeys and the effects of inflation in Weimar Germany. In this study of the interplay of crowds, Canetti offers one of the most profound and startling portraits of the human condition.

    It is an honest account of one man’s journey to complete abandonment of ‘the self’ and the Western principles that we use to define ourselves. Professor Herrigel imparts knowledge from his experiences and guides the reader through physical and spiritual lessons in a clear and insightful way.Mastering archery is not the key to achieving Zen, and this is not a practical guide to archery. It is more a guide to Zen principles and learning and perfect for practitioners and non-practitioners alike.