Ever since the phrase "fight or flight" was coined in the 1920s, the common understanding has been that the mind respond to danger in one of two ways - either fleeing in blind panic, or fighting through it. But as scientists unlock the secrets of the human brain, a more complex understanding of the fear response has emerged. It turns out that the ancient brain circuitry wired to process fear is also intricately tied to our ability to master new skills, and that the icy sensation of terror ...

This “engrossing history of censorship” is an urgent, timely read for our era of social media trolls, fake news, and free speech debates (The Economist).How restricting speech continuously shapes our culture, props up authorities, and maintains class and gender disparitiesThrough compelling narrative, historian Eric Berkowitz reveals how drastically censorship has shaped our modern society. More than just a history of censorship,

Leah Elson draws upon her wildly popular web series, 60 Seconds of Science, in this highly entertaining and visually appealing giftable book of real-world scientific questions and answers.How does DNA work?Does chicken noodle soup actually help with being sick?When cats purr, what is actually making the noise?Does singing to plants really help them grow?Is it possible to clone a woolly mammoth?In the vein of Randall Munr...

A 2021 Mathical Honor Book: "One of the best math teachers on the planet. His book is as buoyant, open-hearted, and energetic as he is." —Steven Strogatz, New York Times–bestselling author of Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the UniverseWhy aren't left-handers extinct? What makes a rainbow round? How is a pancreas like a pendulum? These may not look like math questions, but they are—because they all have to do with patterns. And...

" In a unique take on the cosmos, Gould makes the case that the emergence of a great many things are not only pre-ordained, but predictable." ( Forbes)We know the universe has a history, but does it also have a story of self-creation to tell? Yes, in Roy R. Gould's account. He offers a compelling narrative of how the universe?with no instruction other than its own laws?evolved into billions of galaxies and gave rise to life. Far from being a random accident...

Discover the incredible stories of warrior women throughout history—from Vikings and African queens to cross-dressing military doctors and WWII fighter pilots.Who says women don’t go to war? These “exhilarating accounts . . . finally put to rest the tired old arguments that only men are fit for combat” (Adrienne Mayor, author of The Amazons).The woman warrior is always cast as an anomaly—Joan of Arc, not GI Jane. But women, it turn...

An "absorbing" look at how our species evolved, from the curator of human evolution at the American Museum of Natural History ( Kirkus Reviews).What makes us so different from those other animals? How did we get this way? How do we know? And what exactly are we? These questions are what make human evolution a subject of general fascination. Ian Tattersall, one of those rare scientists who is also a graceful writer, addresses them in this delightful book.

Covering 13.8 billion years in some 100 pages, a concise, wryly intelligent history of everything, from the Big Bang to the advent of human civilization.With wonder, wit, and flair—and in record time and space—geophysicist David Bercovici explains how everything came to be everywhere, from the creation of stars and galaxies to the formation of Earth's atmosphere and oceans, to the origin of life and human civilization. Bercovici marries humor and legitimate scienti...

Everything you want to know about the breakthroughs in AI technology, machine learning, and deep learning—as seen in self-driving cars, Netflix recommendations, and more.The future is here: Self-driving cars are on the streets, an algorithm gives you movie and TV recommendations, IBM’s Watson triumphed on Jeopardy over puny human brains, computer programs can be trained to play Atari games. But how do all these things work? In this book, Sean Gerrish offer...

A "wide-ranging, witty, and astonishingly learned" scientific and cultural history of the concept of the capacity to act in nature ( London Review of Books).Today, a scientific explanation is not meant to ascribe agency to natural phenomena: we would not say a rock falls because it seeks the center of the earth. Even for living things, in the natural sciences and often in the social sciences, the same is true. A modern botanist would not say that plants pur...

"[A] delightful addition to the stuff-you-think-you-know-that's-wrong genre, á la Freakonomics, Outliers, and The Black Swan." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)In Israel, pilot trainees who were praised for doing well subsequently performed worse, while trainees who were yelled at for doing poorly performed better. Evidence shows that highly intelligent women tend to marry men who are less intelligent. Students who get the highest...

In this dual biography, New York Times bestselling author Arthur Herman brilliantly reveals how Lenin and Wilson rewrote the rules of modern geopolitics.In April 1917, Woodrow Wilson—champion of American democracy but also of segregation, advocate for free trade and a new world order based on freedom and justice—thrust the United States into the First World War in order to make the "world safe for democracy"—only to see his dreams for a liberal internationa...