This shocking, surprisingly entertaining romp into the intellectual nether regions of today?s underthirty set reveals the disturbing and, ultimately, incontrovertible truth: cyberculture is turning us into a society of know-nothings.

The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention

In Conservatives Without Conscience, John Dean, who served as White House counsel under Richard Nixon and then helped to break the Watergate scandal with his testimony before the Senate, takes a vivid and analytical look at a Republican Party that has changed drastically from the conservative movement that he joined in the mid-1960s as an admirer of Senator Barry Goldwater. Listen to our interview with Dean as part of our July 13 Amazon Wire podcast (along with interviews with Garrison...

In his most deeply personal work, religious scholar Needleman cuts a clear path through today's clamorous debates over the existence of God, illuminating an entirely new way of approaching the question of how to understand a higher power.

I n this new book, philosopher Jacob Needleman- whose voice and ideas have done so much to open the West to esoteric and Eastern religious ideas in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries-intimately considers humanity's most vital question: <...

While sailing alone one night in the shipping lanes across one of the busiest waterways in the world, John Burnett was attacked by pirates. Through sheer ingenuity and a little bit of luck, he survived, and his shocking firsthand experience became the inspiration for Dangerous Waters.

Today's breed of pirates are not the colorful cutthroats painted by the history books. Unlike the romantic images from yesteryear of Captain Hook, Long John Silver, and Blackbeard, modern pirates...

In The Girl with the Crooked Nose, Ted Botha tells the absorbing story of Frank Bender, a gifted, self-taught artist who can bring back the dead and the vanished through a unique, macabre sculpting talent. Bender has been the key to solving at least nine murders and tracking down numerous criminals. Then he is called upon to tackle the most challenging and bizarre case of his career.

Someone is killing the young women of Juarez. Since 1993, the decomposing bodies of as many as f...

An essential book for parents and teachers that explores how children?s individual strengths create success

With this groundbreaking work, educator Jenifer Fox is poised to change the conversation about education in this country. For too long, parents and teachers have focused on identifying and ?fixing? kids? weaknesses to improve academic performance. Passionately written and informed by Fox?s twenty-five years of experience, Your Child?s Strengths turns that flawed p...

Excerpts from Inside the Revolution

The Followers of Jihad: On April 1, 1979, Iran became the first Islamic republic in history. Three decades later, the shock waves from the Iranian Revolution are still being felt around the globe [and] we are rapidly approaching the most dangerous moment in the history of the Iranian Revolution. Iran’s senior leaders have stated publicly that the end of the world is “imminent.”… They are feverishly trying to build, buy, or steal nuclear weapons… Iran...

Noted science writer Nicholas Wade offers for the first time a convincing case based on a broad range of scientific evidence for the evolutionary basis of religion.

For at least the last fifty thousand years, and probably much longer, people have practiced religion. Yet little attention has been given, either by believers or atheists, to the question of whether this universal human behavior might have an evolutionary basis. Did religion evolve, in other words, beacause it helpe...

A journey through twenty years of politics with one of the most revered news analysts of our time

Daniel Schorr, an institution at CBS for decades and a twenty-year mainstay of NPR, is a legend in journalism. Come to Think of It is the first selection of Schorr?s observations on politics and American life from the years 1990 to the present?a peerless commentary on the history of our time. Schorr?s essays reveal him as a master of pithy, get-to-the-point analysis, whethe...

In What?s the Matter with Kansas?, Thomas Frank pointed out that a great number of Americans actually vote against their own interests. In The Political Mind, George Lakoff explains why.

As it turns out, human beings are not the rational creatures we?ve so long imagined ourselves to be. Ideas, morals, and values do not exist somewhere outside the body, ready to be examined and put to use. Instead, they exist quite literally inside the brain?and they take physical shape t...

"(E)xcellent...what makes Mr Brzezinski's account interesting - and, in parts, intellectually demanding - is the sense it makes of the great swirl of shifting forces that set the context." Financial Times"

Now in paperback: The major national bestseller that the New York Times says "tosses sand on liberal sacred cows"John Stossel -- award-winning journalist, tireless consumer-rights crusader, and anchor of ABC's newsmagazine 20/20 -- has built his reputation on his willingness to debunk conventional wisdom, no matter the source. In his latest New York Times bestseller, which has sold more than 200,000 copies in hardcover, he busts the myths, lies, and downright stupidity clogging media outlets ...

Science popularizer Aczel (Fermat's Last Theorem) offers an uninspired and all-too-brief look at a remarkable subject. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1956) succeeded in melding his life as a Jesuit priest and as a scientist at a time when the Catholic Church denied that such a thing was either possible or desirable. Teilhard's superiors prohibited him from publishing almost everything he wrote during his lifetime and forced him into exile from his native France. Published after...

Since 1960, Surfer magazine has been chronicling a pastime that confounds description. Now for the first time, Surfer has collected its eclectic array of surf journalism into one volume, from dyspeptic editorials and gnarly travel pieces to great fiction and humor writing. Each piece is introduced by the editors and accompanied by the full-color cover of the Surfer issue in which the article first appeared. With the top names of surf journalism, this authoritative volume ...

With more than one million copies sold, this is the first, best, and most comprehensive guide to private-sector scholarships, grants, and loans published in America. It gives students essential tips for determining which awards they qualify for, helps them write winning essays, applications, and cover letters, alerts them to scams and rip- offs, and provides useful lists of recommended websites and publications.

She may be smart, incisive, witty, and keenly observant but with the release of Are Men Necessary?--a series of pithy (some might say piqued) ruminations on the sexes--Maureen Dowd will never, ever be championed by guys. Not that she cares. Even those who seek to avoid her columns in the august pages of The New York Times are certain to stumble over her invective in syndication. Dowd, it often seems, is everywhere. So those seeking even more via this book should be warned: Ar...

Written by a man who is arguably the country’s most authoritative voice on counterterrorism, Crush the Cell demolishes, with simple logic, the edifice of false “terror punditry” that has been laid, brick by brick, since 9/11. A veteran of special ops, international diplomacy, and bruising clashes with federal law enforcement agencies, Michael Sheehan delivers in this book a two-part message: First, that we’ve wasted–and are continuing to waste–billio...

A REVELATORY AND DARKLY COMIC ADVENTURE THROUGH A NATION ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN—FROM THE HALLS OF CONGRESS TO THE BASES OF BAGHDAD TO THE APOCALYPTIC CHURCHES OF THE HEARTLAND


Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi set out to describe the nature of George Bush’s America in the post-9/11 era and ended up vomiting demons in an evangelical church in Texas, riding the streets of Baghdad in an American convoy to nowhere, searching for phantom ...

For the woman whose significant other spends hours glued to ESPN comes a fun and irreverent guide to understanding (and enjoying) the male-dominated world of spectator sports

From The Smart Girl’s Guide to Sports:
Welcome, ladies. This book will not make you a sports expert. It will not make you put down a great novel to watch football, or stop you from helping your kids with their homework because you have to watch the last five minutes of a...

The world's worst bioterrorist isn't the murderer who put anthrax spores into mail in the fall of 2001; it's Mother Nature, writes Madeline Drexler in this survey of infectious diseases. They're all here, described in detail from historical, scientific, and public-health perspectives: AIDS, influenza, the West Nile virus, and so on. Secret Agents is a good primer on each. The best chapter--and the scariest--may be the last one, which covers bioterrorism of the human variety (i.e., not ...