With our earliest utterances, we announce ourselves—and are recognized—as persons ready for social life. With our final ones, we mark where others must release us to death's embrace. In Bye Bye I Love You, linguist and author Michael Erard explores these phenomena, commonly called "first words" and "last words," uncovering their cultural, historical, and biological entanglements and honoring their deep private significance. Erard draws from personal, historical, and anthropologica...

Debunking much of the received wisdom regarding the sources of leadership team dysfunctionality, Leadership Team Alignment presents a targeted strategy for building and managing a top executive team to gain competitive advantage. Frédéric Godart and Jacques Neatby bring a wealth of practical experience and in-depth knowledge, with over eight hundred hours of direct observation with more than fifty leadership teams across the globe and thousands of hours working with executives. Wi...

Ready to escape the drama of existing social media platforms and try something new and awesome in the world of social media? In Mastodon For Dummies, experienced tech trainers Chris Minnick and Mike McCallister show you exactly how to use Mastodon, the hot decentralized social media offering on the web and destination for thousands of social media migrants. Learn how to sign up for the service on your choice of server and get familiar with the rules of what's sure to become your n...

The passage of time is inevitable, but getting sick as you get older is not. There was a major breakthrough in the world of antiaging in 2013 with the release of a landmark paper conceptualizing nine hallmarks of aging and their underlying mechanisms. Gut health was recently added as the tenth point. Now we know why we get old and why the cells start to deteriorate and eventually die.The Ageless Revolution zeroes in on these ten hallmarks of aging to turn back time with a ...

Jamie Sayen approaches the story of northern New England's undeveloped forests from the viewpoints of the previously unheard: the forest and the nonhuman species it sustains, the First Peoples, and, in more recent times, the disenfranchised human voices of the forest, including those of loggers, mill workers, and citizens who, like Henry David Thoreau, wish to speak a kind word for nature.From 1988 to 2016 paper companies sold their timberlands and closed seventeen paper mills in n...

A practical and occasionally provocative look at the state of spinal surgical careJust a few decades ago most spine surgery was literally a gamble: maybe you'd get better and maybe you wouldn't. Today we have the knowledge, understanding, and technology to predictably relieve pain and neurological deficits like never before—yet many patients are still getting subpar care.Foundational knowledge of surgical spine care isn't spreading to the medical community,...

• Can ancient philosophers really provide useful insights for the modern warfighter?• How might they reconcile cosmopolitan principles with patriotic duty?• Would a truly enlightened individual participate in the horrors of war?Stoicism as a Warrior Philosophy grapples with these questions and more. Authored by a serving military professional, it breaks down the most advanced concepts of Stoicism into plain language without oversimplifying. Exhaustively resea...

When states die, there are massive consequences. Somalia's death in 1991 created a safe haven for criminal non-state actors and has unsettled the Horn of Africa for decades. When the Iraqi state was dismantled in 2003, a similar set of consequences plagued the Middle East and the international system more broadly.In How States Die, Douglas Lemke provides an analysis of this phenomenon by reconceptualizing the definitions of the state and state death. A state exists, accord...

Nationwide repercussions to a bloody battle on the southern frontier.The Fort Mims massacre changed the course of American history in many ways, not the least of which was the ensuing rise of one Andrew Jackson to the national stage. The unprecedented Indian victory over the encroaching Americans who were bent on taking their lands and destroying their culture horrified many and injured the young nation's pride. Tragedies such as this one have always rallied Americ...

We thought we knew the story of the twentieth century. For many in the West, after the two world conflicts and the long cold war, the verdict was clear: democratic values had prevailed over dictatorship. But if the twentieth century meant the triumph of liberalism, as many intellectuals proclaimed, why have the era's darker impulses—ethnic nationalism, racist violence, and populist authoritarianism—revived?The Project-State and Its Rivals offers a radical alternative inter...

Societally sanctioned competition for money, power, and fame promotes selfishness, personal alienation, and widespread inequality, especially in market-oriented economies. Yet many of those engaging in this competitive individualism—the competition for rewards and limited resources—yearn to act directly to promote a more civil, equitable, and sustainable society.Enlightened Self-Interest offers evidence-based insights into the societal and individual consequences of this c...

During the first fifty years of the twentieth century, the United States saw two world wars, a devastating economic depression, and more social, political, and economic changes than in any other five-decade period before. Frederick Lewis Allen, former editor of Harper's Magazine, recounts these years—spanning World War I, the Progressive Era, the Great Depression, World War II, and the early Cold War—in vivid detail, from the fashions and customs of the times to major events that ...