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Shim has only ever known a world of peace. Unusually big and strong even for a young giant, he lives on the magical isle of Fincayra, immersed in nature as well as tales of wizards, mer folk, and dragons.

Suddenly that world explodes in chaos. A terrible attack forces Shim and his mother to flee — and take a hazardous journey to reach the only person who could possibly help them, the mysterious Domnu. But when a wager goes horribly wrong, Shim shrinks down to a tiny fraction of his size. Now only as tall as a man’s knee, he finds himself lost in a deadly swamp. Worse yet, he has forgotten something important, something truly essential. But what?

As small as he is now, Shim must find giant-size courage. He embarks on a perilous quest to discover what happened, what secret he forgot, and what it really means to be a giant.

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The author's ancestry and upbringing are a blend of the plural strands of India's races, religions and culture . His education in three countries, reinforced this liberal, cosmopolitan and trusting heritage, which is the backdrop for the unfolding of a diplomat's life in eight different countries.

The book recounts the history of dramatic, exciting, and dangerous events, which the author and his family witnessed and in which they were often active participants.

Vivid portraits of Presidents, Prime Ministers, Emperors, Princes, musicians, dancers, poets, actors, business tycoons give this book a uniquely rare texture. This kaleidoscope of eminent leaders and humbler folk, is enriched and enlivened by a variety of stories and anecdotes which are amusing, poignant and at times inspirational .

The author has tried to portray a life which has had the character of a luxuriant garden, with flowers of a myriad hues, stately trees and the scent of freshly mown grass. The pages of the book illuminate the wonder, the beauty, the joys and the grace of a magnificent garden.

He celebrates his garden by counting the flowers that grow rather than by the leaves that fall.

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Artifice is set in a near-future Singapore and takes on the challenge of what truly sentient AI might mean for humanity. This is speculative fiction in the mold of Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun or Le Tellier's The Anomaly.

Humanity's greatest invention could be our last.

Archie's involvement in the artificial intelligence project known as Janus was limited to routine diagnostics. But when she discovers that she and everyone else has been deceived by their creation, it launches her on a journey that will change her life - and humanity's future.

Set in a near-future Singapore, Artifice will resonate with anyone curious or concerned about developments in AI, as well as how such technological advances might make us rethink what it means to be human.

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Since Pauline Konga’s breakthrough performance at the 1996 summer Olympics in Atlanta, the world has become accustomed to seeing Kenyan women medal at major championships, sweep marathons, and set world records. Yet little is known about the pioneer generation of women who paved the way for Kenya’s reputation as an international powerhouse in women’s track and field. In Kenya’s Running Women: A History, historian and former professional runner Michelle M. Sikes details the triumphs and many challenges these women faced, from the advent of Kenya’s athletics program in the colonial era through the professionalization of running in the 1980s and 1990s. Sikes reveals how over time running became a vehicle for Kenyan women to expand the boundaries of acceptable female behavior. Kenya’s Running Women demonstrates the necessity of including women in histories of African sport, and of incorporating sport into studies of African gender and nation-building.
 

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This volume collects four spirited, imaginative and provocative plays from Romanian-American dramatist Cristina A. Bejan. The plays are:

• TO THOSE WHO HAVEN'T STOPPED THINKING
• DISTRICTLAND
• FINALLY QUIET IN MY MIND
• LIFE ACCORDING TO SWAMI SHIVA.

From a dystopian investigation of the impact of totalitarianism, an absurd satire about American ambition, a cry for mental health awareness, and a timely critique of Putin's Russia, Bejan's plays span the world and ultimately capture the universal beating of the human heart. 

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A fascinating history of the first attempts to computerize medical diagnosis.

Beginning in the 1950s, interdisciplinary teams of physicians, engineers, mathematicians, and philosophers began to explore the possible application of a new digital technology to one of the most central, and vexed, tasks of medicine: diagnosis. In Digitizing Diagnosis, Andrew Lea examines these efforts—and the larger questions, debates, and transformations that emerged in their wake.

While surveying the continuities spanning the analog and digital worlds of medicine, Lea uncovers how the introduction of the computer to medical diagnosis reconfigured the identities of patients, diseases, and physicians. Debates about how and whether to apply computers to the problem of diagnosis, he demonstrates, were animated by larger concerns about the nature of medical reasoning, the definitions of disease, and the authority and identity of physicians and patients.

In their attempts to digitize diagnosis, these interdisciplinary groups of researchers repeatedly came up against fundamental moral and philosophical questions. How should doctors classify diseases? Could humans understand, and come to trust, the opaque decision-making processes of machines? And how might computerized systems circumvent—or calcify—bias? As medical algorithms become more deeply integrated into clinical care, researchers, clinicians, and caregivers continue to grapple with these questions today.

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Maria Montessori (1870-1952) was an Italian physician, anthropologist, and educator known around the world for her educational philosophy and pedagogy. Her work established educational environments tailored to the child where autonomy and independence are encouraged within thriving and respectful communities. 

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Montessori Education is an accessible resource tracing Montessori education from its historical roots to current scholarship and contemporary issues of culture, social justice, and environmentalism. Divided into six sections the handbook encompasses a range of topics related to Maria Montessori and Montessori education including foundations and evolution of the field; key writings; pedagogy across the lifespan; scholarly research; global reach; and contemporary considerations such as gender, inclusive education, race and multilingualism.

Written by scholars and practitioners based in over 20 countries, this is the go-to reference work for anyone interested in Montessori education.

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Getting to Good Friday intertwines literary analysis and narrative history in an accessible account of the shifts in thinking and talking about Northern Ireland's divided society that brought thirty years of political violence to a close with the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement.

Drawing on decades of reading, researching, and teaching Northern Irish literature and talking and corresponding with Northern Irish writers, Marilynn Richtarik describes literary reactions and contributions to the peace process during the fifteen years preceding the Agreement and in the immediate post-conflict era.

Progress in this period hinged on negotiators' ability to revise the terms used to discuss the conflict. As poet Michael Longley commented in 1998, 'In its language the Good Friday Agreement depended on an almost poetic precision and suggestiveness to get its complicated message across.' Interpreting selected literary works by Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Deirdre Madden, Seamus Deane, Bernard MacLaverty, Colum McCann, and David Park within a detailed historical frame, Richtarik demonstrates the extent to which authors were motivated by a desire both to comment on and to intervene in unfolding political situations. 

Getting to Good Friday suggests that literature as literature-that is, in its formal properties in addition to anything it might have to 'say' about a given subject-can enrich readers' historical understanding. Through Richtarik's engaging narrative, creative writing emerges as both the medium of and a metaphor for the peace process itself.

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Brothers is Nico Slate’s poignant memoir about Peter Slate, aka XL, a Black rapper and screenwriter whose life was tragically cut short. Nico and Peter shared the same White American mother but had different fathers. Nico’s was White; Peter’s was Black. Growing up in California in the 1980s and 1990s, Nico often forgot about their racial differences until one night in March 1994 when Peter was attacked by a White man in a nightclub in Los Angeles.

Nico began writing Brothers with the hope that investigating the attack would bring him closer to Peter. He could not understand that night, however, without grappling with the many ways race had long separated him from his brother.

This is a memoir of loss—the loss of a life and the loss at the heart of our racial divide—but it is also a memoir of love. The love between Nico and Peter permeates every page of Brothers. This achingly beautiful memoir presents one family’s resilience on the fault lines of race in contemporary America.

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The world is changing faster than ever, with increasing uncertainty and threat of disruption in every business and nonprofit segment. Conventional approaches to strategy no longer work. In this prequel to their Amazon-bestseller, Bulletproof Problem Solving, Charles Conn and Rob McLean introduce a novel approach to strategic problem solving in times of high uncertainty.

Based on a decade of research and fifty new case studies, The Imperfectionists posits a dynamic approach to developing organizational direction under uncertainty based on six reinforcing problem-solving mindsets. With endorsements from Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman and Professor Richard Rumelt, The Imperfectionists is a go-to strategy resource for this moment. 

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A Surprisingly Simple Plan for Ending Poverty–and Making Trillions of Dollars for Ourselves While We Do It

Poverty costs our country more than a trillion dollars a year for myriad complex reasons. Ending it would result in joy that is hard to quantify. Yet for all the complexities involved, the “how” of it all–the way to escape national suffering and decline and start off toward a future of organic, resilient national growth–is simple. It’s SO SIMPLE.

To have lives of dignity and purpose and contribute meaningfully to our capitalist economy, America’s poor people do not need the rest of us to feed or shelter them. They don’t need us to derail our lives to take care of them or even think about them all that much.

They need MONEY.

Darryl Finkton, Jr. is a hedge fund manager turned community organizer. Raised in poverty, Darryl went on to graduate from Harvard College and the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. In “End Poverty. Make Trillions.” Darryl shares how he rose from rags to riches, and how we can ensure everyone has an opportunity to generate wealth.

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Overcoming the Oppressors traces southern Africa's long walk to freedom, the overturning of colonial rule in the northern territories, and the dissolution of backs-to-the-wall white settler suzerainty, first in what became Zimbabwe and then in South Africa. Chapters on the individual countries detail the stages along their sometimes complicated and tortuous struggle to attain the political New Zion. Rotberg explains how and why the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland failed, how and why apartheid eventually collapsed, and exactly how the various components of this heavily white conquered, and later white oppressed, domain transitioned via diverse fits and starts into today's assemblage of proud, politically charged, and still mostly fragmented nation-states.

But what did the new republics make of their hard-won freedoms? Having liberated themselves successfully, several soon dismantled democratic safeguards, established effective single-party states, closed their economies, deprived citizens of human rights and civil liberties, and exchanged economic progress for varieties of central planning experiments and stunted forms of protected economic endeavors. Only Botswana, of the new entities, embraced full democracy and good governance. The others, even South Africa, at first tightly regimented their economies and attempted to severely limit the degrees of economic freedom and social progress that citizens could enjoy. Corruption prevailed everywhere except Botswana. Today, as the chapters on contemporary southern Africa reveal, most of the southern half of the African continent is returning, if sometimes struggling, to the patterns of probity and good governance that many countries abandoned in the decades after independence.

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From a leading Yale expert and serial entrepreneur, a radical, principled, and field-tested approach that identifies what’s really at stake in any negotiation and ensures you get your half—so you can focus on growing the pie. 

Negotiations are incredibly stressful and can bring out the worst in people. Wouldn’t it be better if there were a principled way to negotiate? Wouldn’t it be even better if there were a way to treat people fairly and get treated fairly in a negotiation?

Split the Pie offers a new approach that does both—a field-tested method that reframes how negotiations play out. Barry Nalebuff, a professor at Yale School of Management, helps identify what’s really at stake in a negotiation: the “pie.” The negotiation pie is the additional value created through an agreement to work together. Seeing the relevant pie will change how you think about fairness and power in negotiation. You’ll learn how to get half the value you create, no matter your size. 

Filled with examples and in-depth case studies, Split the Pie is a practical and theory-based approach to negotiation. You’ll see how it helped reframe a high-stakes negotiation when Coca-Cola purchased Honest Tea, a company Barry cofounded with his former student Seth Goldman. The pie framework also works for everyday negotiations. You’ll learn how to deploy logic to determine truly equitable solutions and employ empathy to expand the pie and sell your solution. Split the Pie allows both sides to focus their energy on making the biggest possible pie—to have your pie and eat it too.

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Were the Dutch-Africans in southern Africa a brother nation to the Dutch or did they simply represent a lost colony? Connecting primary sources in Dutch and Afrikaans, this work tells the story of the Dutch stamverwantschap (kinship) movement between 1847 and 1900. The white Dutch-Africans were imagined to be the bridgehead to a broader Dutch identity – a ‘second Netherlands’ in the south. This study explores how the 19th century Dutch identified with and idealised a pastoral community operating within a racially segregated society on the edge of European civilisation. When the stamverwantschap dream collided with British military and economic power, the belief that race, language and religion could sustain a broader Dutch identity proved to be an illusion.

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This book brings the tools and ideas of Anglo-American analytic philosophy to bear on how we think about issues of contemporary significance, in a way that is accessible to a broad audience. While acknowledging empirical findings within the social sciences, it takes on the prescriptive task of imagining a better world, in which being citizens in a democracy means actively engaging with others. 

We cling to tribal affiliations which incline us to look inward and spurn those whom we deem to be “other.” And we observe the mind-numbing, herd-like impact of social (and other) media on our capacity – and that of our children – to distinguish truth and good sense from falsehood and nonsense. Such problems demand our attention as reasonable persons who both think for themselves, and deliberate in good faith with others with whom they may well disagree. The good news is that while reasonableness cannot be taken for granted, it can – indeed, it must – be nurtured and it must be taught. This book both articulates a conception of reasonableness and exemplifies a clear standard of reasonableness, with respect to the questions it raises and the author's responses to them. 

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A practical blueprint for successful, measurable, and impactful DEI initiatives

In Data-Driven DEI: The Tools and Metrics You Need to Measure, Analyze, and Improve Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion, Dr. Randal Pinkett, a renowned diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) thought leader delivers a practical and evidence-based blueprint to achieving lasting impact with your DEI initiatives. Dr. Pinkett has created a simple, step-by-step process to assess the current state of your DEI, analyze that data to create a personal and organizational action plan, and implement data-driven, science-based, and technology-enabled interventions for greater diversity, equity, and inclusion. 

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A haunting story of love, art, and betrayal, set against the heart-pounding backdrop of Antarctic exploration—from the Boston Globe-bestselling author of The Clover House.

The year is 1910, and two Antarctic explorers, Watts and Heywoud, are racing to the South Pole.  Back in London, Viola, a photo-journalist, harbors love for them both.  In Terra Nova, Henriette Lazaridis seamlessly ushers the reader back and forth between the austere, forbidding, yet intoxicating polar landscape of Antarctica to the bustle of early twentieth century London.

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A tour de force, Second Coming, first novel by the author explores the sacred and the profane in the life of the protagonist. The multi-layered narrative is seen through his eyes which both colour it, and expose him. It cuts across several countries and cultures, belief systems and social structures, ages and genders. The novel deftly weaves literary and religious allusions and illusions into an absorbing, complex portrayal. A cosmopolitan childhood, challenging and successful middle age and the onset of infirmities of ageing contribute to the unusual manipulation of the time frame. The past, present and future, of a sensitive individual prone to doubt and hope, vulnerability and sureness, are laid candidly bare. It is a story studded with comic moments of self-delusion, folly and the ridiculous. Here, viewed from telling, faceted perspectives, is the human condition.

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Divided by a beautiful valley and 150 years of racism, the town of Rossburn and the Waywayseecappo Indian reserve have been neighbours nearly as long as Canada has been a country. Their story reflects much of what has gone wrong in relations between Indigenous Peoples and non-Indigenous Canadians. It also offers, in the end, an uncommon measure of hope.

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A bold new interpretation of Augustine’s virtue of hope and its place in political life.

When it comes to politics, Augustine of Hippo is renowned as one of history’s great pessimists, with his sights set firmly on the heavenly city rather than the public square. Many have enlisted him to chasten political hopes, highlighting the realities of evil and encouraging citizens instead to cast their hopes on heaven. A Commonwealth of Hope challenges prevailing interpretations of Augustinian pessimism, offering a new vision of his political thought that can also help today’s citizens sustain hope in the face of despair.

Amid rising inequality, injustice, and political division, many citizens wonder what to hope for in politics and whether it is possible to forge common hopes in a deeply polarized society. Michael Lamb takes up this challenge, offering the first in-depth analysis of Augustine’s virtue of hope and its profound implications for political life. He draws on a wide range of Augustine’s writings—including neglected sermons, letters, and treatises—and integrates insights from political theory, religious studies, theology, and philosophy. Lamb shows how diverse citizens, both religious and secular, can unite around common hopes for the commonwealth.

Recovering this understudied virtue and situating Augustine within his political, rhetorical, and religious contexts, A Commonwealth of Hope reveals how Augustine’s virtue of hope can help us resist the politics of presumption and despair and confront the challenges of our time.

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Arctic Meltdown, a gripping environmental thriller, is set against the backdrop of the melting polar icecap and the ensuing jostling for jurisdiction over additional seabed resources. Hanne Kristensen, a beautiful Danish geologist, has to contend with a corrupted UN process, China's growing interest in Arctic resources and maritime routes, Russian military aggression and the resulting international tension to try to save the world from war and the Arctic from environmental catastrophe. A potential complication in this real-life situation is that resource rich but population poor Greenland is egged on toward independence from Denmark by Chinese money and Russian military domination. This is a book that presages what is actually happening in the Arctic today.

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The Mind Spins is an exploration of the creative process, of the mind as it plots a narrative and builds characters. The thirteen stories included in the collection are divided into two parts, Awake and Dreaming. The six that make up the Part I, Awake, explore how the human mind creates a story in its waking state. Several of the tales in this section take off from the author's own experiences—walking in the woods in Vermont, a phone message from his brother, a stray item of lingerie—while others are based on critical social issues—the plight of refugees in the US, human trafficking, the plight of homeless veterans. The stories in Part II, Dreaming, are based on dreams the author had and managed to capture upon waking. These fully reflect the zany manner in which dreams can spin off in strange directions, often bringing in new seemingly unrelated characters, some of which are sometimes non-human, others clearly from a non-contemporaneous past or future. Yet it is also evident that these stories, too, the first "draft" of which were "spun" by the mind in its dreaming state, are based on the author's experiences.

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The Abyss: Poems for our World poignantly sets out that we - human beings - are the greatest threat to life and this world: not only because of our social and political divisions, but also because of our continuing incapacity to come to terms with the need to change our ways, and to adopt behaviors that are less destructive to mother earth, other species of life and indeed, ourselves.

Geza Tatrallyay's last two collections of poetry, Extinction and Extinction Rebellion, were devoted to exploring the beauty of nature around us and more specifically, how our actions are systematically destroying it. The Abyss, continues the focus on our glorious world and the delight we can derive from it and from each other, as well as on the manner in which our habits can have such a harmful impact.]

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To be published in February 2023. A poet and journalist looks back on a remarkable journey from Turkey to Nepal in 1978, when the region was on the brink of massive transformation.

In the spring of 1978, at age twenty-two, Mark Abley put aside his studies at Oxford and set off with a friend on a three-month trek across the celebrated Hippie Trail — a sprawling route between Europe and South Asia, peppered with Western bohemians and vagabonds. It was a time when the Shah of Iran still reigned supreme, Afghanistan lay at peace, and city streets from Turkey to India teemed with unrest. Within a year, many of the places he visited would become inaccessible to foreign travellers.

Drawing from the tattered notebooks he filled as a youthful wanderer, Abley brings his kaleidoscope of experiences back to life with vivid detail: dancing in a Turkish disco, clambering across a glacier in Kashmir, travelling by train among Baluchi tribesmen who smuggled kitchen appliances over international borders. He also reflects on the impact of the Hippie Trail and the illusions of those who journeyed along it. The lively immediacy of Abley’s journals combined with the measured wisdom of his mature, contemporary voice provides rich insight, bringing vibrant witness and historical perspective to this beautifully written portrait of a region during a time of irrevocable change.

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Harry Abley was a nightmare of a father: depressive, self-absorbed, unpredictable, emotionally unstable. He was also a dream of a father: gentle, courageous, artistically gifted. Mark Abley, his only child, grew up in the shadow of music and mental illness. How he came to terms with this divided legacy, and how he learned to be a man in the absence of a traditional masculine role model, are central to this beautifully written memoir. 

This extraordinary story will speak to all those who love music, who struggle with depression, or who wrestle with the difficult bonds of love between a parent and a child. 

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Among the greatest of poets, T. S. Eliot protected his privacy while publicly associated with three women: two wives and a church-going companion. This presentation concealed a life-long love for an American: Emily Hale, a drama teacher to whom he wrote (and later suppressed) over a thousand letters. Hale was the source of “memory and desire” in The Waste Land; she is the Hyacinth Girl.

Drawing on the dramatic new material of the only recently unsealed 1,131 letters Eliot wrote to Hale, leading biographer Lyndall Gordon reveals a hidden Eliot. Emily Hale now becomes the first and consistently important woman of life — and his art. Gordon also offers new insight into the other spirited women who shaped him: Vivienne, the flamboyant wife with whom he shared a private wasteland; Mary Trevelyan, his companion in prayer; and Valerie Fletcher, the young disciple to whom he proposed when his relationship with Emily foundered. Eliot kept his women apart as each ignited his transformations as poet, expatriate, convert, and, finally, in his latter years, a man `made for love.’

Emily Hale was at the centre of a love drama he conceived and the inspiration for the lines he wrote to last beyond their time. To read Eliot’s twice-weekly letters to Emily during the thirties and forties is to enter the heart of the poet’s art.

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A timely resource for Black professionals on how to rise to the top of their organizations or industries and, just as importantly, to stay there. 
Black Faces in High Places is the essential guide for Black professionals who are moving up through their organizations or industries but need a roadmap for how to get to the top and stay there. It highlights the experiences of other Black faces in high places who were able to navigate various crossroads, reach the top, and stay there, including insights from President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Cathy Hughes, Bob Johnson, Ursula Burns, David Steward, Angela Glover Blackwell, Ken Chenault, Senator Cory Booker, Geoffrey Canada, and others.

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These poems are framed by the experience of the Covid-19 pandemic. While not all were written during that time, they share a concern with the fragility of the earth and our bodies on the earth, as well as the webs we weave through virtual means of connection.

Jennifer Davis Michael is a professor of English at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, specializing in British Romanticism. Her publications include a previous chapbook, Let Me Let Go (Finishing Line Press, 2020), and a book of criticism, Blake and the City (Bucknell University Press, 2006).  Her poem “Forty Trochees” won the Frost Farm Prize in 2020, judged by Rachel Hadas.

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From the author of The Emperor of All Maladies, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and The Gene, a #1 New York Times bestseller, comes his most spectacular book yet, an exploration of medicine and our radical new ability to manipulate cells. Rich with Mukherjee’s revelatory and exhilarating stories of scientists, doctors, and the patients whose lives may be saved by their work, The Song of the Cell is the third book in this extraordinary writer’s exploration of what it means to be human.

Mukherjee begins this magnificent story in the late 1600s, when a distinguished English polymath, Robert Hooke, and an eccentric Dutch cloth-merchant, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek looked down their handmade microscopes. What they saw introduced a radical concept that swept through biology and medicine, touching virtually every aspect of the two sciences, and altering both forever. It was the fact that complex living organisms are assemblages of tiny, self-contained, self-regulating units. Our organs, our physiology, our selves—hearts, blood, brains—are built from these compartments. Hooke christened them “cells”.

The discovery of cells—and the reframing of the human body as a cellular ecosystem—announced the birth of a new kind of medicine based on the therapeutic manipulations of cells. A hip fracture, a cardiac arrest, Alzheimer’s dementia, AIDS, pneumonia, lung cancer, kidney failure, arthritis, COVID pneumonia—all could be reconceived as the results of cells, or systems of cells, functioning abnormally. And all could be perceived as loci of cellular therapies.

In The Song of the Cell, Mukherjee tells the story of how scientists discovered cells, began to understand them, and are now using that knowledge to create new humans. He seduces you with writing so vivid, lucid, and suspenseful that complex science becomes thrilling. Told in six parts, laced with Mukherjee’s own experience as a researcher, a doctor, and a prolific reader, The Song of the Cell is both panoramic and intimate—a masterpiece.

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Originally published in 1950, Harold A. Innis’s Empire and Communications is considered to be one of the classic works in media studies, yet its origins have received little attention. Ambitious in its scope, the book spans five millennia, tracing a path of development around the globe from 2900 BCE to the twentieth century and revealing the cyclical interplay between communications and power structures across space and time.

In this new edition, William J. Buxton pays close attention to handwritten glosses that Innis added to a copy of the original edition and the revisions undertaken by his widow, Mary Q. Innis. A new introduction provides a detailed account of how the book emerged from lectures that Innis delivered at Oxford University in 1948, as well as how it related to other presentations Innis made in Britain during the same period. It explores how Innis sought to enrich his analysis by incorporating material related to phenomena such as war, education, religion, culture, geography, and finance. An insightful foreword by Marshall McLuhan is included, as well as bibliographical references and a revised index.

By providing a narrative based on extensive notes from Innis, this edition makes Empire and Communications more accessible and contributes to the broad efforts to shape Innis’s legacy.

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We live in a world that is always on, where everyone is always connected. But we feel increasingly disconnected. Why? The answer lies in our brains. Carl D. Marci, MD, a leading expert on social and consumer neuroscience, reviews the mounting evidence that overuse of smart phones and social media is rewiring our brains, resulting in a losing deal: we are neglecting the relationships that sustain us and keep us healthy in favor of weaker and more ephemeral ties.

The ability to connect and form strong social bonds is fundamental to human experience and emerged through unique structures in our brains. But ever-more-powerful technologies and ubiquitous access to media have hijacked our need to connect intimately and emotionally with others. The quick highs of clicking “like” and swiping right overstimulate the same neurological reward centers associated with social relationships. The habits that accompany our digital lifestyles are putting tremendous pressure on critical components of the brain associated with attention, emotion, and memory, changing how we process information and altering how we communicate and relate, even at a physiological level.

As a psychiatrist working at the forefront of research on the impact of digital technology, Marci has seen this transformation up close and developed a range of responses. Rewired provides scientifically supported solutions for everyone who wants to restore their tech–life balance—from parents concerned about their children’s exposure to the internet to stressed workers dealing with the deluge of emails and managing the expectation of 24/7 availability.

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Fob James’ legal adviser (from January 1979 to July 1980), Mike Waters, details how the former Alabama Governor's vision for Alabama's future still resonates today. 

Mike Waters has practiced law in Alabama since 1977 and is a partner in the Birmingham office of Jones Walker LLP.  A native of Cullman, Alabama, he graduated cum laude from Duke University in 1972 with a B.A. in history.  He received an M.A. in philosophy, politics and economics in 1975 from Oxford University, England, as a Rhodes Scholar, and received a J.D. from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1977.  His law practice centers on corporate and securities work, primarily for banks and financial institutions.  He served as Legal Adviser to Alabama Governor Fob James from January 1979 to July 1980.  He was a member of Governor Bob Riley’s Alabama Citizens Commission on Constitutional Reform chaired by Secretary of State Jim Bennett in 2002-2003 and a consultant to Governor Robert Bentley’s Alabama Constitution Revision Commission chaired by former Governor Albert Brewer, 2011-2014.

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Jessica Teich was among the first wave of women to expose Hollywood’s culture of harassment and abuse. Her memoir, The Future Tense of Joy, tells the inspiring story of her own recovery from trauma, empowering other victims to move past silence and shame toward help, healing, and hope. Teich writes openly, courageously, of the challenges facing so many survivors: to feel safe, to find love, to nurture optimism and resilience, and to reclaim the sense of connection — of belonging — that defines us as human beings.

Kirkus called The Future Tense of Joy “an honest, compassionate memoir about shaking off personal demons.” 

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Choosing to pursue a PhD is not an easy decision. It can include enormous financial and time investments, relocation, and loss of personal time. It is stressful and onerous work, yet it can bring prestige, better career opportunities, increased income, priceless knowledge, and memorable experiences. Even if you know you want to pursue a PhD, how do you choose which program to apply for? How do you fund your studies? And what questions do you not even know to ask? In The PhD Journey: Strategies for Enrolling, Thriving, and Excelling in a PhD Program, Dr. Gladys Chepkirui Ngetich shares her recent experiences succeeding in a PhD program at the University of Oxford. Her personal stories, practical advice, and down-to-earth perspective will enlighten your journey. Plus, she shares interviews with fifteen other students from universities around the world.

Topics range from choosing a PhD program, finding an advisor, and deciding on a thesis or dissertation topic to coping with homesickness, finding a support group, making the best use of your time, and applying new technology.

This book details how any administration intent on pursuing a pro-fossil policy, when Congress fails to act as a check, can change governance rules to permanently entrench oil and gas extraction and reliance in the United States and to cripple regulatory agencies. The Trump administration’s actions which violated traditional bipartisan values of economic prudence, environmental stewardship and respect for democratic norms, damaged Americans’ health, economy and governing institutions. Americans can take steps to reset the United States to a sustainable energy pathway and a more inclusive economy. Proposed legislation that combines incentives for the deployment of renewable energy with long-term investments into revitalizing fossil fuel communities enjoys strong support among voters in fossil fuel reliant regions. Government policies that correct economic-wide signals to capture pollution and climate risks creates a more level playing field for the growth of more sustainable livelihoods. These actions can bolster the momentum for a sustainable and equitable transition.

With America’s Energy Gamble, public policy expert Shanti Gamper-Rabindran lays out a stark case that powerful oil and gas interests have, with considerable help from the outgoing Trump administration, gained control of the lever arms of our energy and environmental policy apparatus. Our economic competitiveness, the health of our environment, and the livability of our planet are all now threatened. Read this book to be informed about the threat and armed with the knowledge of what can be done in the Biden era to undo the damage and right the course.' Michael E. Mann, Penn State University; author of The New Climate War

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Having moved from zoology to psychology to anthropology on both sides of the Atlantic, Bill McGrew developed a fascination for chimpanzees which led to him spending four decades studying our nearest living relations in their African homelands. He held a series of academic posts in the USA and UK, culminating in a professorship at the University of Cambridge and ending in retirement to Scotland. As he puts it: “I was lucky enough to be paid by various academic institutions to do what I would have paid them to let me do”.

This memoir consists of a series of stories and vignettes from a varied and colourful life, mainly involving animals, and naturally focusing on chimpanzees. All proceeds will go to organisations that rescue and care for chimpanzees.

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Pathways to Excellence suggests ways in which Zambia could liberate herself from mediocrity and become the world class economy it is meant to be. In addition to sensible prescriptions such as maximizing the efficacy of public spending, and creating conditions that support Zambian entrepreneurship, the author argues that the country's full potential cannot be realized until the ghost of colonialism is exorcised from the national psyche. Ways are suggested as to how Zambians can regain the confidence of their pre-colonial ancestors, and proceed to excellence

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This wide-ranging, detailed and engaging study of Brecht's complex relationship with Greek tragedy and tragic tradition argues that this is fundamental for understanding his radicalism. Featuring an extensive discussion of The Antigone of Sophocles (1948) and further related works (the Antigone model book and the Small Organon of the Theatre), this monograph includes the first-ever publication of the complete set of colour photographs taken by Ruth Berlau. This is complemented by comparatist explorations of many of Brecht's own plays as his experiments with tragedy conceptualized as the 'big form', The significance for Brecht of the Green tragic tradition is positioned in relation to the the other formative influences on his work (Asian theatre, Naturalism, comedy, Schiller, and Shakespeare.) Brecht emerges as a theatre artist of enormous range and creativity, who has succeeded in re-shaping and re0energizing tragedy and has carved paths for its continued artistic and political relevance. 

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Dan Chiponda earns a scholarship to study in China and reluctantly leaves Zimbabwe for an uncertain future. While stoically dealing with racial abuse and haunted by the weight of his mother’s expectations, Dan navigates a future in which nothing will ever be the same again.

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"For many of us, what drew us to the law as our chosen career path was its ability to remedy injustice, to help make our society more equal. And yet, despite professing these high ideals, we must always ask: How far does our profession in fact actually practice them?

While a number of barriers that lawyers with disabilities face can only be addressed through large-scale interventions, many such barriers are attitudinal - stemming from nothing more than a fundamental lack of awareness about what a lawyer with a disability, when provided appropriate tools, can accomplish. It is to address these attitudinal barriers that, in 2016, the IDAP Interview Series was launched by Rahul Bajaj, Anusha Reddy and Madhavi Singh, with the singular aim of fostering dialogue, breaking stereotypes and opening new avenues for lawyers with disabilities, in India and beyond. This book is a compilation of those interviews, featuring 21 legal professionals, from 6 countries and 3 continents, whose disabilities run the gamut.

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Sustainable investing is a rapidly growing and evolving field.  With investors expressing ever greater interest in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics and reporting, companies face a sustainability imperative and the need to remake their business models to respond to an array of pressing issues including climate change, air and water pollution, racial justice, workplace diversity, economic inequality, privacy, corporate integrity, and good governance. From equities to fixed income and from private equity to impact-investing, investors of all kinds now want to understand which companies will be marketplace leaders in a business future redefined by sustainability. Thus, investment strategies, risk models, financial vehicles, applications, data, metrics, standards, and regulations are all changing rapidly around the world.

In an effort to better understand the current status and movement of this dynamic field and to provide a practical reference for the growing pool of investors, financial advisors, companies, and academics seeking information on sustainable investing and ESG reporting, this edited book covers the latest trends, tools, and thinking. It showcases the work of authors from leading companies and academic institutions across a range of vital topics such as financial disclosure, portfolio assessment, ESG metrics construction, and law as well as regulation. Readers of the book will be better able to identify and address the hurdles to moving mainstream capital toward more sustainable companies, investments, and projects. 

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Amia Srinivasan’s new book The Right to Sex is a ground-breaking exploration of the politics and ethics of sex. The book focuses on a number of subjects - from pornography to student-teacher relationships - through a collection of radical essays.

Searching, trenchant and extraordinarily original, The Right to Sex is a landmark examination of the politics and ethics of sex in this world, animated by the hope of a different one. 

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In 2015, a group of twenty-one young people sued the federal government in Juliana v. United States for violating their constitutional rights by promoting climate catastrophe and thereby depriving them of life, liberty, and property without due process and equal protection of law. They Knew offers evidence supporting the children's claims, presenting a compelling account of the US federal government's role in bringing about today's climate crisis. James Gustave Speth, tapped by the plaintiffs as one of twenty-one preeminent experts in their climate case, analyses how administrations—despite having information about the impending climate crisis and the connection to fossil fuels—continued aggressive support of a fossil fuel based energy system.

What did the federal government know and when did it know it? They Knew (an updated version of the Expert Report Speth prepared for the lawsuit) presents a definitive indictment of the US government's role in the climate crisis.

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Creating a Masterpiece: The Arts and Climate Change Conflict looks at how the creative arts and conflict service providers bring a new lens to handling climate change conflict.

Charalee has also recently published Life on Planet Earth: My Story is an activity book designed to help children learn about the ecosystem, biodiversity and the changes that are taking place on planet earth. In it, children learn about about plants and animals, climate change and the Paris Agreement. They take part in scavenger hunts, play biodiversity bingo, pictionary and much more.

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From medical expert Leana Wen, MD, Lifelines is an insider's account of public health and its crucial role―from opioid addiction to global pandemic―and an inspiring story of her journey from struggling immigrant to being one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People.

“Public health saved your life today―you just don’t know it,” is a phrase that Dr. Leana Wen likes to use. You don’t know it because good public health is invisible. It becomes visible only in its absence, when it is underfunded and ignored, a bitter truth laid bare as never before by the devastation of COVID-19.

Leana Wen―emergency physician, former Baltimore health commissioner, CNN medical analyst, and Washington Post contributing columnist―has lived on the front lines of public health, leading the fight against the opioid epidemic, outbreaks of infectious disease, maternal and infant mortality, and COVID-19 disinformation. Here, in gripping detail, Wen lays bare the lifesaving work of public health.

Wen also tells her own uniquely American story: an immigrant from China, she and her family received food stamps and were at times homeless despite her parents working multiple jobs. That child went on to attend college at thirteen, become a Rhodes Scholar, and turn to public health as the way to make a difference in the country that had offered her such possibilities.

Ultimately, she insists, it is public health that ensures citizens are not robbed of decades of life, and that where children live does not determine whether they live.

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Working to Learn disrupts the false dichotomy of college versus career by showing how young people and the programs created to serve them integrate the worlds of college and career readiness, highlighting how students work to learn against the odds and strive toward lives that matter to them. Work-based learning at each stage of the K–college experience is crucial to the development of young people. Through analysis of national policies on college readiness and work-based learning, as well as through illustrative case studies of young people in work-based learning programs, the authors highlight the programs, voices, and experiences of young people from middle school through college. Through interviews, participating students share their views, aspirations, and preparation for both college and career.

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• A short, wonk-free exploration of the prospects and perils of enacting a Medicare for All policy in the United States
• The first book to offer realistic roadmap to policy supported by a majority of Americans
• Authors' combined expertise in medicine, public health, and government make this the most clear-eyed treatise available on America's most debated--and popular--public policy

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A leading psychiatrist and expert reveals important issues in mental health care today and introduces innovations to revolutionize and improve mental health for everyone.

Mental health care systems are falling short and the consequences, for individuals and societies, are dire. In this urgent book, celebrated psychiatrist and mental health care advocate Dr. David Goldbloom outlines proven innovations in medicine and health care delivery that we all could benefit from today.

Using fictional—but all too real—examples of people suffering from various mental illnesses, from depression to opioid addiction, and drawn from his real-life experiences in this field, Dr. Goldbloom shows barriers to care and other faults in mental health care systems. He then reveals simple, yet startlingly effective tools for improving access and treatment that can help people now—if we only had the will to share, use, and fund these (and more) brilliant innovations:

-Self-referrals for faster access to care
-Apps and e-tools for treatment, rehabilitation, and self-monitoring between appointments
-Remote coaching for effectively treating common childhood problems
-Integrated youth services to improve early intervention
-Personalized care to ensure treatments don’t fail patients
-Rapid-access housing for the homeless and mentally ill so they can begin a journey of care

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More than three decades ago, Frank White coined the term “Overview Effect” to describe the cognitive shift that results from the experience of viewing the Earth from space and in space, from orbit or on a lunar mission. He found that with great consistency, this experience profoundly affects space travelers’ worldviews - their perceptions of themselves, our planet, and our understanding of the future. 

In The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution, White expands on his original concept, which has now gained worldwide recognition. Using interviews with, and writings by, astronauts and cosmonauts, he describes space exploration and development as necessary next steps in the evolution of human civilization and consciousness. The fourth edition features new interviews with active and retired professional astronauts, including three who were on board the International Space Station at the time. 

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As a child, Jory Fleming was wracked by uncontrollable tantrums, had no tolerance for people, and couldn’t manage the outside world. Slightly more than a decade later, he was bound for England, selected to attend one of the world’s premier universities.

How to Be Human explores life amid a world constructed for neurotypical brains when yours is not. But the miracle of this book is that instead of dwelling on Jory’s limitations, those who inhabit the neurotypical world will begin to better understand their own: they will contemplate what language cannot say, how linear thinking leads to dead ends, and how nefarious emotions can be, particularly when, in Jory’s words, they are “weaponized.” Through a series of deep, personal conversations with writer Lyric Winik, Jory makes a compelling case for logical empathy based on rational thought, asks why we tolerate friends who see us as a means to an end, and explains why he believes personality is a choice. Most movingly, he discusses how, after many hardships, he maintains a deep, abiding faith: “With people, I don’t understand what goes in and what comes out, and how to relate,” he says. “But I can always reconnect with my relationship with my Creator.”

Join Jory and Lyric as they examine what it means to be human and ultimately how each of us might become a better one. Jory asks us to consider: Who has value? What is a disability? And how do we correct the imbalances we see in the world? How to Be Human shows us the ways a beautifully different mind can express the very best of our shared humanity.

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Metafiction and the Postwar Novel is a full-length reassessment of one of the definitive literary forms of the postwar period, sometimes known as 'postmodern metafiction'. 
Across three comprehensive chapters, Dean shows how some of the most highly-regarded postwar writers were motivated to incorporate reflexive elements into their writing - and to what ends. The first chapter, on South African novelist J. M. Coetzee, shows with a new clarity how his fictions drew from and relativized academic literary theory and the conditions of writing in apartheid South Africa. The second chapter, on New Zealand writer Janet Frame, draws widely from her fictions, autobiographies, and posthumously published materials. It demonstrates the terms in which her writing addresses a readership seemingly convinced that her work expressed the interior experience of 'madness'. The final chapter, on American writer Philip Roth, shows how his early reception led to his later, and often explosive, reconsiderations of identity and literary value in postwar America.

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What exactly does it take to bring out the best in you? Pure luck or simply one’s fate? How far can one go through sheer grit, hard work and consistency? In The Bold Dream: Transcending the Impossible, a medical doctor and an aerospace engineer tell of how they scaled academic heights from under-resourced rural primary schools deep in the heart of the Rift Valley in Kenya, to the University of Oxford as Rhodes scholars. Through narration of real-life experiences, this book explores the challenges they faced while growing up and schooling, the push that their bold dreams gave them, and how they ended up in one of the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Most importantly, they share deep, thought-provoking views on the sacrifices women in their community make, through the experiences of their mothers. Dr Elisha Ngetich and Dr Gladys Ngetich explore some of the consistent themes in their serendipitous climb to the University of Oxford to pursue PhD. An inspirational read, this book is a must read for anyone who wants to persistently pursue their bold dreams.

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These are dangerous times for democracy. We live in an age of winners and losers, where the odds are stacked in favour of the already fortunate. Stalled social mobility and entrenched inequality give the lie to the promise that "you can make it if you try". And the consequence is a brew of anger and frustration that has fuelled populist protest, with the triumph of Brexit and election of Donald Trump.

Michael J. Sandel argues that to overcome the polarized politics of our time, we must rethink the attitudes toward success and failure that have accompanied globalisation and rising inequality. Sandel highlights the hubris a meritocracy generates among the winners and the harsh judgement it imposes on those left behind. He offers an alternative way of thinking about success - more attentive to the role of luck in human affairs, more conducive to an ethic of humility, and more hospitable to a politics of the common good.

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Few things are more precious in a democratic society than individual freedom, and few things are easier to take for granted. In this essay, Philip Slayton argues that Canada, in ways large and small, is frittering away the liberties on which a free and open society depends.

Philip Slayton is a Canadian lawyer and the former dean of law at the University of Western Ontario. He is the best-selling author of Lawyers Gone Bad: Money, Sex and Madness in Canada’s Legal Profession. 

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Still Time on Pye Pond stands at the intersection of literature and visual arts. It is the story of a young White woman, the author’s daughter, rejected by her paternal grandfather for marrying a Black man. The memoir is told principally in encaustic paintings, from the point of view of the mother who remains painfully silent to avoid further unraveling tenuous family bonds. The story follows the author’s technical progress as she reclaims her voice in a newfound medium. Her paintings become the means through which a remnant of harmony is preserved, a hopeful bridge toward eventual reconciliation. The art becomes the words she cannot speak.

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Robert Marsden Hope, a senior judge, reconstructed the Australian intelligence agencies in two Royal Commissions in the 1970s and 1980s. Peter Edwards’s biography contributes substantially to current debates about the structure, roles and doctrines of the intelligence community.

Not just a biography on Hope, Law, Politics and Intelligence also makes an important contribution to the history of Australia's environmental policies, adds significantly to the debate on judges acting as Royal Commissioners, and contains new insights into the appointment of High Court and Supreme Court judges, as well as the dismissal of the Whitlam Government.

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In Anticorruption Professor Rotberg explains that corruption is the conversion of a public good into personal gain - either by the exchange of cash for influence or by the granting of special favours even without explicit payments. He describes successful anticorruption efforts in countries ranging from Denmark and Sweden to Canada and Costa Rica, and discusses the roles of judicial systems, investigative journalism, multinational corporations, and technological advances. He shows how the United States has become more corrupt than before, and contrasts recent US and Canadian experiences. Without sufficient political will to eliminate corruption, it persists. Rotberg outlines thirteen practical steps for battling corruption, including removing holdover officials tainted by corruption and the public declaration of financial assets by elected officials and appointees.

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Professor Rotberg is one of the world’s foremost authorities on African politics and society, and in this book he synthesizes his knowledge of the continent into a concise overview of the current state of Africa and where it is headed. In Things Come Together, Rotberg asks how African states are managing urban epochal shifts? He looks at how Africa’s nations are governed, ranging from states with autocratic kleptocrats to democratized regimes that have made progress in achieving economic growth and battling corruption. He then turns to African economies, looking at growth levels, productivity, and persistent corruption. He concludes by covering the effects of war, health care, wildlife management, varieties of religious belief, education, technology diffusion, and the character of both city and village life in this ever-evolving region.

Throughout this sweeping work, Rotberg deftly moves readers across the continent, from Nigeria to South Africa, from Kenya to Uganda, to name but a few. While there are cross-continent commonalities related to governance, demographics, and economic performance, he shows the unique national variations of who and what is African.

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