Showing titles in Anthropology

It's on the television, in the papers, and in our minds. Every day we're bludgeoned by news of how bad everything is - financial collapse, unemployment, growing poverty, environmental disasters, disease, hunger, war. But the rarely acknowledged reality is that our progress over the past few decades has been unprecedented. By almost any index you care to identify, things are markedly better now than they have ever been for almost everyone alive.

David Mitchell investigates how the humble meeting took over the world - and what we should do about it In this fantastic follow-up to Behaving Ourselves: David Mitchell on Manners, the comedian and columnist turns his attention to meetings, examining our love/hate relationship with them and...

First coined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, a meme is any idea, behavior, or skill that can be transferred from one person to another by imitation. Susan Blackmore shows that once our distant ancestors acquired the crucial ability to imitate, a second kind of natural selection began, a survival of the fittest amongst competing ideas and behaviors. Ideas and behaviors that proved most adaptive-making tools, for example, or using language - survived and flourished, replicating themselves in as many minds as possible.

In this extraordinary book, an award-winning author tells the story of how humans invented history, from the Stone Age to the Virtual Age “Terrific… Tamim Ansary explores the underappreciated ways that empires, nations, and smaller sets of people have responded to their surroundings...

The Origin of Species sold out on the first day of its publication in 1859. It is the major book of the 19th century and one of the most readable and accessible of the great revolutionary works of the scientific imagination. Though, in fact, little read, most people know what it says—at least they think they do. The Origin of Species was the first mature and persuasive work to explain how species change through the process of natural selection. Upon its publication, the book began to transform attitudes about society and religion.

In 1967, not long after the Six-Day War, three young Arab men ventured into the town of Ramle, in what is now Jewish Israel. They were cousins, on a pilgrimage to see their childhood homes; their families had been driven out of Palestine nearly 20 years earlier. One cousin had a door slammed in his face, and another found his old house had been converted into a school. But the third, Bashir Al-Khairi, was met at the door by a young woman called Dalia, who invited them in.

James Scott taught us what's wrong with seeing like a state. Now, in his most accessible and personal book to date, the acclaimed social scientist makes the case for seeing like an anarchist. Inspired by the core anarchist faith in the possibilities of voluntary cooperation without hierarchy, Two Cheers for Anarchism is an engaging, high-spirited, and often very funny defense of an anarchist way of seeing - one that provides a unique and powerful perspective on everything from everyday social and political interactions to mass protests and revolutions.

Brought to you by Penguin. A mind-expanding, revolutionary journey across time that shows how our biology has determined human history for the first time. This book will change how you see the world. We’re a wonder of evolution, capable of incredible feats. But we’re also deeply flawed. Our...

The Roman historian Tacitus was a successful politician who eventually became governor of the province of Asia. He is thought to have died around AD 120 and benefitted from the patronage of the Flavian emperors. The Histories, of which only just over four out of 14 books survive, covers the years following the assassination of the Emperor Nero: Rome was plunged into further civil war with the Year of the Four Emperors (AD 69), which culminated in the accession of Vespasian, the first of the Flavians.

Brought to you by Penguin. *WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION* *THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER* *A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE TIMES, NEW YORK TIMES, GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, AND PROSPECT* When Naomi Klein discovered that a woman who shared her first name, but had radically different...

Chinese was the first truly global cuisine. When the first Chinese labourers began to sojourn and settle abroad, restaurants appeared in their wake. Yet Chinese has the curious distinction of being both one of the world's best-loved food cultures and one of the least understood. For more than a century, the overwhelming dominance of a simplified form of Cantonese cooking has ensured that few foreigners experienced anything of the richness or sophistication of China's local food traditions - but today that is beginning to change.

Brought to you by Penguin. A ground-breaking look at the science of love and connection – and an urgent corrective to some of our most fundamental assumptions about attraction. We’re told that what men and women desire from relationship is different and at odds – he’s looking for novelty...

Øl, bue og pil og tegninger på væggen. Urmennesket havde en formidabel evne til at kombinere leg og fantasi med arbejde. Vi skal lade os inspirere af dén centrale del i menneskets udviklingshistorie og lukke legen ind i hverdagen igen. Rane Willerslev og tre videnskabsmænd fra...

Historian, professor and data scientist Jo Guldi turns the David and Goliath story of the 19th century Irish Land Wars to show how a small band of revolutionary Irish peasants—pioneering nonviolent activism and minting ideas like rent control and land transfer—took on the British Empire and...

Most people picture archaeologists digging through dirt in search of ancient artifacts and lost cities. And sometimes that’s exactly right—as at the mound of Troy, where excavations suggest there may be truth behind Homer’s tales. But archaeology is much more than excavation. It blends science, history, and detective work, using tools like CT scans, astronomical modeling, and even cryptographic analysis to solve puzzles from across the ages.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER #1 New York Times bestselling author Ben Shapiro examines the current state of America and Western civilization, and poses a question: will we be Lions, or will we be Scavengers? In a world split between noble Lions and destructive Scavengers, only the brave can...

Martín Prechtel continues the narrative of his unique life in Santiago, Atitlan in Long Life, Honey in the Heart, an eloquent memoir replete with the subtle intelligence and sophistication of Mayan culture. Set against the dramatic backdrop of Guatemala's political upheaval in the 1980s, this...

‘Essential reading for creators, builders, and leaders’ DANIEL H. PINK, author of Drive ‘A deep dive into the dynamics of successful teams’ ADAM GRANT, author of Think Again ‘A phenomenal, science-backed guide’ KATY MILKMAN, author of How to Change We live in an age of unprecedented...

Can forests think? Do dogs dream? In this astonishing book, Eduardo Kohn challenges the very foundations of anthropology, calling into question our central assumptions about what it means to be human - and thus distinct from all other life forms. Based on four years of fieldwork among the Runa of Ecuador's Upper Amazon, Kohn draws on his rich ethnography to explore how Amazonians interact with the many creatures that inhabit one of the world's most complex ecosystems.

This fresh perspective on crucial questions of history identifies the root metaphors that cultures have used to construct meaning in their world. It offers a glimpse into the minds of a vast range of different peoples: early hunter-gatherers and farmers, ancient Egyptians, traditional Chinese sages, the founders of Christianity, trailblazers of the Scientific Revolution, and those who constructed our modern consumer society.