In this urgent and “thrillingly written” book, there is a case and solution for humanity’s last shot at survival (Sunday Times).**Humanity’s future is at risk. We face existential catastrophes, climate change, nuclear war, and more. If we do not act fast to reach a place of safety, it will soon be too late.Drawing on over a decade of research, The Precipice explores the cutting-edge science behind the risks we face. And it points the way ...

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Very often we're uncertain about what we ought, morally, to do. We don't know how to weigh the interests of animals against humans, how strong our duties are to improve the lives of distant strangers, or how to think about the ethics of bringing new people into exist...

From one of the world’s leading moral voices, this urgent and eye-opening book makes the case thatprotecting humanity’s future is the central challenge of our time.If all goes well, human history is just beginning. Our species could survive for billions of years—enough time toend disease, poverty, and injustice, and to flourish in ways unimaginable today. But this vast future is at risk. With theadvent of nuclear weapons, humanity entered a new age, where we fa...

A groundbreaking examination of the greatest event in history, the Scientific Revolution, and how it came to change the way we understand ourselves and our worldWe live in a world transformed by scientific discovery. Yet today, science and its practitioners have come under political attack. In this fascinating history spanning continents and centuries, historian David Wootton offers a lively defense of science, revealing why the Scientific Revolution was truly the greatest event in...

An inside account of the fight to contain the world's deadliest diseases -- and the panic and corruption that make them worse.Throughout history, humankind's biggest killers have been infectious diseases: the Black Death, the Spanish Flu, and AIDS alone account for over one hundred million deaths. We ignore this reality most of the time, but when a new threat -- Ebola, SARS, Zika, coronavirus -- seems imminent, we send our best and bravest doctors to contain it. Pe...

From a former president of the United Nations Security Council, an authoritative look at the US, China, and the defining geopolitical contest of the twenty-first century.“An excellent and important book on the biggest question in international affairs: how will the relationship between the US and China evolve?” —Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator, Financial TimesChina and the United States are world powers wi...

Bestselling author Norman Cantor delivers this compact but magisterial survey of the ancient world—from the birth of Sumerian civilization around 3500 BC in the Tigris-Euphrates valley (present-day Iraq) to the fall of the Roman Empire in AD 476. In Antiquity, Cantor covers such subjects as Classical Greece, Judaism, the founding of Christianity, and the triumph and decline of Rome.In this fascinating and comprehensive analysis, the author explores social and cultural hist...

The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of Garbology explores the hidden and costly wonders of our buy-it-now, get-it-today world of transportation, revealing the surprising truths, mounting challenges, and logistical magic behind every trip we take and every click we make.Transportation dominates our daily existence. Thousands, even millions, of miles are embedded in everything we do and touch. We live in a door-to-door universe that works so well most Americans ...

Weaving decades of field observations with exciting new discoveries about the brain, Carl Safina's landmark book offers an intimate view of animal behavior to challenge the fixed boundary between humans and nonhuman animals. In Beyond Words, listeners travel to Amboseli National Park in the threatened landscape of Kenya and witness struggling elephant families work out how to survive poaching and drought, then to Yellowstone National Park to observe wolves sort out the aftermath o...

**From a former president of the United Nations Security Council, an authoritative look at the US, China, and the defining geopolitical contest of the twenty-first century“An excellent and important book on the biggest question in international affairs: how will the relationship between the US and China evolve?” —Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator, Financial Times**China and the United States are world powers without serious rivals. They eye each other warily...

Anyone can be a quiet influencer. But not everyone knows how."A tremendous and relevant read!" -Stephen M. R. Covey, New York Times and #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Speed of TrustDrawing on the enduring wisdom of the Buddha, Confucius, Rumi, Gandhi and others, The Art of Quiet Influence shows anyone, not just bosses, how to use influence without authority, a key mindfulness principle, ...

This "fantastic revisionist history . . . captures the excitement of the scientific revolution and makes a point of celebrating the advances it ushered in" ( Financial Times).We live in a world transformed by scientific discovery. In The Invention of Science, historian David Wootton reveals why the Scientific Revolution was truly the greatest event in our history. Spanning continents and centuries, Wootton chronicles the factors that led to this cr...