The first anthology ever to present the entire range of ancient Greek and Roman stories—from myths and fairy tales to jokesCaptured centaurs and satyrs, talking animals, people who suddenly change sex, men who give birth, the temporarily insane and the permanently thick-witted, delicate sensualists, incompetent seers, a woman who remembers too much, a man who cannot laugh—these are just some of the colorful characters who feature in the unforgettable stories that a...

The Aesop's Fable Paradigm is a collection of essays that explore the cutting-edge intersection of Folklore and Science. From moralizing fables to fantastic folktales, humans have been telling stories about animals—animals who can talk, feel, think, and make moral judgments just as we do—for a very long time. In contrast, scientific studies of the mental lives of animals have professed to be investigating the nature of animal minds slowly, cautiously, objectively, with no room for...

A classic anthology now available on audioWith narration by Kristin Atherton, who presents the entire range of ancient Greek and Roman stories from myths and fairy tales to jokesCaptured centaurs and satyrs, incompetent seers, people who suddenly change sex, a woman who remembers too much, a man who cannot laugh—these are just some of the colorful characters who feature in the unforgettable stories that ancient Greeks and Romans told in their daily lives. Tog...

BBC R4 Book of the Week ‘Brilliant’ Guardian ‘Fascinating and often delightful’ The TimesWhat if intelligent life on Earth evolved not once, but twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter?In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how nature became aware of itself – a story...

"A brilliant, witty, and altogether satisfying book." — New York Times Book ReviewThe classic work on the development of human language by the world’s leading expert on language and the mindIn The Language Instinct, the world's expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. ...

**“Lovely, celebratory. For all the belittling of ‘bird brains,’ [Ackerman] shows them to be uniquely impressive machines . . .” —New York Times Book Review“A lyrical testimony to the wonders of avian intelligence.” —Scientific AmericanAn award-winning science writer tours the globe to reveal what makes birds capable of such extraordinary feats of mental prowess**Birds are astonishingly intelligent creatures. According to revolutionary new research...

'Dazzling...Pinker's big idea is that language is an instinct...as innate to us as flying is to geese...Words can hardly do justice to the superlative range and liveliness of Pinker's investigations'- Independent'A marvellously readable book...illuminates every facet of human language: its biological origin, its uniqueness to humanity, it acquisition by children, its grammatical structure, the production and perception of speech, the pathology of language disorders and the u...

The New York Times Bestseller that explores animal intelligence and will alter the way we as humans view other species.Have you ever wondered what it is like to be a fish? Or a parrot, dolphin, or an elephant? Do they experience thoughts that are similar to ours, or have feelings of grief and love? These are tough questions, but scientists are answering them. They know that ants teach and rats love to be tickled. They’ve discovered that dogs have thousand-...

A New York Times bestseller: "A passionate and convincing case for the sophistication of nonhuman minds." —Alison Gopnik, The AtlanticHailed as a classic, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? explores the oddities and complexities of animal cognition—in crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, chimpanzees, and bonobos—to reveal how smart animals really are, and how we’ve underestimated their abilities for too long. Did ...

The Gardener and the Carpenter shatters the myth of "good parenting" and illuminates the paradoxes of parenthood from a scientific perspective.In the past thirty years, parenting has transformed into an obsessive, controlling, and goal-oriented labor intended to create a particular kind of child and adult. However, in The Gardener and the Carpenter, pioneering developmental psychologist and philosopher Alison Gopnik argues that this familiar twent...

Selected as a Book of the Year by the Financial Times‘The Gardener and the Carpenter should be required reading for anyone who is, or is thinking of becoming a parent’ Financial TimesCaring deeply about our children is part of what makes us human. Yet the thing we call ‘parenting’ is a surprisingly new invention. In the past thirty years, the concept of parenting and the huge industry surrounding it have transforme...

In this thought-provoking book, the acclaimed author of Our Inner Ape examines how empathy comes naturally to a great variety of animals, including humans.Are we our brothers' keepers? Do we have an instinct for compassion? Or are we, as is often assumed, only on earth to serve our own survival and interests?By studying social behaviors in animals, such as bonding, the herd instinct, the forming of trusting alliances, expressions of consolation, an...