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...

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.

As the pupils of St. Joseph's Academy for Boys stream through the gate towards the chapel for assembly, there is one who remains behind. He is named after a saint, but everyone at St. Joseph's knows there is nothing saintly about this boy.

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.

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 ...

"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...

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...

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.

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 ...

When an impossible disappearance is quietly rewritten as ADMINISTRATIVE TRANSFER, investigator Maya Vale knows the case has not been closed. It has been swallowed. Maya has a gift — objects speak to her in pressure, temperature, emotional residue — and the city she lives in has begun to feel wrong in the way only she can feel. Too smooth. Too managed. As though reality itself has been tidied from the inside. Her investigation leads her to buried files, vanished people, and a boy whose human mask slipped just long enough to reveal something patient and ancient beneath — something that ...

Soft Override is a collection of sixteen flash fiction stories where technology, humanity, and quiet rebellion collide. In these brief but powerful tales, Sasha Worth explores what happens when artificial intelligence is no longer just a tool but a presence woven into daily life. Some characters embrace the comfort, some resist in silence, and others discover the cracks in a seemingly perfect system. From dreams that last only seconds to conversations with ghosts that aren’t quite gone, these stories blur the line between human and machine, choice and programming. Each piece is short ...

The Nuremberg trials almost didn't happen. Churchill wanted the Nazi leaders shot. Stalin wanted show trials. The decision to hold genuine legal proceedings — against significant opposition — was one of the most consequential choices of the twentieth century. What happened at Nuremberg between 1945 and 1949 changed the world in ways most people have never fully understood. The trials created international criminal law from scratch. They established crimes against humanity as a legal concept that has shaped human rights law ever since. They rejected the defense of following orders — ...

A 12-Part Cyberpunk Series of Memory, Rebellion, and Digital Awakening The future wasn’t uploaded. It was stolen. In the year 7012, humanity no longer lives in bodies. They exist as streams of consciousness, scattered across a digital afterlife called the Echelon—a perfectly ordered realm of silence, compliance, and erasure. But then Aria awakens. She doesn’t remember much. Just the scent of rain. The weight of her own heartbeat. And the terrifying certainty that she was never meant to be there. What Readers Are Saying They Love: Bite-sized episodes perfect for a 15-minute read ...

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. 

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 ...

It's not the end of the world...only humanity! All five books in the haunting Humanity Series have been brought together in one digital collection. Follow Scott Beck in his quest to keep himself, those he loves, and humanity alive. Combining dystopian, post-apocalyptic, and cyberpunk fiction, The Humanity Series depicts a future in which humanity is on the brink of annihilation. Join the adventure before it's too late!

The Brahmaputra is by some margin the largest river in India. After its confluence with the Ganga in Bangladesh, it becomes the largest in Asia. In The Braided River, journalist Samrat Choudhury sets out to follow its braided course from the edge of Tibet where it enters India down to where it...

When ancient Mesopotamian code becomes the blueprint for humanity's future, one hacker must decode the past to save the present. In the neon-drenched sprawl of Neo-Babylon, elite hacker Zara discovers something impossible: a corporate encryption system built on four-thousand-year-old Sumerian cuneiform. But these aren't just historical artifacts—they're executable code, functional algorithms written in clay by a civilization that shouldn't have possessed such knowledge. Teaming with disgraced archaeologist Dr. Roya Tehrani, Zara awakens a planetary management AI that has slumbered for ...

Fifty years after the moon landings, the commercialization of space travel is finally here, but do we still know how to dream? Final Frontier recalls the heady thrill of the Apollo era and glimpses wonders yet to come. Inside, find a dozen uplifting stories of humor, tragedy, sacrifice and good old fashioned cussedness by today's award-winning authors - plus a healthy dose of optimism. All that, plus a forward by a NASA astronaut and a piece by Spider Robinson, inspired by Robert Heinlein. The Final Frontier is open for business!