Alan Lightman

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

California

Spirituality in the Age of Science

From the acclaimed author of Einstein’s Dreams comes a rich, fascinating answer to the question, Can the scientifically inclined still hold space for spirituality? “Lightman…belongs to a noble tradition of science writers, including Oliver Sacks and Lewis Thomas, who can poke endlessly into a subject and…stir up fresh embers of wonder.” —The Wall Street Journal Gazing at the stars, falling in love, or listening to music, we sometimes feel a transcendent connection with a cosmic unity and things larger than ourselves. But these experiences are not easily understood by science, which holds that all things can be explained in terms of atoms and molecules. Is there space in our scientific worldview for these spiritual experiences? According to acclaimed physicist and novelist Alan Lightman, there may be. Drawing on intellectual history and conversations with contemporary scientists, philosophers, and psychologists, Lightman asks a series of thought-provoking questions that illuminate our strange place between the world of particles and forces and the world of complex human experience. Can strict materialism explain our appreciation of beauty? Or our feelings of connection to nature and to other people? Is there a physical basis for consciousness, the most slippery of all scientific problems? Lightman weaves these investigations together to propose what he calls “spiritual materialism”— the belief that we can embrace spiritual experiences without letting go of our scientific worldview. In his view, the breadth of the human condition is not only rooted in material atoms and molecules but can also be explained in terms of Darwinian evolution. What is revealed in this lyrical, enlightening book is that spirituality may not only be compatible with science, it also ought to remain at the core of what it means to be human.

The Transcendent Brain

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Doug Mader

Kevin T. Fitzgerald

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

Stories of Survival from an Inner-City Animal Hospital

A veterinarian's fight for his patients and staff lays bare the power of the human-animal bond. As one of the few exotic animal experts in California during his time running Noah's Ark Veterinary Hospital, Dr. Doug Mader was just as likely to be treating a lion as a house cat. In The Vet at Noah's Ark, his amazing protection of animals-from cats and dogs to emus, skunks, snakes, foxes, monkeys, and a host of other exotic animals--is recounted with all the thrill of an ER medical drama. And not only must Dr. Mader fight to protect the vulnerable animals in his care, but also his human staff navigating the social unrest of Los Angeles in the early 1990s. This beloved, multi-award winning volume from a veterinary hero often praised as a modern day James Herriot is a captivating tribute to our animal friends and the true stories of a doctor who goes above and beyond to protect them.

The Vet at Noah's Ark

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Amber Lyon

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Guiding Principles for a Magnetic and Joyful Life

We each hold the power to attract the life we want, the one we deserve, the one we dream of. Yet so many of us get stuck in a cycle of self-doubt, insecurities, and other issues. Amber Lyon builds on her successful coaching program and wildly popular Instagram to show you how to embrace and enhance your own power. "Magnetism" is all about creating alignment: between your authentic self + your life. The more aligned our actions, thoughts and behaviors are with our true self, the more flow, ease, and joy we invite into our lives. With meditations, prompts or reflections, You are a Magnet shares daily tools to create more ease, joy, and opportunity and discover the limitless potential for growth we have at our fingertips. It is a book for those who seek the best of themselves and what the world has to offer. What adventures lie beyond the corner? How do I trust that life will carry me when faced with doubt? How can I use what I've been through to empower myself and others? These are the searching questions that help you create expansion in your life, rather than rely on the convenient, "safe" path. Amber Lyon's astute, inspiring words and simple, soothing visuals are beloved by an engaged and rapidly growing fanbase. Now, she brings her foundational mission of helping seekers to simply navigate everyday life with a more positive outlook to her debut book. Using a 4-part framework (Alchemizing Fear /Cultivating Courage / The Magnetic Mindset / Living Through Joy), You Are a Magnet speaks to the same audiences as bestsellers by Vex King and Alex Elle.

You Are a Magnet

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Mehdi Hasan

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Win Every Argument shows how anyone can communicate with confidence, rise above the tit for tats on social media, and triumph in a successful and productive debate in the real world. MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan isn’t one to avoid arguments. He relishes them as the lifeblood of democracy and the only surefire way to establish the truth. Arguments help us solve problems, uncover new ideas we might not have considered, and nudge our disagreements toward mutual understanding. A good argument, made in good faith, has intrinsic value—and can also simply be fun. Arguments are everywhere—and especially given the fierce debates we’re all embroiled in today, everyone wants to win. In this riveting guide to the art of argument and rhetoric, Hasan shows you how. As a journalist, anchor, and interviewer who has clashed with politicians, generals, spy chiefs, and celebrities from across the world, Hasan reveals his tricks of the trade for the first time. Whether you are making a presentation at work or debating current political issues with a friend, Mehdi Hasan will teach you how to sharpen your speaking skills to make the winning case.

Win Every Argument

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C. J. Hauser

A Memoir in Essays

A memoir in essays that expands on the viral sensation “The Crane Wife” with a frank and funny look at love, intimacy, and self in the twenty-first century. From friends and lovers to blood family and chosen family, this “elegant masterpiece” (Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author of Hunger) asks what more expansive definitions of love might offer ​us all. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME, THE GUARDIAN, GARDEN & GUN "Hauser builds their life's inventory out of deconstructed personal narratives, resulting in a reading experience that's rich like a complicated dessert—not for wolfing down but for savoring in small bites." —The New York Times “Hauser’s wry, introspective investigation of their assumptions about love will likely free readers to examine their own personal narratives as well ... ‘The rare happy ending I appreciate is one that makes room for the whole painful fact of the world at the same time it offers the reader some joy,’ they write. The Crane Wife embraces this philosophy again and again as Hauser excavates their past loves and losses, thoughtfully examines them and declares the pain of love to be worth the risk.” —BookPage Ten days after calling off their wedding, CJ Hauser went on an expedition to Texas to study the whooping crane. After a week wading through the gulf, they realized they'd almost signed up to live someone else's life. Hauser releases themself from traditional narratives of happiness and goes looking for ways of living that leave room for the unexpected, making plenty of mistakes along the way. They kiss Internet strangers and officiates at a wedding. They reread Rebecca in the house their boyfriend once shared with his ex-wife and rewinds Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story to learn how not to lose yourself in a relationship. They think about Florence Nightingale at a robot convention and grief at John Belushi’s rock and roll gravesite, and the difference between those stories we’re asked to hold versus those we choose to carry. Told with the late-night barstool directness of your wisest, most bighearted friend, The Crane Wife is a book for everyone whose life doesn't look the way they thought it would; for everyone learning to find joy in the not-knowing; for everyone trying, if sometimes failing, to build a new sort of life story, a new sort of family, a new sort of home, to live in.

The Crane Wife

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Hua Hsu

A Memoir

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • A gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art, by the New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu “This book is exquisite and excruciating and I will be thinking about it for years and years to come.” —Rachel Kushner, New York Times bestselling author of The Flamethrowers and The Mars Room In the eyes of eighteen-year-old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken—with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity—is that he is exactly like everyone else. Ken, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is mainstream; for Hua, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, who makes ’zines and haunts Bay Area record shops, Ken represents all that he defines himself in opposition to. The only thing Hua and Ken have in common is that, however they engage with it, American culture doesn’t seem to have a place for either of them. But despite his first impressions, Hua and Ken become friends, a friendship built on late-night conversations over cigarettes, long drives along the California coast, and the successes and humiliations of everyday college life. And then violently, senselessly, Ken is gone, killed in a carjacking, not even three years after the day they first meet. Determined to hold on to all that was left of one of his closest friends—his memories—Hua turned to writing. Stay True is the book he’s been working on ever since. A coming-of-age story that details both the ordinary and extraordinary, Stay True is a bracing memoir about growing up, and about moving through the world in search of meaning and belonging.

Stay True

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Susan Lieu

An emotionally raw memoir about the crumbling of the American Dream and a daughter of refugees who searches for answers after her mother dies during plastic surgery. Susan Lieu has long been searching for answers. About her family’s past and about her own future. Refugees from the Vietnam War, Susan’s family escaped to California in the 1980s after five failed attempts. Upon arrival, Susan’s mother was their savvy, charismatic North Star, setting up two successful nail salons and orchestrating every success—until Susan was eleven. That year, her mother died from a botched tummy tuck. After the funeral, no one was ever allowed to talk about her or what had happened. For the next twenty years, Susan navigated a series of cascading questions alone—why did the most perfect person in her life want to change her body? Why would no one tell her about her mother’s life in Vietnam? And how did this surgeon, who preyed on Vietnamese immigrants, go on operating after her mother’s death? Sifting through depositions, tracking down the surgeon’s family, and enlisting the help of spirit channelers, Susan uncovers the painful truth of her mother, herself, and the impossible ideal of beauty. The Manicurist’s Daughter is much more than a memoir about grief, trauma, and body image. It is a story of fierce determination, strength in shared culture, and finding your place in the world.

The Manicurist's Daughter

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Tara Schuster

And Other Rituals to Fix Your Life, from Someone Who's Been There

Brutally honest, often hilarious, hard-won lessons in learning to love and care for yourself from a former vice president at Comedy Central who was called “ahead of her time” by Jordan Peele “You’re going to want Tara Schuster to become your new best friend.”—Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Untamed “Compelling, persuasive, and useful no matter where you are in your life.”—Chelsea Handler, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Life Will Be the Death of Me By the time she was in her late twenties, Tara Schuster was a rising TV executive who had worked for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and helped launch Key & Peele to viral superstardom. By all appearances, she had mastered being a grown-up. But beneath that veneer of success, she was a chronically anxious, self-medicating mess. No one knew that her road to adulthood had been paved with depression, anxiety, and shame, owing in large part to her minimally parented upbringing. She realized she’d hit rock bottom when she drunk-dialed her therapist pleading for help. Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies is the story of Tara’s path to re-parenting herself and becoming a “ninja of self-love.” Through simple, daily rituals, Tara transformed her mind, body, and relationships, and shows how to • fake gratitude until you actually feel gratitude • excavate your emotional wounds and heal them with kindness • identify your self-limiting beliefs, kick them to the curb, and start living a life you choose • silence your inner frenemy and shield yourself from self-criticism • carve out time each morning to start your day empowered, inspired, and ready to rule • create a life you truly, totally f*cking LOVE This is the book Tara wished someone had given her and it is the book many of us desperately need: a candid, hysterical, addictively readable, practical guide to growing up (no matter where you are in life) and learning to love yourself in a non-throw-up-in-your-mouth-it’s-so-cheesy way.

Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies

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Annie Reed

Cassie Chadwick, the Greatest Grifter of the Gilded Age

Before there was Anna Delvey or Elizabeth Holmes, there was Cassie Chadwick. The first woman-using criminal cunning, some confidence, and a bit of charm--to bring down a federal agent, a bank, and a city's worth of men. Paroled felon. Rich doctor's wife. Famous clairvoyant. The best con artists know how to reinvent themselves, time and time again. Cassie Chadwick, one of history's most successful con artists, was a master of the trade. Over the course of fifteen years, she swept from town to town, assuming new identities and running new swindles at each railroad stop. In the dusk of the Gilded Age, years after the robber barons had amassed their fortunes, she was amassing her own. Then came the Carnegie con. Using her wits and a series of forged documents, Cassie convinced prominent men from Cleveland to New York City that she was Andrew Carnegie's illegitimate daughter. Blinded by the name of the most powerful man in the world, businessmen lined up to loan her hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time. The con made her impossibly rich. The crash shattered banks and bankers alike. Her sensational trial drew the eyes of a nation that couldn't get enough of the woman, who newspapers called the Queen of Swindlers, the Duchess of Diamonds, the High Priestess of Fraudulent Finance. Indeed, when Charles Ponzi's infamous scheme collapsed in 1920, reporters scoffed that "Ponzi is a piker compared to Cassie." Interspersing Cassie's crimes with stories of an unsuspecting Andrew Carnegie, author Annie Reed spins an enthralling, page turning tale of true crime. Could the rumors be true? Can Cassie's money last? Will she escape the electric chair? Told with a gossip columnists' charm and wit, The Impostor Heiress, is a rollicky trickster's tale that will appeal to history buffs and true crime aficionados alike to bring one of the greatest swindlers of all time back into the public eye.

The Impostor Heiress

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Tom McGrath

America, the Eighties, and the Creation of an Unequal Nation

In Triumph of the Yuppies, Tom McGrath presents the first-ever book-length history of the Yuppie phenomenon, chronicling the roots, rise, triumph and (seeming) fall of the "young urban professionals" who radically altered American life between 1980 and 1987. By the time their obituary was being written in the late 1980s, Yuppies--the elite, uber‑educated faction of the Baby Boom generation--had become something of a cultural punchline. This was understandable: a species that regularly drank white wine spritzers deserved to be mocked. But amidst the Yuppies's preoccupation with money, work, and career success; their colonization of previously working‑class neighborhoods in various American cities; their self‑evident self‑absorption; and their obsession with having just the right status‑signifying stuff, from BMWs and VCRs to American Express cards and Cuisinarts, there was something serious happening, too, something that continues to have profound ramifications on American culture four decades later. Based on new interviews with people at the center of the action in the '80s, this book brings to life the ascendance of this Yuppie elite. It chronicles educated Boomers' transformation from idealists in the late 1960s to careerists in the early 1980s, and charts how marketers, the media, and politicians pivoted to appeal to this influential new group. And it shows how Yuppie values impacted the broader culture--from gentrification in cities and an obsession with money and career success to an indulgent materialism. Most significantly, it shows how the me‑first mindset typical of Yuppieness helped created the largest income inequality in a century. Brimming with lively and nostalgic details (think Jane Fonda, The Sharper Image, and laughable tidbits of Yuppie culture), Triumph of the Yuppies is a portrait of America just as it was beginning to come apart--and the origin story of the America we live in today.

Triumph of the Yuppies

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B. Janet Hibbs

Anthony Rostain

Parenting Young Adults in an Age of Uncertainty

You're Not Done Yet

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Marty Skovlund

Joe Kent

The True Story of a Mother at War

The extraordinary story of American special operator and trailblazer Shannon Kent, who hunted high value targets on classified missions in the most dangerous locales on earth while trying to balance her life as a wife and mother. Of the 1.3 million active-duty service members in the US military, only a tiny fraction are selected as "operators." Shannon Kent was one of the first women to serve at this level and was widely recognized as one of the best. Shannon served as a Navy cryptologic technician, responsible for signals intelligence and electronic warfare, but her proficiency with language set her apart. She was assigned to a unit so secretive that its name can't even be printed here, where she worked clandestinely to hunt the most wanted terrorists in the world. Send Me is Shannon's heroic life story, revealing the truth of both her work and the challenges she faced while trying to raise a family with her husband Joe, himself a Special Forces soldier. He and Shannon met in a war zone, their love forged during a special operations training course, their dedication spanning multiple combat deployments and the birth of their two boys. It is the legacy of an extraordinary woman who rose to the apex of the military, working with the most elite forces in the world, lifting the veil from the life of a Special Forces family to share their duty, sacrifice, and humanity.

Send Me

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Anna Akbari

How Three Women Caught America's Biggest Catfish

Part memoir, part explosive window into the mind of a catfish, a thrilling personal account of three women coming face-to-face with an internet predator and teaming up to expose them. In 2011, three successful and highly educated women fell head over heels for the brilliant and charming Ethan Schuman. Unbeknownst to the others, each exchanged countless messages with Ethan, staying up late into the evenings to deepen their connections with this seemingly perfect man. His detailed excuses about broken webcams and complicated international calling plans seemed believable, as did last minute trip cancellations. After all, why would he lie? Ethan wasn't after money -- he never convinced his marks to shell out thousands of dollars for some imagined crisis. Rather, he ensnared these women in a web of intense emotional intimacy. After the trio independently began to question inconsistencies in their new flame's stories, they managed to find one another and uncover a greater deception than they could've ever imagined. As Anna Akbari and the women untangled their catish's web, they found dozens of other victims and realized that without a proper crime, there was no legal reason for "Ethan" to ever stop. THERE IS NO ETHAN catalogues Akbari's experience as both victim and observer. By looking at the bigger picture of where these stories unfold -- a world where technology mediates our relationships; where words and images are easily manipulated; and where truth, reality, and identity have become slippery terms -- Akbari gives a page-turning and riveting examination of why stories like Ethan's matter for us all.

There Is No Ethan

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Sara Jane Ho

How to Be Your Best Self in Any Situation

Founder of a global etiquette school and star of her own Netflix series Sara Jane Ho teaches readers how to thrive socially in a variety of situations, in person and online. Etiquette, Sara Jane says, is the glue that holds society together. Humans are social creatures, after all--we need connection to survive. But with global cultures in flux and the post-pandemic digital age, shadow epidemics of anxiety and loneliness are on the rise. Plus, the old rules of "decorum" don't match the times. Amidst all this withdrawal and change, social growth can feel out of reach. How do we leave the comfort of our homes, step away from our screens, and interact face to face? How do we create genuine bonds with people we've just met, and how do we maintain those ties throughout our lives? Even the most resilient social butterflies among us face sticky situations--from accidentally-sent invites to unruly work and family encounters--any advice would help. In her signature cheeky yet pragmatic style, Sara Jane Ho imparts a lifetime's worth of lessons, pro-tips, and FAQs on social and digital etiquette across the five main microcultures in our lives: Friendship & Social Life, Work, Dating & Relationships, Family, and Food & Travel. From jumping everyday hurdles to discerning unspoken, cross-cultural cues, Mind Your Manners helps us feel the joy and transformation of social fluency--that deep comfort that comes from connection, inclusion, and presenting our best self in any situation.

Mind Your Manners

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Mary Gabriel

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

A Rebel Life

In this riveting biography, award-winning author Mary Gabriel chronicles the meteoric rise and enduring influence of the greatest female pop icon of the modern era: Madonna. With her arrival on the music scene in the early 1980s, Madonna generated nothing short of an explosion--as great as that of Elvis or the Beatles--taking the nation by storm with her liberated politics and breathtaking talent. Within two years of her 1983 debut album, a flagship Macy's store in Manhattan held a Madonna lookalike contest featuring Andy Warhol as a judge, and opened a department called "Madonna-land." But Madonna was more than just a pop star. Everywhere, fans gravitated to her as an emblem of a new age, one in which feminism could shed the buttoned-down demeanor of the 1970s and feel relevant to a new generation. Amid the scourge of AIDS, she brought queer identities into the mainstream, fiercely defending a person's right to love whomever--and be whoever--they wanted. Despite fierce criticism, she never separated her music from her political activism. And, as an artist, she never stopped experimenting. Madonna existed to push past boundaries by creating provocative, visionary music, videos, films, and live performances that changed culture globally. Deftly tracing Madonna's story from her Michigan roots to her rise to super-stardom, master biographer Mary Gabriel captures the dramatic life and achievements of one of the greatest artists of our time.

Madonna

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Sheryl Sandberg

Adam. Grant

Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy

"The author's experience with grief after the sudden death of her husband, combined with social science on resilience"--

Option B

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Alexandra Horowitz

What Dogs See, Smell, and Know

The bestselling book that asks what dogs know and how they think. The answers will surprise and delight you as Alexandra Horowitz, a cognitive scientist, explains how dogs perceive their daily worlds, each other, and that other quirky animal, the human. Temple Grandin meets Stephen Pinker in this engaging and informative look at what goes on inside the minds of dogs—from a cognitive scientist with a background at The New Yorker. With more than 52 million pet dogs in America today, it’s clear we are a nation of unabashed dog-lovers. Yet the relationship between dogs and humans remains a fascinating mystery, as no one really knows what goes on in the canine mind. Now, in Inside of a Dog, Alexandra Horowitz fuses her perspectives as both scientist and dog-owner to deliver a fresh look at the world of dogs—as seen from the animal’s point of view. Inspired by her years of living with her own dog, Pumpernickel, who was a constant source of delight and mystery, Horowitz’s mind became filled with questions and ideas. In crisp, clear prose, she draws on her research in the field of dog cognition to give readers a sense of a dog’s perceptual and cognitive abilities—and paints a picture of what the canine experience is like. Horowitz’s own scientific journey, and the insights she uncovered, allowed her to understand her dog better and appreciate her more. Containing up-to-the minute research and providing many moments of dog-behavior recognition, this lively and absorbing book helps dog owners to see their best friend’s behavior in a different, and revealing light, allowing them to understand their pets and enjoy their company even more.

Inside of a Dog

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Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

The Hidden Life of Dogs

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Ann Wolbert Burgess

Steven Matthew Constantine

Murderers, Mindhunters, and My Quest to Decipher the Criminal Mind

A vivid behind-the-scenes look into the creation of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit and the evolution of criminal profiling, written by the pioneering forensic nurse who transformed the way the FBI studies, profiles, and catches serial killers.

Lurking beneath the progressive activism and sex positivity in the 1970-80s, a dark undercurrent of violence rippled across the American landscape. With reported cases of sexual assault and homicide on the rise, the FBI created a specialized team--the "Mindhunters" better known as the Behavioral Science Unit--to track down the country's most dangerous criminals. And yet narrowing down a seemingly infinite list of potential suspects seemed daunting at best and impossible at worst--until Dr. Ann Wolbert Burgess stepped on the scene.

In A Killer By Design, Burgess reveals how her pioneering research on sexual assault and trauma caught the attention of the FBI, and steered her right into the middle of a chilling serial murder investigation in Nebraska. Over the course of the next two decades, she helped the budding unit identify, interview, and track down dozens of notoriously violent offenders, including Ed Kemper ("The Co-Ed Killer"), Dennis Rader ("("BTK"), Henry Wallace ("The Taco Bell Strangler"), Jon Barry Simonis ("The Ski-Mask Rapist"), and many others. As one of the first women trailblazers within the FBI's hallowed halls, Burgess knew many were expecting her to crack under pressure and recoil in horror--but she was determined to protect future victims at any cost. This book pulls us directly into the investigations as she experienced them, interweaving never-before-seen interview transcripts and crime scene drawings alongside her own vivid recollections to provide unprecedented insight into the minds of deranged criminals and the victims they left behind. Along the way, Burgess also paints a revealing portrait of a formidable institution on the brink of a seismic scientific and cultural reckoning--and the men forced to reconsider everything they thought they knew about crime.

Haunting, heartfelt, and deeply human, A Killer By Design forces us to confront the age-old question that has long plagued our criminal justice system: "What drives someone to kill, and how can we stop them?"

As Featured on ABC 20/20 

One of Amazon's "Best True Crime" Books

A "Best Book of the Month" Pick for Amazon (December 2021)

An Apple Audio "Must-Listen" (December 2021)

A Killer by Design

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Katie Spalding

The Untold Weirdness of History's Greatest Geniuses

A hilarious look at how the line between 'genius' and 'extremely lucky idiot' is finer than we'd like to admit. The more you delve into the stories behind history's greatest names, the more you realize they have something in common: a mystifying lack of common sense. Take Marie Curie, famous for both discovering radioactivity and having absolutely zero lab safety protocols. Or Lord Byron, who literally took a bear with him to university. Or James Glaisher, a hot-air balloon pioneer who nearly ended up as the world's first human satellite... From Nikola Tesla falling in love with a pigeon to non-swimmer Albert Einstein's near-fatal love of sailing holidays, Edison's Ghosts is filled with examples of the so-called brightest and best of humanity doing, to put it bluntly, some really dumb shit. These are the stories that deserve to be told but never are: the hilarious, regrettable and downright baffling lesser-known achievements of the men and women who somehow managed to bungle their way into our history books.

Edison's Ghosts

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Stephen Mills

A Memoir of Stolen Boyhood

"An unparalleled achievement, a work of shattering, almost unbearable radiance. I did not stop crying throughout. For Mills. For my young self. For all of us who have lived and continue to live in that pitiless abyss of childhood abuse. To read this courageous book is to be transformed utterly by Mills's empathy, resilience, and grace. Mark my words: Chosen is destined to be a classic because this is a book that will save lives."
--Junot Díaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

At thirteen years old, Stephen Mills is chosen for special attention by the director of his Jewish summer camp, a charismatic social worker intent on becoming his friend. Stephen, whose father died when he was four, places his trust in this authority figure, who first grooms and then molests him for two years.

Stephen tells no one, but the aftershocks rip through his adult life, as intense as his denial: self-loathing, drug abuse, petty crime, and horrific nightmares, all made worse by the discovery that his abuser is moving from camp to camp, state to state, molesting other boys. Only physical and mental collapse bring Stephen to confront the truth of his boyhood and begin the painful process of recovery--as well as a decades-long crusade to stop a serial predator, find justice, and hold to account those who failed the children in their care.

The trauma of sexual abuse is shared by one out of every six men, yet very few have broken their silence. Unflinching and compulsively readable, Chosen eloquently speaks for those countless others and their families. It is a rare act of consummate courage and generosity--the indelible story of a man who faces his torment and his tormentor and, in the process, is made whole.

Chosen

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Mary Gauthier

The Art and Healing Power of Songwriting

Mary Gauthier was twelve years old when she was given her Aunt Jenny's old guitar and taught herself to play with a Mel Bay basic guitar workbook. and music offered her a window to a world where others felt the way she did. Songs became lifelines to her, and she longed to write her own, one day.Then, for a decade, while struggling with addiction, Gauthier put her dream away and her call to songwriting faded. It wasn't until she got sober and went to an open mic with a friend did she realize that she not only still wanted to write songs, she needed to. Today, Gauthier is a decorated musical artist, with numerous awards and recognition for her songwriting, including a Grammy nomination.In Saved by a Song, Mary Gauthier pulls the curtain back on the artistry of songwriting. Part memoir, part philosophy of art, part nuts and bolts of songwriting, her book celebrates the redemptive power of song to inspire and bring seemingly different kinds of people together.

Saved by a Song

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Christine Yu

The Groundbreaking Science of Women Athletes

“Up to Speed is a roadmap and toolbox for athletes of all ages. Every coach should read it and discuss it with their athletes. I wish I had been able to read this book while I was competing.” —Kara Goucher, Olympic long-distance runner and author of The Longest Race How the latest science can help women achieve their athletic potential Over the last fifty years, women have made extraordinary advances in athletics. More women than ever are playing sports and staying active longer. Whether they’re elite athletes looking for an edge or enthusiastic amateurs, women deserve a culture of sports that helps them thrive: training programs and equipment designed to work with their bodies, as well as guidelines for nutrition and injury prevention that are based in science and tailored to their lived experience. Yet too often the guidance women receive is based on research that fails to consider their experiences or their bodies. So much of what we take as gospel about exercise and sports science is based solely on studies of men. The good news is, this is finally changing. Researchers are creating more inclusive studies to close the gender data gap. They’re examining the ways women can boost athletic performance, reduce injury, and stay healthy. Sports and health journalist Christine Yu disentangles myth and gender bias from real science, making the case for new approaches that can help women athletes excel at every stage of life, from adolescence to adulthood, through pregnancy, menopause, and beyond. She explains the latest research and celebrates the researchers, athletes, and advocates pushing back against the status quo and proposing better solutions to improve the active and athletic lives of women and girls.

Up to Speed

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David R. Samson

How to Channel Our Foundational Human Instincts into a Force for Good

An astounding and inspiring look at the science behind tribalism, and how we can learn to harness it to improve the world around us.

What do you think of when you hear the word "tribalism?" For many, it conjures images of bigotry, xenophobia, and sectarian violence. Others may envision their own tribe: family, friends, and the bonds of loyalty that keep them together. Tribalism is one of the most complex and ancient evolutionary forces; it gave us the capacity for cooperation and competition, and allowed us to navigate increasingly complex social landscapes. It is so powerful that it can predict our behavior even better than race, class, gender, or religion. But in our vast modern world, has this blessing become a curse?

Our Tribal Future explores a central paradox of our species: how altruism, community, kindness, and genocide are all driven by the same core adaptation. Evolutionary anthropologist David R. Samson engages with cutting-edge science and philosophy, as well as his own field research with small-scale societies and wild chimpanzees, to explain the science, ethics, and history of tribalism in compelling and accessible terms.

This bold and brilliant book reveals provocative truths about our nature. Readers will discover that tribalism cannot, and should not, be eliminated entirely--to do so would be to destroy what makes us human. But is it possible to channel the best of this instinct to enrich our lives while containing the worst of its dangers?

Our Tribal Future

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