Bøger udgivet af Basic Books

"When your dog growls and barks, you might assume that he's angry. But how do you know? You can't very well ask him. Even if you could, it's not at all clear that animals even have emotions like humans do. We still know very little about what emotions are and how they drive behavior. In fact, scientists haven't even been able to reach a consensus on how to study them. In The Nature of the Beast, neuroscientist David Anderson argues that the only way to solve this problem is to totally rethink our approach. One of the main sources of confusion is that we often fail to differentiate between feelings and emotions. Feelings are the subjective experiences of emotion, but they are not actually emotions. Anderson argues that emotions are internal states of the brain, similar to the state of being tired or thirsty, which you can observe in a brain's neural activity. They are like programs that our brain runs to address specific needs. Feelings are just one of many ways your brain tries to address a need. This neuroscientific approach offers us a much more precise and objective way of understanding emotions than older methods like self-report. And because it doesn't rely on language, you don't actually have to ask a dog if he's angry to find out. Anderson has been able to get some of the first reliable evidence about whether animals experience emotions like humans (spoiler alert: they do), and he is using those results to learn new things about how emotions drive our own actions. The Nature of the Beast takes readers into Anderson's groundbreaking studies of animal aggression and explores provocative new insights into how we choose between fight or flight responses, why isolation makes us more aggressive and social circles make us more peaceful, why sex and violence often bleed into one another, and whether there is in fact a connection between aggression and mental illness. The Nature of the Beast is How Emotions Are Made meets Mama's Last Hug: an exciting new framework for understanding how the brain regulates emotions, and why we have them at all"--

"Humans seem to be destroying nature with incessant fiddling. We can use viruses to insert genes for pesticide resistance into plants, or to make the flesh of goldfish glow. We can turn bacteria into factories for millions of molecules, from vitamin A and insulin to diesel fuel. And this year's Nobel Prize went to the inventors of tool called CRISPR, which lets us edit genomes almost as easily as we can edit the text in a computer document. The potential for harm can seem both enormous and inevitable. In Life as We Made It, evolutionary biologist Beth Shapiro argues that our fears of new technologies aren't just mistaken, but they miss the big picture about human history: we've been remaking nature for as long as we've been around. As Shapiro shows, the molecular tools of biotechnology are just the latest in a long line of innovations stretching back to the extra food and warm fires that first brought wolves into the human fold, turning them into devoted dogs. Perhaps more importantly, Shapiro offers a new understanding of the evolution of our species and those that surround us"--

"Criminal justice reformer Victoria Pratt offers a path forward to restoring public trust in the courts: procedural justice, the simple idea that people will obey the law if they are treated with dignity, respect, and fairness by the justice system. Growing up as the daughter of an African-American sanitation worker and a Dominican beauty salon owner, Victoria Pratt learned one simple lesson at a young age: treat everyone with respect, no matter what they look like or where they come from. Carrying that with her as she became the Chief Judge of the Newark Municipal Court, she found that showing respect not only changed lives, it transformed the way justice was done in her community. Drawing on years of experience, Pratt breaks down how her reforms can be implemented to build trust in the rule of law ... Through her stories, research, and insights, she reveals how leaders can better address each defendant's potential, approach them as a whole person, connect them with community resources, and restore them back into society. She explains the reasoning behind strategies she's pioneered, such as assigning essays to defendants, offering alternatives to jailtime, and connecting people with the support they need to stay out of the court system for good. And we can all learn from her lessons in empathy and compassion to shift toward a more humane form of community leadership"--

"For centuries, philosophers have debated the question of free will. Do we make our own choices? Or are we more like rudderless ships drifting on the ocean, buffeted by winds and currents outside ourselves? In TK, research psychologist Ken Sheldon reveals that the way we answer these questions has serious implications for our wellbeing. We may never know for certain whether free will exists, Sheldon argues, but recent studies have found that believing in free will matters-indeed, it's an essential component of psychological health. Freely Determined offers an argument for embracing our capacity to choose our own destiny, and a guide for how we might recognize our freedom and use it wisely. Drawing on his own groundbreaking work on motivation, as well as recent research in personality science and social psychology, Sheldon shows us that far from being in the thrall of animal urges and unconscious biases, we humans are constantly making conscious choices: whether to eat the nachos or the salad, whether to shoot the basketball or pass it to a teammate, whether to take that job or marry that person or write that novella. Indeed, over decades of research, Sheldon has established that seeing ourselves as change-makers in our own lives, and in the world, helps us feel happier and even behave more ethically. By identifying and pursuing our deepest values, he argues, we can set and achieve meaningful goals, ones that will help us and our communities flourish. Offering readers insight into how they can live a more self-directed, satisfying life, Freely Determined demystifies the science of choice and reveals that we are radically free to live with greater purpose"--

"It's long been accepted that the 1950s and 1960s were a period of steady decline for the British stately country home. In Noble Ambitions, celebrated historian Adrian Tinniswood shows that the postwar history of family seats and great houses is much more nuanced. Tinniswood proves that the country house is not only an iconic symbol, but a lens through which to understand the shifting fortunes of the British âelite. Twinned with the orthodox narrative of demolition and decline is a parallel story of creativity and dynamic social activity"--

Statesman, diplomat, Founding Father--Benjamin Franklin was all of these things, but, according to Chaplin, it is his status as a scientific genius that is the key to understanding him and his world. Illustrations.

This wonderful book, based on a previously unpublished three-part public lecture, shows us another side of Richard P. Feynman, as he expounds on the world around us.

A magnificent treasury of the best short works of Feynman--from interviews and speeches to lectures and printed articles--presents a fascinating view of a life in science like no other.

Offering a voyeuristic peek into the private, creative lives of today's 20-something and 30-something writers, this volume sheds light on what their work means at a time when the book business is changing, and yet storytelling via e-mail and weblogs seems more relevant than ever.

A female world-record-setting pilot, Jerrie Cobb was recruited in 1959 to take the astronaut tests. She excelled, so the doctor who supervised the selection of NASA's Mercury astronauts recruited additional female pilots. Twelve performed exceptionally. Stephanie Nolen tracked down eleven of the surviving "Fellow Lady Astronaut Trainees" and learned the story of those early days of the space race and the disappointment when, in 1961, the women were grounded.

A noted military historian offers a cultural approach to the history of warfare, insisting that we understand combat best when we study the beliefs, values, and expectations of the adversaries

More clearly than many other books, Large's account depicts the tragic abandonment of the Jews by Western Nations.- "Booklist"

The book's science is solid and McCarthy's fervor genuinely infectious. The future never felt so close.- "Wired"