Modern Science

At the age of 16, in a nationwide selection for royal consorts, Cixi was chosen as one of the emperor’s numerous concubines. When he died, in 1861, their five-year-old son succeeded to the throne. Cixi at once launched a palace coup against the regents appointed by her husband and made herself the real ruler of China - behind the throne, literally, with a silk screen separating her from her officials who were all male.

If recent history has taught us anything, it's that sometimes the best guide to leadership is the negative example. But that insight is hardly new. Nearly 2,000 years ago, Suetonius wrote Lives of the Caesars, perhaps the greatest negative leadership book of all time. In How to Be a Bad Emperor, Josiah Osgood provides crisp new translations of Suetonius's briskly paced, darkly comic biographies of the Roman emperors Julius Caesar, Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero. Entertaining and shocking, these ancient anti-role models show how power inflames leaders' worst tendencies.

A paradigm-shifting work that revolutionizes our understanding of the origins and structure of science.

Like the creation myths they supersede, the revelations of science are seared into our collective imagination through storytelling. From Archimedes' bath to Newton's apple, vivid accounts of scientific discovery help us understand the principles behind each theory, and add to the larger narrative of how the universe works, and how we came to be here. This anthology draws out and distils science's love of narrative from a wide range of scientific disciplines, weaving theory into very human stories.

When we humans love foods, we love them a lot. In fact, we have often eaten them into extinction, whether it is the megafauna of the Paleolithic world or the passenger pigeon of the last century. In Lost Feast, food expert Lenore Newman sets out to look at the history of the foods we have loved to death and what that means for the culinary paths we choose for the future.

Have you ever noticed that when you feel good, you attract wonderful relationships, circumstances, and your body is full of energy? Do you feel like changing something in your life or giving it more meaning? If my audiobook attracted your attention and you are reading this description, it means that you are also wondering:

What is this current chakra craze all about? Is it just a recitation of colors and symbols, or is it about developing true spirituality? What is spirituality?

At a time of astonishing confusion about what it means to be a man, Brad Miner has recovered the oldest and best ideal of manhood: the gentleman. Reviving a thousand-year tradition of chivalry, honor, and heroism, The Compleat Gentleman provides the essential model for 21st-century masculinity.

One of the great insights of science is that the universe has an underlying order. The supreme goal of physicists is to understand this order through laws that describe the behavior of the most basic particles and the forces between them. For centuries, we have searched for these laws by studying the results of experiments. Since the 1970s, however, experiments at the world's most powerful atom-smashers have offered few new clues. So some of the world's leading physicists have looked to a different source of insight: modern mathematics.

What accounts for the rise of the state, the creation of the first global system, and the dominance of the West? The conventional answer asserts that superior technology, tactics, and institutions forged by Darwinian military competition gave Europeans a decisive advantage in war from 1500 onward. Empires of the Weak argues that Europeans had no general military superiority in the early modern era. Sharman shows instead that European expansion is better explained by deference to strong Asian and African polities, disease in the Americas, and maritime supremacy earned by default.

Indy Zimmerman has a new stalker who won't leave her alone, no matter what she says to him. Never mind the fact that he's one of the most popular guys at school - she's positive Bryant Bailey is only trying to appease his own conscience after pretty much destroying her life. But when Bryant doesn't back down and insists on having some sort of bizarre friendship with her, his magic works, and her walls slowly start to crumble. He's not her type. She's never been into guys like Bryant, but then again, she's never really known anyone quite as stubborn, or caring.

Viennese ideas saturate the modern world. From California architecture to Hollywood Westerns, modern advertising to shopping malls, orgasms to gender confirmation surgery, nuclear fission to fitted kitchens—every aspect of our history, science, and culture is in some way shaped by Vienna. Richard Cockett gives us the entirety of an extraordinary story of how one city made the modern world—and how we all remain inescapably Viennese.

Since Darwin's day, we've been told that sexual monogamy comes naturally to our species. Mainstream science - as well as religious and cultural institutions - has maintained that men and women evolved in families in which a man's possessions and protection were exchanged for a woman's fertility and fidelity. But this narrative is collapsing....

Although modern science has unraveled some of the mysteries of our sleeping, dreaming, and waking states and age-old yoga practices are helping us enjoy better sleep, clearer minds, and healthier bodies, over 65 percent of U.S. adults are still sleep deprived. Sleep deprivation causes and aggravates ailments like stress, heart conditions, high blood pressure, obesity, and depression. Master yoga teacher, trainer, and best-selling author Mark Stephens provides easy-to-do, effective yoga activities for better sleep, no matter your age.

Perhaps one of the most revolutionary works of philosophy ever presented, The Phenomenology of Spirit is Hegel's 1807 work that is in numerous ways extraordinary. A myriad of topics are discussed, and explained in such a harmoniously complex way that the method has been termed Hegelian dialectic. Ultimately, the work as a whole is a remarkable study of the mind's growth from its direct awareness to scientific philosophy, proving to be a difficult yet highly influential and enduring work.

Drawing from the latest scientific and psychological research on the quest for happiness, The Law of Happiness reveals that the spiritual truths of the Bible hold the secrets to the happiness we desire. As Dr. Cloud unpacks these universal, eternal principles, he reveals that true happiness is not about circumstances, physical health, financial success, or even about the people in our lives. In other words, it’s not about the factors that are frequently beyond our control.

Do you constantly feel sick and tired of being a puppet to your emotions? Often get envious of other people that live good happy lives? Or maybe you’re just looking for that new outlook on life, but just simply can’t find the answers anywhere? Stoic philosophy actually allows us to embrace our negative and detrimental emotions, and turn them into positive peaceful thoughts, thus giving us a whole new perspective on life.

In this groundbreaking biography of the Japanese emperor Hirohito, Herbert P. Bix offers the first complete, unvarnished look at the enigmatic leader whose 63-year reign ushered Japan into the modern world. Never before has the full life of this controversial figure been revealed with such clarity and vividness. Bix describes what it was like to be trained from birth for a lone position at the apex of the nation's political hierarchy and as a revered symbol of divine status.

Lucian: I am a Dragon Prince of the House of Smoke...and I am dying. Five hundred years is truly enough for a man like me. A monster. Yet a 10,000-year treaty will die with me, if I don't spawn a dragonling to take my place. My two brothers are no use in this task. It falls to me, the eldest by a hair's breadth, and yet, I cannot face the horror of another sealing. Another death. Another woman's blood on my hands.

Socrates is the quintessential Athenian philosopher, the source of the entire Western philosophical tradition, and Godfather to the Stoics. He spent his life teaching practical philosophy to ordinary people in the streets of Athens, yet few people today are familiar with the wisdom he has to offer us.

Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium. These fundamental materials have created empires, razed civilizations, and fed our ingenuity and greed for thousands of years. Without them, our modern world would not exist, and the battle to control them will determine our future. In Material World, Ed Conway embarks on an epic journey across continents, cultures, and epochs to reveal the underpinnings of modern life on Earth—traveling from the sweltering depths of the deepest mine in Europe to spotless silicon chip factories in Taiwan to the eerie green pools where lithium originates.