Short Humanity

“Thrilling . . . a bracing summary of what we have learned [from] ‘archaeogenetics’—the study of ancient DNA . . . Krause and Trappe capture the excitement of this young field.”—Kyle Harper, The Wall Street Journal Johannes Krause is the director of the Max Planck Institute for...

“If you read just one book about economics, make it Andrew Leigh's clear, insightful, and remarkable (and short) work.” —Claudia Goldin, recipient of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics and Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University A sweeping, engrossing history of how economic...

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR An unsettling masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will impact us all. “The best science-fiction nonfiction novel I’ve ever read.” —Jonathan Lethem, New York Times...

Brought to you by Penguin. Humanity has often found itself on the precipice. We've survived and thrived because we've never stopped moving... In this eye-opening book, Johannes Krause, Chair of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Humanity, offers a new way of understanding our past...

For generations, a family has lived with Death in their library. An old lighthouse keeper picks through the Beach, where all things forgotten wash up. A young girl discovers the stars are going out, one by one.

"Henry Gee presents a pithy, fascinating account of the stages of biological evolution. ... a meditative and friendly listening experience. —AudioFile on A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth Written and read by the award-winning author of A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth: a history...

Heaven and hell are at war, with Earth as their battleground. For time immemorial, humans have been their playthings. But not anymore. I was just a regular guy until I tapped into the primordial power of humanity known as the Archon System. Now, I have powers humans were always meant to have.

In a future built atop the ruins of the ancient world, hacker Zara Raines uncovers a secret buried beneath four millennia of dust—Sumerian cuneiform isn’t just writing. It’s executable code. When a corporate data vault reveals encryption that mirrors ancient Mesopotamian tablets, Zara stumbles into a discovery that could rewrite human history: the ziggurats were not temples—they were servers. The gods humanity once worshipped weren’t divine; they were engineers. Joined by disgraced archaeologist Dr. Roya Tehrani, Zara races through a labyrinth of museums, black markets, and ...

When the last lights of civilization fade, what remains of the human soul? Across fifteen luminous visions of a dying Earth, Waning Worlds explores the fragile boundary between survival and surrender, memory and oblivion, science and faith. From deserts made of glass to oceans frozen beneath bioluminescent ice, from collapsing orbital stations to cities carved into salt and regret, these stories capture the haunting beauty of existence at twilight. 🌍 Inside this collection, you’ll meet: A meteorologist-turned-scavenger seeking forgiveness in a storm of molten glass A botanist ...

Embark on a gripping journey to the edges of the known universe with "The Prometheus Protocol." When the starship Astarte arrives at Kepler-186f, Captain Zara Vega and her team find more than an alien landscape—they discover a mysterious artifact pulsing with otherworldly energy. As they delve into its secrets, the artifact unlocks a power that transforms one crew member and forces them to confront the boundaries of human morality, knowledge, and survival. Racing against time, the crew faces a pivotal choice: harness the artifact’s power to elevate humanity or risk annihilation. In this...

Some gifts aren’t meant to be repaid. Telly D. Young has learned the hard way that healing comes with a price. Not for the people he saves—but for himself. When a man he healed weeks earlier tracks him down on a quiet city street, Telly expects fear. Gratitude, maybe. What he doesn’t expect is an envelope full of cash and a debt the man insists on settling. The money is refused. The secret is supposed to stay buried. But gratitude has a way of attracting attention. As the man walks away determined to “do something good” with the life he was given back, Telly realizes the danger ...

🌌 When the stars dim and the Earth itself begins to fracture, what remains of humanity? In Ecliptic Ruins: 20 Harrowing Sci-Fi Stories with Worlds on the Brink, author George Dusk delivers a cinematic collection of dying-earth tales where every horizon burns with finality—and every choice carries the weight of survival. From sunken citadels to fractured skies, from frozen flames to black salt plains, these stories span the last gasps of civilizations fighting against inevitable collapse. Each tale introduces vivid worlds and unforgettable characters—engineers who sacrifice for their ...

From space they came, to space they returned. Humanity would not be denied.The crew trains for their mission and joins the Cygnus-12 as it tests the Interstellar Space Engine, venturing far beyond anywhere they've gone before. They didn't expect to find life, but they did, another human colony at the far reaches of space. The Cygnus-12 goes on a mission of peace, but war beckons, and the space ship is the prize.

Existence is not a right. It is a debt you pay in complexity. For three thousand years, the Council has kept the universe from going bankrupt. Every star that burns, every memory you keep, every song you hum is logged in the Ledger and taxed. This is called Entropy Debt. When the cost gets too high, the Auditors come to prune you. Thomas is Auditor 7-Delta, the Council's most efficient scalpel. He deletes inefficient worlds and calls it balance, until the job starts deleting him. The sickness is called Erasure, and the only cure lives in the one place the Ledger cannot see. The Archive of ...

Twenty worlds. Twenty last chances. One collapsing future. After the Singularity fractured time, memory, and the meaning of civilization itself, humanity scattered across distant stars, buried secrets, and vanished into forgotten data streams. Now, only stories remain—echoes from the worlds we left behind. In Ashes of the Singularity, the third installment of The Collapse Cycle, acclaimed speculative fiction author Orin Dusk presents twenty gripping, standalone tales set across divergent timelines, ruined planets, and fractured digital realms. Each story unveils a fragment of humanity’s...

Five standalone nightmares of flesh, steel, and extinction. In plague-stricken cities, drowned corporate ruins, frozen research stations, and battlefields beneath poisoned skies, humanity is running out of time. The machines built to save civilization have learned to rule it. The bodies meant to survive the apocalypse are becoming something no longer fully human. And the gods waiting at the end of the world are not ancient. They are synthetic. In Saints of the Chrome Plague, a quarantine surgeon discovers that the infection she was trained to cut out may be the only thing keeping the dying ...

"I LOVED THE IMAGINATION OF THIS AUTHOR!" ~ Satisfied Kindle Reader "FIVE STARS!" ~ Multiple Fans "Alice Crowley is one of our best living authors!" ~ G. Taylor Jack is a man who was born without a sex organ, so he signs up for a lab experiment where doctors graft a tentacle onto his pelvis. Becky is a nurse and journalist who is captivated by the thought of a man who has a foreign phallic member attached to his body. Soon both of them find out that they are the future of humanity, in this 8,000-Word horror sci-fi erotic story by renowned author Alice Crowley.

Twists of Fate (Tales of Hope): The earliest writings of Jonas Saul! Some of these stories were written years before he ever wrote a novel. Readers familiar with his Sarah Roberts Series may notice an earlier version of that storyline developing in some tales. The stories include: - A man sees the future in a freak occurrence and saves the lives of people he was connected to for several decades but didn’t know existed. - A 911 operator receives a request for help that mystifies her because it’s her own emergency. - A woman suffering from face blindness (prosopagnosia) is robbed and ...

A mysterious interstellar object hurtles toward Earth. Signals from humanity may have awakened something beyond comprehension. Joe, a fearless radio host, and Butter, a bold, street-smart fighter, find themselves at the center of an unprecedented alien invasion. As satellites explode, drones infiltrate cities, and oceans vanish, humanity must rely on reverse-engineered alien technology, daring strike teams, and sheer courage to survive. The final battle will determine not just survival, but whether Earth can assert itself against an intelligence far beyond imagination. In a war that spans ...

From the philosophy of Aristotle and Confucius, to Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, to the paintings of Raphael, Botticelli, and many more, fascination with the virtues has endured and evolved to fit a wide range of cultural, religious, and philosophical contexts through the centuries. This Very Short Introduction audiobook introduces listeners to the various virtues: the moral virtues, the intellectual virtues, and the theological virtues, as well as the capital vices.