"It's no secret that men often behave in mystifying ways, but in recent years we've witnessed so many spectacular public displays of male excess--indecent politicians, sleazy academics, philandering sports stars--that we're left to wonder whether something has come unwired in the collective male psyche. In the essays collected here, Kipnis revisits the archetypes of wayward masculinity that have captured her imagination over the years: the scumbag,...

"A generous selection of Frazier's most sophisticated and uproarious feature stories"--

"Taking its name from the moon's dark plains, misidentified as seas by early astronomers, The Black Maria investigates African diasporic histories, the consequences of racism within American culture, and the question of human identity. Central to this project is a desire to recognize the lives of Eritrean refugees who have been made invisible by years of immigration crisis, refugee status, exile, and resulting statelessness. The recipient of a 2015...

"Why do we do the things we do? Over a decade in the making, this game-changing book is Robert Sapolsky's genre-shattering attempt to answer that question as fully as perhaps only he could, looking at it from every angle. Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: he starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from...

Three hundred and forty-eight years, six months, and nineteen days ago to-day, the Parisians awoke to the sound of all the bells in the triple circuit of the city, the university, and the town ringing a full peal. The sixth of January 1482, is not, however, a day of which history has preserved the memory. There was nothing notable in the event, which thus set the bells and the bourgeois of Paris in a ferment from early morning. It was neither an assault...

"An updated edition of a classic African American autobiography, with new supplementary materials. The preeminent American slave narrative first published in 1845, Frederick Douglass's Narrative powerfully details the life of the abolitionist from his birth into slavery to his escape to the North in 1838. Douglass tells how he endured the daily physical and spiritual brutalities of his owners and drivers, how he learned to read and write, and how...

The late 1600s. Distinguished English polymath, Robert Hooke, and an eccentric Dutch cloth-merchant, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek look down their handmade microscopes. What they see introduced a radical concept that swept through biology and medicine, touching virtually every aspect of the two sciences, and altering both forever. Presenting revelatory and exhilarating stories of scientists, doctors, and the patients whose lives may be saved by their work,...

"Based on years of investigative reporting and unprecedented fieldwork, Walking the Bowl immerses readers in the daily lives of four unforgettable characters: Lusabilo, a determined waste picker; Kapula, a burned-out brothel worker; Moonga, a former rock crusher turned beggar; and Timo, an ambitious gang leader. These children navigate the violent and poverty-stricken underworld of Lusaka, one of Africa’s fastest growing cities. When the dead body...

"This is the perfect time for a modern-day Scarlet Letter--a radically empathetic book about public shaming, and about shaming as a form of social control. It has become such a big part of our lives it has begun to feel weird and empty when there isn't anyone to be furious about. Whole careers are being ruined by one mistake. A transgression is revealed. Our collective outrage at it has the force of a hurricane. Then we all quickly forget about it...

"The founder of a network of influencers from the worlds of business, science, art, sports, and nonprofits, Jon Levy, explains the social science behind connecting with people and creating lasting communities"--