After the twentieth century's devastating series of wars, the world's governments banded together into one globe-spanning entity, committed to peace at all costs. Ensuring that peace is the Vulcan supercomputer, responsible for all major decisions. But some people don't like being taken out of the equation. And others resent the idea that the Vulcan is taking the place of God. As the world grows ever closer to all-out war, one functionary frantically...

"A groundbreaking manifesto for people searching for the kind of insight on leading, thinking, and living that elite schools should be--but aren't--providing"-- Deresiewicz takes a sharp look at the high-pressure conveyor belt that begins with demands for perfect grades and culminates in the skewed applications received by college admissions committees. Students are losing the ability to think independently. College is supposed to be a time for self-discovery--...

This ancient Chinese military text dissects thirteen aspects of warfare from a strategical and intellectual point of view. Deploring the use of excess force causing economic and civilian losses while discussing strategies that are still relevant to modern warfare, the text continues to resonate with readers around the world and has been considered fundamental in military doctrine for over two thousand years. The Art of War was first translated...

Offers insight into how and why the Buddhist movement of Soka Gakkai, with its commitment to social justice and egalitarian approach, has become successful in applying the religion to people's everyday lives.

From the New York Times perfume critic, a stylish, fascinating, unprecedented insider's view of the global perfume industry, told through two creators working on two very different scents. No journalist has ever been allowed into the ultra-secretive, highly pressured process of originating a perfume. But, Chandler Burr, the New York Times perfume critic, spent a year behind the scenes observing the creation of two major fragrances. Now, writing with...

Summer World is an intimate, accessible, and eloquent illumination of animal survival in the Summer months from Bernd Heinrich, bestselling author of Winter World and our latter-day Thoreau. Heinrich's fascinating exploration and appreciation of the natural order a lovely book, meticulously etched and based on impassioned but exacting scientific research animals come to life in gripping detail...and so does Heinrich…. The man is irrepressible.

From one of Israel's most lauded contemporary writers, this book retells the myth of Samson-one of the most tempestuous, charismatic, and colorful characters in the Hebrew Bible. Few other Bible stories feature as much drama and action, narrative fireworks and raw emotion: the battle with the lion; the three hundred burning foxes; the women he bedded and the one woman that he loved; his betrayal by all the women in his life, from his mother to Delilah;...

"The Monkeewrench crew returns to face the city of Minneapolis's worst nightmare--a rampant serial killer on the loose--in the electrifying new thriller. When Minneapolis homicide detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth are called to a crime scene in a heavily wooded city park, everything about the setting is all too familiar. And when they discover a playing card on the victim's body, their worst fears are confirmed--there's a serial killer operating...

A Financial Times and Economist Best Book of the Year exploring world trade from Mesopotamia in 3,000 BC to modern globalization. How did trade evolve to the point where we don't think twice about biting into an apple from the other side of the world? In A Splendid Exchange, William J. Bernstein, bestselling author of The Birth of Plenty, traces the story of global commerce from its prehistoric origins to the myriad controversies surrounding it today....

In Like Dreamers, acclaimed journalist Yossi Klein Halevi interweaves the stories of a group of 1967 paratroopers who reunited Jerusalem, tracing the history of Israel and the divergent ideologies shaping it from the Six-Day War to the present. Following the lives of seven young members from the 55th Paratroopers Reserve Brigade, the unit responsible for restoring Jewish sovereignty to Jerusalem, Halevi reveals how this band of brothers played...