This offbeat slice of American history places the story of our great republic beneath an unexpected lens: that of fringe candidates for president of the United States. Mark Stein explores how their quest for our nation’s highest office helped to amplify voices otherwise quashed during their day. His careening tour through elections past includes the efforts of true pioneers in the quest for social equality in our country: the first woman to run for president, Victoria Woodhull in 1872; the...

Today, a trip to Hawaii is a simple six-hour flight from the West Coast. But almost a century ago, the first flights to Hawaii required a nerve-wracking and uncertain twenty-six-hour journey to isolated and elusive islands located in the middle of the world’s largest ocean. Pilots prayed they would encounter land after flying a full day and night across 2,400 miles of the open Pacific.Race to Hawaii chronicles the thrilling first flights to Hawaii in the 1920s, during the ...

World-class beaches, fragrant frangipani, swaying palms, and hula girls. Most folks think of Hawaii as a vacation destination. Mob-style executions, drug smuggling, and vicious gang warfare are seldom part of the postcard image. Yet, Hawaii was once home to not only Aloha spirit, but also a ruthless, homegrown mafia underworld. From 1960 to 1980, Hawaiian gangsters grew rich off a robust trade in drugs, gambling, and prostitution that followed in the wake of Hawaii’s tourist boom.T...

Forest bathing is a gentle, meditative practice of connecting with nature. Simply being present with all of our senses, in a forest or other wild area, can produce mental, emotional, and physical health benefits. It is a simple, accessible antidote to our nature-starved lives and can inspire us to become advocates for healing our relationships with the more-than-human world. This book is both an invitation to take up the practice of forest bathing and an inspiration to connect with nature ...

What if everything you've learned about inflation is wrong?The Inflation Myth and the Wonderful World of Deflation illustrates our rapidly changing world where constant technological innovation leads to cheaper and better products. These changes are no longer reflected in the ways we measure inflation. Renowned investor and author Mark Mobius persuasively argues that what we believe to know about inflation today does not reflect the reality any longer. It ...

The internationally renowned, clinically tested, revolutionary diet program to lose weight, fight disease, and live a longer, healthier life.Can what you eat determine how long, and how well, you live? The clinically proven answer is yes, and The Longevity Diet is easier to follow than you’d think. The culmination of twenty-five years of research on aging, nutrition, and disease across the globe, this unique program lays out a simple solution to living to a healthy old age...

In the late 1970s and early ’80s, a cadre of freewheeling, Southern pot smugglers lived at the crossroads of Miami Vice and a Jimmy Buffett song. These irrepressible adventurers unloaded nearly a billion dollars worth of marijuana and hashish through the eastern seaboard’s marshes. Then came their undoing: Operation Jackpot, one of the largest drug investigations ever and an opening volley in Ronald Reagan’s War on Drugs.In Jackpot, author Jason Ryan takes us back...

The epochal shift toward neoliberalism—a web of related policies that, broadly speaking, reduced the footprint of government in society and reassigned economic power to private market forces—that began in the United States and Great Britain in the late 1970s fundamentally changed the world. Today, the word "neoliberal" is often used to condemn a broad swath of policies, from prizing free market principles over people to advancing privatization programs in developing nations around the worl...

In How the Laser Happened, Nobel laureate Charles Townes provides a highly personal look at some of the leading events in twentieth-century physics. Townes was inventor of the maser, of which the laser is one example; an originator of spectroscopy using microwaves; and a pioneer in the study of gas clouds in galaxies and around stars. Throughout his career he has also been deeply engaged with issues outside of academic research. He worked on applied research projects for Bell Labs...

A revised and updated edition (with more than 70% new material) of the classic book about innate differences between boys and girls and how best to parent and teach girls and boys successfully, with new chapters on sexual orientation and on transgender and intersex kids.Back in 2005, the first edition of Why Gender Matters broke ground in illuminating the differences between boys and girls—how they perceive the world differently, how they learn differently, how they proces...

Honeybees make decisions collectively—and democratically. Every year, faced with the life-or-death problem of choosing and traveling to a new home, honeybees stake everything on a process that includes collective fact-finding, vigorous debate, and consensus building. In fact, as world-renowned animal behaviorist Thomas Seeley reveals, these incredible insects have much to teach us when it comes to collective wisdom and effective decision making. A remarkable account of scientific discovery...

In a revelatory dispatch from the frontier of capitalist extremism, an acclaimed historian of ideas shows how free marketeers are realizing their ultimate goal: an end to nation-states and the constraints of democracy.Look at a map of the world and you’ll see a colorful checkerboard of nation-states. But this is not where power actually resides. Over the last decade, globalization has shattered the map into different legal spaces: free ports, tax havens, special ec...