"What do Angela Merkel, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Christine Lagarde, Oprah Winfrey, Sheryl Sandberg, JK Rowling and Beyoncé have in common?" was the headline in the English newspaper The Observer in 2014. "Other than riding high in Forbes list of the world’s most powerful women," journalist Tracy McVeigh wrote in answer to her own question, "they are also all firstborn children in their families. Firstborn children really do excel."So what does it mean to be an eldest daughter?

An exploration of the self-fulfilling lives of people who, by chance or choice, have no children of their own• Investigates the life choices people make around having children and alternate ways of finding purpose in life• Based on a global survey and more than 50 in-depth interviews with childless and childfree women and men aged 19 to 91 from different cultures and walks of life• Enables readers to place their own circumstances in a larger context as they gain ins...

Reading this book, you get the sense that Lisette Schuitemaker sees right through you. As if she knows that you gorge on chocolate at times, that you go crazy if people know something you don’t, that you are bound to hit the slow cashier one day. Or that in truth you’re not here at all with your thoughts. And how ardently you hope that one day someone will truly love you the way you are.You, me, all of us have drawn some conclusions in our childhood: impressions we got as a young c...

"What do Angela Merkel, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Christine Lagarde, Oprah Winfrey, Sheryl Sandberg, JK Rowling and Beyoncé have in common?" was the headline in the English newspaper The Observer in 2014. "Other than riding high in Forbes list of the world’s most powerful women," journalist Tracy McVeigh wrote in answer to her own question, "they are also all firstborn children in their families. Firstborn children really do excel."So what does it mean to be an eldest daughter?

An exploration of the self-fulfilling lives of people who, by chance or choice, have no children of their own• Investigates the life choices people make around having children and alternate ways of finding purpose in life• Based on a global survey and more than 50 in-depth interviews with childless and childfree women and men aged 19 to 91 from different cultures and walks of life• Enables readers to place their own circumstances in a larger context as they gain ins...

**#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING PHENOMENON—NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE!More than 18 million copies sold worldwideA Reese’s Book Club PickA Business Insider Defining Book of the Decade“I can't even express how much I love this book! I didn't want this story to end!”—Reese Witherspoon“Painfully beautiful.”—The New York Times Book Review**For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the ...

Why does a gifted psychiatrist suddenly begin to torment his own beloved wife? How can a ninety-pound woman carry a massive air conditioner to the second floor of her home, install it in a window unassisted, and then not remember how it got there? Why would a brilliant feminist law student ask her fiancé to treat her like a helpless little girl? How can an ordinary, violence-fearing businessman once have been a gun-packing vigilante prowling the crime districts for a fight?

A "heartwarming, life-affirming" memoir of a relationship with an intellectually disabled sibling: "Read this book. It might just change your life" ( Boston Herald).Beth is a spirited woman with an intellectual disability who lives intensely and often joyfully, and spends most of her days riding the buses in Pennsylvania. The drivers, a lively group, are her mentors; her fellow passengers, her community—though some display less patience or kindness than ot...

As seen in the hit documentary Three Identical Strangers • “[A] poignant memoir of twin sisters who were split up as infants, became part of a secret scientific study, then found each other as adults.”—Reader’s Digest (Editors’ Choice)WINNER OF A BOOKS FOR A BETTER LIFE AWARDElyse Schein had always known she was adopted, but it wasn’t until her mid-thirties while living in Paris that she searched for her biological mother....

The 'Flynn effect' is a surprising finding, identified by James R. Flynn, that IQ test scores have significantly increased from one generation to the next over the past century. Flynn now brings us an exciting new book which aims to make sense of this rise in IQ scores and considers what this tells us about our intelligence, our minds and society. Are We Getting Smarter? features fascinating new material on a variety of topics including the effects of intelligence in the developing world; ...

Sociopaths can be found in every facet of life: personal relationships, work, school, and family. Most people have been in a relationship or interacted with more than one sociopath in their lifetime, often not recognizing their danger until it was too late. The Sociopath At the Breakfast Table breaks new ground in the field of abusive relationships. It presents an emerging theory about sociopathic interaction: SEAT, or the "Sociopath-Empath-Apath Triad." With this new found unders...

An "elegant and eloquent" (New York Times) exploration of the frontiers of noise and silence, and the growing war between them.Between iPods, music-blasting restaurants, earsplitting sports stadiums, and endless air and road traffic, the place for quiet in our lives grows smaller by the day. In Pursuit of Silence gives context to our increasingly desperate sense that noise pollution is, in a very real way, an environmental catastrophe. Traveling a...