"The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his groundbreaking podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet-from the QWERTY keyboard and Staphylococcus aureus to the Taco Bell breakfast menu-on a five-star scale. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully...

Shares insights into such present-day issues as the role of technology in transforming humanity, the epidemic of false news, and the modern relevance of nations and religion.

The follow-up to Pinker's groundbreaking The Better Angels of Our Nature presents the big picture of human progress: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against...

"Meet the people of the world and find out about some of the fascinating cultures that make up our global community. From Spaniards to Samoans, and the Miao to the Miskitu, this fully updated edition of DK's popular Encyclopedia of People will take you on a worldwide tour of continents, peninsulas, and islands to discover what life is like for the billions of people on our planet. Discover how the Yakut people survive in the Arctic temperatures of...

"From the New York Times columnist and bestselling author of BAD RELIGION, a powerful portrait of how our turbulent age is defined by dark forces seemingly beyond our control. Today the Western world seems to be in crisis. But beneath our social media frenzy and reality television politics, the deeper reality is one of drift, repetition, and dead ends. THE DECADENT SOCIETY explains what happens when a rich and powerful society ceases advancing-- how...

Thirty years ago Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about climate change. Now he broadens the warning: the entire human game, he suggests, has begun to play itself out. Bill McKibben's groundbreaking book The End of Nature -- issued in dozens of languages and long regarded as a classic -- was the first book to alert us to global warming. But the danger is broader than that: even as climate change shrinks the space where our civilization...

"A collection of the finest New York Times columns written by Roger Cohen, and an extended commentary on the years in which he wrote them"--

"A paradigm-shifting book from Aboriginal scholar Tyson Yunkaporta, who brings a crucial Indigenous perspective to history, education, money, power, and sustainability-and offers a new template for living"--

"Axelrod spins his personal philosophy out into the wider world, where technology is changing the nature of human consciousness faster than we can see it happening. He draws a parallel between the environmental crisis and a lesser-known, but equally pressing issue: as we lose the world around us, he argues, we are losing our interior worlds, too. We can't navigate without a GPS, we can't pay attention unless our attention is DEMANDED in all caps and...