What happened to the people who made the forlorn long-abandoned statues of Easter Island? What happened to the architects of the crumbling Maya pyramids? Will we go the same way, our skyscrapers one day standing derelict and overgrown like the temples at Angkor Wat? This book deals with these questions.

An essential overview of the problems of our world today -- and how we should prepare for tomorrow -- from the world's leading public intellectual

We have two choices. We can be pessimistic, give up, and help ensure that the worst will happen. Or we can be optimistic, grasp the opportunities that surely exist, and maybe help make the world a better place. Not much of a choice. From peerless political thinker Noam Chomsky comes an exploration of rising neoliberalism, the refugee crisis in ...

An entertaining and lively guide to rediscovering the pleasure in art

A harrowing account of brainwashing’s pervasive role in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries

An enjoyable, accessible exploration of the legacy of ancient Greece today, across our daily lives and all forms of popular culture

James Bamford has been the preeminent expert on the National Security Agency since his reporting revealed the agency's existence in the 1980s. Now Bamford describes the transformation of the NSA since 9/11, as the agency increasingly turns its high-tech ears on the American public.

The Shadow Factory reconstructs how the NSA missed a chance to thwart the 9/11 hijackers and details how this mistake has led to a heightening of domestic surveillance. In disturbing detail, Bamford descri...

Why is paying for things painful? Why are we comfortable overpaying for something in the present just because we've overpaid for it in the past? Why is it easy to pay $4 for a soda on vacation, when we wouldn't spend more than $1 on that same soda at our local grocery store?We think of money as numbers, values, and amounts, but when it comes down to it, when we actually use our money, we engage our hearts more than our heads. Emotions play a powerful role in shaping our financial behavior, of...

?An unusually engaging book on the forces that fuel originality across fields.? ?Adam Grant Looking at the 14 key traits of genius, from curiosity to creative maladjustment to obsession, Professor Craig Wright, creator of Yale University's popular ?Genius Course,? explores what we can learn from brilliant minds that have changed the world.

Einstein. Beethoven. Picasso. Jobs. The word genius evokes these iconic figures, whose cultural contributions have irreversibly shaped society. Yet B...

Whether you want to write a Petrarchan sonnet for your lover's birthday, an epithalamion for your sister's wedding or a villanelle excoriating the government's housing policy, this book gives you the tools and the confidence to do so with enjoyable exercises, insights and simple step-by-step advice.

Istanbul's Galata Bridge has spanned the Golden Horn since the sixth century AD, connecting the old city with the more Western districts to the north. But the bridge is a city in itself, peopled by merchants and petty thieves, tourists and fishermen, and at the same time a microcosmic reflection of Turkey as the link between Asia and Europe.