The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari · 456 pages

From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.” One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What hap

Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity

Andrew Solomon · 721 pages

Solomon’s startling proposition in *Far from the Tree* is that being exceptional is at the core of the human condition—that difference is what unites us. He writes about families coping with deafness, dwarfism, Down's syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, or multiple severe disabilities; with children who are prodigies, who are conceived in rape, who become criminals, and who are transgender. While eac

Everything Is Obvious: How Common Sense Fails

Duncan J. Watts · 335 pages

Discusses how the concept of common sense is inadequate in an increasingly complex world and draws on multiple disciplines to offer insight into the sources of such topics as popularity, economics, and self-deception.

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Nassim Nicholas Taleb · 400 pages

The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

Iain McGilchrist · 608 pages

"Why is the brain divided? The difference between right and left hemispheres has been puzzled over for centuries. In this book, Iain McGilchrist draws on a vast body of recent brain research, illustrated with case histories, to reveal that the difference is profound - not just this or that function, but two whole, coherent, but incompatible ways of experiencing the world. The left hemisphere is de

The Meme Machine

Susan Blackmore · 264 pages

After Richard Dawkins' *The Selfish Gene*, Susan Blackmore drive us deeply into the theory of the meme, social and cultural "replicators", trying to explain the human unique ability to imitate. Altruism, ideas, human behaviours, sex, poetry, music... seems to be simply the result of such as memetic selection... > Even our inner conscious self and our sense of free will are illlusion created by

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Jared Diamond · 592 pages

"In his Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond examined how and why Western civilizations developed the technologies and immunities that allowed them to dominate much of the world. Now, Diamond probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates?" "As in Guns, G

Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals

Hal Herzog · 334 pages

Does living with a pet really make people happier and healthier? What can we learn from biomedical research with mice? Who enjoys a better quality of life -- the chicken destined for your dinner plate or the rooster in a Saturday night cockfight? Why is it wrong to eat the family dog? Drawing on more than two decades of research into the emerging field of anthrozoology, the science of human–animal

The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind

Gustave Le Bon · 208 pages

"Gustave LeBon's The Crowd is not only a classic, but one of the best-selling scientific books in social psychology and collective behavior ever written. Here, LeBon analyzes the nature of crowds and their role in political movements. He presents crowd behavior as a problem of science and power, a natural phenomenon with practical implications. Originally published in 1895, LeBon's book was the fi

Civilization and Its Discontents

Sigmund Freud · 116 pages

Originally published in 1930, this book seeks to answer ultimate questions. What influences led to the creation of civilization? How did it come to be? What determines its course? In this classic work, Freud addresses the contest between aggression and eros, and speaks to issues of human creativity and fulfillment, the place of beauty in culture, and the effects of repression.

Outliers: The Story of Success

Malcolm Gladwell · 320 pages

In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their

De la démocratie en Amérique

Alexis de Tocqueville, Gustave de Beaumont · 436 pages

The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

Jonathan Haidt · 297 pages

Applies the latest findings in psychology and brain research to the wisdom of the ancients to define what makes people happy and how you can find more happiness in your life. Confirms and builds on the happiness formula defined by other psychologists: H=S+C+V or Happiness = your biological Setpoint + the Conditions of your life + the Voluntary activities you do

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison

Michel Foucault · 333 pages

In this brilliant work, the most influential philosopher since Sartre suggests that such vaunted reforms as the abolition of torture and the emergence of the modern penitentiary have merely shifted the focus of punishment from the prisoner's body to his soul.

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Julian Jaynes · 486 pages

At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, o

Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation

Silvia Federici · 285 pages

Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences

Cordelia Fine · 320 pages

Subtitle: How our minds, society, and neurosexism create difference Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience and psychology, the author criticizes claims about innate biological differences between men and women's minds as being faulty and exaggerated and considers how cultural and societal beliefs contribute to sex differences. Cornelia Fine is an academic psychologist.

Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson

Jennifer Michael Hecht · 551 pages

The Empathic Civilization: The Race To Global Consciousness In A World In Crisis

Jeremy Rifkin · 688 pages

The Story of Psychology

Morton Hunt · 896 pages

"Fully revised, and incorporating the dramatic developments of the last fifteen years, The Story of Psychology is a graceful and absorbing chronicle of one of the great human inquiries - the search for the true causes of our behavior." -- Back cover.

Status Anxiety

Alain de Botton · 306 pages

This is a book about an almost universal anxiety that rarely gets mentioned directly: an anxiety about what others think of us; about whether we’re judged a success or a failure, a winner or a loser. This is a book about status anxiety. We care about our status for a simple reason: because most people tend to be nice to us according to the amount of status we have (it is no coincidence that the f

From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present

Jacques Barzun · 896 pages

"Highly regarded here and abroad for some thirty works of cultural history and criticism, master historian Jacques Barzun has now set down in one continuous narrative the sum of his discoveries and conclusions about the whole of Western culture since 1500.". "In this account, Barzun describes what Western Man wrought from the Renaissance and Reformation down to the present in the double light of

Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud

Herbert Marcuse · 277 pages

This is Herbert Marcuse's masterpiece which transfixed youth in the 1960s, convincing the New Left there was hope in revolutionary activity. It's also Marcuse encounter with Signmund Freud, well worth the time to decipher it. Narcuse is optimistic, in that if we tame or transform capitalism, we can fix ourselves. It's a far cry from Freud's pessimistic outlook.

Man's Search for Meaning

Viktor E. Frankl · 165 pages

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Based on his own experience and the stories of his patients, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. At the heart of his theory, known a