A startling and gripping reexamination of the Jim Crow era, as seen through the eyes of some of the most important American writers"Walker has opened up a fresh way of thinking about the intellectual history of the South during the civil-rights movement."—Robert Greene, The NationIn this dramatic reexamination of the Jim Crow South, Anders Walker demonstrates that racial segregation fostered not simply terror and vi...

In "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther King, Jr. asserted that "the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice." To date, our understanding of the Civil Rights era has been largely defined by high-profile public events such as the crisis at Little Rock high school, bus boycotts, and sit-ins-incidents that were met with massive resistan...

This volume reflects on what happens when the idea and practice of universal human rights cross the cultural borders between different communities of knowledge. Although such rights are usually presumed to be founded on certain globally shared beliefs, the norms and values of many cultures are often incommensurable with these "universal" principles, and hence the need to translate and “vernacularize” them. Any law that would successfully institutionalize them must frame human rights in a w...

Not just ancient stories—but a code for how we think, desire, fear, and believe.Readers' Favorite Book Award WinnerA profound psychological approach… Fascinating stuff. —James Sale, author of Gods, Heroes, and UsMyths have never been merely entertainment. For thousands of years, they have shaped religion, philosophy, psychology, politics, and art. But what are they really—primitive...

**One of Washington Post's 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction From 2024The first volume in a two-book series about each of the atomic bomb drops that ended the Pacific War based on years of irreplicable personal interviews with survivors to tell a story of devastation and resilience**In this vividly rendered historical narrative, M. G. Sheftall layers the stories of hibakusha—the Japanese word for atomic bomb survivors—in harrowing detail, to give a minute-by-...

**“Mind-blowing and soul-expanding.” —Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an OctopusA behavioral ecologist’s riveting account of his decades-long obsession with octopuses: his discoveries, adventures, and new scientific understanding of their behaviors.**Of all the creatures of the deep blue, none is as captivating as the octopus. In Many Things Under a Rock, marine biologist David Scheel investigates four major mysteries about these elusive beings. How c...

Other countries have social safety nets. The U.S. has women. Holding It Together chronicles the causes and dire consequences.America runs on women—women who are tasked with holding society together at the seams and fixing it when things fall apart. In this tour de force, acclaimed Sociologist Jessica Calarco lays bare the devastating consequences of our status quo.Holding It Together draws on five years of research in which Calarc...

**NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “The conscience of the AI revolution” (Fortune) explains how we’ve arrived at an era of AI harms and oppression, and what we can do to avoid its pitfalls.“AI is not coming, it’s here. If we answer the beautiful call inside these pages, we can decide who we are going to be and how we’re going to use technology in service of what it means to be fully human.”—Brené Brown, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dare to Lead**

A Next Big Idea Club Must Read of February 2025"Von Hippel presents a radically new way to understand why human happiness has diminished. What’s more, he offers superlative advice for how to get back on track.” —Sonja Lyubomirsky, New York Times bestselling author of The How of HappinessFrom the author of The Social Leap comes this thought-provoking exploration, grounded in evolutionary ps...

In this definitive book on revenge, psychiatry researcher James Kimmel, Jr. exposes the unseen neurobiological cause of violence—a compulsive desire for retribution—and offers a profound new understanding of human behavior and breakthrough framework for making our lives and communities safer.**“This riveting, science-based exploration of why we feel pleasure from other people’s pain is a must-read.”—Anna Lembke, MD, author of Dopamine NationA Next ...

"A splendid and beautifully written illustration of the tremendous importance public policy has for the daily lives of ordinary people." —Ryan Cooper, Washington MonthlyOver the last generation, the United States has undergone seismic changes. Stable institutions have given way to frictionless transactions, which are celebrated no matter what collateral damage they generate. The concentration of great wealth has coincided with the fraying of social ties an...

The New York Times–bestselling author looks at the real history of the corrupting influence of oligarchy in America—and how we can fight back.Billionaire oligarchs want to own our republic, and they're nearly there thanks to legislation and Supreme Court decisions that they have essentially bought. They put Trump and his political allies into office and support a vast network of think tanks, publications, and social media that every day push our nation clos...