The "fascinating" story of the CDC's intrepid investigators, who travel the world to protect us from deadly pathogens ( Chicago Tribune).Since its founding in 1951, the Epidemic Intelligence Service has waged war on every imaginable ailment. When an epidemic hits, the EIS will be there to crack the case, however mysterious or deadly, saving countless lives in the process. Over the years they have successfully battled polio, cholera, and smallpox, to name a ...

The definitive history of the world's most popular drug—coffee.Uncommon Grounds tells the story of coffee from its discovery on a hill in ancient Abyssinia to the advent of Starbucks. Mark Pendergrast reviews the dramatic changes in coffee culture over the past decade, from the disastrous "Coffee Crisis" that caused global prices to plummet to the rise of the Fair Trade movement and the "third-wave" of quality-obsessed coffee connoisseurs.As the sc...

The author of Uncommon Grounds offers "a rich and resonantly detailed account of an unlikely partnership" that redefined the concept of fair trade ( Coffee Review).The Akha hill Tribe of Thailand has a long, tumultuous history. Politics, economics, and land development consistently worked against the Akha's desire to move away from their dependency on opium production and create a stable future for their children. That all changed in 2006 when Canadian bus...

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the concept of repressed memories. It provides a history and context that documents key events that have had an effect on the way that modern psychology and psychotherapy have developed. Chapters provide an overview of how human memory functions and works and examine facets of the misguided theories behind repressed memory. The book also examines the science of the brain, the reconstructive nature of human memory, and studies of suggestibility. ...

In Memory Warp, Mark Pendergrast sounds a clarion call to stop the ongoing pseudoscience of “repressed memory therapy,” which has destroyed millions of families and continues to do so. In the 1990s, Pendergrast’s book Victims of Memory helped to debunk the repressed memory craze. Now, more than two decades later, he revisits the subject and proves that this form of “therapy” is still widespread, still destroying family relationships and causing false alle...

What we can learn from Atlanta's struggle to reinvent itself in the 21st CenturyAtlanta is on the verge of tremendous rebirth-or inexorable decline. A kind of Petri dish for cities struggling to reinvent themselves, Atlanta has the highest income inequality in the country, gridlocked highways, suburban sprawl, and a history of racial injustice. Yet it is also an energetic, brash young city that prides itself on pragmatic solutions.Today, the most promising ...

The fizzy, “marvelously entertaining” (Los Angeles Times) story of the world’s favorite beverageFor God, Country & Coca-Cola is the definitive history of the great American soft drink and the company that makes it. From its origins as a patent medicine in Reconstruction Atlanta through its rise as the dominant consumer beverage of the American century, the story of Coke is as singular, appealing, and effervescent as the drink itself. Mark Pendergr...

Of all human inventions, the mirror is perhaps the one most closely connected to our own consciousness. As our first technology for contemplation of the self, the mirror is arguably as important an invention as the wheel. Mirror Mirror is the fascinating story of the mirror's invention, refinement, and use in an astonishing range of human activities -- from the fantastic mirrored rooms that wealthy Romans created for their orgies to the mirror's key role in the use and understandi...

‘I doubt whether any book of greater importance will be published in 1997.’ Anthony Storr, The Times.In March, 1995, a Winchester father is imprisoned for eight years on the uncorroborated oral evidence of his daughter, who had recovered memories of sexual abuse while in psychiatric care; a Yorkshire father is freed, seventeen months after his arrest, when the Prosecution finally admit that his 22-year-old’s allegations against him were entirely false.Victims of Memory exam...

"The best, the liveliest and most illuminating" account of Rockefeller, Morgan, and the other men who seized American economic power after the Civil War ( The New Republic).John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, E. H. Harriman, Jay Gould, Henry Clay Frick . . . their names carry a powerful historical ring, still echoing today in the countless institutions that are part of their legacy, from universities to museums to bank...

"Twenty-nine oral histories and additional excerpts, selected from 2000 interviews with former slaves conducted in the 1930s for a WPA Federal Writers Project, document the conditions of slavery that . . . lie at the root of today's racism." — Publishers WeeklyIn the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration commissioned an oral history of the remaining former slaves. Bullwhip Days is a remarkable compendium of selections from these extraordinary i...

A history of the Chinese experience in WWII, named a Book of the Year by both the Economist and the Financial Times: "Superb" ( The New York Times Book Review).In 1937, two years before Hitler invaded Poland, Chinese troops clashed with Japanese occupiers in the first battle of World War II. Joining with the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain, China became the fourth great ally in a devastating struggle for its very surviv...