Bøger udgivet af Basic Books

A leading historian argues that Johnny Cash was the most important political artist of his time

Charles Darwin called it "e;a little world within itself."e; Sailors referred to it as "e;Las Encantadas"e;- the enchanted islands. Lying in the eastern Pacific Ocean, straddling the equator off the west coast of South America, the Gal pagos is the most pristine archipelago to be found anywhere in the tropics. It is so remote, so untouched, that the act of wading ashore can make you feel like you are the first to do so.Yet the Gal pagos is far more than a wild paradise on earth-it is one of the most important sites in the history of science. Home to over 4,000 species native to its shores, around 40 percent of them endemic, the islands have often been called a "e;laboratory of evolution."e; The finches collected on the Gal pagos inspired Darwin's revolutionary theory of natural selection.In The Gal pagos, science writer Henry Nicholls offers a lively natural and human history of the archipelago, charting its course from deserted wilderness to biological testing ground and global ecotourism hot spot. Describing the island chain's fiery geological origins as well as our species' long history of interaction with the islands, he draws vivid portraits of the life forms found in the Gal pagos, capturing its awe-inspiring landscapes, understated flora, and stunning wildlife. Nicholls also reveals the immense challenges facing the islands, which must continually balance conservation and everencroaching development.Beautifully weaving together natural history, evolutionary theory, and his own experience on the islands, Nicholls shows that the story of the Gal pagos is not merely an isolated concern, but reflects the future of our species' relationship with nature-and the fate of our planet.

An acclaimed expert on race and gender illuminates the distinctive role that white women play in perpetuating racism, as well as the distinctive role they can play in dismantling it.

How military technology has transformed the world

In this insightful book, an underwater archaeologist and survival coach shows how understanding the collapse of civilizations can help us prepare for a troubled future.

Do antidepressants work? Of courseeveryone knows it. Like his colleagues, Irving Kirsch, a researcher and clinical psychologist, for years referred patients to psychiatrists to have their depression treated with drugs before deciding to investigate for himself just how effective the drugs actually were. Over the course of the past fifteen years, however, Kirschs researcha thorough analysis of decades of Food and Drug Administration datahas demonstrated that what everyone knew about antidepressants was wrong. Instead of treating depression with drugs, weve been treating it with suggestion.The Emperors New Drugs makes an overwhelming case that what had seemed a cornerstone of psychiatric treatment is little more than a faulty consensus. But Kirsch does more than just criticize: he offers a path society can follow so that we stop popping pills and start proper treatment for depression.

The Holocaust is the defining event of the twentieth century and perhaps all of modern history. Yet for too long, we have ignored the vital question of how and why such a monstrous event could have happened at all. Now, in How Could This Happen, historian Dan McMillan distills the existing Holocaust research into a cogent explanation of the genocides causes, revealing how a once progressive society like Germany could commit murder on such a massive scale. Countless barriers stand between stable societies and genocide, McMillan explains, but in Germany these buffers began to topple well before World War II. From Hitlers meteoric rise to deep-rooted European anti-Semitism to the dehumanizing effects of World War I, McMillan uncovers the many factors that made the Holocaust possible.Persuasive and compelling, How Could This Happen illustrates how a perfect storm of bleak circumstances, malevolent ideas, and societal upheaval unleashed historys most terrifying atrocity.

In these many-layered and masterfully written portraits, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot reaches deep into human experiencefrom the drama of birth to the solemn vigil before deathto find the essence of respect. In her moving vision, relayed through powerfully told stories, respect is not the passive deference offered a superior but an active force that creates symmetry even in unequal relationships.

Europe, 19001914: a world adrift, a pulsating era of creativity and contradictions. The major topics of the day: terrorism, globalization, immigration, consumerism, the collapse of moral values, and the rivalry of superpowers. The twentieth century was not born in the trenches of the Somme or Passchendaelebut rather in the fifteen vertiginous years preceding World War I.In this short span of time, a new world order was emerging in ultimately tragic contradiction to the old. These were the years in which the political and personal repercussions of the Industrial Revolution were felt worldwide: Cities grew like never before as people fled the countryside and their traditional identities; science created new possibilities as well as nightmares; education changed the outlook of millions of people; mass-produced items transformed daily life; industrial laborers demanded a share of political power; and women sought to change their place in societyas well as the very fabric of sexual relations.From the tremendous hope for a new century embodied in the 1900 Worlds Fair in Paris to the shattering assassination of a Habsburg archduke in Sarajevo in 1914, historian Philipp Blom chronicles this extraordinary epoch year by year. Prime Ministers and peasants, anarchists and actresses, scientists and psychopaths intermingle on the stage of a new century in this portrait of an opulent, unstable age on the brink of disaster.Beautifully written and replete with deftly told anecdotes, The Vertigo Years brings the wonders, horrors, and fears of the early twentieth century vividly to life.

A top expert on decision-making explains why it's so hard to make good choices-and what you and your doctor can do to make better ones

Inspired by insights gained on the International Space Station, a NASA astronaut offers essential lessons to empower earthbound readers to fight climate change.

A superstar historian offers "the most comprehensive account of the GOP and its competing impulses," (Los Angeles Times) - now updated to cover Donald Trump's presidency

A dazzling history of Africans in Europe, revealing their unacknowledged role in shaping the continent One of the Best History Books of 2021 — SmithsonianConventional wisdom holds that Africans are only a recent presence in Europe. But in African Europeans, renowned historian Olivette Otele debunks this and uncovers a long history of Europeans of African descent. From the third century, when the Egyptian Saint Maurice became the leader of a Roman legion, all the way up to the present, Otele explores encounters between those defined as "Africans" and those called "Europeans." She gives equal attention to the most prominent figures—like Alessandro de Medici, the first duke of Florence thought to have been born to a free African woman in a Roman village—and the untold stories—like the lives of dual-heritage families in Europe's coastal trading towns. African Europeans is a landmark celebration of this integral, vibrantly complex slice of European history, and will redefine the field for years to come.

Thomas Sowell's incisive critique of the intellectuals' destructive role in shaping ideas about race in AmericaIntellectuals and Race is a radical book in the original sense of one that goes to the root of the problem. The role of intellectuals in racial strife is explored in an international context that puts the American experience in a wholly new light. The views of individual intellectuals have spanned the spectrum, but the views of intellectuals as a whole have tended to cluster. Indeed, these views have clustered at one end of the spectrum in the early twentieth century and then clustered at the opposite end of the spectrum in the late twentieth century. Moreover, these radically different views of race in these two eras were held by intellectuals whose views on other issues were very similar in both eras.Intellectuals and Race is not, however, a book about history, even though it has much historical evidence, as well as demographic, geographic, economic and statistical evidence-- all of it directed toward testing the underlying assumptions about race that have prevailed at times among intellectuals in general, and especially intellectuals at the highest levels. Nor is this simply a theoretical exercise. The impact of intellectuals' ideas and crusades on the larger society, both past and present, is the ultimate concern. These ideas and crusades have ranged widely from racial theories of intelligence to eugenics to "e;social justice"e; and multiculturalism. In addition to in-depth examinations of these and other issues, Intellectuals and Race explores the incentives, the visions and the rationales that drive intellectuals at the highest levels to conclusions that have often turned out to be counterproductive and even disastrous, not only for particular racial or ethnic groups, but for societies as a whole.

A major reassessment of one of the most important-and complex-political figures of the modern age

A panoramic survey of the interactions between American business and public policy, from J.P. Morgan to Lee Iacocca.

These pieces reflect the hardships faced by African Americans. Through allegorical stories and fictional encounters, dreams and dialogues, they present new perspectives on issues that concern Blacks. With a theme of Christian love, they offer African Americans hope in a racist world.

This bold book breaks new ground by making explicit and coherent the theoretical underpinnings of feminist therapy

Thoroughly revised and updated, this edition covers important new developments in the field, including the emergence of Critical Incident Stress Debriefing Teams, which help emergency service personnel survive the impact of critical incident stress. This edition also addresses the psychological aspects of proactive police work.

A noted feminist psychologist takes a fascinating look at the lived and ordinary experience of women to present the first psychology of women that integrates all aspects of experience, from the physical to the sociocultural.

With the publication of Running on Ritalin in 1998, Dr. Lawrence Diller established himself as the country's leading expert on the use of psychiatric drugs to treat children. Since then, parents have clamored for his expertise on psychological problems beyond ADD, drugs beyond Ritalin, and, most important, how to decide whether or not drugs really are the best option for their children. More and more parents are asking the simple question: Should I medicate my child? In this authoritative and plainspoken book, which features a detailed, easy-to-access "e;Quick Guide to Psychiatric Drugs,"e; Dr. Diller gives parents the tools they need to regain faith in their own judgment and make wise choices for their children.

"Why do so many smart, career-oriented, even ardently feminist women end up with nearly sole responsibility for running their households and raising their children? Why does it happen even in couples w"

ed by a host of "unknown others" in the militia movements of rural America.

A controversial look at how the failure of most of the poor to work at all has transformed American politics, by a New York University political scientist who is a leading advocate of workfare programs.

Combining armchair travel with political history and social commentary, Barbara Crossette offers the first look across Asia to tell the story of hill stations from their colonial origins to the present.

Empires on the Pacific is to be celebrated as one of the best accounts available of the war against Japan.--Toronto Globe and Mail.

One of the truly seminal works in modern cultural anthropology, Five Families is a dramatic and forceful account of the men, women, and children of five Mexican families and the impoverished communities in which they live.

In a fascinating study of how the Army became the premier model for developing black leadership in a racially integrated setting, Moskos and Butler show how this system works and how it can be applied throughout American society.

A leading Yale psycholinguist separates myth from fact in the first comprehensive account of the psychological, linguistic, educational, and social aspects of bilingualism.