Marrying the findings of the new field of social neuroscience together with gripping human stories, award-winning author and psychologist Susan Pinker explores the impact of face-to-face contact from cradle to grave, from city to Sardinian mountain village, from classroom to workplace, from love to marriage to divorce. Her results are enlightening and enlivening, and they challenge our assumptions.Most of us have left the literal village behind, and don't want to give up our new te...

After four decades of eradicating gender barriers at work and in public life, why do men still dominate business, politics and the most highly paid jobs? Why do high-achieving women opt out of successful careers? Psychologist Susan Pinker explores the illuminating answers to these questions in her groundbreaking first book.In The Sexual Paradox, Susan Pinker takes a hard look at how fundamental sex differences continue to play out in the workplace. By comparing the...

Susan Pinker, psychologist and award-winning columnist, has written a groundbreaking and controversial book that reveals why learning and behavioral gaps between boys and girls in the classroom are reversed in the workplace.Pinker examines how fundamental sex differences play out over the life span. By comparing fragile boys who succeed later with high-achieving women who opt out or plateau in their careers, Pinker turns several assumptions upside down: that women ...

From birth to death, human beings are hardwired to connect to other human beings. Face-to-face contact matters: tight bonds of friendship and love heal us, help children learn, extend our lives, and make us happy. Looser in-person bonds matter too, combining with our close relationships to form a personal "village" around us, one that exerts unique effects.Marrying the findings of the new field of social neuroscience together with gripping human stories, Susan Pinker explores the i...

In times of questioning and despair, people often quote the Bible to provide answers. Surprisingly, though, the Bible does not have one answer but many ""answers"" that often contradict one another. Consider these competing explanations for suffering put forth by various biblical writers:The prophets: suffering is a punishment for sinThe book of Job, which offers two different answers: suffering is a test, and you will be rewarded later for passing it; and ...

The Nature Principle presents a compelling case that a conscious reconnection to nature can make us whole again and that the future will belong to nature-smart individuals, families, businesses, and communities. Supported by evidence from emerging empirical and theoretical research and eye-opening anecdotes, Louv shows that when we tap into the restorative powers of the natural world we can boost mental acuity and creativity, heal illness, increase immunity, broaden our compassion...

A leading cognitive scientist argues that a deep sense of good and evil is bred in the bone.From John Locke to Sigmund Freud, philosophers and psychologists have long believed that we begin life as blank moral slates. Many of us take for granted that babies are born selfish and that it is the role of society—and especially parents—to transform them from little sociopaths into civilized beings. In Just Babies, Paul Bloom argues that humans are in fact hardw...

In sumptuous and illuminating detail, Simon Winchester, the bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman (""Elegant and scrupulous""—New York Times Book Review) and Krakatoa (""A mesmerizing page-turner""—Time) brings to life the extraordinary story of Joseph Needham, the brilliant Cambridge scientist who unlocked the most closely held secrets of China, long the world's most technologically advanced country.No cloistered don, this tall, mar...

“A delightful and fascinating book filled with insight and wit, which will make you think twice and cheer up.” — Steven PinkerIn a bold and provocative interpretation of economic history, Matt Ridley, the New York Times-bestselling author of Genome and The Red Queen, makes the case for an economics of hope, arguing that the benefits of commerce, technology, innovation, and change—what Ridley calls cultural evolution—will inevitably increa...

A groundbreaking approach to transforming traumatic legacies passed down in families over generations, by an acclaimed expert in the fieldDepression. Anxiety. Chronic Pain. Phobias. Obsessive thoughts. The evidence is compelling: the roots of these difficulties may not reside in our immediate life experience or in chemical imbalances in our brains—but in the lives of our parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents. The latest scientific research, no...

In Social, renowned psychologist Matthew Lieberman explores groundbreaking research in social neuroscience, revealing that our need to connect with other people is even more fundamental, more basic, than our need for food or shelter. Because of this, our brain uses its spare time to learn about the social world—other people and our relation to them. It is believed that we must commit 10,000 hours to master a skill. According to Lieberman, each of us has spent 10,000 hours learning...

Renowned psychologist Walter Mischel, designer of the famous Marshmallow Test, explains what self-control is and how to master it.A child is presented with a marshmallow and given a choice: Eat this one now, or wait and enjoy two later. What will she do? And what are the implications for her behavior later in life?The world's leading expert on self-control, Walter Mischel has proven that the ability to delay gratification is critical for a successful life, predicting higher...