Mental Health History

With acuity, humor, and respect for human diversity, The Shortest History of Sex reveals where the many facets of our sexuality—chemical, anatomical, behavioral, social—come from. Chasing down our evolutionary family tree, from the first aquatic creatures to primate societies, David Baker sheds light on our baffling array of passions, impulses, and fetishes, and guides us toward a clear understanding of one of the deepest, most abiding forces of human nature.

This fresh and exciting approach to science, skepticism, and critical thinking will enlighten and inspire listeners of all ages. With a mix of wit and wisdom, it challenges everyone to think like a scientist, embrace the skeptical life, and improve their critical thinking skills. Think shows you how to better navigate through the maze of biases and traps that are standard features of every human brain.

Gustave Le Bon was a French polymath whose areas of interest included anthropology, psychology, sociology, medicine, invention, and physics. He is best known for his 1895 work The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, which is considered one of the seminal works of crowd psychology. Other than the cover suggests, this book does not deal with the Russian Revolution, but revolutions and their pre-conditions in general. Le Bon who grew up in France during the revolutionary wave that was pravelent in Europe in the mid 19th century uses in this book the French Revolution as his study case.

Ego: The Fall of the Twin Towers and the Rise of an Enlightened Humanity by Peter Baumann and Michael W. Taft is the first book to explore the positive evolutionary potential hidden in one of the most destructive events in history. In their examination of the evolutionary implications of 9/11 and its aftermath, the authors contend we are not falling into the grip of a new dark age at all; rather, we are on the verge of a much brighter one as the Darwinian process of natural selection continues to advance humankind.

When someone says they hear voices in their head, they are often thought to be mentally ill. But, as Charles Fernyhough argues in The Voices Within, such voices are better understood as one of the chief hallmarks of human thought. Our inner voices can be self-assured, funny, profound, hesitant, or mean; they can appear in different accents and even in sign language. We all hear them - and we needn't fear them. Indeed, we cannot live without them.

For centuries, medicine has made reckless use of one of earth's most toxic substances: mercury - and the consequences, often invisible or ignored, continue to be tragic. Today, global emissions of mercury as well as other toxicants, make us all more vulnerable to its effects. From the worst cases of syphilis to Sigmund Freud's first cases of hysteria, from baffling new disorders in 19th century Britain to the modern scourge of autism, The Age of Autism traces the long overlooked history of mercury poisoning.

Dive into Evolutionary History, a mesmerizing journey through time, tracing the origins and development of all living beings. From the earliest single-celled organisms to the rise of Homo sapiens, this audiobook unravels the intricate tapestry of evolution with clarity and passion. Explore the wonders of life’s evolution across geological epochs, uncovering the secrets of adaptation, survival, and the remarkable journey of our ancestors.

The Naughty Nineties: The Triumph of the American Libido examines the scandal-strafed decade when our public and private lives began to blur due to the rise of the web, reality television, and the wholesale tabloidization of pop culture. In this comprehensive and often hilarious time capsule, David Friend combines detailed reporting with first-person accounts from many of the decade's singular personalities, from Anita Hill to Monica Lewinsky, Lorena Bobbitt to Heidi Fleiss, Jesse Jackson to key members of the Clinton, Dole, and Bush teams.

Author Anne Rooney brings together the threads that have made up psychology, from the musings of the Ancient Greeks to the findings of functional MRI scanning. The Story of Psychology is a narrative of how we have tried to approach the very core of our being—of what makes us ourselves.

Adam Frankel’s maternal grandparents survived the Holocaust and built new lives, with new names, in Connecticut. Though they tried to leave the horrors of their past behind, the pain they suffered crossed generational lines - a fact most apparent in the mental health of Adam’s mother. When Adam sat down with her to examine their family history in detail, he learned another shocking secret, this time one that unraveled Adam’s entire understanding of who he is.

Bestselling author Leonard Shlain explores the life, art, and mind of Leonardo da Vinci, seeking to explain his singularity by looking at his achievements in art, science, psychology, and military strategy (yes), and then employing state of the art left-right brain scientific research to explain his universal genius. Shlain shows that no other person in human history has excelled in so many different areas as Da Vinci and he peels back the layers to explore the how and the why.

From government to business, banks to media, trust in institutions is at an all-time low. But this isn't the age of distrust - far from it. Rachel Botsman reveals that we are at the tipping point of one of the biggest social transformations in human history. A new world order is emerging: We might have lost faith in institutions and leaders, but millions of people rent their homes to total strangers, exchange digital currencies, or find themselves trusting a bot. This is the age of "distributed trust", a paradigm shift driven by innovative technologies that are rewriting the rules....

Through interviews, research, and her own experience, Brown not only gives us the real story on weight, health, and beauty, but also offers concrete suggestions for how each of us can sort through the lies and misconceptions and make peace with and for ourselves.

What is it that makes you "you"? What produces your likes and dislikes, fear and fantasies? What makes you different from other people, and what makes you the same as them? For thousands of years, people have tried to identify the spirit, soul, or mind that makes us human. And they have tried to work out how and why it makes our identity. Answers have ranged from the physiological to the psychological - the influence of early experiences and upbringing.

ALA notable author Iain Lawrence pens a moving tale with a Dickensian atmosphere about a young man's life aboard a cruel 19th-century prison ship. 14-year-old Tom Tin is forced to scavenge on the grimy streets of London after his father is sent to debtor's prison. Tom's survival is threatened by the sinister lowlifes that inhabit his hopeless world. But when he is unjustly arrested for murder, he finds a place that is even worse than the dark city streets.

Despite 21st-century fears of an "epidemic" of loneliness, its history has been sorely neglected. A Biography of Loneliness offers a radically new interpretation of loneliness as an emotional language and experience. Using letters and diaries, philosophical tracts, political discussions, and medical literature from the 18th century to the present, historian of the emotions Fay Bound Alberti argues that loneliness is not a historical, universal phenomenon. It is, in fact, a modern emotion: before 1800, its language did not exist.

This talk by Sam Shoemaker begins with a brief history of AA told by Sam. It contains some things which only Rev. Sam Shoemaker could tell correctly. Sam was the preeminent Oxford Group leader in the US at the time Bill Wilson and Ebby T. were affiliated with it. The mission that Ebby was livening and working at during his pivotal meetings with Bill around the time Bill sobered for life was a branch of Sam's church.

With acuity, humor, and respect for human diversity, The Shortest History of Sex reveals where the many facets of our sexuality—chemical, anatomical, behavioral, social—come from. Chasing down our evolutionary family tree, from the first aquatic creatures to primate societies, David Baker sheds light on our baffling array of passions, impulses, and fetishes, and guides us toward a clear understanding of one of the deepest, most abiding forces of human nature.

In the void between universes, a secretive organization called the Tuners works to maintain peace in the multiverse. The stability is threatened when a group of religious radicals seek to burn all those who do not believe. Jon Xiong, a 17-year-old from Montana, gets caught up in much bigger problems when the cult members appear at his home. The order wants him because he can distinguish the subtle differences of the cosmic background noise between universes.

We take the seven-day week for granted, rarely asking what anchors it or what it does to us. Yet weeks are not dictated by the natural order. They are, in fact, an artificial construction of the modern world. With meticulous archival research that draws on a wide array of sources - including newspapers, restaurant menus, theater schedules, marriage records, school curricula, folklore, housekeeping guides, courtroom testimony, and diaries - David Henkin reveals how our current devotion to weekly rhythms emerged in the United States during the first half of the 19th century.