Showing titles in Anthropology

Stepping effortlessly from myth to cutting-edge science, Mutants gives a brilliant narrative account of our genetic code and the captivating people whose bodies have revealed it - a French convent girl who found herself changing sex at puberty; children who, echoing Homer's Cyclops, are born with a single eye in the middle of their foreheads; a village of long-lived Croatian dwarves; one family, whose bodies were entirely covered with hair, was kept at the Burmese royal court for four generations and gave Darwin one of his keenest insights into heredity.

The story of human civilization can be read most deeply in the materials we have found or created, used or abused. They have dictated how we build, eat, communicate, wage war, create art, travel, and worship. Some, such as stone, iron, and bronze, lend their names to the ages. Others, such as gold, silver, and diamond, contributed to the rise and fall of great empires.

Going beyond the how and why of burnout, a former tenured professor combines academic methods and first-person experience to propose new ways for resisting our cultural obsession with work and transforming our vision of human flourishing.

Brought to you by Penguin. The fascinating new history of the British Aristocracy since the Second World War There are fewer than 5000 people who can genuinely claim to be members of the British aristocracy, and yet they loom large in the popular consciousness. We're fascinated by their houses...

'The Waste Land' is a landmark in 20th-century poetry. Here it is read by the late Poet Laureate Ted Hughes. Published in 1922, it is a brilliant exploration of a faithless, immoral society trying to rebuild itself after the devastation of the Great War. Rich in literary references and steeped in allusive and evocative imagery, 'The Waste Land' is widely considered to be the pinnacle of modernist poetry.

Brought to you by Penguin. *WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION* *THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER* *A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE TIMES, NEW YORK TIMES, GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, AND PROSPECT* When Naomi Klein discovered that a woman who shared her first name, but had radically different...

In 1994, Rwanda was the scene of the first acts since World War II to be legally defined as genocide. Two years later, Clea Koff, a twenty-three-year-old forensic anthropologist, left the safe confines of a lab in Berkeley, California, to serve as one of sixteen scientists chosen by the United Nations to unearth the physical evidence of the Rwandan genocide. Over the next four years, Koff’s grueling investigations took her across geography synonymous with some of the worst crimes of the twentieth century.

'Superb ... entertaining ... Phillips traverses this sprawling terrain with energy and charm' Telegraph 'Exceptionally funny from cover to cover, it is not only an entertaining read but also deeply researched and thoughtful' Irish Independent 'Fans of Phillips's earlier books Humans and Truth...

Crossing continents and cultures from antiquity to the present, The Garden encompasses a global history of the garden, the place where culture and nature converge. The uniqueness of the book will come not only from its global scope – the embracing of East and West, English aristocrats and...

In the summer of 2022, Lee Berger lost 50 pounds in order to wriggle though impossibly small openings in the Rising Star cave complex in South Africa—spaces where his team has been unearthing the remains of Homo naledi, a proto-human likely to have coexisted with Homo sapiens some 250,000 years ago. Lead researcher Berger had never made his way into the dark, cramped, dangerous underground spaces where many of the naledi fossils had been found. Now he was ready to do so. Once inside the cave, Berger made shocking new discoveries that expand our understanding of this early hominid.

Humans are a puzzling species. On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the wild, often failing to overcome even basic challenges, like obtaining food, building shelters, or avoiding predators. On the other hand, human groups have produced ingenious technologies, sophisticated languages, and complex institutions that have permitted us to successfully expand into a vast range of diverse environments. What has enabled us to dominate the globe, more than any other species, while remaining virtually helpless as lone individuals?

A story of defiance and determination by a controversial scientist, this is Lee Berger's own take on finding Homo naledi, an all-new species on the human family tree and one of the greatest discoveries of the 21st century. In 2013, Lee Berger, a National Geographic explorer-in-residence, heard of a cache of bones in a hard-to-reach underground cave in South Africa. He put out a call around the world for petite collaborators - men and women small and adventurous enough to be able to squeeze through eight-inch tunnels to reach a sunless cave forty feet underground. It worked.

When an unexpected medical crisis sends Naomi Wolf on a deeply personal journey to tease out the intersections between sexuality and creativity, she discovers, much to her own astonishment, an increasing body of scientific evidence that suggests that the vagina is not merely flesh, but an intrinsic component of the female brain - and thus has a fundamental connection to female consciousness itself.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of How to be Human: The Manual written and read by Ruby Wax with Ash Ranpura and Gelong Thubten. A three way encounter between a Monk, a neuroscientist and Ruby Wax sounds like the set up for a joke. Instead it's produced one of the most fascinating...

Um mergulho preciso e mordaz no mundo dos endinheirados brasileiros. Há um traço comum a boa parte dos endinheirados brasileiros: eles não se consideram ricos. Não existe um critério absoluto para a riqueza no Brasil. Sempre haverá alguém com mais dinheiro, mais pompa, mais patrimônio, mais próximo do topo da pirâmide. Logo, os ricos são sempre os outros.

PARIS: A MILLION MEANINGS IN A SINGLE NAME Heiress. Party girl. Problem child. Selfie taker. Model. Reality star. Self-created. The labels attached to Paris Hilton. Founder. Entrepreneur. Pop Culture Maker. Innovator. Survivor. Activist. Daughter. Sister. Wife. Mother. The roles Paris embraces...

Brought to you by Penguin. For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike - either free and equal, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts...

A bold and deeply personal exploration of wealth, power, and the American elite, exposing how the ruling class—intentionally or not—perpetuates cycles of injustice "[A] story about American inequity, and how it mindlessly, immorally, reproduces itself. Unlike most such stories, however, this...

For a World in Conflict... New Hope for Wholeness in the Modern Age! A society of rugged individualists and economic competitors A world of nuclear politics and uncontrollable forces For many, modern living means loneliness, disaffection, apathy and isolation. Is there an escape? In a startling...

From the #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of Abundance comes a groundbreaking and entertaining investigation into what makes a hit a hit–from films and music to art and design. “Enthralling—full of 'aha' moments about why some ideas soar and others never get off the ground. This...