Social science / Anthropology

Monkeyluv: And Other Essays on Our Lives as Animals

by Robert M. Sapolsky

The human animal in all its fascinating quirks of nature is showcased in this thoughtful and entertaining essay collection from America's most beloved neurobiologist/primatologist.

In these essays -- updated...

One River

by Wade Davis

In the 1940s, biologist Richard Evans Schultes uncovered many of the secrets of the rain forest, relying not only on his own prodigious investigations, but on the wisdom passed down by local tribes. Thirty years...

Flushed: How the Plumber Saved Civilization

by W. Hodding Carter

Hodding Carter writes, "The unsung hero of human history was, of course, the Brain of Drains, the Hub of Tubs, the Power of Showers, the Brewer of Sewers...the humble plumber.... The Irish may have saved civilization,...

In Search of the Old Ones

by David Roberts

The Anasazi, ancestors of the Pueblo people, inhabited the Southwest for at least 5,000 years. David Roberts' extensive interviews and back country travels create a richly detailed portrait of an enigmatic people...

Hair of the Alien: DNA and Other Forensic Evidence of Alien Abductions

by Bill Chalker

Shocking. Controversial. Unprecedented. A case unlike any other in the annals of UFO investigation, DNA research, or alien abduction.

Sydney, Australia. July 23, 1992. Twenty-eight-year-old Peter Khoury was...

Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China

by Philip P. Pan

From an award-winning journalist for The Washington Post and one of the leading China correspondents of his generation comes an eloquent and vivid chronicle of the world's most successful authoritarian state...

Sick Societies

by Robert B. Edgerton

A Simon & Schuster eBook. Simon & Schuster has a great book for every reader.

The Last of the Tribe: The Epic Quest to Save a Lone Man in the Amazon

by Monte Reel

Throughout the centuries, the Amazon has yielded many of its secrets, but it still holds a few great mysteries. In 1996 experts got their first glimpse of one: a lone Indian, a tribe of one, hidden in the forests...

Lost Cosmonaut: Observations of an Anti-Tourist

by Daniel Kalder

Daniel Kalder belongs to a unique group: the anti-tourists. Sworn to uphold the mysterious tenets of The Shymkent Declarations, the anti-tourist seeks out the dark, lost zones of our planet, eschewing comfort,...

Breakfast with Socrates: An Extraordinary (Philosophical Journey Through Your Ordinary Day

by Robert Rowland Smith

Ever want to have a bagel with Hegel? Eggs with Bacon? Or spend a day with Socrates, Mill, Herodotus, or Kant, able to pick their brains about the most mundane moments of your life? Former Oxford Philosophy...

Bigfoot!: The True Story of Apes in America

by Loren Coleman

For years, scientists and researchers have studied, speculated about, and searched for an enigmatic creature that is legendary in the annals of American folklore. Now, learn the truth about...

BIGFOOT!

In...

Sizwe's Test: A Young Man's Journey Through Africa's AIDS Epidemic

by Jonny Steinberg

At the age of twenty-nine, Sizwe Magadla is among the most handsome, well-educated, and richest of the men in his poverty-stricken village. Dr. Hermann Reuter, a son of old South West African stock, wants to...

Tall Man: The Death of Doomadgee

by Chloe Hooper

In 2004 on Palm Island, an Aboriginal settlement in the "Deep North" of Australia, a thirty-six-year-old man named Cameron Doomadgee was arrested for swearing at a white police officer. Forty minutes later he...

Natural History

by Secundius Gaisus Pliny the Elder & John Healey

Pliny’s Natural History is an astonishingly ambitious work that ranges from astronomy to art and from geography to zoology. Mingling acute observation with often wild speculation, it offers a fascinating view...

The Cosmic Serpent

by Jeremy Narby

This adventure in science and imagination, which the Medical Tribune said might herald "a Copernican revolution for the life sciences," leads the reader through unexplored jungles and uncharted aspects of mind...

Rome and Italy

by Titus Livy & Betty Radice

Thus Livy (59 BC-AD17) makes plain the moral purpose of his life's work. This Penguin Classic contains Books VI-X of The History of Rome, beginning with the city's foundation and covering the dramatic century...

The Blank Slate

by Steven Pinker

In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading experts on language and the mind, explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity,...

Something for Nothing: Luck in America

by Jackson Lears

Since Tocqueville compared American society to "a vast lottery," America has had a distinctive—and highly contradictory—attitude towards gambling and the very idea of chance. SOMETHING FOR NOTHING is a counter-history...

Intelligence in Nature

by Jeremy Narby

Continuing the journey begun in his acclaimed book The Cosmic Serpent, the noted anthropologist ventures firsthand into both traditional cultures and the most up-todate discoveries of contemporary science to...

The United States of Wal-Mart

by John Dicker

An irreverent, hard-hitting examination of the world's largest-and most reviled-corporation, which reveals that while Wal-Mart's dominance may be providing consumers with cheap goods and plentiful jobs, it may...