Modern Science

Can jokes win a hostile room, a hopeless argument, or even an election? You bet they can, according to Cicero, and he knew what he was talking about. One of Rome's greatest politicians, speakers, and lawyers, Cicero was also reputedly one of antiquity's funniest people. After he was elected commander-in-chief and head of state, his enemies even started calling him "the stand-up Consul". How to Tell a Joke provides a lively new translation of Cicero's essential writing on humor alongside that of the later Roman orator and educator Quintilian.

More than 1,500 years after his disappearance into the mists of Avalon, King Arthur has returned. This time, he's prepared to rule the Camelot of a new millennium: New York City. Handsome, charismatic Arthur Penn is running for mayor on a platform of common sense, humor, and knightly virtues. His advisors include a gifted 10-year-old named Merlin; Percival, an immortal accountant; and Gwen, a lovely young woman with no end of problems.

When 17-year-old Laurel Harper decides to go live with her estranged father and step-family, she's unaware of the fact that her fate was already sealed the day she was born. She is now exactly where some higher power wants her to be. But it's not until she meets the proud and mysterious Sam Laurens that she feels something strange is going on. And when she learns the dark truth about her own future, a sinister secret that will change everything as soon as she turns 19, she wants to run and hide, but soon realizes that there is no hiding from fate.

With unflinching gaze and uncompromising intensity Julius Evola analyzes the spiritual and cultural malaise at the heart of Western civilization and all that passes for progress in the modern world. As a gadfly, Evola spares no one and nothing in his survey of what we have lost and where we are headed. At turns prophetic and provocative, Revolt Against the Modern World outlines a profound metaphysics of history and demonstrates how and why we have lost contact with the transcendent dimension of being.

Jared craved an ordinary life. Clock in, do paperwork, clock out. He gave up magic, joined the Meta Marshal Service, and just wanted to be left alone. Until a routine prisoner transport went awry and blew up his entire existence. That was when he found Cassie down on her knees in the wreckage, asking him for help. And he knew in that instant: Magic just wouldn't leave him alone. Now he's on a hunt for an escaped convict and a powerful ancient artifact with the potential to ruin their world for good.

Worried that old age will inevitably mean losing your libido, your health, and possibly your marbles too? Well, Cicero has some good news for you. In How to Grow Old, the great Roman orator and statesman eloquently describes how you can make the second half of life the best part of all - and why you might discover that reading and gardening are actually far more pleasurable than sex ever was.

Everyone's a cynic, yet few will admit it. Today's cynics excuse themselves half-heartedly - "I hate to be a cynic, but...." - before making their pronouncements. Narrowly opportunistic, always on the take, contemporary cynicism has nothing positive to contribute. The Cynicism of the ancient Greeks, however, was very different. Bold and shameless, it was committed to transforming the values on which civilization depends.

As the child of refugees of World War II Europe and a renowned philosopher and scholar of propaganda, Jason Stanley has a deep understanding of how democratic societies can be vulnerable to fascism: Nations don’t have to be fascist to suffer from fascist politics. In fact, fascism’s roots have been present in the United States for more than a century.

What are the secrets to a contented life? One of Rome's greatest and most influential poets, Horace (65-8 BCE) has been cherished for more than 2,000 years not only for his wit, style, and reflections on Roman society, but also for his wisdom about how to live a good life - above all else, a life of contentment in a world of materialistic excess and personal pressures. In How to Be Content, Stephen Harrison provides fresh, contemporary translations of poems from across Horace's works that continue to offer important lessons about the good life, friendship, love, and death.

One of the most influential Roman perspectives on religion came from a nonreligious belief system that is finding new adherents even today: Stoicism. How did the Stoics think about religion? In How to Think About God, Philip Freeman presents vivid new translations of Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods and The Dream of Scipio. In these brief works, Cicero offers a Stoic view of belief, divinity, and human immortality, giving eloquent expression to the religious ideas of one of the most popular schools of Roman and Greek philosophy.

If recent history has taught us anything, it's that sometimes the best guide to leadership is the negative example. But that insight is hardly new. Nearly 2,000 years ago, Suetonius wrote Lives of the Caesars, perhaps the greatest negative leadership book of all time. In How to Be a Bad Emperor, Josiah Osgood provides crisp new translations of Suetonius's briskly paced, darkly comic biographies of the Roman emperors Julius Caesar, Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero. Entertaining and shocking, these ancient anti-role models show how power inflames leaders' worst tendencies.

Who doesn't worry sometimes that smart phones, the Internet, and TV are robbing us of time and preventing us from having a life? How can we make the most of our time on earth? In the first century AD, the Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger offered one of the most famous answers to that question in his essay "On the Shortness of Life"—a work that has more to teach us today than ever before.

How to Say No is a delightful collection of brief ancient writings about Cynicism that captures all the outrageousness, wit, and wisdom of its remarkable cast of characters—from Diogenes in the fourth century BCE to the column-stander Symeon Stylites in late antiquity.

We are living through a revolution in machine learning-powered AI that shows no signs of slowing down. This technology is based on relatively simple mathematical ideas, some of which go back centuries, including linear algebra and calculus, the stuff of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century mathematics. It took the birth and advancement of computer science and the kindling of 1990s computer chips designed for video games to ignite the explosion of AI that we see today. In this enlightening book, Anil Ananthaswamy explains the fundamental math behind machine learning.

Much has been written about the storied New Hollywood of the 1970s, but while Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Francis Ford Coppola were making their first classic movies, a parallel universe of directors gave birth to the modern horror film - aggressive, raw, and utterly original. Based on unprecedented access to the genre's major players, New York Times critic Jason Zinoman's Shock Value delivers the first definitive account of horror's golden age.

In The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, Jeffrey C. Stewart offers the definitive biography of the father of the Harlem Renaissance, based on the extant primary sources of his life and on interviews with those who knew him personally. He narrates the education of Locke, including his becoming the first African American Rhodes Scholar, earning a PhD in philosophy at Harvard University, and his long career as a professor at Howard University. And yet he became most closely associated with the flowering of Black culture in Jazz Age America.

Legacy LDS Audiobook Foundation is proud to present Key to the Science of Theology, by Parley P. Pratt, with additional faith-building content for the modern reader. Parley P. Pratt began to work on Key to the Science of Theology in San Francisco in August 1851, just before leaving for his mission to Chile. He continued writing it while in Chile. He finished the manuscript upon his return to Utah in 1853. The manuscript remained unpublished, however, until 1855 when Parley found a publisher in England.

Happy Singlehood charts a way forward for singles to live life on their terms, and shows how everyone - single or coupled - can benefit from accepting solo living. Based on personal interviews, quantitative analysis, and extensive review of singles' writings and literature, author Elyakim Kislev uncovers groundbreaking insights on how unmarried people create satisfying lives in a world where social structures and policies are still designed to favor marriage.

The book that changed the consciousness of a country - and the world. Landmark, groundbreaking, classic - these adjectives barely describe the earthshaking and long-lasting effects of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. This is the book that defined "the problem that has no name", that launched the Second Wave of the feminist movement, and has been awakening women and men with its insights into social relations, which still remain fresh, ever since.

Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium. These fundamental materials have created empires, razed civilizations, and fed our ingenuity and greed for thousands of years. Without them, our modern world would not exist, and the battle to control them will determine our future. In Material World, Ed Conway embarks on an epic journey across continents, cultures, and epochs to reveal the underpinnings of modern life on Earth—traveling from the sweltering depths of the deepest mine in Europe to spotless silicon chip factories in Taiwan to the eerie green pools where lithium originates.