New Science

Luke Skywalker's daring mission to halt the Yuuzhan Vong's nefarious plot to overthrow the New Republic is struggling on all fronts. And time is slipping away for Han and Leia Organa Solo, trapped on a small planet whose rulers are about to yield to Yuuzhan Vong pressure to give up the Jedi rebels.

Whitley Strieber and Jeffrey J. Kripal team up on this unprecedented and intellectually vibrant new framing of inexplicable events and experiences. Rather than merely document the anomalous, these authors - one the man who popularized alien abduction and the other a renowned scholar - deliver a fast-paced and exhilarating study of why the supernatural is neither fantasy nor fiction but a vital and authentic aspect of life.

Before We Were Trans illuminates the stories of people across the globe, from antiquity to the present, whose experiences of gender have defied binary categories. Blending historical analysis with sharp cultural criticism, trans historian and activist Kit Heyam offers a new, radically inclusive trans history, chronicling expressions of trans experience that are often overlooked, like gender-nonconforming fashion and wartime stage performance. Heyam looks to the past to uncover new horizons for possible trans futures.

Imagine living in a world where people use their computers, drive their cars, and communicate with one another simply by thinking. In this stunning and inspiring work, Duke University neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis shares his revolutionary insights into how the brain creates thought and the human sense of self - and how this might be augmented by machines, so that the entire universe will be within our reach.

A sparklingly strange odyssey through the kaleidoscope of America's new spirituality: the cults, practices, high priests, and prophets of our supposedly post-religion age.

Jackson's class as an Ironwood Monk puts him right in the front line. He gets stronger the more he gets hit and can pass that on to the rest of the team. That is if he can get his mom to actually let him fight. No one, least of all Jackson, fully understands the importance he holds for his family's future or that of all Talos. He will have to navigate challenges both in dungeons and the halls of power if he is to find a new home.

The New York Times bestselling authors of The Carrot Principle and All In deliver a breakthrough, groundbreaking guide for building today’s most collaborative teams—so any organization can operate at peak performance.

A massive shift is taking place in the business world. In today’s average company, up to eighty percent of employees’ days are now spent working in teams. And yet the teams most people find themselves in are nowhere near as effective as they could be. They’re often divided by tensions, if not outright dissension, and dysfunctional teams drain employees’ energy, enthusiasm, and creativity. Now Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton share the proven ways managers can build cohesive, productive teams, despite the distractions and challenges every business is facing.

In The Best Team Wins, Gostick and Elton studied more than 850,000 employee engagement surveys to develop their “Five Disciplines of Team Leaders,” explaining how to recognize and motivate different generations to enhance individual engagement; ways to promote healthy discord and spark innovation; and techniques to unify customer focus and build bridges across functions, cultures, and distance. They’ve shared these disciplines with their corporate clients and have now distilled their breakthrough findings into a succinct, engaging guide for business leaders everywhere. Gostick and Elton offer practical ways to address the real challenges today’s managers are facing, such as the rise of the Millennials, the increasing speed of change, the growing number of global and virtual teams, and the friction created by working cross-functionally.

This is a must-read for anyone looking to maximize performance at work, from two of the most successful corporate consultants of their generation, whom The New York Times called “creative and refreshing.”

Our views of the world are shaped by the stories told by our self-selected communities. Whether seeking out groups that share our tastes, our faith, our heritage, or other interests, since the dawn of time we have taken comfort in defining ourselves through our social groups. But what happens when we only socialize with our chosen group, to the point that we lose the ability to connect to people who don't share our passions? What happens when our tribes merely confirm our world view, rather than expand it?

Socrates is on trial for his life. He is charged with impiety and corrupting young people. He presents his own defense, explaining why he has devoted his life to challenging the most powerful and important people in the Greek world. The reason is that rich and famous politicians, priests, poets, and a host of others pretend to know what is good, true, holy, and beautiful, but when Socrates questions them, they are shown to be foolish rather than wise.

When it comes to expressing the pleasure and pain of being just a touch too smart to be happy, Dorothy Parker is still the champion. Along with Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott, and the rest of the Algonquin Round Table, she dominated American popular literature in the 1920s and 1930s. This collection of more than 30 short stories and poems is essential for any Parker fan and an excellent way for new listeners to make the acquaintance of one of the 20th century's most quotable authors.

Thanks to house tamer Hulda Larkin, the mischief infesting Whimbrel House has calmed. But if Hulda’s job is done, what does that mean for Merritt Fernsby, inheritor of the remote Narragansett Bay estate, who’s only now coming to terms with his enchanted place in the world? Merritt has realized his own burgeoning powers, which draw the thoughts of every plant, insect, and dog. His nights are sleepless, with an uncontrollable cacophony of voices that compel a long-overdue search into his uncanny bloodline. It’s not the only puzzle uniting Merritt and his ex-housekeeper, Hulda.

Your heart is a miracle in motion, a marvel of construction unsurpassed by any human-made creation. It beats 100,000 times every day—if you were to live to 100, that would be more than 3 billion beats across your lifespan. Despite decades of effort in labs all over the world, we have not yet been able to replicate the heart’s perfect engineering. But, as Sian Harding shows us in The Exquisite Machine, new scientific developments are opening up the mysteries of the heart. And this explosion of new science has crucial, real-world consequences for health and well-being.

Modern Esoteric examines the flaws in modern history and looks at how conspiracy theories, esoteric knowledge, and fringe subjects can be used to help change the dead-end course humanity seems to be following. The Lifeology section explores the long "alternative narrative" of life on this planet. In the Control section, author Brad Olsen examines how Big Brother is here in the New World Order, and how they keep the knowledge of humankind's true nature from the mass population. Finally, the Thrive section looks at all the ways humans are evolving to achieve their full potential.

In the tradition of Oliver Sacks, a tour of the latest neuroscience of schizophrenia, autism, Alzheimer’s disease, ecstatic epilepsy, Cotard’s syndrome, out-of-body experiences, and other disorders - revealing the awesome power of the human sense of self from a master of science journalism. Anil Ananthaswamy’s extensive in-depth interviews venture into the lives of individuals who offer perspectives that will change how you think about who you are.

In a universe filled by chaos and disorder, one physicist makes the radical argument that the growth of order drives the passage of time - and shapes the destiny of the universe.

Every day, in dance studios all across America, legions of little children line up at the barre to take ballet class. This time in the studio shapes their lives, instilling lessons about gender, power, bodies, and their place in the world both in and outside of dance. In Turning Pointe, journalist Chloe Angyal captures the intense love for ballet that so many dancers feel, while also grappling with its devastating shortcomings....

This exciting new anthology has over a dozen original tales starring the vicious foes of Marvel's superheroes: Greg Cox's chronicle of the Super-Skrull's conflict with the Avengers, Michael Jan Friendman's story of evil Loki's latest attempt to snare his stepbrother Thor, Adam-Troy Castro's tale of a mutant who brings Magneto and X-Men's Professor X together in a unique manner, Glenn Greenberg's pairing of Venom and the Absorbing Man in an unlikely jailbreak.

From science and technology to business and education, curiosity is often taken for granted as an unquestioned good. And yet, few people can define curiosity. Curiosity Studies marshals scholars from more than a dozen fields not only to define curiosity but also to grapple with its ethics as well as its role in technological advancement and global citizenship. While intriguing research on curiosity has occurred in numerous disciplines for decades, no rigorously cross - disciplinary study has existed - until now.

Plant Science for Gardeners empowers growers to analyze common problems, find solutions, and make better decisions in the garden for optimal plant health and productivity. Most gardeners learn by accumulating rules–water once a week, never dry out snowdrop bulbs, prune lilacs after flowering, plant garlic in October—the list is endless. There is a better way.

The money-hungry bosses in charge of New Realm Online have installed a new quest and screwed over the medi pod users. But the quest rewards would give Ryan and the rest of the Broken Bones guild the ability to afford to stay in this magical world. The competition will be fierce! Ryan and the team will have to be bold, level up, and take some risks if they want to win!