Root Science

It's Homecoming season at Caiman University, and all 17-year-old Malik Baron wants to do is be a regular college student…or as regular as he can get at a magical HCBU for young, Black Conjurers. He’s ready to go to parties, hang out with his new friends, choose a major, and talk to girls. Instead, he's reeling from a summer of revelations, heartbreak and betrayal, and still uncovering the truth about his powers and his legacy.

As brilliantly polemical and richly descriptive as it was when it was published almost three decades ago, this new version of An Unnatural Order is sure to excite a passionate debate about our role in either saving the ecosystems upon which all species (including our own) rely, or bringing it all to an end.

It’s 1963, and things are changing for Jezebel Turner. Her beloved grandmother has just passed away. The local police deputy won’t stop harassing her family. With school integration arriving in South Carolina, Jez and her twin brother, Jay, are about to begin the school year with a bunch of new kids. But the biggest change comes when Jez and Jay turn 11 - and their uncle, Doc, tells them he’s going to train them in rootwork. And Jez soon finds out that her family’s true power goes far beyond small charms and elixirs…and not a moment too soon.

As the people of Azela morn the loss of another king, the heirs of the ten kingdoms are thrust into the harsh light of leadership without warning. They must now unify their nations and their forces to drive the mysterious conquerors out of their land. Several of the young rulers are already at war or enslaved as they take over, requiring a devious plan to escape.

The fundamental drive to answer these questions is at the heart of Finding Your Roots, the companion book to the hit PBS documentary series. As Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. shows us, the tools ofcutting-edge genomics and deep genealogical research now allow us to learn more about our roots, looking further back in time than ever before. Gates' investigations take on the personal and genealogical histories of more than twenty luminaries.

Is privilege real or imagined? It's clear that issues of race and equality have come to the forefront in our nation's consciousness. Every week yet another incident involving racial tension splashes across headlines and dominates our news feeds. But it's not easy to unpack the origins of these tensions, and perhaps we wonder whether any of these issues really has anything to do with us. Ken Wytsma, founder of The Justice Conference, understands these questions.

Why We Hate tackles a pressing issue of both longstanding interest and fresh relevance: why a social species like Homo sapiens should nevertheless be so hateful to itself. We go to war and are prejudiced against our fellow human beings. We discriminate on the basis of nationality, class, race, sexual orientation, religion, and gender. Why are humans at once so social and so hateful to each other? In this book, Michael Ruse looks at scientific understandings of human hatred, particularly Darwinian evolutionary theory.

What if the key to a more connected and mindful life lies in ancient wisdom, we've overlooked? This audiobook explores the spiritual traditions of Indigenous Australians, with a focus on the practice of Dadirri—a deep form of listening and contemplation. It also examines parallels between Indigenous spirituality and other global wisdom traditions, such as Zen Buddhism, Vedic traditions, and Christian mysticism.

Using his unique lens as a critical race theorist and law professor, Khaled A. Beydoun captures the many ways in which law, policy, and official state rhetoric have fueled the frightening resurgence of Islamophobia in the US.

Philosophy, Socrates declared, is the art of dying. This book underscores that it is also the art of learning to live and share the earth with those who have come before us. Burial, with its surrounding rituals, is the most ancient documented cultural-symbolic practice: all humans have developed techniques of caring for and communicating with the dead.

Beauty in a Box uses an interdisciplinary framework, engaging with African American history, critical race and cultural theory, consumer culture theory, media studies, diasporic art history, Black feminism, visual culture, film studies and political economy to explore the history of Black beauty culture in both Canada and the United States.

Roslyn is still healing from her losses of the past couple of months, and is finally accepting what her ancestors and the gods have in store for her: being Queen of Jay'Al. There is much to be done though, from dealing with werewolves and the Tribes of the Archipelago, to bringing the orcs into the Clans. Things get more complicated though when Roslyn learns of trouble back home, and more earthquakes bring forth even more mysteries to be solved.

Ewan Forbes was born to a wealthy, landowning family, holders of a baronetcy, in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in 1912. Assigned female at birth, his true identity was nevertheless clear even in childhood - and so, with the support of his mother, he was taken to European specialists and eventually treated with early preparations of synthetic testosterone. Socially obliged to present himself as a girl in public until his official coming out to the Queen, Ewan lived a quiet life as a husband, doctor, and a pillar of the local community.

In July 2012, aged 30, Juliet Jacques underwent sex reassignment surgery and felt for the first time that her body matched the person she felt she had been since childhood. Through university and then in a series of dead end clerical jobs, Jacques felt out of place with her surroundings, and with who she really was. Living in Brighton, trying to launch a career as a writer, she navigates the hostilities and misunderstandings of growing up in a time when the mainstream media - and even feminism - fail to acknowledge transgender identity.

After the harrowing events of The Acrid Sky, Anika Lawson flees from her grief, burdened by a prophecy she doesn’t yet fully understand. With no sense of belonging, her newfound powers carry her into the heart of Karrane, where the truth of her birth hides within the intricate web of a foreign kingdom’s politics. Anika must navigate a dark, winding path to uncover her true heritage. Meanwhile, her brother Gage battles the encroaching Shadow, a darkness eager to fill the void left by a brutal assassination attempt by the Light.

Finding Oprah's Roots will not only endow listeners with a new appreciation for the key contributions made by history's unsung heroes but also equip them with the tools to connect to pivotal figures in their own pasts. A roadmap through the intricacies of public documents and online databases, this audiobook also highlights genetic testing resources that can make it possible to know one's distant tribal roots in Africa.

Prepare for a mind-expanding journey. Discover how intelligence evolved, starting from DNA and RNA genesis, all the way to the rise of machines. Imagine a world where evolutionary principles influence machine learning algorithms, crafting Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). This provocative exploration delves deep into evolution, unlocking parallels between natural selection and the birth of computing intelligence. The narrative charts an exhilarating course from the dawn of life to an AGI-dominated future.

The Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education is widely considered a seminal point in the battle to end segregation, but it was in fact the culmination of a decades-long legal campaign. Root and Branch is the epic story of the two fiercely dedicated lawyers who led the fight from county courthouses to the marble halls of the Supreme Court, and, in the process, laid the legal foundations of the civil rights movement.

Before Jak became a hero, a horrible secret surrounded her birth. Witness the beginning of that secret as we follow her father while he searches for his wife, and finds more than he could possibly imagine.

As she is pursued deeper into the mountains, Jak must face her own inner demons. Jak is on the run. After the mysterious reappearance of her friend, Marek, she must decide whether to stay with the body of her army, or go off in search of the illusive second Pillar of Eternity. But she must decide fast. Cain is on his way, and his demons pursue her. And no one knows whether they should trust Jak's childhood friend, whom they had long presumed to be dead.