A landmark, radically uplifting account of our species’ progress, from one of the world's preeminent thinkers.“Unparalleled in its scope and ambition…All readers will learn something, and many will find the book fascinating.’—The Washington Post“Breathtaking. A new Sapiens!” —L'Express**“Completely brilliant and utterly original ... a book for our epoch.”—**Jon Snow, former presenter, Chan...

For most of the vast span of human history, economic growth was all but nonexistent. Then, about two centuries ago, some nations began to emerge from this epoch of economic stagnation, experiencing sustained economic growth that led to significant increases in standards of living and profoundly altered the level and distribution of wealth, population, education, and health across the globe. The question ever since has been--why?This is the first book to put forward a unified theory...

A landmark, radically uplifting account of our species’ progress, from one of the world's preeminent thinkers.“Unparalleled in its scope and ambition…All readers will learn something, and many will find the book fascinating.’—The Washington Post“Breathtaking. A new Sapiens!” —L'Express**“Completely brilliant and utterly original ... a book for our epoch.”—**Jon Snow, former presenter, Chan...

Innovation is the subject of countless books and courses, but there's very little out there about how you actually innovate. Innovation and entrepreneurship are not one and the same, although aspiring innovators often think of them that way. They are told to get an idea and a team and to build a show-and-tell for potential investors. In Innovating, Luis Perez-Breva describes another approach -- a doer's approach developed over a decade at MIT and internationally in workshops, classes, and ...

For as long as we’ve gathered by campfires to tell ghost stories, humans have always loved a good scare. From the splatter flicks of the 70s, to Japan’s obsession with drowned girls, to creepy modern experiences like the overnight ghost hunt at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, the horror industry has thrived across time and cultures. Our obsession with getting scared is obvious to anyone who visits ScareHouse, a haunted house in Pittsburgh that is annually ranked among the scariest in t...

From writer and political analyst Jared Yates Sexton comes an eye-opening journey through American history that unearths and debunks the myths we've always told ourselves.Recent years have brought a reckoning in America. As rampant political corruption, stark inequality, and violent bigotry have come to the fore, many have faced two vital questions: How did we get here? And how do we move forward?An honest look at the past—and how it’s been covered up—is th...

**From the New York Times-bestselling author of Stony the Road and one of our most important voices on the African-American experience, a powerful new history of the Black church in America as the Black community's abiding rock and its fortress.The companion book to the upcoming PBS series.**For the young Henry Louis Gates, Jr., growing up in a small, segregated West Virginia town, the church was his family and his community's true center of gravity. Withi...

Once upon a time, the world was neatly divided into prosperous and backward economies. Babies were plentiful, workers outnumbered retirees, and people aspiring towards the middle class yearned to own homes and cars. Companies didn't need to see any further than Europe and the United States to do well. Printed money was legal tender for all debts, public and private. We grew up learning how to 'play the game', and we expected the rules to remain the same as we took our first job, started a ...

Whose Middle Ages? is an interdisciplinary collection of short, accessible essays intended for the nonspecialist reader and ideal for teaching at an undergraduate level. Each of twenty-two essays takes up an area where digging for meaning in the medieval past has brought something distorted back into the present: in our popular entertainment; in our news, our politics, and our propaganda; and in subtler ways that inform how we think about our histories, our countries, and ourselves. Each a...

"An antidote to nearsightedness. Ari Wallach won’t just leave you planning months or years ahead—he challenges you to look generations ahead. Get ready to think and think again." — Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of the TED podcast WorkLifeA paradigm-shifting manifesto for transforming our thinking from reactionary short-termism to the long-term, widening our scope beyond today, tomorrow, and to eve...

Winner of the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for NonfictionThis “elegant” and “unfailingly empathetic” narrative (The New York Times) follows three ordinary South Africans living through the most extraordinary reckoning with race and power any modern country has ever faced.Dipuo, who grew up in apartheid-era Johannesburg’s largest Black township, conceived her only daughter, Malaika, on the mine ...

The acclaimed author of Byzantium and the Crusades "offers a fresh take on this fabled but hidden civilization" across eleven centuries of history (Colin Wells).For more than a millennium, the Byzantine Empire presided over the juncture between East and West, as well as the transition from the classical to the modern world. Rather than recounting the standard chronology of emperors and battles, leading Byzantium scholar Jonathan Harris focuses on a success...