The human mind has a trusty device for simplifying a complex reduce to averages and identify trends. Although valuable, the risk is that we ignore variations and end up with a skewed view of reality. In evolutionary terms, the result is a view in which humans are the inevitable pinnacle of evolutionary progress, instead of, as Stephen Jay Gould patiently argues, "a cosmic accident that would never arise again if the tree of life could be replanted." The implications of Gould's argument may threaten certain of our philosophical and religious foundations but will in the end provide us with a clearer view of, and a greater appreciation for, the complexities of our world.

The late Stephen Jay Gould was a man of strong opinions--and not just about evolutionary theory and paleontology, the subjects of fine books of his such as Ever Since Darwin and Wonderful Life . Just get him going on baseball, as readers of his long-running monthly column in Natural History magazine will remember, and sparks would fly. Baseball, Gould writes in this collection of diverse essays and reviews, is an intellectual's game, but only accidentally so; plenty of smart folks like other sports. In his case, though, baseball was the game to follow, for he grew up in the New York of the 1950s, when the city had "the three greatest teams in major league baseball." Two of those teams later moved far away, but Gould nursed his passion into adulthood, all the while acquiring plenty of ammunition for sophisticated arguments about every facet of the game. In these pages, for instance, he weighs in on such eminently arguable matters as the greatest player the sport has known (Ty Cobb, maybe), the greatest single game ever played (game six of the 1975 World Series), why it is that no one hits .400 these days (it's a matter of statistics, but so much more too), and whether the current system of postseason playoffs is a good thing (no). The sport has had few more learned and literate fans than Gould, who brings his best to these pieces. Celebrating triumphs and mourning tragedies on and off the diamond, this book makes just the right companion for the new season, and for the seasons to come. --Gregory McNamee

Humans cannot live without stories. But one story has proved itself the most durable and hauntingly real of all time. The mythic tale of Adam and Eve has shaped conceptions of human origins and destiny for centuries. Stemming from a few verses in an ancient book, it became not just the foundation of three major world faiths, but has evolved through art, philosophy and science to serve as the mirror in which we seem to glimpse the whole, long history of our fears and desires. What is it about Adam and Eve's story that fascinates us? What does it tell us about how our species lives, dies, works or has sex? In a quest that begins at the dawn of time, Stephen Greenblatt takes us from ancient Babylonia to the forests of east Africa. We meet evolutionary biologists and fossilised ancestors; we grapple with morality and marriage in Milton's Paradise Lost; and we decide if the Fall is the unvarnished truth or fictional allegory. Ultimately, The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve allows us a new understanding of ourselves.

“Brilliantly illustrates the immense and disarming power of changing course and driving not toward division, but toward civility and mutual respect.” -- Ms . magazine As a progressive commentator on Fox News and now CNN, Sally Kohn has made a career out of bridging intractable political differences. In this age of dangerous partisan resentment and rising bigotry, she decided to investigate hate itself--to better consider how we can stop it. With her trademark humor and humanity, Kohn introduces us to leading researchers and scientists who are exploring the evolutionary and cultural roots of hate. She travels to Rwanda, to the Middle East, and across the United States, talking with former terrorists and reformed white supremacists, and even sitting down with some of her own Twitter trolls. What she discovers is surprising: All of us harbor hate but the powerful acknowledgment that we are all in this together can lead us out of the wilderness. The opposite of hate is connection .

Whether or not we know it, our daily lives are shaped by powerful current of instinct. The conscious and unconscious decisions we make are deeply affected by an ancient and universal genetic programme. Our ambition and lust, our drives to compete and to co-operate are essential components of the human mind, forged among our ancestors on the African savannah. Instincts were instrumental in the evolutionary success of the species, and success meant a fondness for sex and violence, for status and wealth - and a will to survive. From ordering lunch to one night stands, human behaviour is still heavily influenced by this genetic agenda. But how well do instincts equip us for the 21st century? Do instincts help or hinder us as we deal with large anonymous cities, low-level stress, the battle of the sexes, and the fracturing of communal life?

Many thousands of years ago, a group of extraterrestrials from another planet guided the evolution of life on Earth—determining the existence and nature of humankind as we know it today. How did the master builders from the stars construct the miracle called man? Is the DNA that is at the core of all life in the universe a "cosmic code" that links Earth to heaven and man to God? In this sixth volume of The Earth Chronicles , Zecharia Sitchin unveils writings from the past to decipher prophesies, and reveals how the DNA-matched Hebrew alphabet and the numerical values of its letters serve as a code that bares the secrets of mortal man’s fate and mankind’s celestial destiny.

Called "the most important critic of his time" by Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin has emerged as one of the most compelling thinkers of our time as well, his work assuming a crucial place in current debates over the interactions of art, culture, and meaning. A "natural and extraordinary talent for letter writing was one of the most captivating facets of his nature", writes Gershom Scholem in his Foreword; and indeed, Benjamin's correspondence reveals the evolution of some of his most powerful ideas. Published here in English for the first time, these letters offer an intimate picture of Benjamin himself and the times in which he lived. Written in a day when letters were an important vehicle for the presentation and development of intellectual matters, Benjamin's correspondence is rich in insight into the circumstances behind his often difficult work. These letters provide a lively view of Benjamin's life and thought from his days as a student to his melancholy experiences as an exile in Paris. As he defends his changing ideas to admiring and skeptical friends – poets, philosophers, and radicals – we witness the restless self-analysis of a creative mind far in advance of his own time. Writing at length to Scholem and Theodor Adorno, and exchanging letters with Rainer Maria Rilke, Hannah Arendt, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Max Horkheimer, Max Brod, Bertolt Brecht, and Kafka's friend Felix Weltsch, Benjamin elaborates his ideas about metaphor and language. He reflects on literary figures from Kafka to Karl Kraus, the "Jewish Question" and anti-Semitism, Marxism and Zionism. And he expounds his personal attitudes toward such subjects as the role of quotations in criticism, history, and tradition; the meaning of being a "collector"; and French culture and the national character. In sum, this magnificent collection is an exceptionally rich source of information and an essential key to understanding one of the preeminent figures of modern culture. --

Profiling Canada's leading poet-singer, this concise biography surveys the remarkable 40-year career of Leonard Cohen that has produced 11 books and 11 records. Focusing on the evolution of Cohen's international reputation, the book begins with a review of the Montreal years. The popularity of works like The Spice Box of Earth and Beautiful Losers is examined in detail. Cohen's musical career receives special attention, from his first studio session to his latest record. The biography concludes with a discussion of Stranger Music .

From the New York Times bestselling author of Fermat?s Last Theorem , ?an extraordinary story?( Philadelphia Inquirer ) of discovery, evolution, science, and faith. In 1929, French Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a part of a group of scientists that uncovered a skull that became known as Peking Man, a key evolutionary link that left Teilhard torn between science and his ancient faith, and would leave him ostracized by his beloved Catholic Church. His struggle is at the heart of The Jesuit and the Skull , which takes readers across continents and cultures in a fascinating exploration of one of the twentieth century?s most important discoveries, and one of the world?s most provocative pieces of evidence in the roiling debate between creationism and evolution.

One of our most brilliant evolutionary biologists, Richard Lewontin has also been a leading critic of those-scientists and non-scientists alike-who would misuse the science to which he has contributed so much. In The Triple Helix , Lewontin the scientist and Lewontin the critic come together to provide a concise, accessible account of what his work has taught him about biology and about its relevance to human affairs. In the process, he exposes some of the common and troubling misconceptions that misdirect and stall our understanding of biology and evolution. The central message of this book is that we will never fully understand living things if we continue to think of genes, organisms, and environments as separate entities, each with its distinct role to play in the history and operation of organic processes. Here Lewontin shows that an organism is a unique consequence of both genes and environment, of both internal and external features. Rejecting the notion that genes determine the organism, which then adapts to the environment, he explains that organisms, influenced in their development by their circumstances, in turn create, modify, and choose the environment in which they live. The Triple Helix is vintage Lewontin: brilliant, eloquent, passionate, and deeply critical. But it is neither a manifesto for a radical new methodology nor a brief for a new theory. It is instead a primer on the complexity of biological processes, a reminder to all of us that living things are never as simple as they may seem.

Ideas, Dan Sperber argues, may be contagious. They may invade whole populations. In the process, the people, their environment, and the ideas themselves are being transformed. To explain culture is to describe the causes and the effects of this contagion of ideas. This book will be read by all those with an interest in the impact of the cognitive revolution on our understanding of culture.

This reissue of the penetrating biography of Senator John McCain, the man who may be the next president of the United States, by celebrated author Robert Timberg now has a new foreword that updates readers on the politician's life since this book's original publication in 1999. In John McCain: An American Odyssey, Timberg provides a riveting account of McCain's remarkable life -- from his rambunctious childhood and his madcap escapades as a U.S. Naval Academy midshipman to his grim experiences as a combat pilot and POW in Vietnam, where the North Vietnamese held him prisoner for five and a half years. Most important, the author illuminates Senator McCain's postwar evolution into one of our country's most distinguished politicians and a formidable presidential candidate. This biography probes deeply into the life of this hugely colorful, straight-talking American original. It is a rich and captivating portrait of one of America's most fascinating and provocative public figures -- a man who has captured the imagination of millions of Americans and who will continue to be a most prominent figure in the American political landscape.

A comprehensive anthology bringing together more than one thousand of the best American and English song lyrics of the twentieth century; an extraordinary celebration of a unique art form and an indispensable reference work and history that celebrates one of the twentieth century’s most enduring and cherished legacies. Reading Lyrics begins with the first masters of the colloquial phrase, including George M. Cohan (“Give My Regards to Broadway”), P. G. Wodehouse (“Till the Clouds Roll By”), and Irving Berlin, whose versatility and career span the period from “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” to “Annie Get Your Gun” and beyond. The Broadway musical emerges as a distinct dramatic form in the 1920s and 1930s, its evolution propelled by a trio of lyricists—Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin, and Lorenz Hart—whose explorations of the psychological and emotional nuances of falling in and out of love have lost none of their wit and sophistication. Their songs, including “Night and Day,” “The Man I Love,” and “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” have become standards performed and recorded by generation after generation of singers. The lure of Broadway and Hollywood and the performing genius of such artists as Al Jolson, Fred Astaire, Ethel Waters, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, and Ethel Merman inspired a remarkable array of talented writers, including Dorothy Fields (“A Fine Romance,” “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love”), Frank Loesser (“Guys and Dolls”), Oscar Hammerstein II (from the groundbreaking “Show Boat” of 1927 through his extraordinary collaboration with Richard Rodgers), Johnny Mercer, Yip Harburg, Andy Razaf, Noël Coward, and Stephen Sondheim. Reading Lyrics also celebrates the work of dozens of superb craftsmen whose songs remain known, but who today are themselves less known—writers like Haven Gillespie (whose “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” may be the most widely recorded song of its era); Herman Hupfeld (not only the composer/lyricist of “As Time Goes By” but also of “Are You Makin’ Any Money?” and “When Yuba Plays the Rumba on the Tuba”); the great light versifier Ogden Nash (“Speak Low,” “I’m a Stranger Here Myself,” and, yes, “The Sea-Gull and the Ea-Gull”); Don Raye (“Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” “Mister Five by Five,” and, of course, “Milkman, Keep Those Bottles Quiet”); Bobby Troup (“Route 66”); Billy Strayhorn (not only for the omnipresent “Lush Life” but for “Something to Live For” and “A Lonely Coed”); Peggy Lee (not only a superb singer but also an original and appealing lyricist); and the unique Dave Frishberg (“I’m Hip,” “Peel Me a Grape,” “Van Lingo Mungo”). The lyricists are presented chronologically, each introduced by a succinct biography and the incisive commentary of Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball.

Even in the flattest landscape there are passes where the road first climbs to a peak and then descends into a new valley. Most of these passes are simply topography with little or no difference in climate, language, or culture between the valleys on either side. But some passes are different: they are true divides. History too knows such divides. Once these divides have been crossed, the social and political landscape changes; the social and political climate is different, and so is the social and political language. Some time between 1965 and 1973 we passed over such a divide and entered "the next century." Challenging, insightful, and provocative, Peter Drucker's "The New Realities" anticipates the central issues of a rapidly changing world. When it was initially published, in 1989, some reviewers mistakenly thought "The New Realities" was a book about the future, or in other words, a series of predictions. But, as indicated in the title, the book discusses "realities." Drucker argues that events of the next thirty to forty years, or even further on, had already largely been defined by events of the previous half-century. Thus, Drucker discusses episodes in world history that had not yet happened at the time of the book's initial publication, such as: the archaism of the hope for "salvation by society" in "The End of FDR's America"; the democratization of the Soviet Union in "When the Russian Empire is Gone"; the technology boom of the 1990s in "The Information-Based Organization"; and the evolution of management in "Management as Social Function and Liberal Art." Graced with a new preface by the author that discusses both reactions to the original publication of the book and how important it is for decision-makers to consider the past and present when planning for the future, "The New Realities" is mandatory reading for understanding politics, government, the economy, information technology, and business in an ever-changing world.

From the bestselling author of Gratitude and Musicophilia , a collection of essays that displays Oliver Sacks's passionate engagement with the most compelling ideas of human endeavor: evolution, creativity, memory, time, consciousness, and experience. Oliver Sacks, scientist and storyteller, is beloved by readers for the extraordinary neurological case histories ( Awakenings , An Anthropologist on Mars ) in which he explored many now-familiar disorders--autism, Tourette syndrome, face blindness. He was also a memoirist who wrote with honesty and humor about the remarkable experiences that shaped him ( Uncle Tungsten , On the Move , Gratitude ). In the pieces that comprise The River of Consciousness (many first published in The New York Review of Books , among other places), Dr. Sacks takes on evolution, botany, chemistry, medicine, neuroscience, and the arts, and calls upon his great scientific and creative heroes--above all, Darwin, Freud, and William James. For Sacks, these thinkers were constant companions from an early age. The questions they explored--the meaning of evolution, the roots of creativity, and the nature of consciousness--lie at the heart of science and of this book. The River of Consciousness demonstrates Sacks's unparalleled ability to make unexpected connections, his sheer joy in knowledge, and his unceasing, timeless endeavor to understand what makes us human.

“Nat Hentoff may very well be the foremost jazz historian in the world because he was there to witness firsthand the music’s evolution from big band and swing to fusion and bossa nova; and to dive into the souls of the men and women who created it from Ellington, Basie, Miles, Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald and Dinah Washington, among many others. At the Jazz Band Ball: Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene is an invaluable archive of not only the musical influence of America’s only indigenous music on the world, but its enormous impact as an engine for social change as well. It is a book that should be read by every young musician, music fan, and educator in America.”—Quincy Jones "The very best witnesses in the worlds of the law, aesthetic evaluation, social contexts of imposing significance, and artistic public performance are those who accurately understand what they have seen or what they are seeing. Nat Hentoff has been and continues to be a star witness in every one of those arenas. One of the greatest contributions of his jazz writing is that he has never felt the need to condescend to black people or to let the dictates of sociology diminish the universal significance of what they do when they do it well. Nat knows that so many jazz musicians have done what they do superbly, quite often expressing themselves beyond the narrows of color. As sensitive to the Americana of jazz as he is to its transcendent revelations about the sound of the human heart, Nat Hentoff is part of our American luck."—Stanley Crouch “ At the Jazz Band Ball is full of nuggets from Nat's rich lode of wit and wisdom, gleaned in a lifetime of fellowship with jazz and its makers.”—Dan Morgenstern, Director, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University; author of Living With Jazz: A Reader

In her latest work of personal criticism, Nancy K. Miller tells the story of how a girl who grew up in the 1950s and got lost in the 1960s became a feminist critic in the 1970s. As in her previous books, Miller interweaves pieces of her autobiography with the memoirs of contemporaries in order to explore the unexpected ways that the stories of other people's lives give meaning to our own. The evolution she chronicles was lived by a generation of literary girls who came of age in the midst of profound social change and, buoyed by the energy of second-wave feminism, became writers, academics, and activists. Miller's recollections form one woman's installment in a collective memoir that is still unfolding, an intimate page of a group portrait in process.

Traces the evolution of the Romantic approach to literary criticism and compares it to the other methods which prevailed in the early nineteenth century.

"An unprecedented and historic new book, The First Homosexuals traces the evolution of the homosexual identity through an archive of hundreds of artworks in a wide variety of media. Organized geographically, each chapter highlights a different part of the world and includes an insightful essay by an expert in the art and sexuality of that region. Ranging from well-known masterpieces to works by unknown artists and pieces rarely considered in the context of sexuality, The First Homosexuals offers a stunning and illuminating look at the first self-consciously queer art"--

"Just ahead lies all the fun and games which Darwin missed" ... So sayeth Jack "The King" Kirby in describing the creative spark behind his enchanting Devil Dinosaur, an alternate-reality fable that recounts what might have happened had humans and dinsoaurs roamed the Earth at the same time - and in typical "King" Kirby fashion, finds the author wondering, "Who says they didn't?" One of his latter-day titles from his final stint at Marvel, Devil Dinosaur's nine-issue run came and went in 1978, going mostly unrecognized for its gritty charm and episodic mythologizing. Seemingly crafted for an audience far younger than the other fare he was generating for Marvel at the time, Jack's grand tale is a prehistoric fable that seems to sell the notion that cooperation, friendship and loyalty were the lights that guided man out of the swamps and into civilization. Putting into play these notions were Devil Dinosaur and Moon Boy, brothers bonded not by blood, but rather an uncommon spark of curiosity about their sourrounding world. It was this curiosity - this compulsion to investigate and not take for granted the conventional wisdom of others - that separated them from their peers and put them at the vanguard of evolution. Naturally, the dinosaurs in Devil's world came in many shapes and sizes, from triceratops, pterodactyls, and ankylosaurs to tyrannosaurs rex - Jack draws 'em all! And aside from Devil, Moon Boy finds himself rejected by his Small Folk kin for making friends with a fearsome T. Rex, and bullied by the Killer Folk that try to gain dominance in the forest by force! Devil and Moon Boy's curiosity often leads them into heaps of trouble, but that's where the fun is for readers! Besides the vicious Killer Folk, led by the warlord Seven Scars, the boy and his dinosaur are beset by a host of dinosaurs, giant spiders and armies of enormous ants, and are visited by aliens from outer space! But in the end, it is their friendship and fierce loyalty to each other that manifests itself in courageous heroism that eventually wins the day - and as Jack seems keen to note through subtext, evolves the species! Nearly thirty years after they were first created, this Omnibus edition dusts off the rare and woefully ignored pages of Jack Kirby's wild adventures in a prehistoric land and restores them for a new generation of readers - perfect for any child, or the child within you!