Other books that might interest you

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  What Einstein Kept Under His Hat...

  Marlene Parrish, Robert L. Wolke

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  Have you ever wondered why onions make us cry? Do you believe bananas contain more calories as they ripen and get sweeter? This sequel to the bestselling What Einstein Told His Cook continues Robert L. Wolke's investigations into the science behind our foods. In response to ongoing questions from readers of his nationally syndicated Washington Post column, "Food 101," Wolke debunks misconceptions with reliable, commonsense logic. And for exceptionally inquisitive cooks and scientists, he offers "Sidebar Science" features, which dig more deeply into the chemical processes that underlie food and cooking. Above all, What Einstein Kept Under His Hat provides indispensable information that will make listeners better shoppers, cooks, and eaters.

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  In the Light of Humane Nature -...

  Arthur B. Weissman

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  This engaging book encourages us to tap into humanity’s highest ideals to solve environmental and social problems and become better people in the process.   Despite significant progress in recent decades, the environmental crisis is far from over. We know what needs to change, but we don’t seem to know—economically, politically, or socially—how to stop the juggernaut of destructive development and resource depletion. Something continues to undermine our efforts to become a truly sustainable society.   This book highlights the positive accomplishments we have made recently in greening the economy, but also exposes the underlying causes of our continued march toward disaster. A seasoned environmental professional, Arthur Weissman argues that what causes our environmental problems and stymies solutions ultimately relates to human values and our attitudes toward the world around us, including other humans, other species, and nature as a whole. We will attain our true relationship with nature only when we embrace the highest human values.  In the Light of Humane Nature weaves personal narrative and autobiographical details with professional and philosophical discourse. Weissman sticks to essential concepts we can all comprehend, and presents the changes we need to make in our moral and aesthetic outlooks to connect with our highest human values so that we may achieve a sustainable and humane world.  

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  Nuclear Forces - The Making of...

  Silvan S. Schweber

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  “A highly readable account . . . tracing the future Nobel laureate through his formative years and up to the eve of World War II” (The Wall Street Journal). 
   
  On the fiftieth anniversary of Hiroshima, Nobel-winning physicist Hans Bethe called on his fellow scientists to stop working on weapons of mass destruction. What drove Bethe, the head of Theoretical Physics at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project, to renounce the weaponry he had once worked so tirelessly to create? That is one of the questions answered by Nuclear Forces, a riveting biography of Bethe’s early life and development as both a scientist and a man of principle. 
   
  As Silvan Schweber follows Bethe from his childhood in Germany, to laboratories in Italy and England, and on to Cornell University, he shows how these differing environments were reflected in the kind of physics Bethe produced. Many of the young quantum physicists in the 1930s, including Bethe, had Jewish roots, and Schweber considers how Liberal Judaism in Germany helps explain their remarkable contributions. A portrait emerges of a man whose strategy for staying on top of a deeply hierarchical field was to tackle only those problems he knew he could solve. 
   
  Bethe’s emotional maturation was shaped by his father and by two women of Jewish background: his overly possessive mother and his wife, who would later serve as an ethical touchstone during the turbulent years he spent designing nuclear bombs. Situating Bethe in the context of the various communities where he worked, Schweber provides a full picture of prewar developments in physics that changed the modern world, and of a scientist shaped by the unprecedented moral dilemmas those developments in turn created. 
   
  Praise for Nuclear Forces 
   
  “Schweber’s account of Hans Bethe’s life . . . reveals the origins of a charismatic scientist, grounded in the importance of his parents and his Jewish roots . . . [Schweber] recreates the social world that shaped the character of the last of the memorable young scientists who established the field of quantum mechanics.” —Publishers Weekly 
   
  “Nuclear Forces is a carefully researched, historically and biographically insightful account of the development of a profession and of one of its leading representatives during a century in which physics and physicists played key roles in scientific, cultural, political, and military developments.” —David C. Cassidy, author of A Short History of Physics in the American Century

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  Verbs Bones and Brains -...

  Aku Visala, Agustín Fuentes

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  “A benchmark collection of essays on the contemporary understanding of human nature. . . . [engaging] biology and anthropology to theology and philosophy.” —Robin W. Lovin, Cary M. Maguire University Professor of Ethics emeritus, Southern Methodist University, author of What Do We Do When No One is Listening: Leading the Church in a Polarized Society The last few decades have seen an unprecedented surge of empirical and philosophical research into the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens, the origins of the mind/brain, and human culture. This research has sparked heated debates about the nature of human beings and how knowledge about humans from the sciences and humanities should be properly understood. The goal of Verbs, Bones, and Brains: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Human Nature is to engage these themes and present current debates, discussions, and discourse for a range of readers. The contributors bring the discussion to life with key experts outlining major concepts paired with cross-disciplinary commentaries in order to create a novel approach to thinking about, and with, human natures. Throughout, they emphasize the importance of seeking a convergence in our views on human nature, despite metaphysical disagreements. They caution that if convergence eludes us and a common ground cannot be found, this is itself a relevant result: it would reveal to us how deeply our questions about ourselves are connected to our basic metaphysical assumptions. Instead, their focus is on how the interdisciplinary and possibly transdisciplinary conversation can be enhanced in order to identify and develop a common ground on what constitutes human nature.   “A landmark volume. . . . It shows the fruitfulness of a mutually respectful and yet rigorous approach to cross-disciplinary engagement.” (William Storrar, Center of Theological Inquiry, Princeton, NJ, editor of A World for All?: Global Civil Society in Political Theory and Trinitarian Theology   “Fascinating, well-organized, and well-edited.” —Choice

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  Synchronicity

  Vic Mansfield

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  Even though synchronicity, the term coined by Carl Jung for meaningful coincidences, has attained some renown, according to Mansfield it is badly misconstrued. Here he discusses what synchronicity is, its parallels with quantum mechanics and perhaps why it shows up in our lives. He draws on his studies in physics and Buddhism, as well as his own personal experiences.

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  Forecast - The Consequences of...

  Stephan Faris

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  While reporting just outside of Darfur, Stephan Faris discovered that climate change was at the root of that conflict, and he began to wonder what current and impending-and largely unanticipated-crises such changes have in store for the world.Forecast provides the answers.Global warming will spur the spread of many diseases. Italy has already experienced its first climate-change epidemic of a tropical disease, and malaria is gaining ground in Africa. The warming world will shift huge populations and potentially redraw political alliances around the globe, driving environmentalists into the hands of anti-immigrant groups. America's coasts are already more difficult places to live, as increasing insurance rates make the Gulf Coast and other gorgeous spots prohibitively expensive. Crops will fail in previously lush places and thrive in some formerly barren zones, altering huge industries and remaking traditions. Water scarcity in India and Pakistan have the potential to inflame the conflict in Kashmir to unprecedented levels and draw the United States into the troubles there and elsewhere.Told through the narratives of current, past, and future events, the result of astonishingly wide travel and reporting, Forecast is a powerful, gracefully written, eye-opening account of this most urgent issue and how it has altered and will alter our world.

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