The popularity of great Americans frequently simmers before it boils, but the nation’s 40th President heard the kettle whistling from early in his administration. Ronald Reagan came to office in 1981 determined to face head-on foes of the great American experiment. He departed in 1989 adored by millions of fellow citizens and admired even by political adversaries. Join Jay Stephen Whitney in this look at the life and work of Ronald Wilson Reagan through nearly 200 large-format photographs,...

Oh, Brother! stars the sibling duo of Bud and Lily, who humorously interact within the leafy confines of their middle-class suburban home and neighborhood. Whether they are playing together in the family room or running amok in the schoolyard, Bud and Lily elevate the act of one-upmanship to Code Red levels. Lily is the quintessential slightly older and far more sensible sister. She takes it upon herself to look after her uninhibited, prank-loving younger brother, Bud. While Lily ...

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to its knees. When we weren’t sheltering in place, we were advised to wear masks, wash our hands, and practice social distancing. We watched in horror as medical personnel worked around the clock to care for the sick and dying. Businesses were shuttered, travel stopped, workers were furloughed, and markets dropped. And people continued to die.Amid all this uncertainty, writers and artists from around the world continued to create com...

The definitive refutation to the argument of The Bell Curve.When published in 1981, The Mismeasure of Man was immediately hailed as a masterwork, the ringing answer to those who would classify people, rank them according to their supposed genetic gifts and limits.Yet the idea of biology as destiny dies hard, as witness the attention devoted to The Bell Curve, whose arguments are here so effectively anticipated and thoroughly undermined. In this ed...

Roy's life was not going well. He was clever, very clever, but his boss didn't like him and finding other jobs in the computer industry at the ripe old age of forty-five could be difficult. He had bought a house with his girlfriend, but she was leaving him because he was "too nice". He would have the debts of the house plus old debts that he was still repaying. Then there was Rosemary, but she seemed preoccupied with her stalker who had threatened Roy, grabbing by the throat on one occasio...

More than any other modern scientists, Stephen Jay Gould has opened up to millions the wonders of evolutionary biology. His genius as an essayist lies in his unmatched ability to use his knowledge of the world, including popular culture, to illuminate the realm of science.Ever Since Darwin, Stephen Jay Gould's first book, has sold more than a quarter of a million copies. Like all succeeding collections by this unique writer, it brings the art of the scientific essa...

"People of good will wish to see science and religion at peace. . . . I do not see how science and religion could be unified, or even synthesized, under any common scheme of explanation or analysis; but I also do not understand why the two enterprises should experience any conflict." So states internationally renowned evolutionist and bestselling author Stephen Jay Gould in the simple yet profound thesis of his brilliant new book.Writing with bracing intelligence and elegant clarit...

Stephen Jay Gould's writing remains the modern standard by which popular science writing is judged. Ever since the late 1970s up until till his death in 2002, his monthly essay in Natural History and his full-length books bridged the yawning gap between science and wider culture.In this fascinating new collection of essays from Natural History, Gould applied biographical perspectives to the illumination of key scientific concepts and their history, ranging from th...

"Lively and fascinating. . . . [Gould] writes beautifully about science and the wonders of nature."—Tracy KidderOver a century after Darwin published the Origin of Species, Darwinian theory is in a "vibrantly healthy state," writes Stephen Jay Gould, its most engaging and illuminating exponent. Exploring the "peculiar and mysterious particulars of nature," Gould introduces the reader to some of the many and wonderful manifestations of evolutionary biology.

“Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” was Haeckel’s answer—the wrong one—to the most vexing question of nineteenth-century biology: what is the relationship between individual development (ontogeny) and the evolution of species and lineages (phylogeny)? In this, the first major book on the subject in fifty years, Stephen Jay Gould documents the history of the idea of recapitulation from its first appearance among the pre-Socratics to its fall in the early twentieth century.Mr. Gould e...

A survey of a range of irrationalisms, with explanations of their empirical and logical flaws, this book describes the differences between science and pseudo-science, and goes on to describe and critique popular contemporary irrationalisms.Why do smart people believe weird things?Why do so many people believe in mind reading, past-life regression therapy, extra-terrestrial abduction and ghosts? What is behind the rise of 'scientific creationism' and Holocaust denial? In an age of s...

Stephen Jay Gould's writing remains the modern standard by which popular science writing is judged. Throughout his work Gould has developed a distinctive and personal form of essay to treat great scientific issues in the context of biography. With I Have Landed, Gould once again applied biographical perspectives to the illumination of key scientific concepts and their history. Ranging from the discovery of the new scourge of syphilis by Fracastero in the sixteenth century and Isab...