Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens. How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations and human rights; to trust money, books and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come? In Sapiens, Dr Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the earth to the radical – and sometimes devastating – breakthroughs of the Cognitive, Agricultural and Scientific Revolutions. Drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, paleontology and economics, he explores how the currents of history have shaped our human societies, the animals and plants around us, and even our personalities. Have we become happier as history has unfolded? Can we ever free our behaviour from the heritage of our ancestors? And what, if anything, can we do to influence the course of the centuries to come? Bold, wide-ranging and provocative, Sapiens challenges everything we thought we knew about being human: our thoughts, our actions, our power ... and our future.

    Infinite games are more mysterious -- and ultimately more rewarding. They are unscripted and unpredictable; they are the source of true freedom.In this elegant and compelling work, James Carse explores what these games mean, and what they can mean to you. He offers stunning new insights into the nature of property and power, of culture and community, of sexuality and self-discovery, opening the door to a world of infinite delight and possibility."An extraordinary little book . . . a wise and intimate companion, an elegant reminder of the real."-- Brain/Mind Bulletin

    Even in our technological age, politics, education, business, and relationships center on words.Since the tongue is such a powerful force—for good or evil—we are wise to ask: What would homes, churches, schools, even the public square be like if we used words with Christian intentionality and eloquence? The Power of Words and the Wonder of God seeks to answer this difficult question. In these chapters, derived from Desiring God's 2008 national conference, John Piper and Sinclair Ferguson team with worship pastor Bob Kauflin, ministry leader Paul Tripp, and literature professor Daniel Taylor to help readers harness their tongues and appropriately command their silences for the glory of God and the ministry of the gospel.

    For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to the twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected -- and most popular -- of its kind. Here you will find another "splendid array of unpredictable and delectable essays" (Booklist), chosen by the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Louis Menand, another collection with "delights on every page" (Dallas Morning News). The Best American Essays once again earns its place as the liveliest and leading annual of its kind.

    "There is a whole sensible world around me that I should be able to turn to Your praise." Written between 1946 and 1947 while O'Connor was a student far from home at the University of Iowa, A Prayer Journal is a rare portal into the interior life of the great writer. Not only does it map O'Connor's singular relationship with the divine, but it shows how entwined her literary desire was with her yearning for God. "I must write down that I am to be an artist. Not in the sense of aesthetic frippery but in the sense of aesthetic craftsmanship; otherwise I will feel my loneliness continually . . . I do not want to be lonely all my life but people only make us lonelier by reminding us of God. Dear God please help me to be an artist, please let it lead to You."O'Connor could not be more plain about her literary ambition: "Please help me dear God to be a good writer and to get something else accepted," she writes. Yet she struggles with any trace of self-regard: "Don't let me ever think, dear God, that I was anything but the instrument for Your story."As W. A. Sessions, who knew O'Connor, writes in his introduction, it was no coincidence that she began writing the stories that would become her first novel, Wise Blood, during the years when she wrote these singularly imaginative Christian meditations. Including a facsimile of the entire journal in O'Connor's own hand, A Prayer Journal is the record of a brilliant young woman's coming-of-age, a cry from the heart for love, grace, and art.

    We do not usually think of him as radical, partly because he wore colorful, soft sweaters made by his mother. Nor do we usually imagine him as a pacifist; that adjective seems way too political to describe the host of a children's program known for its focus on feelings. We have restricted Fred Rogers to the realm of entertainment, children, and feelings, and we've ripped him out of his political and religious context. Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister, and although he rarely shared his religious convictions on his program, he fervently believed in a God who accepts us as we are and who desires a world marked by peace and wholeness. With this progressive spirituality as his inspiration, Rogers used his children's program as a platform for sharing countercultural beliefs about caring nonviolently for one another, animals, and the earth.To critics who dared call him "namby-pamby," Rogers said, "Only people who take the time to see our work can begin to understand the depth of it." This is the invitation of Peaceful Neighbor, to see and understand Rogers's convictions and their expression through his program. Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, it turns out, is far from sappy, sentimental, and shallow; it's a sharp political response to a civil and political society poised to kill.

    Age twenty-eight and fed up with the office job he settled for, Paul Barach decided to travel to Japan to follow a vision he had in college: to walk the ancient 750-mile Shikoku pilgrimage trail. Here are some things he did not decide to do: learn Japanese, do any research, road test his hiking shoes, or check if it’s the hottest summer in history. And he went anyway, hoping to change his life. Fighting Monks and Burning Mountains is the absurd and dramatic journey of one impulsive American’s search for answers on a holy path in an exotic land. Along the pathway connecting 88 Buddhist temples, he’ll face arduous mountain climbs, hide from guards in a toilet stall, challenge a priest to a mountaintop karate battle, and other misadventures. He’ll also delve into the fascinating legends of this ancient land, including a dragon-fighting holy man, a berserker warrior-priest, haunted temples, all manner of gods and monsters, and a vendetta-driven ghost that overthrew a dynasty. Told with humor and humility, Fighting Monks and Burning Mountains is a funny, engaging memoir about the consequences of impulsive decisions, and the things you can discover while you’re looking for something else. Also that boars are terrifying in person.

    Beginning with: "It was Sappho who first called eros 'bittersweet.' No one who has been in love disputes her. What does the word mean?", Carson examines her subject from numerous points of view and styles, transcending the constraints of the scholarly exercise for an evocative and lyrical meditation in the tradition of William Carlos William's Spring and All and William H. Gass's On Being Blue.

    Here is the poignant journey of a minority student who pays the cost of his social assimilation and academic success with a painful alienation--from his past, his parents, his culture--and so describes the high price of making it in middle-class America. Provocative in its positions on affirmative action and bilingual education, Hunger of Memory is a powerful political statement, a profound study of the importance of language and the moving, intimate portrait of a boy struggling to become a man.

    From Machiavelli's The Prince to Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, from Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto to Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa, these "influential" books have led to war, genocide, totalitarian oppression, the breakdown of the family, and disastrous social experiments. And yet the toxic ideas peddled in these books are more popular and pervasive than ever. In fact, they might influence your own thinking without your realizing it. Fortunately, Professor Benjamin Wiker is ready with an antidote, exposing the beguiling errors in each of these evil books. Witty, learned, and provocative, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World provides a quick education in the worst ideas in human history and explains how we can avoid them in the future.

    There is no middle ground. It is the Church and kingdom of God or it is nothing."--LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley, April Conference, 2003. Many Mormons assume that this and other similar proclamations by Mormon Leaders are rhetorical statements. But what if the LDS leaders meant something else? It is estimated that more than 1-1.5 million Mormons have resigned from the LDS Church since 1995. This book exposes why there is such a recent, formal abandonment of Mormonism by, in many cases, previously devout members of the Church. Admittedly, the LDS Church "stands or falls," on the divinity of "The Book of Mormon." However, it has been proven that "The Book of Mormon" is not a translation of ancient American history engraved in "reformed Egyptian," on golden plates buried by an early American prophet. Instead, it has been shown to be a 19th-century work of fiction authored by Joseph Smith and perhaps others. Until the advent of widespread internet access, most members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons, rarely read outside the strictly proscribed canonized scriptures, books and magazines approved by Church leaders. But over the past 10-15 years, Mormons have begun to discover facts about LDS history that had only previously been known to very few, mainly scholarly historians of Mormonism. Through the discovery of these primary historical sources, now available on numerous internet sites, most intelligent and curious Mormons have reached a critical point and are furious. If they read, they have become disaffected and disoriented. Many are experiencing existential crises. Those who refuse to look outside Mormon Society for Truth have become increasingly self-righteous and insular. The first third of "An American Fraud: One Lawyer's Case against Mormonism," chronicles the Author's journey out of the Religion. The second two-thirds of the Book, the last six chapters, are an exposé including an analysis under the law. The Author, an experienced civil trial attorney, places the activities of Mormon Leaders over almost two centuries in their proper legal framework, analyzing not only the misrepresentations, but the resulting damages: political, environmental and especially psycho-social. Ms. Burningham writes that a determination of whether Mormon Leaders have historically misrepresented the origins of LDS theology does not involve a judicial evaluation of the truth of religious beliefs and is therefore not beyond the reach of the American legal system--it is not constitutionally barred. The issue is not whether Jesus Christ is the Son of God, or the efficacy of prayer. These things could never be determined by a secular court of law. Instead, the fraud committed by generations of Mormon Leaders is that they have misrepresented the facts surrounding the source of their scriptures, presenting that source as divine, when they have known otherwise. Neither the golden plates, nor the writings by the Old Testament prophet, Abraham, claimed to have been inscribed on Egyptian papyri, ever existed. Furthermore, the claimed visitations by biblical apostles to restore lost priesthoods to Smith and his colleagues never occurred.  Yet for decades LDS leaders have at least ignored, if not suppressed and grossly misrepresented, the true facts surrounding Mormonism's origins, reworking and re-packaging the founding facts and the theology as necessary. Those who joined the Church or continued on in the Religion reasonably relied on LDS leaders' misrepresentations to their significant detriment. Given what has been proven about its sources, the Author claims that the Mormon Religion cannot continue to be defended under any guise as a religious organization for the good of its members.

    Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque adventure -- at its heart, it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home.Akhtar forges a new narrative voice to capture a country in which debt has ruined countless lives and our ideals have been sacrificed to the gods of finance, where a TV personality is president and immigrants live in fear, and where the nation's unhealed wounds of 9/11 wreak havoc around the world. Akhtar attempts to make sense of it all through the lens of a story about one family, from a heartland town in America to palatial suites in Central Europe to guerilla lookouts in the mountains of Afghanistan, and spares no one -- least of all himself -- in the process.

    A hunting and gathering people who made a good living by working only as much as needed to exist in harmony with their hostile desert environment, the Bushmen have lived in southern Africa since the evolution of our species nearly two hundred thousand years ago.In Affluence Without Abundance, anthropologist James Suzman asks whether understanding how hunter-gatherers like the Bushmen found contentment by having few needs easily met might help us address some of the environmental and economic challenges we face today. Vividly bringing to life a proud and private people, introducing unforgettable members of their tribe, Affluence Without Abundance tells the story of the collision between the modern global economy and the oldest hunting and gathering society on earth. In rendering an intimate picture of a people coping with radical change, it asks profound questions about how we now think about matters such as work, wealth, equality, contentment, and even time.Not since Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's The Harmless People in 1959 has anyone provided a more intimate or insightful account of the Bushmen or of what we might learn about ourselves from our shared history as hunter-gatherers.

    Bourdieu's subject is the study of culture, and his objective is most ambitious: to provide an answer to the problems raised by Kant's Critique of Judgment by showing why no judgment of taste is innocent."A complex, rich, intelligent book. It will provide the historian of the future with priceless materials and it will bring an essential contribution to sociological theory."— Fernand Braudel "One of the more distinguished contributions to social theory and research in recent years . . . There is in this book an account of culture, and a methodology of its study, rich in implication for a diversity of fields of social research. The work in some ways redefines the whole scope of cultural studies."— Anthony Giddens, Partisan Review"A book of extraordinary intelligence." — Irving Louis Horowitz, Commonweal“Bourdieu’s analysis transcends the usual analysis of conspicuous consumption in two ways: by showing that specific judgments and choices matter less than an esthetic outlook in general and by showing, moreover, that the acquisition of an esthetic outlook not only advertises upper-class prestige but helps to keep the lower orders in line. In other words, the esthetic world view serves as an instrument of domination. It serves the interests not merely of status but of power. It does this, according to Bourdieu, by emphasizing individuality, rivalry, and ‘distinction’ and by devaluing the well-being of society as a whole.”— Christopher Lasch, Vogue

    Now Wright attempts something even more ambitious: explaining the direction of evolution and human history–and discerning where history will lead us next.In Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Wright asserts that, ever since the primordial ooze, life has followed a basic pattern. Organisms and human societies alike have grown more complex by mastering the challenges of internal cooperation. Wright's narrative ranges from fossilized bacteria to vampire bats, from stone-age villages to the World Trade Organization, uncovering such surprises as the benefits of barbarian hordes and the useful stability of feudalism. Here is history endowed with moral significance–a way of looking at our biological and cultural evolution that suggests, refreshingly, that human morality has improved over time, and that our instinct to discover meaning may itself serve a higher purpose. Insightful, witty, profound, Nonzero offers breathtaking implications for what we believe and how we adapt to technology's ongoing transformation of the world.From the Trade Paperback edition.