Social Sciences

As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science....

Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the number-one New York Times best seller Outliers, reinvents the audiobook in this immersive production of Talking to Strangers, a powerful examination of our interactions with people....

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 dramatic expansion of a groundbreaking work of journalism, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story offers a profoundly revealing vision of the American past and present....

Here are the thrills, grandeur, and unabashed fun of the Greek myths, stylishly retold by Stephen Fry. The legendary writer, actor, and comedian breathes life into ancient tales, from Pandora's box to Prometheus's fire, and transforms the adventures of Zeus and the Olympians....

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

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

The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions....

At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking, reading to partying; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion....

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

Brilliant investigative reporting of what went wrong when, in May 2001, a group of 26 men attempted to cross the Mexican border into the desert of Southern Arizona....

In his landmark best seller The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand the world around us....

In a series of illuminating, often surprising experiments, MIT behavioral economist Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways....

Yuval Noah Harari returns with an original, compelling, and provocative book, turning his focus toward humanity's future and our quest to upgrade humans into gods....

The fate of the world is in our hands. Humanity’s written history spans only five thousand years. Our yet-unwritten future could last for millions more—or it could end tomorrow. Astonishing numbers of people could lead lives of great happiness or unimaginable suffering....

Douglas Murray shows how many well-meaning people have been fooled by hypocritical and inconsistent anti-West rhetoric....

From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history....

In this searing classic autobiography, originally published in 1965, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and Black empowerment activist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Human Rights movement....

On Nonviolent Communication, this renowned peacemaker presents his complete system for speaking our deepest truths....

Written by Virginia Grohl, the mother of Dave Grohl - former Nirvana drummer and current frontman for the Foo Fighters - From Cradle to Stage shares stories and exclusive photos featuring mothers of rock icons, the icons themselves....

William Strauss and Neil Howe will change the way you see the world - and your place in it. With blazing originality, The Fourth Turning illuminates the past, explains the present, and reimagines the future. Most remarkably, it offers an utterly persuasive prophecy....

The founder of the first female-focused recovery program offers a groundbreaking look at alcohol and a radical new path to sobriety....

An essential analysis of the modern science and technology that makes our twenty-first century lives possible—a scientist's investigation into what science really does, and does not, accomplish....

From Malcolm Gladwell’s hit podcast Revisionist History comes a compendium about one of his greatest obsessions: education....

One of today’s most insightful and influential thinkers offers a powerful exploration of inequality and the lesson that generations of Americans have failed to learn: Racism has a cost for everyone - not just for people of color....

Living in our 21st century and feel embarrassed from time to time. Let me explain why I am making such a strong remark. In a modern society with extremely advanced technology, I find it difficult to recover the innocence of childhood memories. I remember well how my good friends and I used to hang out in a downtown park to play freely. For example, in my childhood, my friend and I were always obsessed with a cheap toy car and tiny amusements, and, at that moment, we were both childlike and innocent! Today, people may have forgotten that sense of innocence.

In this groundbreaking book, John Morrison examines the theory of evolution currently being taught in high schools and colleges across the world. This planet was once nothing but liquid and gas, but somehow, over billions of years, the countless number of living organisms currently on Earth came into existence. This includes humans descending from apes. Once the currently taught theory is understood, John then proceeds to explain what the textbooks don't teach, which puts the theory of evolution in a new light.

Every one of our thoughts, actions, moods and decisions is shaped by a whole array of factors, most of which we don't pay any attention to. From culture, time and language to genetics, technology and the microorganisms living inside us—even our own unconscious routines and habits—it's clear that we aren't always in the driving seat. The good news is that by better understanding the external and internal forces at work, we can minimise their impact on our lives.

I've written this book to help you decide if you're with a controlling spouse because I know from experience the signs can be subtle, and if you have nobody close to you to talk to, getting validation and affirmation can be challenging. To help you better recognize a toxic relationship, I've compiled these red flag warnings of a controlling partner. Understanding this complex and often covert abuse in a relationship ensures that you're better equipped to deal with it.

Dr. Abigail Favale provides an in-depth yet accessible account of the gender paradigm: a framework for understanding reality and identity that has recently risen to prominence. With substance, clarity, and compassion, Favale teases out the hidden assumptions of the gender paradigm and exposes its effects. Yet this book is not merely an exposé—it is also a powerful, moving articulation of a Christian understanding of reality: a holistic paradigm that proclaims the dignity of the body, the sacramental meaning of sexual difference, and the interconnectedness of all creation.

Providing a post-COP26 perspective on the climate emergency, Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitant's Guide acknowledges that it is now practically impossible to keep this side of the 1.5°C dangerous climate change guardrail. The upshot is that we can no longer dodge the arrival of a disastrous, all-pervasive climate breakdown that will come. Bill McGuire explains the science behind the climate crisis, painting a blunt but authentic picture of the sort of world our children will grow old in, and our grandchildren grow up in, a world that we catch only glimpses of today.

By the late 1970s, the fishermen of the Texas Gulf Coast were struggling. The bays that had sustained generations of shrimpers and crabbers before them were being poisoned by nearby petrochemical plants, oil spills, pesticides, and concrete. But as their nets came up light, the white shrimpers could only see one culprit: the small but growing number of newly resettled Vietnamese refugees who had recently started fishing. Turf was claimed. Guns were flashed. Threats were made. 

The Portable Anna Julia Cooper brings together, for the first time, Anna Julia Cooper's major collection of essays, A Voice from the South, along with several previously unpublished poems, plays, journalism, and selected correspondences, including more than 30 previously unpublished letters between Anna Julia Cooper and W. E. B. Du Bois. This volume will introduce a new generation to an educator, intellectual, and activist whose prescient insights underlie some of the most important developments in modern American intellectual thought and African American activism.

Daryl Joji Maeda's account of Bruce Lee's legacy traces how movements and migrations across the Pacific Ocean structured the cultures Lee inherited, the milieu he occupied, the martial art he developed, the films he made, and the world he left behind. A unique blend of cultural history and biography, Like Water unearths the cultural strands intertwined in Lee's rise to a new kind of global stardom. Moving from the gold rush in California and the British occupation of Hong Kong to the Cold War, Maeda builds depth and complexity to this larger-than-life figure. 

Inside Cardboard Box 39 at the South Australian Museum’s storage facility lies the forgotten skull of an Aboriginal man who died 85 years before. His misspelled name is etched on the crown, but the many bones in boxes around him remain unidentified. Who was Yokununna, and how did he die? His story reveals the layered, exploitative White Australian mindset that has long rendered Aboriginal reality all but invisible. 

"There are children in Holbeck without crayons. Living in a city with an opera company. An opera company paid for with money from all of us. Until everyone has crayons, no one gets opera. That’s what I believe." A deeply moving memoir of how a group of artists fed their local community during the COVID pandemic. When crisis hits and audiences stay home, what’s the most useful thing a theater company can do? The answer was to become a food bank and one-stop help shop for those in need. In 15 months, Slung Low would go on to deliver over 15,000 food parcels.

Written by a therapist with many, many years of practical experience in the resolution of problems such as these, what this book does is to turn victims into survivors and then those survivors into happy and fulfilled regular people. The way this happens is that you are thrown highly effective therapeutic lifelines rather than asked to crawl through academic blurbs. It talks to you rather than trotting out case studies of other people. After all, this is about your problems rather than theirs.

The singularity is the emergence of artificial general intelligence (AGI), and the associated transformation of the human condition. Spoiler alert: That transformation will be profound. Despite the importance of the concept of the singularity, the subject receives nothing like the attention it deserves. This book seeks to dispel the confusion, to untangle the distortions, to highlight practical steps forward, and to attract much more serious attention to the singularity. The future of humanity is at stake.

All societies, in their very different ways, are orderly. The very term 'society' implies the existence of a degree of organisation and predictability to human life. Orderliness, however, is a matter of degree. It is neither total, nor totally absent. In recent times, however, such concerns have largely given way to a greater preoccupation with disorderliness: with significant and disruptive social change; with rising crime and anti-social behaviour; and with a variety of other social problems. But what has really been happening?

It wasn't long-ago that Britons could have been as at home in Varanasi as they could have been in Wolverhampton—why?—because the shape and location of Britain's land-mass has not always been the same, and with large parts of Britain scattered across the globe, British borders and its identity has always been on the move. But, by knowing more about the twelve pivotal moments that occurred over a 2,000-year period, we can not only gain a full sense of our British history, but we can also understand where we are heading.