Anthropology

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Sapiens comes the groundbreaking story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world.

We see notebooks everywhere we go. But where did these indispensable implements come from? In this wide-ranging history, Roland Allen reveals how the notebook became our most dependable and versatile tool for creative thinking.

In this stunning audiobook, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers" - the best and the brightest, the most famous, and the most successful. He asks the question: What makes high-achievers different? Listen to find out more....

A timely investigation into the new "safety culture" on campus and the dangers it poses to free speech, mental health, education, and ultimately democracy....

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Guns, Germs and Steel examines the rise of civilization and the issues its development has raised throughout history....

Number-one best-selling author John Green presents a deeply moving and insightful collection of personal essays adapted and expanded from his groundbreaking podcast....

Mukherjee animates the quest to understand human heredity and its surprising influence on our lives, personalities, identities, fates, and choices....

This fascinating audiobook is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time....

Isolated by Mexico's deadly Copper Canyons, the blissful Tarahumara Indians have honed the ability to run hundreds of miles without rest or injury. In a riveting narrative, award-winning journalist and often-injured runner Christopher McDougall sets out to discover their secrets....

Yuval Noah Harari's 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a probing and visionary investigation into today's most urgent issues as we move into the uncharted territory of the future....

How does trauma affect a child's mind—and how can that mind recover? In the classic The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, Dr. Perry explains what happens to the brains of children exposed to extreme stress and shares their lessons of courage, humanity, and hope....

In The Nordic Theory of Everything, Partanen compares and contrasts life in the United States with life in the Nordic region, focusing on four key relationships....

The author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Anxious Generation shows how a deeper understanding of the world's philosophical wisdom can enrich and transform our lives....

The New York Times best-selling book exploring the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged and how these reactions maintain racial inequality....

Combining history, psychology, and anthropology, Tribe explores what we can learn from tribal societies about loyalty, belonging, and the eternal human quest for meaning....

If there is one belief that has united the left and the right, psychologists and philosophers, ancient thinkers and modern ones, it is the tacit assumption that humans are bad. It's a notion that drives newspaper headlines and guides the laws that shape our lives....

Cults Like Us explains why the eccentric doomsday beliefs of our Puritan founders are still driving American culture today, contextualizes the current rise in far-right extremism as a natural result of our latent indoctrination, and proposes that the United States is the largest cult of all.

A provocative exploration of the tension between our evolutionary history and our modern woes, A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century outlines a science-based worldview that will empower you to live a better, wiser life....

Drawing on vast new data that reveal Americans' changing behavior, Putnam shows how we have become increasingly disconnected from one another ....

The very strange but nevertheless true story of the dark underbelly of a 1960s hippie utopia. Laurel Canyon in the 1960s and early 1970s was a magical place....

Graham Hancock's multi-million bestseller Fingerprints of the Gods remains an astonishing, deeply controversial, wide-ranging investigation of the mysteries of our past and the evidence for Earth's lost civilization. Twenty years on, Hancock returns with the sequel to his seminal work....

The author explores how climate change, the population explosion, and political discord create the conditions for the collapse of civilization....

A sweeping and original history of the Anglo-Saxons by national best-selling author Marc Morris....

This classic presents historical, archaeological, and anthropological evidence to support the theory that ancient Egypt was a black civilization....

Este es el fascinante relato de nuestra extraordinaria historia: de simios sin importancia a amos del mundo....

Based on seven years of research and observation and crafted with consummate skill, The American Game takes listeners inside a unique cultural landscape that nonetheless reflects the wider world. Fluidly weaving in compelling action on the field from World Championships to tense NCAA tournaments, Price also chronicles the controversies and anomalies that have in many ways defined lacrosse. Racism stubbornly persists—and the Haudenosaunee have endured plenty in their rise—yet few mainstream entities have done more than lacrosse to champion the Native American experience.

A drought lasts for decades, a disease rips through a city, a civilization collapses. When we finally uncover the ruins, we ask: What happened? The good news is, we’ve been here before. History is long, and people have already confronted just about every apocalypse we’re facing today. But these days, archaeologists are getting better at seeing stories of survival, transformation, and even progress hidden within those histories of collapse and destruction. Perhaps, we begin to see, apocalypses do not destroy worlds, but create them anew.

In recent years, genetic testing has become easily available to consumers across the globe, making it relatively simple to find out where your ancestors came from. But what do these test results actually tell us about ourselves? In Ancestors, Pierre Zalloua, a leading authority on population genetics, argues that these test results have led to a dangerous oversimplification of what one’s genetic heritage means. Genetic ancestry has become conflated with anthropological categories such as “origin,” “ethnicity,” and even “race” in spite of the complexities that underlie these concepts.

Lamorna Ash was raised with about as much Christianity as most people in Britain these days: a basic knowledge of hymns and prayers received via a Church of England primary school education; occasional brushes with religious services. But once she started writing about her two friends’ unexpected conversions, she began encountering a recurring phenomenon: in an age of disconnection and apathy, a new generation was discovering religion for itself.

Drawing from decades of experience in the craft of language, both Dimópulos and Coetzee face the reality that when it comes to self-expression, some things will always get lost in translation. Speaking in Tongues finally emerges as an engaging and accessible work of philosophy, shining a light on some of the most important linguistic and philological issues of our time.

In history class, we’ve been taught that the Great Depression was all about crashing stock markets, snaking breadlines, and ecological disasters. We learned that FDR tried to put it right with the New Deal, but it was only World War II that finally succeeded in revitalizing the American economy. But that’s not the whole story.

In Together, award-winning political thinker, author and poet Ece Temelkuran provides an inspiring manifesto for change by revealing fresh possibilities for the better world we might want to live in and gives us a new vocabulary for the political action that the twenty-first century demands. Above all, this book will challenge you to have faith in the other human beings we share this planet with, to turn away from an uncaring world and instead build a new one with compassion.

The Shortest History of Music takes us on a lively tour through several thousands of years of music history, tracing our relationship with this essential art and allowing us to freshly appreciate and understand music today.

What is silence? In a series of short meditations, novelist and playwright John Biguenet considers silence as a servant of power, as a lie, as a punishment, as the voice of God, as a terrorist’s final weapon, as a luxury good, as the reason for torture—in short, as an object we both do and do not recognize. Concluding with the prospects for its future in a world burgeoning with noise, Biguenet asks whether we should desire or fear silence—or if it is even ours to choose.

For as long as people have traveled to distant lands, they have brought home objects to certify the journey. More than mere merchandise, these travel souvenirs take on a personal and cultural meaning that goes beyond the object itself. Drawing on several millennia of examples—from the relic-driven quests of early Christians, to the mass-produced tchotchkes that line the shelves of a Disney gift shop—travel writer Rolf Potts delves into a complicated history that explores issues of authenticity, cultural obligation, market forces, human suffering, and self-presentation.