Eat no meat from Monday through Friday. During the weekends, you're back to being a carnivore. Hill, who founded the eco-blog treehugger.com, has expanded the popular short talk he gave at TED 2010 with a life-changing digital book that explores the personal, economic, and societal benefits of moving meat out of your diet. Don't fear that vegetarian dishes all taste like sawdust. Hill includes great-tasting veggie recipes to get you started.

    We are but one more model, and there is no evidence evolution has stopped. So unless you think Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern are the be all and end all of creation, and it just does not get any better, then one has to ask what is next? Juan Enriquez and Steve Gullans, two of the world's most eminent science authors, researchers, and entrepreneurs, answer this by taking you into a world where humans increasingly shape their environment, their own selves, and other species. It is a world where our bodies harbor 100 times more microbial cells than human cells, a place where a gene cocktail may allow many more to climb an 8,000 meter peak without oxygen, and where, given the right drug, one could have a 77 percent chance of becoming a centenarian. By the end you will see a broad, and sometimes scary, map of life science driven change. Not just our bodies will be altered but our core religious, government, and social structures as humankind makes the transition to a new species, a Homo evolutis, which directly and deliberately controls its own evolution and that of many other species.

    or the starting point for innovation? Instead of asking whether the Web is making us stupid, Howard Rheingold (whom MIT calls "the first citizen of the internet") turns that question around and asks how designing and using digital media mindfully could make us smarter. What if humans could build tools that leverage our ability to think, communicate, and cooperate? Humans invented social learning, speech, writing, alphabets, printing, computers, and the Internet, which means we should be systematically directing the evolution of intellectual augmentation. Mind Amplifier: Can Our Digital Tools Make Us Smarter? examines the origins of digital mind-extending tools, and then lays out the foundations for their future. Rheingold proposes an applied, interdisciplinary science of mind amplification. He also unveils a new protocol for developing techno-cognitive-social technologies that embrace empathy, mindfulness, and compassion — elements lacking from existing digital mind-tools.

    Rothbart — a writer, reporter, and documentary filmmaker — is known for his curiosity about other people’s lives. Whether it’s the folks he interviews as a frequent contributor to public radio’s This American Life, or the people he connects with through the deeply personal notes and letters published in his annual magazine, Found, Rothbart has honed a unique talent for compassionately probing into the lives of strangers and drawing out surprisingly revealing stories of beauty, heartbreak, and humor. In How Did You End Up Here?: The Surprising Ways Our Questions Connect Us, Rothbart collects more than 100 of his all-time favorite questions to ask someone you’ve just met, generated by people around North America whom he’s only just met himself. Rothbart opens his toolbox, sharing secrets of his trade, stories from the road, and strategies for approaching people and pushing past superficialities while also taking a close look the questions themselves — the funny, strange, surprising questions we all want to ask the people around us.

    If you're younger, it's unlikely you did any of these things. Has the world become that much more dangerous? Statistically, not at all. But our society has created pervasive fears around letting kids be independent and take risks -- and the consequences for our kids are serious. Gever Tulley takes on these media-inflated fears -- which he calls "dangerism" -- with surprising statistics and insights into the nature of fear and risk.About the author: Gever Tulley is the co-founder of the Tinkering School, a weeklong camp where lucky kids get to play with their very own power tools.

    As a result, we face both a dire emergency and a tremendous opportunity. At their best, our modern cities are hubs of human connection, fountains of creativity, and exemplars of green living. Yet at the same time, they still suffer the symptoms of industrial urbanization: pollution, crowding, crime, social fragmentation, and dehumanization. Now is the time to envision what cities can be and to transform them. This book, produced in partnership with the Atlantic Cities, celebrates 12 promising, provocative responses to this challenge, in realms ranging from transportation to food to art. It asks and begins to answer: How can we transform cities to be sustainable, efficient, beautiful, and invigorating to the human soul? And practically speaking, how do we get from here to there?

    In the Hybrid Age, technology is ubiquitous (with trillions of sensors coating our environment), intelligent (devices communicating with each other as well as with us), and social (encouraging us to develop emotional relationships with it). Technology no longer just processes our instruction; it has its own agency, and we respond to it as much as it responds to us. What this means for societies and individuals, as well as communities and nations, is truly world changing. How will we respond and adapt?

    In Le$terland: The Corruption of Congress and How To End It, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig takes on the deep flaws in our campaign finance system and lays out a plan for fixing it. Lessig describes a place called Lesterland, a fictional land with a population of 311 million people of whom the 144,000, or 0.05 percent, named Lester are the people really in charge. It’s the United States, of course, and Lesters are the people who fund the election. Lessig notes that just 132 Americans gave 60 percent of the SuperPAC money spent in the election cycle. It’s these few, he says, who are our Lesters, and our dependence on them is perverting the democracy of the country. After all, if candidates have to spend 30 to 70 percent of their time trying to raise funds to get back to Congress, which they do, might that not affect their principles, their beliefs, their ideals, and what they’re prepared to fight for on behalf of the people? It's time to change the system. Here's how.

    We all know one! They like to groan and grumble, offering their own commentary on the shortcomings of modern life. Whether it is queues at the supermarket, the state of the health system, the price of a pint these days, the hairstyles of teenagers, or the number of Maltesers you actually get in a bag, there is always something that will get their goat. 'The Grumpy Old Git's Guide to Life' is a hilarious celebration of all these grumps, how to identify one, what exactly they find so irritating and why we find their rants quite so amusing.

    The recession, however, is just the tip of iceberg. We have deeper problems. Most importantly, the rate of innovation is down. Patents, which were designed to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, have instead become weapons in a war for competitive advantage with innovation as collateral damage. College,once a foundation for innovation, has been oversold. We have more students in college than ever before, for example, but fewer science majors. Regulations, passed with the best of intentions, have spread like kudzu and now impede progress to everyone's detriment. "Launching the Innovation Renaissance" is a fast-paced look at how we can accelerate innovation and build a solid 21st-century economy.*****"This is a great book. It’s fast-paced, fun to read, informative as hell, and it gets everything right. It’s the kind of book that made me wish I’d written it — until I realized that I could never have written it half so well. I wish everyone in the world would read this book. It only takes a couple of hours, and it is by far the best introduction I know of to the topic that towers above all others in its importance for the happiness of human beings everywhere, now and in the future, namely how to foster and accelerate the kinds of innovation that lead to economic growth. It will, I hope and expect, make you an enlightened advocate for enlightened policies. And it will arm you with a bundle of fun facts and anecdotes to share with your friends. This book might turn you into a proselytizer, but it will surely not turn you into a bore."Steven Landsburg, author of 'The Armchair Economist,' 'More Sex is Safe Sex,' 'The Big Questions' and regular contributor to Slate, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal. If you're interested in innovation like I am, you need to read 'Launching the Innovation Renaissance.' Alex poses thought experiments from patents to prizes, from health to education to immigration. He skewers Soviet-style employment bargains and offers insightful alternatives to improve our educational system. Alex is occasionally snarky, often witty, always incisive. Read this on your next flight. "- Tom Vander Ark, CEO of Open Education Solutions. Previously he served as president of the X PRIZE Foundation and was the Executive Director of Education for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "Progress comes from improvements in both our technologies and our rules. Alex Tabarrok makes a compelling case that in the United States, our rules on patents, education, and immigration are holding us back. If you want to think clearly about policies that matter for growth, turn off the TV, stop surfing the web, and read this book!" - Paul Romer, New York University Stern School of Business."Alex Tabarrok reveals the hidden roadblocks to innovation in the American economy, and shows us persuasively -- and concisely -- how to fix them. Launching the Innovation Renaissance should be read by everyone interested in innovation and America's future."- Michael Heller, professor at Columbia Law School and author of 'The Gridlock Economy.'

    

    get this book now!*** Do you wonder about the future... what things will be like some day, how long it might take, and what we can do about it? Substantive yet imaginative, readable, occasionally humorous, and science oriented, this book proposes possible future scenarios spanning from the current century to nearly eternity. Most chapters offer a concluding section with recommendations and often, agree or disagree, the author's occasionally inimitable opinions. Some of the recommended actions can be done by individuals, others by nations or other groups, and still others by the entire world. Over 300 references. Discover "What it Means That an Hour’s Work Yields a Week’s Food" (chapter 1). Foresee the "Teeming Cities of Mars" (chap. 21). Learn why it’s "Keyboards Yesterday, Mind Reading Tomorrow" (chap. 3). Have you ever wondered — "Will Artificial Intelligence Threaten Civilization?" (See chap. 12.) Find out what happens "When Genomes Get Cheap" (chap. 6). Prepare for an "Asteroid Apocalypse" (chap. 25). Explore why you would benefit from "Wiki-Wiki-Wikipedia" (chap. 4). How we will "Live Anywhere, Work Anywhere Else" (chap. 2). Realize how the future "Tastes Like the Singularity" (chap. 15). Get smarter with "Smart Pills’n Such" (chap. 5). Experience a "Soylent Spring" (chap. 9). Understand nukes better by "Deconstructing Nonproliferation" (chap. 13). Get ready for a "Space Empire" (chap. 14). What is "Sic Transit Humanitas: The Transcent of Man" (chap. 26)? There’s global warming, and there’s "Warm, Poison Planet" (chap. 17). But let’s not forget about "Big Ice" (chap. 22). Things may really grow on trees with "New Plant Paradigms" (chap. 24). We all have "Questions" (chap. 31). And much more! This book is aimed at the reader who is interested in the future, and intrigued by science and technology.

    From the broad beaming grin of a toddler to the oily smirk of a used car salesman, smiles convey an enormous range of emotions, from joyously happy to nervous or sad. Grins also have radically varied meanings in different cultures, as the author learned during his worldwide trips to explore the complicated, but ubiquitous, act of smiling.

    Many -- politicians, media and citizens alike -- seem to assume the goal of government is to keep the economy moving. Here, Nic Marks argues that the blind pursuit of economic growth has created an environment that actually undermines our happiness. He offers some bold suggestions on how nations and people can return to a shared common purpose: nurturing well-being.About the author: Nic Marks is the founder of the Centre for Well-Being, an independent think tank at the New Economics Foundation in London.

    #1 New York Times bestselling author Douglas Preston takes readers on an adventure deep into the Honduran jungle in this riveting, danger-filled true story about the discovery of an ancient lost civilization.