Why are we obsessed with the things we want and bored when we get them?Why is addiction “perfectly logical” to an addict?Why does love change so quickly from passion to disinterest?Why are some people diehard liberals and others hardcore conservatives?Why are we always hopeful for solutions even in the darkest times—and so good at figuring them out?The answer is found in a single chemical in your brain:

Featured on The Next Big Idea Club’s April 2025 Must-Read BooksDopamine, “the molecule of more,” makes it easy to get stuck in a cycle of never being truly satisfied. It promises happiness, but can never deliver. That part is up to us.A more fulfilling life begins with training your brain to overcome the dopamine chase—and it’s easier than you think.From Michael E. Long, coauthor of the life-changing book The Mo...

Benford's Law is a probability distribution for the likelihood of the leading digit in a set of numbers. This book seeks to improve and systematize the use of Benford's Law in the social sciences to assess the validity of self-reported data. The authors first introduce a new measure of conformity to the Benford distribution that is created using permutation statistical methods and employs the concept of statistical agreement. In a switch from a typical Benford application, this book moves ...

One of the most successful nightclub and theater comedians in America started out a long way from the stage, in the tiny farming community of Lithonia, Georgia. James Gregory was born into a family with lots of love but little money. His parents paid the doctor for his delivery with "a bushel of beans and a peck of tomatoes."Before he became "The Funniest Man in America," James was a successful salesman of everything from encyclopedias to log homes. His philosophy: take care of you...

The primary purpose of this book is to introduce the reader to elementary statistical methods as related to tests of differences, such as one-sample tests, tests of two independent samples, tests of two matched samples, and one-way analysis of variance. Throughout the book the emphasis is on permutation statistical methods, although the results of the permutation analyses are always compared and contrasted with the results of conventional statistical analyses. Unlike classical statistical ...

This book gives a concise overview of measures of relationship, including measures of nominal-nominal association, ordinal-ordinal association, interval-interval correlation, nominal-ordinal association, nominal-interval association, ordinal-interval association, and agreement. The book emphasizes permutation statistical methods under the Fisher--Pitman model. However, the permutation analyses are always paired with conventional statistical analyses under the classical Neyman--Pearson mode...

Grasses are the world’s most important plants. They are the dominant species over large parts of the earth’s land surface, a fact that is reflected in the many different words that exist for grasslands, words such as prairie, veldt, palouse, and pampas to mention just a few. As a group, grasses are of major ecological importance, as soil binders and providers of shelter and food for wild animals, both large and small. Some grasses, such as wheat, rice, corn, barley, rye, ...

Stroke is the fifth leading cause of death in the United States and is a leading cause of adult disability and discharge from hospitals to chronic care facilities. Despite the frequency and morbidity of stroke, there is a relative paucity of “stroke experts,” such as vascular neurologists and neurocritical care physicians, to care for these patients. Clinical research in the diagnosis and treatment of stroke has grown exponentially over the past two decades resulting in a great deal of new...

For those ready to participate in making transformative changes, Transforming Undergraduate Education provides evidence and case studies that suggest how steps can be taken and progress made. For those who are currently leading their campuses through a change in culture, this book offers support and encouragement. And for those who are pausing—looking positively but cautiously at what needs to change—at the prospects and challenges that may be encountered, Harward and the collection of aut...

In 1277 England, the discovery of a Roman hoard sparks a deadly shadow war between English and French spies. On the streets of Paris, French agents seize an English agent, Lady Clemence d'Lisle, and she disappears. Thieves brazenly steal the king's gold en route to Westminster, and the King's Man, Simon Lowys, untangles a complex web of murder, Welsh rebels, deception, and elusive assassins. Simon questions his calling as a man of law when he sees justice obscured by duplicity and lies.

Fifty years after its original publication in 1976, this excellent analysis of the psycho-social dimensions of Shakespearean tragedy shows how the Shakespearean tragedies develop the idea of a conflict between nature and social structure. The idea has its roots in Shakespearean comedy, to which the book makes continuous reference. Both the comedies and the tragic theorists are used to help describe a coherent vision which is seen to animate all Shakespeare’s tragic plays. Michael Long’s in...

From the March on Washington to March for Our Lives to Black Lives Matter, the powerful stories of kid-led protest in America. Kids have always been activists. They have even launched movements. Long before they could vote, kids have spoken up, walked out, gone on strike, and marched for racial justice, climate protection, gun control, world peace, and more. Kids on the March tells the stories of these protests, from the March of the Mill Children, who walked out of f...