Brian Fagan

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Minnesota

How Climate Changed Civilization

Humanity evolved in an Ice Age in which glaciers covered much of the world. But starting about 15,000 years ago, temperatures began to climb. Civilization and all of recorded history occurred in this warm period, the era known as the Holocene-the long summer of the human species. In The Long Summer, Brian Fagan brings us the first detailed record of climate change during these 15,000 years of warming, and shows how this climate change gave rise to civilization. A thousand-year chill led people in the Near East to take up the cultivation of plant foods; a catastrophic flood drove settlers to inhabit Europe; the drying of the Sahara forced its inhabitants to live along the banks of the Nile; and increased rainfall in East Africa provoked the bubonic plague. The Long Summer illuminates for the first time the centuries-long pattern of human adaptation to the demands and challenges of an ever-changing climate-challenges that are still with us today.

The Long Summer

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Steven Pinker

The Ingredients of Language

One of the most visible intellectuals in the new field of cognitive science explains the mysteries of language and mind in an entirely new way, and explores the use of regular and irregular verbs with the help of jokes, cartoons, song lyrics, and more. Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award. Illustrations.

Words and Rules

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Francis Wheen

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

A life

Karl Marx

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A last wild place

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World Languages

English words that come from Spanish

Spanish word histories and mysteries

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Peter Nichols

The Story of the Kidnapping That Led to Charles Darwin's Voyage Aboard the Beagle

This is the story of the man without whom the name Charles Darwin might be unknown to us today. That man was Captain Robert FitzRoy, who invited the 22-year-old Darwin to be his companion on board the Beagle .

This is the remarkable story of how a misguided decision by Robert FitzRoy, captain of HMS Beagle , precipitated his employment of a young naturalist named Charles Darwin, and how the clash between FitzRoy's fundamentalist views and Darwin's discoveries led to FitzRoy's descent into the abyss.

One of the great ironies of history is that the famous journey--wherein Charles Darwin consolidated the earth-rattling 'origin of the species' discoveries--was conceived by another man: Robert FitzRoy. It was FitzRoy who chose Darwin for the journey--not because of Darwin's scientific expertise, but because he seemed a suitable companion to help FitzRoy fight back the mental illness that had plagued his family for generations. Darwin did not give FitzRoy solace; indeed, the clash between the two men's opposing views, together with the ramifications of Darwin's revelations, provided FitzRoy with the final unendurable torment that forced him to end his own life.

Evolution's Captain

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Teresa Ferster Glazier

Laura Knight

Carol Friend

Word Roots

THE LEAST YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT VOCABULARY BUILDING: WORD ROOTS uses words you already know to show you how to develop your vocabulary. With a better vocabulary, your papers will look better and your grades will improve as well. Plus, this edition has built-in study tips and an excellent index to help make papers and tests problem-free.

The Least You Should Know about Vocabulary Building

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Branded nation

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Mark Kurlansky

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

A Portrait of American Food - Before the National Highway System, Before Chain Restaurants, and Before Frozen Food, When the Nation's Food Was Seasonal, Regional, and Traditional - From the Lost WPA Files

The Food of a Younger Land

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Laurie Bauer

The media are ruining English"; "Some languages are harder than others"; "Children can't speak or write properly anymore." Such pieces of "cultural wisdom" are often expressed in newspapers and on radio and television. Rarely is there a response from experts in the fields of language and language development. In this book Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudgill have invited nineteen respected linguists from all over the world to address these "language myths"--showing that they vary from the misconceived to the downright wrong. With essays ranging from "Women Talk Too Much" and "In the Appalachians They Speak Like Shakespeare" to "Italian Is Beautiful, German Is Ugly" and "They Speak Really Bad English Down South and in New York City," Language Myths is a collection that is wide-ranging, entertaining, and authoritative.

Language Myths

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Ariel Dorfman

A bilingual journey 

Heading south, looking north

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Edward O. Wilson

This classic by the distinguished Harvard entomologist tells how life on earth evolved and became diverse, and now, how diversity and life are endangered by us, truly. While Wilson contributed a great deal to environmental ethics by calling for the preservation of whole ecosystems rather than individual species, his environmentalism appears too anthropocentric: "We should judge every scrap of biodiversity as priceless while we learn to use it and come to understand what it means to humanity." And: "Signals abound that the loss of life's diversity endangers not just the body but the spirit." This reprint of the 1992 Belknap Press publication contains a new foreword. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The Diversity of Life

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Mary Helen Dohan

Alstair Cooke

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

The making of the American language

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Patricia Hampl

The Art of the Wasted Day

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William Martin

Why the Left Is Right

The Best Liberal Quotes Ever is the largest and most up-to-date collection of liberal quotes. With more than 2,500 thoughts and sayings (most never published before) on a variety of topics from authority to sex to vanity, this fun book is a treasure trove of progressive wisdom. It even includes a section on the dumbest things ever said by the Right!

A perfect gift for those who have worn through their copies of Lies and the Lying Liars... and Stupid White Men.


Best Liberal Quotes Ever

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Karen L. Hudson

40 Stories of Tattoos - And the Women Who Wear Them

Life. Beauty. Womanhood. That's what tattoos today are all about. Join the women of Chick Ink in this celebration of the tattoos that grace our bodies, tell our stories, and mark forever the significant moments of our lives. Because if you're a woman with a tattoo, you're woman enough for anything. AUTHOR: Karen L. Hudson is the About.com Guide to Tattoos and Body Piercings. Her site is the ninth most accessed site on About.com. She has served a yearlong tattoo apprenticeship at a tattoo studio in Dallas, Texas. Her personal links within the tattoo community continue to keep her updated on body art.

Chick Ink

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Marybeth Bond

True stories of world travel

A woman’s world 

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Robert Wright

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

The Logic of Human Destiny

In his bestselling The Moral Animal, Robert Wright applied the principles of evolutionary biology to the study of the human mind. Now Wright attempts something even more ambitious: explaining the direction of evolution and human history–and discerning where history will lead us next.

In Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Wright asserts that, ever since the primordial ooze, life has followed a basic pattern. Organisms and human societies alike have grown more complex by mastering the challenges of internal cooperation. Wright's narrative ranges from fossilized bacteria to vampire bats, from stone-age villages to the World Trade Organization, uncovering such surprises as the benefits of barbarian hordes and the useful stability of feudalism. Here is history endowed with moral significance–a way of looking at our biological and cultural evolution that suggests, refreshingly, that human morality has improved over time, and that our instinct to discover meaning may itself serve a higher purpose. Insightful, witty, profound, Nonzero offers breathtaking implications for what we believe and how we adapt to technology's ongoing transformation of the world.

Nonzero

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Dancing naked in the mind field

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James E. Lovelock

A biography of our living earth

The ages of Gaia 

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James J. O'Donnell

From papyrus to cyberspace

Avatars of the word

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The impact of the phonetic alphabet on the development of western civilization 

The alphabet effect

Mary Pat Kelly

A journey

Martin Scorsese

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E=mc2

The great ideas that shaped our world

Wendy Smith

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