Human Culture

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER MORE THAN 1 MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE The oldest cultures in the world have mastered the art of raising happy, well-adjusted children. What can we learn from them? “Hunt, Gather, Parent is full of smart ideas that I immediately wanted to force on my own kids...

The study of human evolution is advancing rapidly. Newly discovered fossil evidence is adding ever more pieces to the puzzle of our past, while revolutionary technological advances in the study of ancient DNA are completely reshaping theories of early human populations and migrations. In this Very Short Introduction, Bernard Wood traces the history of paleoanthropology from its beginnings in the 18th century to the very latest fossil finds.

In this extraordinary book, an award-winning author tells the story of how humans invented history, from the Stone Age to the Virtual Age “Terrific… Tamim Ansary explores the underappreciated ways that empires, nations, and smaller sets of people have responded to their surroundings...

In this Hugo-nominated novel, Neanderthal physicist Ponter Boddit brings Canadian geneticist Mary Vaughan back to his world to explore the near-utopian civilization of the Neanderthals. Boddit serves as a Candide figure, the naive visitor whose ignorance about our society makes him a perfect tool to analyze human tendencies toward violence, over-population, and environmental degradation.

From entomologist Barrett Klein comes a buzz-worthy exploration of the many ways insects have affected human society, history, and culture Insects surround us. They fuel life on Earth through their roles as pollinators, predators, and prey, but rarely do we consider the outsize influence they...

Modern humans have come a long way in the seventy thousand years they’ve walked the earth. Art, science, culture, trade—on the evolutionary food chain, we’re true winners. But it hasn’t always been smooth sailing, and sometimes—just occasionally—we’ve managed to truly f*ck things...

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence and labor-saving technologies like self-checkouts and automated factories, the future of work has never been more uncertain, and even jobs requiring high levels of human interaction are no longer safe. The Last Human Job explores the human connections that underlie our work, arguing that what people do for each other in these settings is valuable and worth preserving.

Human Design is the next evolution after Myers-Briggs, the Enneagram, and other innovative profiling systems. Whether your field is psychotherapy, recovery, coaching, or healing arts, and whether your clients are individuals, couples, families, or business teams, Understanding Your Clients through Human Design will empower your work and call you to reconsider how you approach people. Inspire your practice with this groundbreaking and accessible approach and take your work to the next level!

Humans are a puzzling species. On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the wild, often failing to overcome even basic challenges, like obtaining food, building shelters, or avoiding predators. On the other hand, human groups have produced ingenious technologies, sophisticated languages, and complex institutions that have permitted us to successfully expand into a vast range of diverse environments. What has enabled us to dominate the globe, more than any other species, while remaining virtually helpless as lone individuals?

A seismic shift is underway—one that will redefine work, value, and even what it means to be human. Artificial Intelligence is not just disrupting industries—it’s beginning to outperform humans in areas once considered exclusively ours: complex reasoning, creativity, even emotional...

It was with Human, All Too Human, first published in 1878, that Nietzsche developed the aphoristic style that so suited his challenging views and uncompromising style. The text is divided into three main sections: 'Of the First and Last Things', 'History of the Moral Feelings' and 'The Religious Life'.

The author of the legendary #1 New York Times bestseller The Seat of the Soul shows us step-by-fascinating-step how to create a life of love and where that will lead for humanity in this “unique and transformative book” (Ellen Burstyn, Academy Award–winning actress). Internationally...

Cheese Trekking recounts the author’s experiences visiting pastoral communities and cheesemakers in various countries and explains how cheeses can be local manifestations while also representing global archetypes, strategies that have been adopted in many places. It describes the constellations (a range of complementary milk foods that utilize all byproducts of cheesemaking) of various regions through a wide-angle lens. The central premise is that milk has a terroir, born from the plants and ecology of a landscape, that is concentrated via ruminant digestion and lactation.

A sweeping exploration of the ways in which emotions shaped the course of human history, and how our experience and understanding of emotions have evolved along with us. We humans like to think of ourselves as rational creatures, who, as a species, have relied on calculation and intellect to...

A lively, hilarious, and entirely truthful look at the druggie side of history’s most famous figures, including Shakespeare, George Washington, the Beatles, and more Did you know that Alexander the Great was a sloppy drunk and William Shakespeare was a stoner? Or how about the fact that Steve...

Though created by humans, our technologies, markets, and institutions often contain an antihuman agenda. Douglas Rushkoff, digital theorist and host of the NPR-One podcast Team Human, reveals the dynamics of this antihuman machinery and invites us to remake these aspects of society in ways that foster our humanity. In 100 aphoristic statements, his manifesto exposes how forces for human connection have turned into ones of isolation and repression.

A fascinating investigation of the genetics and neuroscience of human differences. The thesis of Human Diversity is that advances in genetics and neuroscience are overthrowing an intellectual orthodoxy that has ruled the social sciences for decades. The core of the orthodoxy consists of three...

Living with Dad was like living with a stranger—as a kid I often had trouble connecting and relating to him. But I was always proud of him. Even before Star Trek, I’d see him popping up in bit roles on some of my favorite TV shows like Get Smart, Sea Hunt, and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. And then one night he brought home Polaroids of himself in makeup and wardrobe for a pilot he was working on. It was December 1964 and nobody had heard of Star Trek. Still, the eight-year-old me had watched enough Outer Limits and My Favorite Martian to understand exactly what I was looking at.

An inside view of the AI revolution, from the people and companies making it happen. How did we build large language models? How do they think, if they think? What will the world look like if we have billions of AIs that are as smart as humans, or even smarter?

"Subtly altered how I see the world." —Michelle Goldberg, New York Times “[Status and Culture] consistently posits theories I'd never previously considered that instantly feel obvious.” —Chuck Klosterman, author of The Nineties “Why are you the way that you are? Status and Culture...