The wisdom of famous philosophers distilled into practical takeaways for readers who seek to confront reality and carve out a livable space within it.For centuries, philosophers have considered the "big questions" of human life, mulling over everything from ethics to the definition of reality. Their ideas and insights are powerful and innovative, but often inaccessible and far too academic for most readers. In The Philosophy Cure: Lessons on Living from the...

The wisdom of famous philosophers distilled into practical takeaways for modern listeners.For centuries, philosophers have considered the “big questions” of human life, mulling over everything from ethics to the definition of reality. Their ideas and insights are powerful and innovative, but often inaccessible and far too academic for most listeners.In The Philosophy Cure: Lessons on Living from the Great Philosophers, scholar and expert on Cartesi...

Etched in the wedge-shaped letters known as cuneiform on clay tablets, the Epic of Gilgamesh stands as the earliest classic of world literature. Its earliest surviving fragments date back to the eighteenth century BC, more than 3,700 years ago. In The Buried Book, David Damrosch tells the story of George Smith, a self-taught linguist, who one momentous afternoon in 1872 was working at the British Museum, going through a pile of Layard’s clay tablets, when he suddenly real...

This program is read by an AI-based synthesized voice.Dr. Albert Shelton was a medical missionary and explorer who spent nearly twenty years in the Tibetan borderlands at the start of the last century. During the Great Game era, the Sheltons' sprawling station in Kham was the most remote and dangerous mission on earth. Raising his family in a land of banditry and civil war, caught between a weak Chinese government and the British Raj, Shelton proved to be a resourc...

What do Bach's compositions, Rubik's Cube, the way we choose our mates, and the physics of subatomic particles have in common? All are governed by the laws of symmetry, which elegantly unify scientific and artistic principles. Yet the mathematical language of symmetry—known as group theory—did not emerge from the study of symmetry at all, but from an equation that couldn't be solved.For thousands of years mathematicians solved progressively more difficult algebraic equations, until...

A gripping memoir written by a 96-year-old Jewish Holocaust survivor about his escape from Nazi-occupied Poland in the 1930's and his adventures with the French Resistance during World War IIIn 1937, as the Nazi Party tightened its grip on the city of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland), Justus Rosenberg’s parents made the wrenching decision to send their son to Paris, where he would have the hope of finishing high school and going on to university in safety. He was sixtee...

Today's computers are composing music that sounds "more Bach than Bach," turning photographs into paintings in the style of Van Gogh's Starry Night, and even writing screenplays. But are computers truly creative—or are they merely tools to be used by musicians, artists, and writers?Miller, an authority on creativity, identifies the key factors essential to the creative process, from "the need for introspection" to "the ability to discover the key problem." He talks to peop...

Explore the fascinating myths of Greek and Roman civilizations!The tales of gods and heroes are often turned into tedious discourse that even Ovid would reject. This easy-to-read guide cuts out the boring details, and instead, provides you with a thrilling lesson in classic mythology.From the heights of Mt. Olympus to the depths of the Underworld, this book takes you on an unforgettable journey through all the major myths born in ancient Greece and Rome, su...

We all make mistakes. Nobody’s perfect. Not even some of the greatest geniuses in history, as Mario Livio tells us in this marvelous story of scientific error and breakthrough.Charles Darwin, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), Linus Pauling, Fred Hoyle, and Albert Einstein were all brilliant scientists. Each made groundbreaking contributions to his field - but each also stumbled badly. Darwin’s theory of natural selection shouldn’t have worked, according to the prevailing beliefs of hi...

In Artificial Unintelligence, Meredith Broussard argues that our collective enthusiasm for applying computer technology to every aspect of life has resulted in a tremendous amount of poorly designed systems. We are so eager to do everything digitally—hiring, driving, paying bills, even choosing romantic partners—that we have stopped demanding that our technology actually work. Broussard, a software developer and journalist, reminds us that there are fundamental limits to what we c...

In this “deeply personal and lyrical book” (Publishers Weekly) from the New York Times bestselling author of The Horse, Wendy Williams explores the lives of one of the world’s most resilient creatures—the butterfly—shedding light on the role that they play in our ecosystem and in our human lives.“[A] glorious and exuberant celebration of these biological flying machines…Williams takes us on a humorous and beautifully crafted journey” (

How to concentrate in a world of beeping smartphones, channel surfing, live-tweeting, pop-up ads, and other distractions.We are in the midst of an attention crisis—caused in large part by our smartphones. There's a constant stream of information that we are powerless to withstand because it shows up in our notifications. More and more of us are finding it harder and harder to concentrate.The good news, attention expert Stefan Van der Stigchel reports, is th...