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A celebrated author and filmmaker shares his firsthand experience of the convulsive changes in the landscape of Japanese society over the past 40 years.

What if digital communication felt as real as being touched?This question led Michael Chorost to explore profound new ideas triggered by lab research around the world, and the result is the book you now hold. Marvelous and momentous, World Wide Mind takes mind-to-mind communication out of the realm of science fiction and reveals how we are on the verge of a radical new understanding of human interaction. Chorost himself has computers in his head that enable him to hear: two cochlear implants. Drawing on that experience, he proposes that our Paleolithic bodies and our Pentium chips could be physically merged, and he explores the technologies that could do it. He visits engineers building wearable computers that allow people to be online every waking moment, and scientists working on implanted chips that would let paralysis victims communicate. Entirely new neural interfaces are being developed that let computers read and alter neural activity in unprecedented detail. But we all know how addictive the Internet is. Chorost explains the addiction: he details the biochemistry of what makes you hunger to touch your iPhone and check your email. He proposes how we could design a mind-to-mind technology that would let us reconnect with our bodies and enhance our relationships. With such technologies, we could achieve a collective consciousness—a World Wide Mind. And it would be humankind’s next evolutionary step. With daring and sensitivity, Chorost writes about how he learned how to enhance his own relationships by attending workshops teaching the power of touch. He learned how to bring technology and communication together to find true love, and his story shows how we can master technology to make ourselves more human rather than less. World Wide Mind offers a new understanding of how we communicate, what we need to connect fully with one another, and how our addiction to email and texting can be countered with technologies that put us—literally—in each other’s minds.

A massive disconnect exists between consumers and providers today. Consumers have a greater selection of higher quality goods to choose from and can obtain these items from a growing number of sources. Computers, cars, and even big-box retail sites promise to solve our every need. So why aren't consumers any happier? Because everything surrounding the process of obtaining and using all these products causes us frustration and disappointment. Why is it that, when our computers or our cell phones fail to satisfy our needs, virtually every interaction with help lines, support centers, or any organization providing service is marked with wasted time and extra hassle? And who among us hasn't spent countless hours in the waiting room at the doctor's office, or driven away from the mechanic only to have the "fix engine" light go on? In their bestselling business classic Lean Thinking, James Womack and Daniel Jones introduced the world to the principles of lean production -- principles for eliminating waste during production. Now, in Lean Solutions, the authors establish the groundbreaking principles of lean consumption, showing companies how to eliminate inefficiency during consumption. The problem is neither that companies don't care nor that the people trying to fix our broken products are inept. Rather, it's that few companies today see consumption as a process -- a series of linked goods and services, all of which must occur seamlessly for the consumer to be satisfied. Buying a home computer, for example, involves researching, purchasing, integrating, maintaining, upgrading, and, ultimately, replacing it. Across all industries, companies that apply the principles of lean consumption will learn how to provide the full value consumers desire from products without wasting time or effort -- theirs or the consumers' -- and as a result these companies will be more profitable and competitive. Lean Solutions is full of surprising success stories: Fujitsu, a leading service company for technology, has transformed the way call centers solve problems -- learning how to eliminate the underlying cause of current problems rather than fixing them again and again. An extremely successful car dealership has adopted lean principles to streamline its business, making for dramatically reduced wait time, fewer return trips, and greater satisfaction for customers -- and a far more lucrative enterprise. Lean Solutions will inspire managers to take the first steps toward perfecting their company's process of giving consumers what they really want.

Since the conclusion of the Human Genome Project in 2003, scientists have been racing towards a grand goal: offering individuals a decoding of their complete genetic makeup for just $1,000. As Kevin Davies reveals in this exquisitely reported account, the $1,000 genome will be a reality by 2011 and it will usher in a whole new era of personalized, genomic medicine. Capable of presenting much more advanced information than the current crop of cheek-swab services, the $1,000 complete genome raises some extraordinary possibilities. We will be able to learn if we have genes that predispose us to a host of diseases, and to take a wide range of preventative measures. Drug companies may be able to create versions of drugs tailored specifically to our individual DNA. But we may also face the psychological burden of learning that we have the gene for an incurable disease, such as Parkinson’s. Acclaimed author Kevin Davies introduces the pioneers of this medical revolution and probes deeply into both the medical benefits and ethical issues of personal genetic testing, also exploring the psychological complexities of learning one’s DNA results, based on both his own experience of being tested and that of a number of others. The $1,000 Genome is an indispensable guide to the new era of personalized medicine.

Born in New Delhi, raised in the Middle East, and living in Washington, D.C., acclaimed food writer Monica Bhide is the perfect representative of the new generation of Indian American cooks who have taken traditional dishes, painstakingly prepared by their Indian mothers and grandmothers, and updated them for modern American lifestyles and tastes. Respectful of the techniques and history of Indian cuisine but eager to experiment, Bhide has written simple but deeply flavorful recipes. Modern Spice takes the vibrant tastes of India into the twenty-first century with a cookbook that is young, fun, sassy, and bold. Dishes like Pomegranate Shrimp, Paneer and Fig Pizza, and Coriander-and-Fennel-Crusted Lamb Chops are contemporary and creative. Bhide pours Guava Bellinis and Tamaritas for her guests, and serves Chile Pea Puffs and Indian Chicken Wings; instead of Chicken Tikka Masala, she serves Chicken with Mint and Ginger Rub. Make-ahead condiments such as Pineapple Lentil Relish and Kumquat and Mango Chutney with Onion Seeds add a piquant accent to the simplest dish. There are plenty of options for everyday meals, including Butternut Squash Stew with Jaggery, Indian-Style Chili in Bread Bowls, and Crabby Vermicelli, along with plentiful recipes for elegant dishes like Tamarind-Glazed Honey Shrimp and Chicken Breasts Stuffed with Paneer. For an original and effortless finish, spoon Raspberry and Fig Jam Topping over tart frozen yogurt or a store-bought pound cake, or if you have more time, tempt guests with exotic sweets such as Saffron-Cardamom Macaroons or Rice Pudding and Mango Parfait. As Mark Bittman says in his foreword, "there is not a cuisine that uses spices with more grace and craft than that of India," and Bhide's recipes do so, but without long and daunting lists of exotic ingredients. In keeping with its local approach to global flavors, Modern Spice includes a guide to the modern Indian pantry and Monica's thoughtful, charming essays on food, culture, and family. Eight pages of gorgeous color photographs showcase the recipes.

Originally published: New York: Free Press; London: Collier Macmillan, c1990.

Controversial and iconoclastic, a veteran corporate manager and business school professor exposes the dangerous myths, fantasies, and delusions that pervade much of the business world today.

Writing with a laser-sharp wit and a perceptive eye for revealing detail, Judy Bachrach traces the course of two careers and one romance—all driven by soaring ambition. With the right amount of energy, money, and desire, Tina Brown and Harry Evans knew how to handle virtually everything that came their way. Once they arrived from England, they felt destined to climb to the heights of the American media. The couple epitomized within elite corporate as well as social circles what might be called parvenu royalty, which covered both of them with the dazzling glaze of power, position, and fame. Underneath, of course, they were quite different: nature’s Americans, one might say, hungry, passionate, forever reinventing themselves. Tina put her stamp on Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Talk magazine. Harry ran Random House. Over the years, they artfully crafted and recrafted the faces they showed the world, confident they were a match for anybody…especially for each other. They were constantly in the public eye, throwing parties, accepting the adulation of their peers—all the time making sure that no one really knew anything about them. But what happens to the perfect married couple—wealthy, attractive, running twin empires, the darlings of the media, the envy of their bitter rivals—when their world starts to fall apart and the enchantment fades? This rich, fast-paced story of Tina Brown and Harry Evans is not only a brilliant account of two media stars, but also a tale of how this British couple molded and shaped every aspect of the American publishing world—until it inevitably turned on them. Originally published in 2001, Tina and Harry Come to America reads like a bestselling novel and is, at times, uncanny in its resemblance to William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair—a riveting, cautionary tale of power and the media.

From the coauthor of Bringing Up a Moral Child comes insight on how to encourage children to focus on intellectual achievement featuring practical techniques and real-life examples.The Passionate Mind shares research from the fields of human intelligence and creativity in an effort to enhance children’s learning and problem-solving skills. Focusing on intellectual achievement by sharing strategies that will boost curiosity, concentration, aesthetic sensitivity, imagination, and creativity, Michael Schulman gives readers information that encourages children to value learning and strengthen their abilities to do so.

There was once a familiar American left. Progressive unions, the civil rights movement, the women's movement, campaigns against poverty, war and other ills - all were recently a part of our national scene. Today all are faded or gone. Now, from Michael Tomasky, one of the most intelligent voices to emerge from the American left in years, comes a stirring challenge to our nation's progressive tradition. Left for Dead examines the troubling recent history and tenuous future of our nations' once-significant progressive movements, and makes an uncompromising study of how the left has been destroyed by its own contradictions and ills - and what must be done if there are any hopes for revival. With penetrating insight Tomasky uses revealing "case studies" to explore how today's left lost control of crucial issues such as welfare, immigration, affirmative action, and health care. It would be all too easy to blame the forces of the right for the left's slippage; but Tomasky explores how today's left has found its own way of "making enemies of everyone" - narrowly representing eccentrics, academic specialists and malcontents above the vast expanse of working-class Americans, whom it has come to regard with near-contempt. With each chapter a unique stepping stone in recent history, Tomasky traces the uneasy relationship between the left and the Democrats, the early institutionalization of identity politics in the McGovern campaign, the dead-end pursuit of welfare rights in the halls of academia, the confused and ultimately failed campaign for national health care and the ill-conceived politicking over immigration - all of which came to life with insight, freshness and candor in the pages of this book. It is from these ruinous times, however, that Tomasky finds the potential for a newly impassioned and American left, one that can understand all that is truly good and promising in America and can become reconnected with the hopes and the motivations of everyday people. But it is a potential that can be realized only with a dramatic break from recent years. If there is to be a recognizable American left in the next century, the thoughtful and urgent work can begin the discussion that will take it there.

Translation of: De la division du travail social.

Translation of: Les raegles de la maethode sociologique.

Thompson, a Georgia native, asserts that the South has drawn on its oldest tradition: an ability to adapt and transform itself. She spent years traveling through the region and discovered a South both amazingly similar and radically different from the land she knew as a child. The new South is ahead of others in absorbing waves of Latino immigrants, in rediscovering its agrarian traditions, in seeking racial reconciliation, and in reinventing what it means to have roots in an increasingly rootless global culture.

As I attempted to digest stories of spiritual cannibalism, of curses that could cost a student her eyesight or ignite the pages of the books she read, I knew I was not alone in my skepticism. And yet, when I caught sight of the waving arms of an industrious scarecrow, the hair on the back of my neck would stand on end. It was most palpable at night, this creepy feeling, when the moon stayed low to the horizon and the dust kicked up in the breeze, reaching out and pulling back with ghostly fingers. There was something to this place that could be felt but not seen. With these words, Karen Palmer takes us inside one of West Africa’s witch camps, where hundreds of banished women struggle to survive under the watchful eye of a powerful wizard. Palmer arrived at the Gambaga witch camp with an outsider’s sense of outrage, believing it was little more than a dumping ground for difficult women. Soon, however, she encountered stories she could not explain: a woman who confessed she’d attacked a girl given to her as a sacrifice; another one desperately trying to rid herself of the witchcraft she believed helped her kill dozens of people. In Spellbound, Palmer brilliantly recounts the kaleidoscope of experiences that greeted her in the remote witch camps of northern Ghana, where more than 3,000 exiled women and men live in extreme poverty, many sentenced in a ceremony hinging on the death throes of a sacrificed chicken. As she ventured deeper into Ghana’s grasslands, Palmer found herself swinging between belief and disbelief. She was shown books that caught on fire for no reason and met diviners who accurately predicted the future. From the schoolteacher who believed Africa should use the power of its witches to gain wealth and prestige to the social worker who championed the rights of accused witches but also took his wife to a witch doctor, Palmer takes readers deep inside a shadowy layer of rural African society. As the sheen of the exotic wore off, Palmer saw the camp for what it was: a hidden colony of women forced to rely on food scraps from the weekly market. She witnessed the way witchcraft preyed on people’s fears and resentments. Witchcraft could be a comfort in times of distress, a way of explaining a crippling drought or the inexplicable loss of a child. It was a means of predicting the unpredictable and controlling the uncontrollable. But witchcraft was also a tool for social control. In this vivid, startling work of first-person reportage, Palmer sheds light on the plight of women in a rarely seen corner of the world.

Why do we work so hard at our jobs, day after day? Why is a job well done important to us? We know there is more to a career than money and prestige, but what exactly do we mean by "fulfillment"? These are old but important questions. They belong with some newly discovered ones: Why are people in business more religious than the population as a whole? What do people of business know, and what do they do, that anchors their faith? In this ground-breaking and inspiring book, Michael Novak ties together these crucial questions by explaining the meaning of work as a vocation. Work should be more than just a job -- it should be a calling. This book explains an important part of our lives in a new way, and readers will instantly recognize themselves in its pages. A larger proportion than ever before of the world's Christians, Jews, and other peoples of faith are spending their working lives in business. Business is a profession worthy of a person's highest ideals and aspirations, fraught with moral possibilities both of great good and of great evil. Novak takes on agonizing problems, such as downsizing, the tradeoffs that must sometimes be faced between profits and human rights, and the pitfalls of philanthropy. He also examines the daily questions of how an honest day's work contributes to the good of many people, both close at hand and far away. Our work connects us with one another. It also makes possible the universal advance out of poverty, and it is an essential prerequisite of democracy and the institutions of civil society. This book is a spiritual feast, for everyone who wants to examine how to make a life through making a living.

From the head of adult urology at Johns Hopkins comes a comprehensive guide to better prostate health: “This book should be read by all men, and their loved ones” (Mehmet Oz, MD, Professor and Vice Chair, Department of Surgery, New York Presbyterian-Columbia Medical Center).What Every Man Needs to Know About Prostate Health—At Any Age More than twenty million American men are affected by a prostate health issue, and more than two hundred thousand are diagnosed with prostate cancer every year. But many of these problems are preventable. Dr. H. Ballentine Carter is the preeminent expert in the diagnosis and management of prostate disease, and in The Whole Life Prostate Book he provides men of all ages the resources to respond efficiently and effectively to a prostate crisis, as well as advice on how to prevent a crisis from ever occurring. Filled with simple and nutritious recipes, easy-to-follow workout routines, and a straightforward approach to demystifying the complex medical jargon of prostate disease, The Whole Life Prostate Book is a comprehensive and powerful guide to maintaining optimal health throughout a man’s life.

Previously published in hardcover: New York: Free Press, 2012.

The suspenseful true story of the kidnapping of a four-year-old boy in 1912. Miraculously recovered several months later, the boy kept secret until his death the astounding reality behind his kidnapping and return. His granddaughter discovered the truth.

From the bestselling author of Pistol and Namath, a vivid, revealing, and fast-paced biography of the great boxer Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini.Frank Sinatra fawned over him. Warren Zevon wrote a tribute song. Sylvester Stallone produced his life story as a movie of the week. In the 1980s, Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini wasn’t merely the lightweight champ. An adoring public considered him a national hero, the real Rocky. But it all came apart on November 13, 1982, in a brutal battle at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Mancini’s obscure Korean challenger, Duk Koo Kim, went down in the fourteenth round and never regained consciousness. Three months later, Kim’s despondent mother took her own life. The deaths would haunt Ray and ruin his carefully crafted image, suddenly transforming boxing’s All-American Boy into a pariah. With the vivid style and deep reporting that have earned him renown as a biographer, Mark Kriegel has written a fast-paced epic. The Good Son is an intimate history, a saga of fathers and fighters, loss and redemption.

Originally published in hardcover in 2012.

“An invaluable operating manual,” says Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO and author of Delivering Happiness. Using brilliantly simple logic that illuminates the universal truths in common emotional challenges, popular motivational speaker and bestselling author Chip Conley has written “a fresh, original guide to an authentic and fulfilling life.”*With a foreword by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos and author of Delivering Happiness When Chip Conley, dynamic author of the bestselling Peak, suffered a series of devastating personal and professional setbacks, he began using what he came to call “Emotional Equations” (such as Joy = Love - Fear) to help him focus on the variables in life that he could handle, rather than dwelling on the parts he couldn’t, such as the bad economy, death, and taxes. Using brilliantly simple logic that illuminates the universal truths in common emotional challenges, Emotional Equations offers a way to identify the elements in our lives that we can change, those we can’t, and how to better understand our emotions so they can help us . . . rather than hurt us. Equations like “Despair = Suffering - Meaning” and “Happiness = Wanting What You Have ÷ Having What You Want” have been reviewed for mathematical and psychological accuracy by experts. Now Conley tells his own comeback story and those of other resilient people and inspiring role models who have worked through emotional equations in their own lives. Emotional Equations arms you with practical strategies for turbulent times.

The book that has sparked a vigorous national debate about the state of American religion, praised by Timothy Keller as “provocative” and “compelling,” while The New York Times says “Douthat attacks nonsense on both the cultural right and left…responsible and fair,” and the Washington Times raves “a superb documentation of America’s crisis of faith,” now in paperback. AS THE YOUNGEST-EVER OP-ED COLUMNIST FOR The New York Times, Ross Douthat has emerged as one of the most provocative and influential voices of his generation. In Bad Religion he offers a masterful and forceful account of how American Christianity has lost its way—and why it threatens to take American society with it. In a world populated by “pray and grow rich” gospels and Christian cults of self-esteem, Ross Douthat argues that America’s problem isn’t too much religion; nor is it intolerant secularism. Rather, it’s bad religion. Conservative and liberal, political and pop cultural, traditionally religious and fashionably “spiritual”—Christianity’s place in American life has increasingly been taken over, not by atheism, but by heresy: debased versions of Christian faith that stroke our egos, indulge our follies, and encourage our worst impulses. In a brilliant and provocative story that moves from the 1950s to the age of Obama, Douthat explores how bad religion has crippled the country’s ability to confront our most pressing challenges and accelerated American decline.

In this stunning celebration and reappraisal of the importance of "women's work," acclaimed journalist Jean Zimmerman poignantly addresses the tug that many Americans of the twenty-first century feel between our professional and private lives. With sharp wit and intelligence, she offers evidence that in the current domestic vacuum, we still long for a richer home life -- a paradox visible in the Martha Stewart phenomenon, in the continuing popularity of women's service magazines such as Better Homes and Gardens, Family Circle, and Ladies' Home Journal -- whose combined circulation of over 17 million is nearly twice the combined circulation of Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report -- and the booming business of restorations, where onlookers get a hands-on view of domestic life as it flourished in past centuries. This book is about the ways home traditions passed from one generation to the next -- baking a birthday cake from scratch, cherishing family heirlooms, or discovering the satisfaction of piecing a quilt -- sustain our souls, especially in our ever more processed, synthetic world, where we buy "homemade" goods and fail to see the irony in that. Made from Scratch tells the story of the unsung heroines of the hearth, investigating the history of female domesticity and charting its cultural changes over centuries. Zimmerman traces the lives of her own family's homemakers -- from her tiny but indomitable grandmother, who managed a farm, strangled chickens with her bare hands, and sewed all the family clothing, to her mother, who rejected her country upbringing yet kept a fastidious suburban home where the gender divide stayed firmly in place, to her own experiences as a wife and mother weaned on the Women's Movement of the 1970s, with its emphatic view that housework was a dirty word and that the domestic sphere was to be fled rather than cherished. In this book Zimmerman questions the unexamined trade-off we have made in a shockingly brief time span, as we've "progressed" from home-raised chickens to frozen TV dinners to McNuggets from the food court at the mall. What is lost when we no longer engage, as individuals and as a community, in the ancient rituals of food, craft, and shelter?