If you could live forever, would you want to? Both a fascinating look at the history of our strive for immortality and an investigation into whether living forever is really all it’s cracked up to be.A fascinating work of popular philosophy and history that both enlightens and entertains, Stephen Cave investigates whether it just might be possible to live forever and whether we should want to. He also makes a powerful argument that it’s our very preoccupation

Should You Choose to Live Forever?: A Debate addresses a centuries old question in philosophy, but also one with increasing relevance as scientists now see the real possibility of extending people’s lives for many hundreds of years.This accessible yet profound debate from two leading researchers in the area, Stephen Cave and John Martin Fischer, offers:Engaging philosophical discourse that brings abstract concepts to life through myth, litera...

Modelling Community Mission is the story of how one church in the South of England set out on an adventure to bring the church and community into a closer relationship. It is told by one of the Ministers at the church and reflects on his 29 years at the church.The story is told with humour and grace, as well as giving the reader the opportunity to reflect on some of the theology of Community Mission, which shaped the way the church sought to close the gap between itself and the com...

Feminist AI: Critical Perspectives on Algorithms, Data and Intelligent Machines is the first volume to bring together leading feminist thinkers from across the disciplines to explore the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and related data-driven technologies on human society. Recent years have seen both an explosion in AI systems and a corresponding rise in important critical analyses of these technologies. Central to these analyses has been feminist scholarship, which calls upon the A...

This book is the first to examine the history of imaginative thinking about intelligent machines. As real Artificial Intelligence (AI) begins to touch on all aspects of our lives, this long narrative history shapes how the technology is developed, deployed, and regulated. It is therefore a crucial social and ethical issue.Part I of this book provides a historical overview from ancient Greece to the start of modernity. These chapters explore the revealing pre-history of key concerns...

In the first-ever Seven Seas history of the world's female buccaneers, Pirate Women: The Princesses, Prostitutes, and Privateers Who Ruled the Seven Seas tells the story of women, both real and legendary, who through the ages sailed alongside—and sometimes in command of—their male counterparts. These women came from all walks of life but had one thing in common: a desire for freedom. History has largely ignored these female swashbucklers, until now. Here are their stories, from an...

A Pulitzer Prize–winning historian examines transformational leaders from Moses to Machiavelli to Martin Luther King Jr. in this "impressive book" ( The Washington Post).Historian and political scientist James MacGregor Burns has spent much of his career documenting the use and misuse of power by leaders throughout history. In this groundbreaking study, Burns examines the qualities that make certain leaders—in America and elsewhere—succeed as transformativ...

A watershed event in the field of sociology, this text introduced "a major breakthrough in the sociology of knowledge and sociological theory generally" (George Simpson, American Sociological Review ).In this seminal book, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann examine how knowledge forms and how it is preserved and altered within a society. Unlike earlier theorists and philosophers, Berger and Luckmann go beyond intellectual history and focu...

How do we know a cat is a cat . . . and why do we call it a cat? An "intriguing and often fascinating" look at words, perceptions, and the relationship between them ( Newark Star-Ledger).In Kant and the Platypus, the renowned semiotician, philosopher, and bestselling author of The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum explores the question of how much of our perception of things is based on cognitive ability, and how much on l...

A vivid narration of the history of the tulip, from its origins on the barren, windswept steppes of central Asia to its place of honor in the lush imperial gardens of Constantinople, to its starring moment as the most coveted—and beautiful—commodity in Europe.In the 1630s, visitors to the prosperous trading cities of the Netherlands couldn't help but notice that thousands of normally sober, hardworking Dutch citizens were caught up in an extraordinary frenzy of buy...

A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary WarMost Americans consider Abraham Lincoln to be the greatest president in history. His legend as the Great Emancipator has grown to mythic proportions as hundreds of books, a national holiday, and a monument in Washington, D.C., extol his heroism and martyrdom. But what if most everything you knew about Lincoln were false? What if, instead of an American hero who sought to free the slaves, Lincoln were ...

Discover how human beings react to danger—and what makes the difference between life and death“Fascinating and useful . . . [shows that] the most important variable in an emergency is your own behavior.”—The New York TimesToday, nine out of ten Americans live in places at significant risk of earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, terrorism, or other disasters. Tomorrow, some of us will have to make split-second choices to save ourselv...