| The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
| Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much ...More
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| A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing
| “WHERE DID THE UNIVERSE COME FROM?WHAT WAS THERE BEFORE IT? WHAT WILL THE FUTURE BRING? AND FINALLY, WHY IS THERESOMETHING RATHER THAN NOTHING?” Lawrence Krauss’s provocative answers to these and other timeless questions in a wildly popular lecture now on YouTube have attracted almost a million viewers. The last of these questions in particular has been at the center of religious and philosophical debates about the existence of God, and it’s the supposed counterargument to anyone ...More
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| The God Delusion
| A preeminent scientist -- and the world's most prominent atheist -- asserts the irrationality of belief in God and the grievous harm religion has inflicted on society, from the Crusades to 9/11.With rigor and wit, Dawkins examines God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed tyrant of the Old Testament to the more benign (but still illogical) Celestial Watchmaker favored by some Enlightenment thinkers. He eviscerates the major arguments for religion and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a...More
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| Beyond Good and Evil
| Beyond Good and Evil is one of Nietzsche's most important works and, although it is relatively easy to read, it is one of the more difficult to fully grasp on a first reading. The thesis is, as the title alludes, that morality is ultimately relativistic - that right and wrong are not absolutes but are considerably flexible - and variable in different societies at all times. Although he qualifies his views as opinions rather than facts and asks his readers to examine his premises c...More
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| Thus Spake Zarathustra
| When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home, and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and solitude, and for ten years did not weary of it. But at last his heart changed,--and rising one morning with the rosy dawn, he went before the sun, and spake thus unto it: Thou great star! What would be thy happiness if thou hadst not those for whom thou shinest! For ten years hast thou climbed hither unto my cave: thou wouldst have wearied of ...More
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| Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
| With a new chapter. The phenomenal bestseller; over 1.5 million copies sold; is now a major PBS special.Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Guns, Germs, and Steel is a brilliant work answering the question of why the peoples of certain continents succeeded in invading other continents and conquering or displacing their peoples. This edition includes a new chapter on Japan and all-new illustrations drawn from the television series. Until around 11,000 BC, all peoples were still ...More
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| A Short History of Nearly Everything: Special Illustrated Edition
| This new edition of the acclaimed bestseller is lavishly illustrated to convey, in pictures as in words, Bill Bryson’s exciting, informative journey into the world of science.In A Short History of Nearly Everything, beloved author Bill Bryson confronts his greatest challenge yet: to understand—and, if possible, answer—the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as his territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, ...More
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| Einstein: His Life and Universe
| By the author of the acclaimed bestseller Benjamin Franklin, this is the first full biography of Albert Einstein since all of his papers have become available. How did his mind work? What made him a genius? Isaacson's biography shows how his scientific imagination sprang from the rebellious nature of his personality. His fascinating story is a testament to the connection between creativity and freedom. Based on newly released personal letters of Einstein, this book explores how...More
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| Free Will
| A BELIEF IN FREE WILL touches nearly everything that human beings value. It is difficult to think about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, morality—as well as feelings of remorse or personal achievement—without first imagining that every person is the true source of his or her thoughts and actions. And yet the facts tell us that free will is an illusion. In this enlightening book, Sam Harris argues that this truth about the human mind does not undermine morality ...More
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| The Problems of Philosophy
| 'Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?' Philosophy is the attempt to answer such ultimate questions, not carelessly and dogmatically, as we might deal with them in ordinary life, but critically, after analysing how and why the questions arise and clarifying the assumptions and concepts on which they are based. This classic work, first published in 1912, has never been supplanted as an approachable introduction to the theory of philosophica...More
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| The Symbolism of Freemasonry
| The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Freemasonry;
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| On the Origin of Species (Penguin Classics)
| A special anniversary edition with a cover by controversial artist Damien Hirst This landmark work of scientific and philosophical thought sets forth Charles Darwin?s pioneering theory of evolution and the interdependence of species. On the Origin of Species had an immediate and profound impact on the literature and ideas of his contemporaries. Without setting out to be controversial, Darwin became quite possibly the most revolutionary writer of the Victorian age, overturning the w...More
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| More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement
| What if you could be smarter, stronger, and have a better memory just by taking a pill? What if we could alter our genes to cure Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s?What if we could halt or even reverse the human aging process?What if we could communicate with each other simply by thinking about it?These questions were once the stuff of science fiction. Today, advances in biotechnology have shown that they’re plausible, even likely to be accomplished in the near future. In labs around the w...More
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| Walking
| "In wildness is the preservation of the world," -- A lecture by Thoreau which became one of the seminal works of the early environmental movement.
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| The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True
| Magic takes many forms. Supernatural magic is what our ancestors used in order to explain the world before they developed the scientific method. The ancient Egyptians explained the night by suggesting the goddess Nut swallowed the sun. The Vikings believed a rainbow was the gods’ bridge to earth. The Japanese used to explain earthquakes by conjuring a gigantic catfish that carried the world on its back—earthquakes occurred each time it flipped its tail. These are magical, extraordinary tales...More
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| The Craft of Research, Third Edition (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)
| With more than 400,000 copies now in print, The Craft of Research is the unrivaled resource for researchers at every level, from first-year undergraduates to research reporters at corporations and government offices. Seasoned researchers and educators Gregory G. Colomb and Joseph M. Williams present an updated third edition of their classic handbook, whose first and second editions were written in collaboration with the late Wayne C. Booth. The Craft of Research explains how to ...More
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| The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
| Selected by The New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of the Year The author of The New York Times bestseller The Stuff of Thought offers a controversial history of violence. Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen. Yet as New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true: violence...More
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| The Selfish Gene
| This is a million copy international bestseller, critically acclaimed and translated into over 25 languages. This 30th anniversary edition includes a new introduction from the author as well as the original prefaces and foreword, and extracts from early reviews. As relevant and influential today as when it was first published, "The Selfish Gene" has become a classic exposition of evolutionary thought. Professor Dawkins articulates a gene's eye view of evolution - a view giving centre stage to th...More
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| 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
| From the author of 1491—the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas—a deeply engaging new history of the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs. More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed radically different suites of plants and animals. When Christopher Columbus set foot in the Americas, he ended that separation at a stroke. Driven by the econo...More
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| Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
| "One of the funniest and most unusual books of the year....Gross, educational, and unexpectedly sidesplitting."—Entertainment WeeklyStiff is an oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem. For two thousand years, cadavers—some willingly, some unwittingly—have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. They've tested France's first guillotines, ridden the NASA Space Shuttle, been crucif...More
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