How does a conversation that ran a little long become a shared life?Someone remembers what mattered to you last week. You risk saying something true, and it is welcome. Years later, the two of you can finish each other's sentences. Somewhere in between, love took a shape. This book shows you how to read it.The Shape of Love follows three everyday processes: showing up, opening, and what builds between two people. Through scenes set in kitchens, par...

Before There Were GodsChronosDragons have always been with us.Not the dragons we invented.The ones we misunderstood.Every culture remembers them.In medieval Europe, they became fire-breathing monsters guarding impossible treasures. In China they governed rivers, seasons, and good fortune. In Mesoamerica they watched over the harvest and the turning of the heavens. Elsewhere they became fairies, gnomes, leprec...

You have never met reality directly. You have only ever known the version your mind lets in: filtered, steadied, narrowed to what you can handle and what you cannot afford to ignore.That narrowing is what makes experience possible, and most of the time it runs quietly beneath awareness. But its grip can become impossible to ignore: the deep groove of an addiction that a person understands completely and still cannot climb out of, or a moment in an altered state when the boundary be...

"Gazzaniga is a giant in cognitive neuroscience . . . [He] advances a fascinating argument that both limits and contextualizes brain research." —Forbes.comThe author of Human, Michael S. Gazzaniga has been called the "father of cognitive neuroscience." In his remarkable book, Who's in Charge?, he makes a powerful and provocative argument that counters the common wisdom that our lives are wholly determined by physical processes we cannot control. Hi...

The bestselling editor of This Explains Everything brings together 175 of the world’s most brilliant minds to tackle Edge.org’s 2014 question: What scientific idea has become a relic blocking human progress?Each year, John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org—”The world’s smartest website” (The Guardian)—challenges some of the world’s greatest scientists, artists, and philosophers to answer a provocative question crucial to our time. In 2014 he asked 175 brilliant mind...

Paula Lillard, director of a Montessori school ranging in age from 18 months to fifteen years, provides a clear and cogent introduction to the Montessori program for the elementary and later years. In detailed accounts, Lillard shows how children acquire the skills to answer their own questions, learn to manage freedom with responsibility, and maintain a high level of intellectual stimulation by using the Montessori method. This is an essential handbook for parents and teachers who have ch...

Humanity's greatest feat is our incredible ability to learn. Even in their first year, infants acquire language, visual and social knowledge at a rate that surpasses the best supercomputers. But how, exactly, do our brains learn?In How We Learn, leading neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene delves into the psychological, neuronal, synaptic and molecular mechanisms of learning. Drawing on case studies of children who learned despite huge difficulty and trauma, he explains why yo...

The prevailing orthodoxy in brain science is that since physical laws govern our physical brains, physical laws therefore govern our behaviour and even our conscious selves. Free will is meaningless, goes the mantra; we live in a 'determined' world.Not so, argues the renowned neuroscientist Michael S. Gazzaniga as he explains how the mind, 'constrains' the brain just as cars are constrained by the traffic they create. Writing with what Steven Pinker has called 'his trademark wit an...

"Theway Brockman interlaces essays about research on the frontiers of science withones on artistic vision, education, psychology and economics is sure to buzzany brain." —Chicago Sun-Times on This WillChange EverythingMarkingthe debut of a hard-hitting new series from Edge.org and Harper Perennial,editor John Brockman delivers a cutting-edge master class covering everythingyou need to know about The Mind. With original contributions by theworld’s leading thinkers and scientists, in...

“Excellent. . . . [Buonomano] reveals the intricate limitations and blessings ?of the most complex device in the known universe.”—The AtlanticThe human brain may be the best piece of technology ever created, but it’s far from perfect. Drawing on colorful examples and surprising research, neuroscientist Dean Buonomano exposes the blind spots and weaknesses that beset our brains and lead us to make misguided personal, professional, and financial decisions. Whether explaining...

Through experiments with kids and chimpanzees, this cutting-edge theory in developmental psychology reveals how cooperation is a distinctly human combination of innate and learned behavior.“[A] fascinating approach to the question of what makes us human.” —Publishers WeeklyDrop something in front of a 2-year-old, and she’s likely to pick it up for you. This is not a learned behavior, psychologist Michael Tomasello argues. Through o...

Charles Darwin changed the course of scientific thinking by showing how evolution accounts for the stunning diversity and biological complexity of life on earth. Recently, there has also been increased interest in the social sciences in how Darwinian theory can explain human culture.Covering a wide range of topics, including fads, public policy, the spread of religion, and herd behavior in markets, Alex Mesoudi shows that human culture is itself an evolutionary process that exhibit...