Introduction to JavaScript Object Notation

This dual biography of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King upends longstanding preconceptions to transform our understanding of the twentieth century's most iconic African American leaders.To most Americ

A lively introduction to opera, from the Renaissance to the twenty-first centuryThere are few art forms as visceral and emotional as opera-and few that are as daunting for newcomers. A Mad Love offers

In this important new book, the noted theoretician Fred Pine provides a synthesis of the four conceptual domains of psychoanalysis: drives, ego functioning, object relations, and self experience. He a

The preeminent scholar Jonathan Sarna reflects on identity, family, and faith in this accessible introduction to the American Jewish experience.

An award-winning poet offers a brilliant introduction to the joys--and challenges--of the genreIn Don't Read Poetry, award-winning poet and literary critic Stephanie Burt offers an accessible introduc

A distinguished dance critic offers an enchanting introduction to the art of balletAs much as we may enjoy Swan Lake or The Nutcracker, for many of us ballet is a foreign language. It communicates thr

What is math? And how exactly does it work? In How to Bake Pi, math professor Eugenia Cheng provides an accessible introduction to the logic of mathematics?sprinkled throughout with recipes for everyt

Every two minutes, Americans alone take more photographs than were printed in the entire nineteenth century; every minute, people from around the world upload over 300 hours of video to YouTube; and i

From a leading expert on longevity, a guide to how individuals and society can seize the advantages of living longer lives and avoid the pitfalls of an aging society Thanks to increases in life expectancy, we can now expect to live for a long time. Most of us would welcome an extra day in the week, so why do so many of us view the prospect of additional years with fear and skepticism? The reason is simple: society is not currently structured to support long lives. Rather than thinking in terms of the needs of a rising number of older people, we must instead support the young and middle-aged to prepare differently for the longer futures they can expect. The Longevity Imperative outlines the innovations needed to make the most of these longer lives: substantial changes to our health system, economy, and financial sector, as well as in how we manage our careers, health, finances, and relationships. Instead of seeing longevity as a problem, economist Andrew J. Scott challenges us to view i

How the tools that enabled us to overcome the uncertainty of the weather will enable us to find new answers to modern science's most pressing questions Why does your weather app say "There's a 10% chance of rain" instead of "It will be sunny tomorrow"? In large part this is due to the insight of Tim Palmer, who made uncertainty essential to the study of weather and climate. Now he wants to apply it to how we study everything else. In The Primacy of Doubt, Palmer argues that embracing the mathematics of uncertainty is vital to understanding ourselves and the universe around us. Whether we want to predict climate change or market crashes, understand how the brain is able to outpace supercomputers, or find a theory that links quantum and cosmological physics, Palmer shows how his vision of mathematical uncertainty provides new insights into some of the deepest problems in science. The result is a revolution--one that shows that power begins by embracing what we don't know.

What Socrates’s greatest failure reveals about an ancient question: Can we teach our leaders to be better people? Is good character something that can be taught? In 430 BCE, Socrates set out to teach the vain, power-seeking Athenian statesman Alcibiades how to be a good person―and failed spectacularly. Alcibiades went on to beguile his city into a hopeless war with Syracuse, and all of Athens paid the price. In The Quest for Character, philosophy professor Massimo Pigliucci tells this famous story and asks what we can learn from it. He blends ancient sources with modern interpretations to give a full picture of the philosophy and cultivation of character, virtue, and personal excellence―what the Greeks called arete. At heart, The Quest for Character isn’t simply about what makes a good leader. Drawing on Socrates as well as his followers among the Stoics, this book gives us lessons perhaps even more crucial: how we can each lead an excellent life.

A spellbinding exploration of the human capacity to imagine the future Our ability to think about the future is one of the most powerful tools at our disposal. In The Invention of Tomorrow, cognitive scientists Thomas Suddendorf, Jonathan Redshaw, and Adam Bulley argue that its emergence transformed humans from unremarkable primates to creatures that hold the destiny of the planet in their hands. Drawing on their own cutting-edge research, the authors break down the science of foresight, showing us where it comes from, how it works, and how it made our world. Journeying through biology, psychology, history, and culture, they show that thinking ahead is at the heart of human nature―even if we often get it terribly wrong. Incisive and expansive, The Invention of Tomorrow offers a fresh perspective on the human tale that shows how our species clawed its way to control the future.

A groundbreaking exposé of how our legal system makes it nearly impossible to overturn wrongful convictions Thousands of innocent people are behind bars in the United States. But proving their innocence and winning their release is nearly impossible. In Barred, legal scholar Daniel S. Medwed argues that our justice system’s stringent procedural rules are largely to blame for the ongoing punishment of the innocent. Those rules guarantee criminal defendants just one opportunity to appeal their convictions directly to a higher court. Afterward, the wrongfully convicted can pursue only a few narrow remedies. Even when there is strong evidence of a miscarriage of justice, rigid guidelines, bias, and deference toward lower courts all too often prevent exoneration. Offering clear explanations of legal procedures alongside heart-wrenching stories of their devastating impact, Barred exposes how the system is stacked against the innocent and makes a powerful call for change.

How games are being harnessed as instruments of exploitation―and what we can do about it Warehouse workers pack boxes while a virtual dragon races across their screen. If they beat their colleagues, they get an award. If not, they can be fired. Uber presents exhausted drivers with challenges to keep them driving. China scores its citizens so they behave well, and games with in-app purchases use achievements to empty your wallet.Points, badges, and leaderboards are creeping into every aspect of modern life. In You’ve Been Played, game designer Adrian Hon delivers a blistering takedown of how corporations, schools, and governments use games and gamification as tools for profit and coercion. These are games that we often have no choice but to play, where losing has heavy penalties. You’ve Been Played is a scathing indictment of a tech-driven world that wants to convince us that misery is fun, and a call to arms for anyone who hopes to preserve their dignity and autonomy.

Why understanding evolution―the most reviled branch of science―can help us all, from fighting pandemics to undoing racism Evolutionary science has long been regarded as conservative, a tool for enforcing regressive ideas, particularly about race and gender. But in A Voice in the Wilderness, evolutionary biologist Joseph L. Graves Jr.―once styled as the “Black Darwin”―argues that his field is essential to social justice. He shows, for example, why biological races do not exist. He dismantles recent work in “human biodiversity” seeking genes to explain the achievements of different ethnic groups. He decimates homophobia, sexism, and classism as well. As a pioneering Black biologist, a leftist, and a Christian, Graves uses his personal story―his journey from a child of Jim Crow to a major researcher and leader of his peers―to rewrite his field. A Voice in the Wilderness is a powerful work of scientific anti-racism and a moving account of a trailblazing life.

From one of the world’s leading economists, a grand narrative of the century that made us richer than ever, yet left us unsatisfied Before 1870, humanity lived in dire poverty, with a slow crawl of invention offset by a growing population. Then came a great shift: invention sprinted forward, doubling our technological capabilities each generation and utterly transforming the economy again and again. Our ancestors would have presumed we would have used such powers to build utopia. But it was not so. When 1870–2010 ended, the world instead saw global warming; economic depression, uncertainty, and inequality; and broad rejection of the status quo. Economist Brad DeLong's Slouching Towards Utopia tells the story of how this unprecedented explosion of material wealth occurred, how it transformed the globe, and why it failed to deliver us to utopia. Of remarkable breadth and ambition, it reveals the last century to have been less a march of progress than a slouch in the right dir

From a MacArthur “Genius,” an intellectual history of the free market, from ancient Rome to the twenty-first centuryAfter two government bailouts of the US economy in less than twenty years, free market ideology is due for serious reappraisal. In Free Market, Jacob Soll details how we got to this current crisis, and how we can find our way out by looking to earlier iterations of free market thought. Contrary to popular narratives, early market theorists believed that states had an important role in building and maintaining free markets. But in the eighteenth century, thinkers insisted on free markets without state intervention, leading to a tradition of ideological brittleness. That tradition only calcified in the centuries that followed.Tracing the intellectual evolution of the free market from Cicero to Milton Friedman, Soll argues that we need to go back to the origins of free market ideology in order to truly understand it―and to develop new economic concepts to face today’s challe

One of our preeminent historians of race and democracy argues that the period since 2008 has marked nothing less than America’s Third ReconstructionIn The Third Reconstruction, distinguished historian Peniel E. Joseph offers a powerful and personal new interpretation of recent history. The racial reckoning that unfolded in 2020, he argues, marked the climax of a Third Reconstruction: a new struggle for citizenship and dignity for Black Americans, just as momentous as the movements that arose after the Civil War and during the civil rights era. Joseph draws revealing connections and insights across centuries as he traces this Third Reconstruction from the election of Barack Obama to the rise of Black Lives Matter to the failed assault on the Capitol.America’s first and second Reconstructions fell tragically short of their grand aims. Our Third Reconstruction offers a new chance to achieve Black dignity and citizenship at last―an opportunity to choose hope over fear.

Forget the language instinct―this is the story of how we make up language as we go Language is perhaps humanity’s most astonishing capacity―and one that remains poorly understood. In The Language Game, cognitive scientists Morten H. Christiansen and Nick Chater show us where generations of scientists seeking the rules of language got it wrong. Language isn’t about hardwired grammars but about near-total freedom, something like a game of charades, with the only requirement being a desire to understand and be understood. From this new vantage point, Christiansen and Chater find compelling solutions to major mysteries like the origins of languages and how language learning is possible, and to long-running debates such as whether having two words for “blue” changes what we see. In the end, they show that the only real constraint on communication is our imagination.

Unlock the secrets to understanding yourself and others with the surprising science of the human minds greatest power: introspection. It happens to everyone: You are asked a questioneven something you

A preeminent classics scholar revises the history of medicine.Medical thinking and observation were radically changed by the ancient Greeks, one of their great legacies to the world. In the fifth cent

The Underground Railroad to the North was salvation for many US slaves before the Civil War. But during the same decades, thousands of people in the south-central United States escaped slavery not by

From Homer to Wordsworth to Gwendolyn Brooks, learn about history's greatest writers and the furry best friends that inspired them. Dogs are at once among the most ordinary of animals and the most b

The next generation of robots will be truly social, but can we make sure that they play well in the sandbox?Most robots are just tools. They do limited sets of tasks subject to constant human control.

A brilliant philosopher reimagines Stoicism for our modern age in this thought-provoking guide to a better life.For more than two thousand years, Stoicism has offered a message of resilience in the fa

The definitive guide to statistical thinkingStatistics are everywhere, as integral to science as they are to business, and in the popular media hundreds of times a day. In this age of big data, a basi

A celebrated mathematician explores how math helps us make sense of the unpredictable We would like to believe we can know things for certain. We want to be able to figure out who will win an election

An anthropologist uses spelling bees as a lens to examine the unique and diverse traits of Generation Z--and why they are destined for successAt first glance, Generation Z (youth born after 1997) seem

An incisive biography of the Supreme Court's enigmatic Chief Justice, taking us inside the momentous legal decisions of his tenure so farJohn Roberts was named to the Supreme Court in 2005 claiming he would act as a neutral umpire in deciding cases. His critics argue he has been anything but, pointing to his conservative victories on voting rights and campaign finance. Yet he broke from orthodoxy in his decision to preserve Obamacare. How are we to understand the motives of the most powerful judge in the land? In The Chief, award-winning journalist Joan Biskupic contends that Roberts is torn between two, often divergent, priorities: to carry out a conservative agenda, and to protect the Court's image and his place in history. Biskupic shows how Roberts's dual commitments have fostered distrust among his colleagues, with major consequences for the law. Trenchant and authoritative, The Chief reveals the making of a justice and the drama on this nation's highest court.

How anyone can become a data ninja From the stock market to genomics laboratories, census figures to marketing email blasts, we are awash with data. But as anyone who has ever opened up a spreadsheet

A Nobel Prize-winning biologist tells the riveting story of his race to discover the inner workings of biology's most important molecule Everyone has heard of DNA. But by itself, DNA is just an inert

A natural history of the wilderness in our homes, from the microbes in our showers to the crickets in our basementsEven when the floors are sparkling clean and the house seems silent, our domestic dom

The story of Andrew Jackson's improbable ascent to the White House, centered on the handlers and propagandists who made it possibleAndrew Jackson was volatile and prone to violence, and well into his

From an award-winning journalist and beer expert, a thoughtful and witty guide to understanding and enjoying beerRight here, right now is the best time in the history of mankind to be a beer drinker.

Most physicists think of beauty as the royal road to discovery; a leading critic shows it is instead the road to nowhereWhether pondering black holes or predicting discoveries at CERN, physicists beli

A psychologist's stories of doctors who seek to help others but struggle to help themselves From ER and M*A*S*H to Grey's Anatomy and House, the medical drama endures for good reason: we're fascinated

The history and future of our democracy's ultimate sanction, presidential impeachment, and a guide to how it should be used nowTo End a Presidency addresses one of today's most urgent questions: when

From birth to death, a lyrical exploration of the role of transformation in human lifeTo be alive is to be in perpetual metamorphosis: growing, healing, learning, aging. In Shapeshifters, physician an

From an internationally acclaimed economist, a provocative call to jump-start economic growth by aggressively overhauling liberal democracyAround the world, people who are angry at stagnant wages and