Human Violence

At just twelve years of age, Ionna has already experienced a life filled with unimaginable horrors. After years of savage beatings and severe emotional abuse, she has finally left her parents’ house behind. But life on the streets can be cruel—especially for a young, beautiful girl. With her newfound freedom, Ionna discovers that new dangers lurk around every corner. This includes the thriving human trafficking trade—a multibillion dollar industry surviving on the exploitation of children and women all over the world. Vulnerable, starving, and struggling for survival, Ionna is just ...

René Girard Explained: Mimetic Desire, Scapegoating, Violence, Religion, and Human Culture introduces a thinker whose central claim is both simple and unsettling: people do not just desire things on their own. They learn what to want by imitating others. From that starting point, Girard built a far-reaching account of rivalry, conflict, blame, religion, and social order. This book explains his ideas in clear language for intelligent non-specialists, with concrete examples drawn from ordinary life, public controversy, and cultural history. The discussion begins with Girard’s life and ...

Violence and the Sacred is Rene Girard's landmark study of human evil. Here Girard explores violence as it is represented and occurs throughout history, literature, and myth. Girard's forceful and thought-provoking analyses of Biblical narrative, Greek tragedy, and the lynchings and pogroms propagated by contemporary states illustrate his central argument that violence belongs to everyone and is at the heart of the sacred.

In the reality TV show The Running Man, the only objective is to stay alive. This “slam-bang action suspense” (Gilbert Cruz, Vulture) from Stephen King is now a major motion picture from Paramount. Ben Richards has no job, no money, and a young daughter who urgently needs medical attention...

This is Citizen Jack’s book, a masterful demonstration of a personal view turned sociopolitical gold. —CHARLES R. AULT JR., Professor Emeritus, Lewis & Clark College Discover the truth about the Trump years with Citizen Jack's gripping and detailed account in The Trump Files. Renowned science educator, researcher, blogger, and author Jack Hassard vividly documents the nation's turbulent Trump years and brings readers back to those troubling days. Through sharp, clear-eyed prose, he takes on racial injustice, the Trumpist worldview, and how science was diminished in the Trump era. The ...

Maps have a mysterious hold over us. Whether ancient, crumbling parchments or generated by Google, maps tell us things we want to know, not only about our current location or where we are going but about the world in general. And yet, when it comes to geo-politics, much of what we are told is generated by analysts and other experts who have neglected to refer to a map of the place in question.

Throughout history, even as daily life has exhibited calm and tolerance, war has never been far away, and even within societies, violence can be a threat. The Goodness Paradox gives a new and powerful argument for how and why this uncanny combination of peacefulness and violence crystallized after our ancestors acquired language in Africa a quarter of a million years ago. 

Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen. Yet as New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true: violence has been diminishing for millennia and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species's existence.

This book is great for beginners and those seeking general knowledge. It explores human resource management, job satisfaction, organizational culture, and workplace violence. It provides an understanding of employee behavior and is a useful tool for anyone in a supervisory or managerial position. People who want to learn about important aspects of organizations will benefit from reading this book.

Take a fascinating deep dive into the dark world of forensic science as experts team up to solve the identity of an unknown woman, using the rapidly evolving techniques being used to break the most notorious cold cases. Fans of true crime shows like CSI, NCIS, Criminal Minds, and Law &Order know...

Restores the region’s fraught history of repression and resistance to popular consciousness and connects the United States’ interventions and influence to the influx of refugees seeking asylum today. At the center of the current immigration debate are migrants from Central America fleeing...

Books about the origins of humanity dominate bestseller lists, while national newspapers present breathless accounts of new archaeological findings and speculate about what those findings tell us about our earliest ancestors. We are obsessed with prehistory—and, in this respect, our current era is no different from any other in the last three hundred years. In this coruscating work, acclaimed historian Stefanos Geroulanos demonstrates how claims about the earliest humans not only shaped Western intellectual culture, but gave rise to our modern world.

“Silenced No More: Voices of Comfort Women” weaves the unforgettable stories of the suffering voiceless with themes of forgiveness, conciliation, and unflagging hope, together with the author’s own investigative journey into a tapestry that will open your eyes to one of the largest human rights tragedies in the 20th century: hundreds of thousands of girls and women were trafficked into Imperial Japanese military sex slavery before and during World War II. History infects the present and determines our future. It is this untold history that the author explores. The author, S.J. (Sylvia...

She sees the patterns no one else will admit. She keeps the records no one else dares to write. In a city that would rather forget its missing girls, Roxie Williams refuses to disappear. Atlanta’s streets hum with secrets, and Roxie knows them all too well. Armed with a battered notebook, a sharp mind, and a promise she can’t break, she hunts for the truth behind the “Vanishing Girls”—a string of disappearances the city would rather ignore. But the closer Roxie gets to the heart of the case, the more dangerous her world becomes. Cops who can’t be trusted. Friends who vanish ...

The indisputable classic of military history that uncovers the shortcomings of military leadership and explains why generals fail. "This penetrating, self-knowing, often hilarious, and sometimes alarming book is a must-read. It is a classic of military history awaiting rediscovery today.”...

A harrowing exploration of the uniquely dangerous experience of men whose survival depends on their absolute commitment to one another—from the bestselling author of The Perfect Storm. "Incisive ... absorbing ... original." —New York Times Book Review Sebastian Junger turns his brilliant and...

Told by a former high-level member of the Peoples Temple and Jonestown survivor, Seductive Poison is the "truly unforgettable" (Kirkus Review) story of how one woman was seduced by one of the most notorious cults in recent memory and how she found her way back to sanity. From Waco to Heaven's...

When a 10-year-old child is suspected of a violent crime, her family must face the truth about their past in this haunting, propulsive, psychologically keen story about class, trauma, and family secrets from “huge literary talent” (Karl Ove Knausgaard) and internationally bestselling author...

What does it really mean to be a man? In Man Alive, Thomas Page McBee attempts to answer that question by focusing on two of the men who most impacted his life - one, his otherwise ordinary father who abused him as a child, and the other, a mugger who almost killed him. Standing at the brink of the life-changing decision to transition from female to male, McBee seeks to understand these examples of flawed manhood and tells us how a brush with violence sent him on the quest to untangle a sinister past and freed him to become the man he was meant to be.

A groundbreaking exploration of how women survive—and carry—the lasting impact of sexual trauma from award-winning New York Times Magazine writer Jen Percy “Impossibly beuatiful...Girls Play Dead is a vital continuation of [the effort] 'to tell true stories of women’s lives,' in such...