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A New York Times–bestselling author looks at mathematics education in America-when it's worthwhile, and when it's not.
Why do we inflict a full menu of mathematics-algebra, geometry, trigonometry, even calculus-on all young Americans, regardless of their interests or aptitudes? While Andrew Hacker has been a professor of mathematics himself, and extols the glories of the subject, he also questions some widely held assumptions in this thought-provoking...
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When your Internet cable leaves your living room, where does it go? Almost everything about our day-to-day lives--and the broader scheme of human culture--can be found on the Internet. But what is it physically? And where is it really? Our mental map of the network is as blank as the map of the ocean that Columbus carried on his first Atlantic voyage. The Internet, its material nuts and bolts, is an unexplored territory. Until now. In Tubes, journalist...
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Published in 1872, thirteen years after On the Origin of Species, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals is devoted to documenting what Darwin believes is the genetically determined aspects of behavior. Together with The Descent of Man (1871), it sketches out Darwin's main thesis of human origins. Here he traces the animal origins of human characteristics such as pursing of the lips in concentration, tightening of the muscles around the...
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The primary ineluctable facts of the birth and death of each one of the constituent members in a social group determine the necessity of education. On one hand, there is the contrast between, the immaturity of the newborn members of the group, its future sole representatives - and the maturity of the adult members, who possess the knowledge and customs of the group. On the other hand, there is the necessity that these immature members be not merely...
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You know less than you think you do - about what makes you healthy, what makes you rich, who you should date, where you should live. You know less than you think you do about how to raise your children, or, for that matter, whether you should have children in the first place. Seth Stephens-Davidowitz showed how big data is revolutionising the social sciences. He shows how big data can help us find answers to some of the most important questions we...
7) Formerly known as food: how the industrial food system is changing our minds, bodies, and culture
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From the voice of a new generation of food activists, a passionate and deeply-researched call for a new food movement. If you think buying organic from Whole Foods is protecting you, you're wrong. Our food-even what we're told is good for us-has changed for the worse in the past 100 years, its nutritional content deteriorating due to industrial farming and its composition altered due to the addition of thousands of chemicals from pesticides to packaging....
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Perhaps this book will be understood only by someone who has himself already had the thoughts that are expressed in it-or at least similar thoughts.
-So it is not a textbook.
-Its purpose would be achieved if it gave pleasure to one person who read and understood it.
The book deals with the problems of philosophy, and shows, I believe, that the reason why these problems are posed is that the logic of our language is mis-understood. The whole sense...
9) Data-ism: the revolution transforming decision making, consumer behavior, and almost everything else
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By one estimate, 90 percent of all of the data in history was created in the last two years. In 2014, International Data Corporation calculated the data universe at 4.4 zettabytes, or 4.4 trillion gigabytes. That much information, in volume, could fill enough slender iPad Air tablets to create a stack two-thirds of the way to the moon. Now, that's Big Data.
Coal, iron ore, and oil were the key productive assets that fueled the Industrial Revolution....
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The historical achievements of religious belief have been large and well chronicled. But what about the accomplishments of those who have challenged religion? Traveling from classical Greece to twenty-first century America, Imagine There's No Heaven explores the role of disbelief in shaping Western civilization. At each juncture common themes emerge: by questioning the role of gods in the heavens or the role of a God in creating man on earth, nonbelievers...
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"In this ... book, the author, a trans man, trains to fight in a charity match at Madison Square Garden while struggling to untangle the vexed relationship between masculinity and violence. Through his experience boxing--learning to get hit, and to hit back; wrestling with the camaraderie of the gym; confronting the betrayals and strength of his own body--McBee examines the weight of male violence, the pervasiveness of gender stereotypes, and the...
12) A people's history of the American Revolution: how common people shaped the fight for independence
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Upon its initial publication, Ray Raphael's magisterial A People's History of the American Revolution was hailed by NPR's Fresh Air as "relentlessly aggressive and unsentimental." With impeccable skill, Raphael presented a wide array of fascinating scholarship within a single volume, employing a bottom-up approach that has served as a revelation.
A People's History of the American Revolution draws upon diaries, personal letters, and other Revolutionary-era...
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"There's no shortage of books about public speaking or language or song. But until now, there has been no book about the miracle that underlies them all--the human voice itself. And there are few writers who could take on this surprisingly vast topic with more artistry and expertise than John Colapinto. Beginning with the novel--and compelling--argument that our ability to speak is what made us the planet's dominant species, he guides us from the...
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What really drives success and failure? Can I trust you? It's the question that strikes at the heart of human existence. Whether we're talking about business partnerships, romantic relationships, child-parent bonds, or the brave new world of virtual interaction, trust, when correctly placed, is what makes our world spin and lives flourish. Renowned psychologist David DeSteno brings together the latest research from diverse fields, including psychology,...
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A fascinating cultural history of fitness, from Greek antiquity to the era of the "big-box gym" and beyond, exploring the ways in which human exercise has changed over time-and what we can learn from our ancestors. We humans have been conditioning our bodies for more than 2,500 years, yet it's only recently that treadmills and weight machines have become the gold standard of fitness. For all this new technology, are we really healthier, stronger,...
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An award-winning scholar and author charts four hundred years of monsters and how they reflect the culture that created them
Leo Braudy, a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, has won accolades for revealing the complex and constantly shifting history behind seemingly unchanging ideas of fame, war, and masculinity.
Continuing his interest in the history of emotion, this book explores how fear has...
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"A brilliant, revelatory account of the Cold War origins of the data-mad, algorithmic twenty-first century, from the author of the acclaimed international bestseller, These Truths. The Simulmatics Corporation, founded in 1959, mined data, targeted voters, accelerated news, manipulated consumers, destabilized politics, and disordered knowledge--decades before Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Cambridge Analytica. Silicon Valley likes to imagine it has...
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