Root Science

An insightful, personal, and timely exploration into the wonderful world of seeds. In What We Sow, Jennifer Jewell brings readers on an insightful, year-long journey exploring the outsize impact one of nature's smallest manifestations—the simple seed. She examines our skewed notions where...

A dying goddess. A fractured prophecy. A magicless elf who shouldn’t exist. Elliah grew up in hiding, her mother’s whispered warnings of treachery and death trailing her every step. A single misstep draws the attention of those who fear what her survival heralds. Her escape rests in the hands of a dragon-hunted warrior blinded by faith. The truth of her existence is a weapon, foretold yet unfulfilled.

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.

There is a cause, or a reason, behind everything that happens. This is the fundamental view behind the classical proposition the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which, in 1813, Schopenhauer chose as his subject for further examination in his doctoral dissertation On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason....

Roslyn's responsibilities—and powers—have grown since she accepted her destiny, but there are beings beneath the surface that want her magic. Kavan and Heath each have choices to make, both when it comes to Roslyn and their own futures. Back in Ellsgrove, Roslyn's family are dealing with the aftermath of an assassination attempt and an impending civil war. Cassidy works with the mages of Ellsgrove to fight for her father as Roslyn's gifts change things around them. The lands of Jay'Al and Ellsgrove are changing, but at what cost? Who will remain at the end to see it?

The southern Appalachians are rich in folk magic and witchery. This book explores the region's customs and traditions for magical healing, luck, prosperity, and more. Author Byron Ballard - known as the village witch of Asheville, North Carolina - teaches you about the old ways and why they work, from dowsing to communicating with spirits.

A beautiful forest. A terrifying legend. It’s 1986. Two strangers, hundreds of miles apart, grapple with disturbing incidents in a one-of-a-kind quaking aspen forest.

D’Souza explains that the reason Obama appears to be working to destroy America from within is found, as Obama himself admits, in The Dreams of My Father: a deeply hostile anticolonialism. Instilled in him by his father, this worldview has led President Obama to resent America and everything we stand for. D’Souza masterfully shows how Obama is working to weaken and punish America here and abroad.

Liberal democracy in America has always contained contradictions—most notably, a noble but abstract commitment to freedom, justice, and equality that, tragically, has seldom been realized in practice. While these contradictions have caused dissent and even violence, there was always an underlying and evolving solidarity drawn from the cultural resources of America’s “hybrid Enlightenment”. James Davison Hunter, who introduced the concept of “culture wars” 30 years ago, tells us in this new book that those historic sources of national solidarity have now largely dissolved.

As if meeting the parents wasn’t complicated enough… My boyfriend’s snooty parents are coming into town for the Yule Feast and they’re staying at the Beechwood Manor — for an entire week! With a paranormal meet-the-parents on the horizon, the last thing I need is to stumble into yet another murder investigation, but when I become a key witness, there’s no way to avoid it. Especially not when vampires are involved and my human partner-in-sleuthing is racing right into their path.

They shed their skin at midnight and ride the sleeping... In the shadowy corners of Louisiana's bayous, an ancient terror still prowls. The Boo Hag—a shapeshifting spirit that slips from its skin to torment the innocent—represents one of America's most enduring supernatural traditions, rooted in the profound spiritual heritage of enslaved Africans. Anthropologist David G. Stone takes listeners on a haunting journey through centuries of hidden folklore, revealing how these malevolent spirits evolved from West African cosmology into distinctly American entities.

Discover the uses and symbolic meanings of flowers over the centuries and across the globe. Flowers have been depicted as objects of beauty and wonder in countless paintings and poems, exchanged as tokens of love and affection, and displayed as symbols of both celebration and remembrance -...

The left and right will always have strong policy disagreements, but constructive debate and negotiation are not possible when each side demonizes the other. In this book, social psychologist Ronnie Janoff-Bulman provides a new framework for understanding why and how we disagree. Janoff-Bulman asks listeners to consider the challenging possibility that both liberalism and conservatism are morally based and reflect genuine concern for the country. Understanding that our political differences are rooted in two natural forms of morality can help us begin to detoxify our politics.

In a world desperate for grand solutions and thundering pronouncements, the lands of Soleth and Tel-Rohen lie parched, not just by drought, but by a deeper silence of the spirit.

In 1983 Chicago elected Harold Washington as the city's first black mayor. This is the story of Washington's improbable victory over Jane Byrne, heir to the late Richard J. Daley's political empire, and over Daley's eldest son. It's the story of a coalition outside the party's mainstream coming to power and ruling in the country's most political of cities. In Fire on the Prairie, Gary Rivlin reveals the personalities and philosophies of those who were at the center of events, from black separatists such as Lu Palmer to community organizers such as Jesse Jackson....

Two world wars, the Civil Rights movement, and a Jheri curl later, Blacks in America continue to have a complex and convoluted relationship with their hair. From the antebellum practice of shaving the head in an attempt to pass as a "free" person to the 2013 uproar over an Ohio school that banned Afro puffs, the issues surrounding Black hair continue to linger as we move through the 21stst century.

The first book to explore the historical role and residual impact of the Green Book, a travel guide for Black motorists.

Roslyn never wanted to be a princess, but when the King and his family die during a sickness her father is crowned king. Roslyn is the bastard daughter of the king and she was very different from the other young noblewomen: she was trained to be a warrior as well as a mage. Unsure of where she belongs, Roslyn embarks on a quest across the ocean to the lands of her mother, a continent that had been cut off from them for the last eighteen years. There she will not only discover who she truly is, but her ancestors have a plan for her as well.

Geneva Fielding is a researcher in the Archives of the Applied History department, prepping time travelers for their destinations. She loves the smell of old paper and chocolate croissants. One day, a Traveler fails an important test and cannot go. Instead of canceling the Trip, the dean appoints Geneva and her friend Peter Donatelli, a physicist, to take his place. They have three days to prepare to Travel to 1630s New England.

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.