An examination of the myths of the Moon goddess and how she appeared to the original creators of those myths in ancient Greece.Waxing and waning and reborn with each new month, the Moon has always been the supreme symbol of cyclical change in the western world.Metaphorical representations of the Moon’s goddess also seem to undergo similar changes, each new century reinventing her in its own image. For Hesiod, she was a distant figure in the celestial panthe...

This book comprehensively surveys the colorful history of mass hysteria and kindred phenomena in schools, documenting outbreaks of demonic possession during witchcraft scares, to modern incidents of collapsing bands, itching frenzies, ghost panics and mystery illnesses.Strange behaviors and illnesses in students are examined through the centuries. Possessed children went into trance states and began to bark like dogs in 16th and 17th century Holland; an epidemic of twitching, tremb...

The New York Times BestsellerWhat if everything you think you know about addiction is wrong? Johann Hari's journey into the heart of the war on drugs led him to ask this question--and to write the book that gave rise to his viral TED talk, viewed more than 62 million times, and inspired the feature film The United States vs. Billie Holiday and the documentary series The Fix.One of Johann Hari's earliest memories i...

From the award-winning, groundbreaking author of A Brief History of Anxiety...Yours and Mine comes a touching, exhilarating, challenging exploration of the inexplicable gleamings of another world many of us experience, in life, in grief, and near death.Sparked by extraordinary experiences that occurred in her family when her father and her sister both died in 2008, Patricia Pearson was launched on a journey of investigation into what she calls "a curious sort of modern und...

'People are emotionally drawn to the supernatural. They actively want weird, spooky things to be true . . . Wiseman shows us a higher joy as he deftly skewers the paranormal charlatans, blows away the psychic fog and lets in the clear light of reason.' Richard DawkinsProfessor Richard Wiseman is clear about one thing: paranormal phenomena don't exist. But in the same way that the science of space travel transforms our everyday lives, so research into telepathy, fortune-tel...

With a scientist's mind and an animal lover's compassion, world-renowned biologist Rupert Sheldrake presents a groundbreaking exploration of animal behavior that will profoundly change the way we think about animals--and ourselves.How do cats know when it's time to go to the vet, even before the cat carrier comes out? How do dogs know when their owners are returning home at unexpected times? How can horses find their way back to the stable over completely unfamilia...

The acclaimed portrait of institutionalized patients whose abandoned possessions recall their forgotten lives“A deeply moving testament to the human side of mental illness.” —Oliver SacksWhen Willard State Hospital closed its doors in 1995, after operating as one of New York State’s largest mental institutions for over 120 years, a forgotten attic filled with suitcases belonging to former patients was discovered. Using the possessi...

From Greek myths to zombie flicks, from the laboratory heroics of Louis Pasteur to the contemporary search for a lifesaving treatment, Rabid is a fresh and often wildly entertaining look at one of humankind's oldest and most fearsome foes.The most fatal virus known to science, rabies—a disease that spreads avidly from animals to humans—kills nearly one hundred percent of its victims once the infection takes root in the brain.In this critically accl...

Almost a third of your whole life is spent asleep. Every night you close your eyes, become oblivious to your surroundings and waste hours flying, being chased or watching all your teeth fall out – and then you wake up. What on earth is going on?Based on exciting new peer-reviewed research, mass-participation experiments and the world’s largest archive of dream reports, Night School uncovers the truth about the sleeping brain – and gives powerful tips on how you can use tho...

Here are over 40 scary, hair-raising, and frightening stories of the supernatural and the paranormal. These are first-person narratives that are unexplained and possibly inexplicable. All of them have been reported to John Robert Colombo, Canada's Master Gatherer of the Arcane, by men and women from various parts of the country, and they're published here in the words of the informants themselves, the witnesses to these wonders.Here, you will have the opportunity to read about:...

Having a good death is our final human right, argues Sandra Martin in this updated and expanded version of her bestselling and award-winning social history of the right to die movement in Canada and around the world.Winner of the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, finalist for both the Donner Prize in Public Policy and the Dafoe Prize for History, A Good Death has a new chapter on Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying Law. The law allows mentally competent adults, who are s...

The shocking true story of a case unlike any other in the annals of UFO investigation, DNA research, or alien abduction.July 23, 1992: In Sydney Australia, twenty-eight-year-old Peter Khoury was awoken by what appeared to be two females—both striking and unearthly—kneeling on his bed. What transpired between them was a physical assault as bizarre and disorienting as it was unnatural. Then, as quickly as they had arrived, they vanished. Khoury had become one of a le...