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...

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...

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 e...

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...

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 story of an uncovered voyage as colorful and momentous as any on record for the Age of Discovery—and of the Black mariner whose stunning accomplishment has been until now lost to historyIt began with a secret mission, no expenses spared. Spain, plotting to break Portugal’s monopoly trade with the fabled Orient, set sail from a hidden Mexican port to cross the Pacific—and then, critically, to attempt the never-before-accomplished return, the vuelta. Fou...

In this provocative book, award-winning journalist Patricia Pearson argues that our culture is in denial of women's innate capacity for aggression. We don't believe that women batter their husbands or abuse the majority of children in North America. We ignore the 200 percent increase in crime by women in a period when most crime statistics are dropping. Pearson weaves the stories of women such as Karla Homolka and Mary Beth Tinning (who smothered eight of her children) with the results of ...

From the bestselling authors and hosts of "The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe," a high-tech roadmap of the future in their beloved voice, cracking open the follies of futurists past and how technology will profoundly change our world, redefining what it means to be human.Our predictions of the future are a wild fantasy, inextricably linked to our present hopes and fears, biases and ignorance. Whether they be the outlandish leaps predicted in the 1920s, like multi-...