Author: Joseph Henrich
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374710457
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 420
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Book Description
A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 A Bloomberg Best Non-Fiction Book of 2020 A Behavioral Scientist Notable Book of 2020 A Human Behavior & Evolution Society Must-Read Popular Evolution Book of 2020 A bold, epic account of how the co-evolution of psychology and culture created the peculiar Western mind that has profoundly shaped the modern world. Perhaps you are WEIRD: raised in a society that is Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. If so, you’re rather psychologically peculiar. Unlike much of the world today, and most people who have ever lived, WEIRD people are highly individualistic, self-obsessed, control-oriented, nonconformist, and analytical. They focus on themselves—their attributes, accomplishments, and aspirations—over their relationships and social roles. How did WEIRD populations become so psychologically distinct? What role did these psychological differences play in the industrial revolution and the global expansion of Europe during the last few centuries? In The WEIRDest People in the World, Joseph Henrich draws on cutting-edge research in anthropology, psychology, economics, and evolutionary biology to explore these questions and more. He illuminates the origins and evolution of family structures, marriage, and religion, and the profound impact these cultural transformations had on human psychology. Mapping these shifts through ancient history and late antiquity, Henrich reveals that the most fundamental institutions of kinship and marriage changed dramatically under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church. It was these changes that gave rise to the WEIRD psychology that would coevolve with impersonal markets, occupational specialization, and free competition—laying the foundation for the modern world. Provocative and engaging in both its broad scope and its surprising details, The WEIRDest People in the World explores how culture, institutions, and psychology shape one another, and explains what this means for both our most personal sense of who we are as individuals and also the large-scale social, political, and economic forces that drive human history. Includes black-and-white illustrations.
Author: Thomas Slemen
Publisher: Barnes & Noble Publishing
ISBN: 9780760712443
Category : Curiosities and wonders
Languages : en
Pages : 426
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Book Description
Author: Michael Shermer
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
ISBN: 1429996765
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 382
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Book Description
"This sparkling book romps over the range of science and anti-science." --Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel Revised and Expanded Edition. In this age of supposed scientific enlightenment, many people still believe in mind reading, past-life regression theory, New Age hokum, and alien abduction. A no-holds-barred assault on popular superstitions and prejudices, with more than 80,000 copies in print, Why People Believe Weird Things debunks these nonsensical claims and explores the very human reasons people find otherworldly phenomena, conspiracy theories, and cults so appealing. In an entirely new chapter, "Why Smart People Believe in Weird Things," Michael Shermer takes on science luminaries like physicist Frank Tippler and others, who hide their spiritual beliefs behind the trappings of science. Shermer, science historian and true crusader, also reveals the more dangerous side of such illogical thinking, including Holocaust denial, the recovered-memory movement, the satanic ritual abuse scare, and other modern crazes. Why People Believe Strange Things is an eye-opening resource for the most gullible among us and those who want to protect them.
Author: Douglas R. Hofstadter
Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
ISBN: 0465030785
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 544
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Book Description
Argues that the key to understanding ourselves and consciousness is the "strange loop," a special kind of abstract feedback loop that inhabits the brain.
Author: Marty M. Engle
Publisher: Frontline Publications
ISBN: 9781567140538
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 148
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Book Description
Rachel investigates some strange plants behind a vacant house and then strange people move into the house.
Author: Lawrence S. Bartell
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1491720239
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
Lawrence Bartell experienced many strange events over the course of his long life, at least partly because he deliberately strayed far from the beaten path in science. While it might not have been the most efficient way to gain a reputation in his field, it was more fun. In his memoir, he presents a collection of entertaining, sometimes bizarre stories collected over a lifetime. Bartell chronicles a wide variety of experiences, such as his predisposition to indulge in childhood pranks, his arrest as a possible Russian spy, his work on the Manhattan Project, his entry into the Guinness Book of Records, his stint in the US Navy during wartime, and his appointment as visiting professor in Moscow during the height of the Cold War. As he recalls the curiousand often bizarretrue stories he acquired over a lifetime, it soon becomes evident that scientists are just as human as anyone else and that beer really can play an important role in preparing one for a PhD thesis. True Stories of Strange Events and Odd People shares details from a scientists one-of-a-kind journey through life as he observes the world around him, tests his theories, and learns valuable life lessons.
Author: Phyllis Raybin Emert
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780812520569
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 132
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Book Description
A journey all over the world takes you on a search for the answers to some baffling mysteries concerning people and places.
Author: Jason G. Strange
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252051890
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 410
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Book Description
”You’re either buried with your crystals or your shotgun.” That laconic comment captures the hippies-versus-hicks conflict that divides, and in some ways defines, modern-day homesteaders. It also reveals that back to-the-landers, though they may seek lives off the grid, remain connected to the most pressing questions confronting the United States today. Jason Strange shows where homesteaders fit, and don't fit, within contemporary America. Blending history with personal stories, Strange visits pig roasts and bohemian work parties to find people engaged in a lifestyle that offers challenge and fulfillment for those in search of virtues like self-employment, frugality, contact with nature, and escape from the mainstream. He also lays bare the vast differences in education and opportunity that leave some homesteaders dispossessed while charting the tensions that arise when people seek refuge from the ills of modern society—only to find themselves indelibly marked by the system they dreamed of escaping.
Author: Amy Alznauer
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1592703437
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 60
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Book Description
“I intend to stand firm and let the peacocks multiply, for I am sure that, in the end, the last word will be theirs.” —Flannery O’Connor When she was young, the writer Flannery O’Connor was captivated by the chickens in her yard. She’d watch their wings flap, their beaks peck, and their eyes glint. At age six, her life was forever changed when she and a chicken she had been training to walk forwards and backwards were featured in the Pathé News, and she realized that people want to see what is odd and strange in life. But while she loved birds of all varieties and kept several species around the house, it was the peacocks that came to dominate her life. Written by Amy Alznauer with devotional attention to all things odd and illustrated in radiant paint by Ping Zhu, The Strange Birds of Flannery O’Connor explores the beginnings of one author’s lifelong obsession. Amy Alznauer lives in Chicago with her husband, two children, a dog, a parakeet, sometimes chicks, and a part-time fish, but, as of today, no elephants or peacocks. Ping Zhu is a freelance illustrator who has worked with clients big and small, won some awards based on the work she did for aforementioned clients, attracted new clients with shiny awards, and is hoping to maintain her livelihood in Brooklyn by repeating that cycle.
Author: Stephanie Lenox
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780970027788
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Poetry. Winner of the 2007 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition. Written mostly in the voice of record holders from Guinness World Records, this chapbook is an ode to human superlatives, ludicrous acts, and our common strangeness. Edited by Suzanne Cleary and Margo Stever. "Stephanie Lenox's THE HEART THAT LIES OUTSIDE THE BODY mines the Guinness World Records to take metaphor to a sublime extreme. Her chapbook, peopled with its federation of freaks, is euphoric, generous, gracefully obsessive. There is intense personal depth in all of these poems, which are intimate, skillful, shimmering with complexity and awe"--Denise Duhamel.
