By Jonah Lehrer
In this technology-driven age, it's tempting to believe that science can solve every mystery. After all, science has cured countless diseases and even sent humans into space. But as Jonah Lehrer argues in this hit debut, science is not the only path to knowledge. In fact, when it comes to understanding the brain, art got there first. Taking a group of artists — a painter, a poet, a chef, a composer, and a handful of novelists — Lehrer shows how each one discovered an essential truth about the mind that science is only now rediscovering.
By Paul Theroux
Thirty years after the epic journey chronicled in his classic work The Great Railway Bazaar, the world's most acclaimed travel writer re-creates his 25,000-mile journey through eastern Europe, central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, China, Japan, and Siberia.
"Brilliant. No one writes with theroux's head-on intensity and raptness, and his descriptions made me want to jump on the next plane to Istanbul (and also, of course, to many of the other places he evokes). I particularly loved the spectral motif, the ghosts and shadows and underground presences that flit through the narrative, giving the whole a half-seen and haunting dimension that no book of travels I've ever read conjures up." —Pico Iyer
By David Sheff
What had happened to my beautiful boy? To our family? What did I do wrong? Those are the wrenching questions that haunted every moment of David Sheff 's journey through his son Nic's addiction to drugs and tentative steps toward recovery. Before Nic Sheff became addicted to crystal meth, he was a charming boy, joyous and funny, a varsity athlete and honor student adored by his two younger siblings. After meth, he was a trembling wraith who lied, stole, and lived on the streets.David Sheff traces the first subtle warning signs: the denial, the 3 A.M. phone calls (is it Nic? the police? the hospital?), the rehabs.His preoccupation with Nic became an addiction in itself, and the obsessive worry and stress took a tremendous toll. But as a journalist, he instinctively researched every avenue of treatment that might save his son and refused to give up on Nic. Beautiful Boy is a fiercely candid memoir that brings immediacy to the emotional rollercoaster of loving a child who seems beyond help.
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The breath of things as they are
Here you will find the finest essays ranging from The New Yorker and Harper's to Swink and Pinch. In his introduction to this year's edition, Adam Gopnik finds that great essays have "text and inner text, personal story and larger point, the thing you're supposed to be paying attention to and some other thing you're really interested in." This latest installment of The Best American Essays is full of writing that reveals, in Gopnik's words, "the breath of things as they are."
Embrace Gratitude
Did you know that there is a crucial component of happiness that is often overlooked? In Thanks!, Robert Emmons draws on the first major study of the subject of gratitude, of "wanting what we have," and shows that a systematic cultivation of this underexamined emotion can measurably change people's lives.
A scientifically groundbreaking, eloquent look at how we benefit -- psychologically, physically, and interpersonally -- when we practice gratitude.
A riveting look behind the gates of the house
of Astor as a famous family falls apart in public. New York journalist Meryl Gordon has interviewed not only the
elite of Brooke Astor's social circle but also the large staff who cosseted
and cared for Mrs. Astor during her declining years. The result is the
behind-the-headlines story of the Astor empire's unraveling, filled with
never-before-reported scenes. This powerful, poignant saga takes the
reader inside the gilded gates of an American dynasty to tell of three
generations' worth of longing and missed opportunities. Even in this
territory of privilege, no riches can put things right once they've been
torn asunder. Here is an American epic of the bonds of money, morality,
and social position.
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