The Inflamed Mind: A Radical New Approach to Depression


Edward Bullmore - 2018
    But treatment for it has not changed much in the last three decades. In the world of psychiatry, time has apparently stood still... until now. In this game-changing book, University of Cambridge Professor Edward Bullmore reveals the breakthrough new science on the link between depression and inflammation of the body and brain. He explains how and why we now know that mental disorders can have their root cause in the immune system, and outlines a future revolution in which treatments could be specifically targeted to break the vicious cycle of stress, inflammation and depression. The Inflamed Mind goes far beyond the clinic and the lab, representing a whole new way of looking at how mind, brain and body all work together in a sometimes misguided effort to help us survive in a hostile world. It offers insights into the story of Western medicine, how we have got it wrong as well as right in the past, and how we could start getting to grips with depression and other mental disorders much more effectively in the future.

Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder


Paul T. Mason - 1998
    It is designed to help them understand how the disorder affects their loved ones and recognize what they can do to get off the emotional roller coasters and take care of themselves.

Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity


Peggy Orenstein - 2020
    It also had an unexpected effect on its author: Orenstein realized that talking about girls is only half the conversation. Boys are subject to the same cultural forces as girls—steeped in the same distorted media images and binary stereotypes of female sexiness and toxic masculinity—which equally affect how they navigate sexual and emotional relationships. In Boys & Sex, Peggy Orenstein dives back into the lives of young people to once again give voice to the unspoken, revealing how young men understand and negotiate the new rules of physical and emotional intimacy.Drawing on comprehensive interviews with young men, psychologists, academics, and experts in the field, Boys & Sex dissects so-called locker room talk; how the word “hilarious” robs boys of empathy; pornography as the new sex education; boys’ understanding of hookup culture and consent; and their experience as both victims and perpetrators of sexual violence. By surfacing young men’s experience in all its complexity, Orenstein is able to unravel the hidden truths, hard lessons, and important realities of young male sexuality in today’s world. The result is a provocative and paradigm-shifting work that offers a much-needed vision of how boys can truly move forward as better men.

Guide to DNA Testing: How to Identify Ancestors, Confirm Relationships, and Measure Ethnic Ancestry through DNA Testing


Richard Hill - 2014
    Genealogists and adoptees are using them and other DNA tests to identify ancestors, confirm relationships, and measure their ethnicity. Unfortunately, there are many similar sounding tests and some of them have different testing levels. So it’s easy to order the wrong test or pay too much. This Guide to DNA Testing provides an easy-to-understand introduction to the different test types, their strengths and limitations. Author and adoptee, Richard Hill, shared his personal success story in his book, "Finding Family: My Search for Roots and the Secrets in My DNA.” Now he boils down the basics of genetic genealogy into this concise summary. Learn which tests are right for you. Hyperlinks to specific tests and resources are included.

Born To Be Killers


Ray Black - 1874
    In this volume the stories reveal the complexity of abnormal human behaviour. In some cases the reason appears to be psychosis or demonic voices, for others, overpowering compulsions with deep psychological roots and for some killing is better than sex and the only way they can achieve total gratification. Ted Bundy, Jack the Ripper, Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Chase, Andrei Chikatilo and many more.Part One: Children who Kill - what makes them kill? including Mary and Norma Bell, Jessie Holtmeyer, Larry SchwartzPart Two: Men who Kill - these men are monsters including The Yorkshire Ripper, The Cannibal Killer, The Boston Strangler, The Ultimate Psycho, The Real Dracula.Part Three: Women who Kill - can women be a cold-blooded as men? including Elizabeth Bathory, Lizzie Borden, Velma Barfield, Mary Ann Cotton, Florida's Black Widow.Part Four: Couples who Kill - torturous teams including Fred and Rosemary West

Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-Outs, and Triggers


Faith G. Harper - 2017
    Your brain knows it's not good to do these things, but it can't help it sometimes--especially if it's obsessing about trauma it can't overcome. That's where this life-changing book comes in. With humor, patience, science, and lots of good-ole swearing, Dr. Faith explains what's going on in your skull, and talks you through the process of retraining your brain to respond appropriately to the non-emergencies of everyday life, and to deal effectively with old, or newly acquired, traumas (particularly post-traumatic stress disorder).

Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men


Mara Hvistendahl - 2011
    These numbers don't seem terribly grim, but in ten years, the skewed sex ratio will pose a colossal challenge. By the time those children reach adulthood, their generation will have twenty-four million more men than women.The prognosis for China's neighbors is no less bleak: Asia now has 163 million females "missing" from its population. Gender imbalance reaches far beyond Asia, affecting Georgia, Eastern Europe, and cities in the U.S. where there are significant immigrant populations. The world, therefore, is becoming increasingly male, and this mismatch is likely to create profound social upheaval.Historically, eras in which there have been an excess of men have produced periods of violent conflict and instability. Mara Hvistendahl has written a stunning, impeccably-researched book that does not flinch from examining not only the consequences of the misbegotten policies of sex selection but Western complicity with them.

Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain


Maryanne Wolf - 2007
    Every new reader's brain possesses the extraordinary capacity to rearrange itself beyond its original abilities in order to understand written symbols. But how does the brain learn to read? As world-renowned cognitive neuroscientist and scholar of reading Maryanne Wolf explains in this impassioned book, we taught our brain to read only a few thousand years ago, and in the process changed the intellectual evolution of our species.Wolf tells us that the brain that examined tiny clay tablets in the cuneiform script of the Sumerians is configured differently from the brain that reads alphabets or of one literate in today's technology.There are critical implications to such an evolving brain. Just as writing reduced the need for memory, the proliferation of information and the particular requirements of digital culture may short-circuit some of written language's unique contributions—with potentially profound consequences for our future.Turning her attention to the development of the individual reading brain, Wolf draws on her expertise in dyslexia to investigate what happens when the brain finds it difficult to read. Interweaving her vast knowledge of neuroscience, psychology, literature, and linguistics, Wolf takes the reader from the brains of a pre-literate Homer to a literacy-ambivalent Plato, from an infant listening to Goodnight Moon to an expert reader of Proust, and finally to an often misunderstood child with dyslexia whose gifts may be as real as the challenges he or she faces.As we come to appreciate how the evolution and development of reading have changed the very arrangement of our brain and our intellectual life, we begin to realize with ever greater comprehension that we truly are what we read. Ambitious, provocative, and rich with examples, Proust and the Squid celebrates reading, one of the single most remarkable inventions in history. Once embarked on this magnificent story of the reading brain, you will never again take for granted your ability to absorb the written word.

Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty


Abhijit V. Banerjee - 2011
    But much of their work is based on assumptions that are untested generalizations at best, harmful misperceptions at worst.Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo have pioneered the use of randomized control trials in development economics. Work based on these principles, supervised by the Poverty Action Lab, is being carried out in dozens of countries. Drawing on this and their 15 years of research from Chile to India, Kenya to Indonesia, they have identified wholly new aspects of the behavior of poor people, their needs, and the way that aid or financial investment can affect their lives. Their work defies certain presumptions: that microfinance is a cure-all, that schooling equals learning, that poverty at the level of 99 cents a day is just a more extreme version of the experience any of us have when our income falls uncomfortably low.This important book illuminates how the poor live, and offers all of us an opportunity to think of a world beyond poverty.Learn more at www.pooreconomics.com

Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul


Stuart M. Brown Jr. - 2009
    Or the blissful abandon of a golden retriever racing with glee across a lawn. This is the joy of play. By definition, play is purposeless and all-consuming. And, most important, it’s fun. As we become adults, taking time to play feels like a guilty pleasure—a distraction from “real” work and life. But as Dr. Stuart Brown illustrates, play is anything but trivial. It is a biological drive as integral to our health as sleep or nutrition. In fact, our ability to play throughout life is the single most important factor in determining our success and happiness. Dr. Brown has spent his career studying animal behavior and conducting more than six thousand “play histories” of humans from all walks of life—from serial murderers to Nobel Prize winners. Backed by the latest research, Play explains why play is essential to our social skills, adaptability, intelligence, creativity, ability to problem solve, and more. Play is hardwired into our brains—it is the mechanism by which we become resilient, smart, and adaptable people. Beyond play’s role in our personal fulfillment, its benefits have profound implications for child development and the way we parent, education and social policy, business innovation, productivity, and even the future of our society. From new research suggesting the direct role of three-dimensional-object play in shaping our brains to animal studies showing the startling effects of the lack of play, Brown provides a sweeping look at the latest breakthroughs in our understanding of the importance of this behavior. A fascinating blend of cutting-edge neuroscience, biology, psychology, social science, and inspiring human stories of the transformative power of play, this book proves why play just might be the most important work we can ever do.

Adolescents at School: Perspectives on Youth, Identity, and Education


Michael Sadowski - 2003
    Issues of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, and ability often complicate this question for youth, affecting their schoolwork and their relationships with teachers, administrators, and peers.Adolescents at School gives educators, administrators, community leaders, counselors, social workers, health-care professionals, and parents a glimpse into the complex "identities" adolescents negotiate as they manage the challenges of school. The book contains the perspectives of teachers, researchers, and administrators and adolescents themselves who explore what it means to be a middle or high school student in the United States today. Practical and jargon-free, the book suggests ways to foster the success of every student in our schools and classrooms.

The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives


Shankar Vedantam - 2009
    But what if our actions are driven not by our conscious values and beliefs but by hidden motivations we’re not even aware of?The “hidden brain” is Shankar Vedantam’s shorthand for a host of brain functions, emotional responses, and cognitive processes that happen outside our conscious awareness but have a decisive effect on how we behave. The hidden brain has its finger on the scale when we make all our most complex and important decisions: It decides whom we fall in love with, whether we should convict someone of murder, and which way to run when someone yells “Fire!” It explains why we can become riveted by the story of a single puppy adrift on the ocean but are quickly bored by a story of genocide. The hidden brain can also be deliberately manipulated to convince people to vote against their own interests, or even become suicide terrorists. But the most disturbing thing is that it does all this without our knowing.Shankar Vedantam, author of The Washington Post’s popular “Department of Human Behavior” column, takes us on a tour of this phenomenon and explores its consequences. Using original reporting that combines the latest scientific research with compulsively readable narratives that take readers from the American campaign trail to terrorist indoctrination camps, from the World Trade Center on 9/11 to, yes, a puppy adrift on the Pacific Ocean, Vedantam illuminates the dark recesses of our minds while making an original argument about how we can compensate for our blind spots and what happens when we don’t.

Learning ACT: An Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Skills-Training Manual for Therapists


Jason B. Luoma - 2007
    Whether you are new to the profession or an experienced clinician with an established career, seeking to incorporate ACT work into your practice, this book is an essential resource. ACT is both a unique approach and somewhat counterintuitive in its methods. Learning to “do ACT” well requires practice, patience, and good information. This book is a major contribution to ACT professional literature: a comprehensive, activity-based workbook that will help you understand and take advantage of ACT’s unique six process model, both as a tool for diagnosis and case conceptualization and as a basis for structuring treatments for clients.Learning ACT begins with an overview of the ACT model, outlining its theoretical and philosophical underpinnings. Next you will learn how to understand and make use of the six core ACT processes. In later chapters, you'll be introduced to the ACT approach to establishing an effective and powerful therapeutic relationship and learn to conceptualize cases from an ACT perspective. Throughout these chapters are numerous exercises to help you apply what you are learning in order to process the material at a deeper level.Unique to this volume is a DVD that includes role-played examples of the core ACT processes in action. Use this helpful addition to bring to life the concepts developed in the text. An invaluable aid to serious ACT study, the DVD can be reviewed often as you gain facility with the model.

Spy the Lie: Three Former CIA Officers Reveal Their Secrets to Uncloaking Deception


Philip Houston - 2012
    Be it hiring a new employee, investing in a financial interest, speaking with your child about drugs, confronting your significant other about suspected infidelity, or even dating someone new, having the ability to unmask a lie can have far-reaching and even life-altering consequences.As former CIA officers, Philip Houston, Michael Floyd, and Susan Carnicero are among the world’s best at recognizing deceptive behavior. Spy the Lie chronicles the captivating story of how they used a methodology Houston developed to detect deception in the counterterrorism and criminal investigation realms, and shows how these techniques can be applied in our daily lives.Through fascinating anecdotes from their intelligence careers, the authors teach listeners how to recognize deceptive behaviors, both verbal and nonverbal, that we all tend to display when we respond to questions untruthfully. For the first time, they share with the general public their methodology and their secrets to the art of asking questions that elicit the truth.Spy the Lie is a game-changer. You may never experience another book that has a more dramatic impact on your career, your relationships, or your future.©2012 Philip Houston, Susan Carnicero, Don Tennant, Michael Floyd (P)2012 Macmillan

The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power


Jeff Sharlet - 2007
    They consider themselves the new chosen—congressmen, generals, and foreign dictators who meet in confidential cells, to pray and plan for a "leadership led by God," to be won not by force but through "quiet diplomacy." Their base is a leafy estate overlooking the Potomac in Arlington, Virginia, and Jeff Sharlet is the only journalist to have reported from inside its walls.The Family is about the other half of American fundamentalist power—not its angry masses, but its sophisticated elites. Sharlet follows the story back to Abraham Vereide, an immigrant preacher who in 1935 organized a small group of businessmen sympathetic to European fascism, fusing the far right with his own polite but authoritarian faith. From that core, Vereide built an international network of fundamentalists who spoke the language of establishment power, a "family" that thrives to this day. In public, they host Prayer Breakfasts; in private, they preach a gospel of "biblical capitalism," military might, and American empire. Citing Hitler, Lenin, and Mao as leadership models, the Family's current leader, Doug Coe, declares, "We work with power where we can, build new power where we can't."Sharlet's discoveries dramatically challenge conventional wisdom about American fundamentalism, revealing its crucial role in the unraveling of the New Deal, the waging of the cold war, and the no-holds-barred economics of globalization. The question Sharlet believes we must ask is not "What do fundamentalists want?" but "What have they already done?"Part history, part investigative journalism, The Family is a compelling account of how fundamentalism came to be interwoven with American power, a story that stretches from the religious revivals that have shaken this nation from its beginning to fundamentalism's new frontiers. No other book about the right has exposed the Family or revealed its far-reaching impact on democracy, and no future reckoning of American fundamentalism will be able to ignore it.