New Science

Drawing on modern neuroscience, ancient wisdom, and decades of practice and teaching, Eddie Stern’s One Simple Thing, with a foreword from Deepak Chopra, explains how what we do affects who we become, and reveals how a steady routine of physical movements, activities, and attitudes are able to transform not just our bodies but our brain functions and emotions, and how we experience life.

No one predicted the dragon apocalypse. The dragons came suddenly and decimated the world as we knew it, including New York City. Now, three years later, Noah, his hardcore survivalist father, and a ragtag group of survivors are barely scraping by in this new reality. Kids scavenge not only for materials in abandoned homes but also for leftover books at the library. Adults spend their time establishing a make-shift society and defending their shelter… with any means available. At least for the few months the dragons are hibernating, until it’s no longer safe aboveground.

Magical makeovers are a messy business. But how was junior arcane lecturer Gerome to know his attempt to improve a part of his anatomy would open a portal to the Shade Planes? Or, worse, unleash the all-powerful “Harbinger of the New Dark”–fondly or not nicknamed Al?

My life wasn't that exciting; a degree in engineering, a small flat in London, and an ex-girlfriend who still texted me when she was drunk. Every day was a bore. Everything changed when I found myself in Lanercost, a small medieval village, with no idea of how I arrived. The locals seemed friendly, and a chance encounter introduced me to several breathtakingly beautiful women. I decided to make the best of it. Armed with only a solid education, my wit, and the five pennies in my pocket, I decided to build a life here. No, not just a life; a House that would last for generations.

A thrilling novel leading into the new CBS series, Una McCormack’s The Last Best Hope introduces you to brand-new characters featured in the life of beloved Star Trek captain Jean-Luc Picard—widely considered to be one of the most popular and recognizable characters in all of science fiction.

Expanding upon one of the most-read New York Times Magazine features of 2012, Smarter penetrates the hot new field of intelligence research to reveal what researchers call a revolution in human intellectual abilities. Shattering decades of dogma, scientists began publishing studies in 2008 showing that "fluid intelligence" - the ability to learn, solve novel problems, and get to the heart of things - can be increased through training. But is it all just hype?

What does it take to raise a great dog? This was the question that husband-and-wife team Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods hoped to answer when they enrolled one hundred and one puppies in the Duke Puppy Kindergarten. With the help of a retired service dog named Congo, Brian, Vanessa, and their team set out to understand the secrets of the puppy mind: What factors might predict whether a puppy will grow up to change someone’s life?

An essential resource for golfers who want to play a smarter, more fulfilling game on the green.

Biology is undergoing a quiet but profound transformation. Several aspects of the standard picture of how life works have been exposed as incomplete, misleading, or wrong. In How Life Works, Philip Ball explores the new biology, revealing life to be a far richer, more ingenious affair than we had guessed. Ball explains that there is no unique place to look for an answer to this question: life is a system of many levels, each with its own rules and principles. How Life Works explains how these levels operate, interface, and work together (most of the time).

The Clans have finally arrived in their new home, and now, they must struggle to establish territories, learn hidden dangers, and find a new place to communicate with StarClan. But more than one cat is harboring sinister plans that could lead to violence and darkness, and as the warriors wait for a sign, they begin to realize the threats they face in the forest may not be as perilous as the threats they face from within.

In this eye-opening audiobook, New York Times science writer Gina Kolata shows that our society's obsession with dieting and weight loss is less about keeping trim and staying healthy than about money, power, trends, and impossible ideals. Rethinking Thin is at once an account of the place of diets in American society and a provocative critique of the weight-loss industry.

After completing his groundbreaking research chronicled in DMT: The Spirit Molecule, Rick Strassman was left with one fundamental question: What does it mean that DMT, a simple chemical naturally found in all of our bodies, instantaneously opens us to an interactive spirit world that feels more real than our own world? When his decades of clinical psychiatric research and Buddhist practice were unable to provide answers to this question, Strassman began searching for a more resonant spiritual model.

Imagine what it would be like if you could maintain the honeymoon effect throughout your whole life. Dr. Bruce H. Lipton describes how the honeymoon effect was not a chance event or a coincidence but a personal creation. Here, Dr. Lipton reveals how we manifest the honeymoon effect and the reasons why we lose it. This knowledge empowers listeners to create the honeymoon experience again, this time in a way that ensures a happily ever after relationship that even a Hollywood producer would love.

In 1999, Clark Elliott suffered a concussion when his car was rear-ended. Overnight his life changed from that of a rising professor with a research career in artificial intelligence to a humbled man struggling to get through a single day. At times he couldn't walk across a room, or even name his five children. Doctors told him he would never fully recover. After eight years, the cognitive demands of his job, and of being a single parent, finally became more than he could manage.

Popular consensus says that the US rose over two centuries to Cold War victory and world domination, and is now in slow decline. But is this right? History's great civilizations have always lasted much longer, and for all its colossal power, American culture was overshadowed by Europe until recently. What if this isn't the end? In History Has Begun, Bruno Maçães offers a compelling vision of America's future, both fascinating and unnerving. From the early American Republic, he takes us to the turbulent present, when, he argues, America is finally forging its own path.

"There is the mammal way and there is the bird way." But the bird way is much more than a unique pattern of brain wiring, and lately, scientists have taken a new look at bird behaviors they have, for years, dismissed as anomalies or mysteries - what they are finding is upending the traditional view of how birds conduct their lives, how they communicate, forage, court, breed, survive. They are also revealing the remarkable intelligence underlying these activities, abilities we once considered uniquely our own.

A deft mixture of memoir and history, modern biology and behavior, In Search of Memory brings listeners from Kandel's childhood in Nazi-occupied Vienna to the forefront of one of the great scientific endeavors of the 20th century: the search for the biological basis of memory. Nobel Prize winner Eric R. Kandel intertwines the intellectual history of the powerful new science of the mind - a combination of cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and molecular biology - with his own personal quest to understand memory.

How are chefs and companies planning to transform our dining experiences, and what can we learn from their cutting-edge insights to make memorable meals at home? These are just some of the ingredients of Gastrophysics, in which pioneering Oxford professor Charles Spence shows how our senses link up in the most extraordinary ways and reveals the importance of all the off-the-plate elements of a meal: the weight of cutlery, the placing on the plate, the background music and much more.

I’m half-witch, half-faery, and facing dangers as real as the ache in my bad knee. Ibuprofen and caffeine keep me going, and I could do this for the rest of my life. Whoever thinks my family home is an easy mark better take notice: The new Guardian in town isn’t going down without a fight. After all, she’s already learned to let go of her simple existence and believe in the extraordinary power inside of her. What could possibly stop her now?

Our sense of smell guides our lives far more than our screen-heavy, sight-privileged era would suggest. It animates our experience of food and drink, helps us access memories, and strengthens our intimacy with each other. But, long considered our most “beastly” sense, the inner workings of smell have stumped scientists for centuries. Now, cognitive scientist and leading smell researcher Jonas Olofsson uncovers the sophisticated biological processes that animate our olfactory system, with profound implications for how we perceive the world around us.