Our brains are the most complex machines known to humankind, but they have an Achilles heel: the very molecules that allow us to exist can also sabotage our minds. Here are gripping accounts of unruly molecules and the diseases that form in their wake.
A college student cannot remember if she has eaten breakfast. By dinner, she is strapped to a hospital bed, convinced she is battling zombies. A man planning to propose marriage instead becomes violently enraged, gripped by body spasms so severe that he nearly bites off his own tongue. One after another, poor farmers in South Carolina drop dead from a mysterious epidemic of dementia.
With an intoxicating blend of history and intrigue, Sara Manning Peskin invites readers to play medical detective, tracing each diagnosis from the patient to an ailing nervous system. Along the way, Peskin entertains with tales of the sometimes outlandish, often criticized, and forever devoted scientists who discovered it all.
Peskin never loses sight of the human impact of these conditions. Alzheimer’s Disease is more than the gradual loss of a loved one; it can be a family’s multigenerational curse. The proteins that abound in every cell of our bodies are not simply strings of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon; they are the building blocks of our personalities and relationships. A Molecule Away from Madness is an unputdownable journey into the deepest mysteries of our brains.
‎W. W. Norton & Company
|
9781324002376
|
Hardcover
The Case for Keto
By Taubes, Gary
The best-selling author of Why We Get Fat and The Case Against Sugar reveals why the established rules about eating healthy might be the wrong approach to weight loss for millions of people, and how low-carbohydrate, high-fat/ketogenic diets can help so many of us achieve and maintain a healthy weight for life.Based on twenty years of investigative reporting and interviews with 100 practicing physicians who embrace the keto lifetstyle as the best prescription for their patients' health, Taubes's book puts the ketogenic diet movement in the necessary historical and scientific perspective. It makes clear the vital misconceptions in how we've come to think about obesity and diet (no, people do not become fat simply because they eat too much; hormones play the critical role) and uses the collected clinical experience of the medical community to provide essential practical advice.
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
|
9780525520061
|
Hardcover
The Age of Grievance
By Bruni, Frank
From bestselling author and longtime New York Times columnist Frank Bruni comes a lucid, powerful examination of the ways in which grievance has come to define our current culture and politics, on both the right and left.. The twists and turns of American politics are unpredictable, but the tone is a troubling given. It's one of grievance. More and more Americans are convinced that they're losing because somebody else is winning. More and more tally their slights, measure their misfortune, and assign particular people responsibility for it. The blame game has become the country's most popular sport and victimhood its most fashionable garb. Grievance needn't be bad. It has done enormous good. The United States is a nation born of grievance, and across the nearly two hundred and fifty years of our existence as a country, grievance has been the engine of morally urgent change.
Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
|
9781668016435
|
Hardcover
Enlightenment Now
By Pinker, Steven
The follow-up to Pinker's groundbreaking The Better Angels of Our Nature presents the big picture of human progress: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science.Is the world really falling apart Is the ideal of progress obsolete In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing.Far from being a nave hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.
Viking
|
9780525427575
|
Hardcover
Geometry the Easy Way
By Leff, Lawrence S
These books are ideal student self-help supplements. They offer valuable overviews of course work and extra help with difficult subject areas. Covers the "how" and "why" of geometry. Includes hundreds of examples and exercises with solutions. Includes more than 700 drawings, graphs,and tables.
Barron's Educational Series
|
9780764101106
|
Book
On Censorship
By Larue, James
In America, censorship surges in periods of demographic and political change. Its primary purpose is to silence challenges to an established elite or norm. Today, censorship is part of a larger assault on such American institutions as schools, public libraries, and universities, the better to establish more control over the people--while also pilfering their wallets. On Censorship is a part of the Publisher's Speakers Corner Books.
Fulcrum Publishing
|
9781682753477
|
Paperback
Principles of Climatology
By Press, Salem
Climatology is the study of climate. The more data scientists collect on the local, regional, and global level, the more information they gather on the factors, both natural and manmade, including global warming, that have an effect on climate. More than
Salem Pr
|
9781682179437
|
Hardcover
Ultimate Guide to Hobby Farm Animals
By Weaver, Sue
Learn everything a hobby farmer needs to know about farm animals!7 popular farm animals - beef cattle, chickens, ducks, goats, pigs, rabbits, and sheep - with extensive sections for each, including information on breeds and varietiesDetailed how-to on the care, handling, feeding, health, and safety of each animalBreeding methods, breeding cycles, caring for pregnant females, caring for baby animals, and raising young animalsTroubleshooting tips for potential problems and warding off diseases, parasites, and predatorsHow to capitalize on your livestock's output by selling eggs, milk, meat, fiber, and feathersRevised edition vetted and updated by Dr. Mark McConnon, DVM, hobby farm professionals, and veterinarians for the most up-to-date information available on the market for shelter, care, health, medicine, nutrition, behavior, marketing, and profitWhat's a hobby farm without a small flock or herd (or several) ?A single, information-packed volume with everything a small-scale hobby farmer, breeder, or homesteader needs to know about farm animals, this updated and comprehensive manual to selecting, caring for, and breeding livestock provides the expertise of five seasoned hobby farmers, each of whom has real life on-the-farm experience with the animals discussed.
CompanionHouse Books
|
9781620084243
|
Paperback
Pairing STEAM with Stories
By Mcchesney, Elizabeth M.
Laying the groundwork for building children's curiosity, openness to learning, ability to persist in the face of failure, and interest in connecting learning from one subject to the other are important objectives for today's libraries. Partnering with cultural institutions, such as the Chicago Public Library (CPL) does with Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry (MSI) , libraries can forge powerful connections between literacy and science. This resource shares the fruits of that partnership, offering ready-to-go, library-tested activities that meld cutting-edge STEAM education principles with some of the best books available for youth today. It's a model that can be used in a variety of library or museum settings and can also be adapted for outreach.
ALA Editions
|
9780838947494
|
Paperback
Framed
By Grisham, John
In his first work of nonfiction since The Innocent Man, #1 bestselling author John Grisham and Centurion Ministries Founder Jim McCloskey share ten harrowing true stories of wrongful convictions. Impeccably researched and grippingly told, Framed offers an inside look at the injustice faced by the victims of the United States criminal justice system.. A fundamental principle of our legal system is a presumption of innocence, but once someone has been found guilty there is very little room to prove doubt. Framed shares ten true stories of men who were innocent but found guilty and forced to sacrifice friends, families, wives, and decades of their lives to prison while the guilty parties remained free. In each of the stories, John Grisham and Jim McCloskey recount the dramatic hard-fought battles for exoneration.
A Molecule Away from Madness
By Peskin, Sara Manning
Our brains are the most complex machines known to humankind, but they have an Achilles heel: the very molecules that allow us to exist can also sabotage our minds. Here are gripping accounts of unruly molecules and the diseases that form in their wake.
A college student cannot remember if she has eaten breakfast. By dinner, she is strapped to a hospital bed, convinced she is battling zombies. A man planning to propose marriage instead becomes violently enraged, gripped by body spasms so severe that he nearly bites off his own tongue. One after another, poor farmers in South Carolina drop dead from a mysterious epidemic of dementia.
With an intoxicating blend of history and intrigue, Sara Manning Peskin invites readers to play medical detective, tracing each diagnosis from the patient to an ailing nervous system. Along the way, Peskin entertains with tales of the sometimes outlandish, often criticized, and forever devoted scientists who discovered it all.
Peskin never loses sight of the human impact of these conditions. Alzheimer’s Disease is more than the gradual loss of a loved one; it can be a family’s multigenerational curse. The proteins that abound in every cell of our bodies are not simply strings of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon; they are the building blocks of our personalities and relationships. A Molecule Away from Madness is an unputdownable journey into the deepest mysteries of our brains.
The Case for Keto
By Taubes, Gary
The best-selling author of Why We Get Fat and The Case Against Sugar reveals why the established rules about eating healthy might be the wrong approach to weight loss for millions of people, and how low-carbohydrate, high-fat/ketogenic diets can help so many of us achieve and maintain a healthy weight for life.Based on twenty years of investigative reporting and interviews with 100 practicing physicians who embrace the keto lifetstyle as the best prescription for their patients' health, Taubes's book puts the ketogenic diet movement in the necessary historical and scientific perspective. It makes clear the vital misconceptions in how we've come to think about obesity and diet (no, people do not become fat simply because they eat too much; hormones play the critical role) and uses the collected clinical experience of the medical community to provide essential practical advice.
The Age of Grievance
By Bruni, Frank
From bestselling author and longtime New York Times columnist Frank Bruni comes a lucid, powerful examination of the ways in which grievance has come to define our current culture and politics, on both the right and left.. The twists and turns of American politics are unpredictable, but the tone is a troubling given. It's one of grievance. More and more Americans are convinced that they're losing because somebody else is winning. More and more tally their slights, measure their misfortune, and assign particular people responsibility for it. The blame game has become the country's most popular sport and victimhood its most fashionable garb. Grievance needn't be bad. It has done enormous good. The United States is a nation born of grievance, and across the nearly two hundred and fifty years of our existence as a country, grievance has been the engine of morally urgent change.
Enlightenment Now
By Pinker, Steven
The follow-up to Pinker's groundbreaking The Better Angels of Our Nature presents the big picture of human progress: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science.Is the world really falling apart Is the ideal of progress obsolete In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing.Far from being a nave hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.
Geometry the Easy Way
By Leff, Lawrence S
These books are ideal student self-help supplements. They offer valuable overviews of course work and extra help with difficult subject areas. Covers the "how" and "why" of geometry. Includes hundreds of examples and exercises with solutions. Includes more than 700 drawings, graphs,and tables.
On Censorship
By Larue, James
In America, censorship surges in periods of demographic and political change. Its primary purpose is to silence challenges to an established elite or norm. Today, censorship is part of a larger assault on such American institutions as schools, public libraries, and universities, the better to establish more control over the people--while also pilfering their wallets. On Censorship is a part of the Publisher's Speakers Corner Books.
Principles of Climatology
By Press, Salem
Climatology is the study of climate. The more data scientists collect on the local, regional, and global level, the more information they gather on the factors, both natural and manmade, including global warming, that have an effect on climate. More than
Ultimate Guide to Hobby Farm Animals
By Weaver, Sue
Learn everything a hobby farmer needs to know about farm animals!7 popular farm animals - beef cattle, chickens, ducks, goats, pigs, rabbits, and sheep - with extensive sections for each, including information on breeds and varietiesDetailed how-to on the care, handling, feeding, health, and safety of each animalBreeding methods, breeding cycles, caring for pregnant females, caring for baby animals, and raising young animalsTroubleshooting tips for potential problems and warding off diseases, parasites, and predatorsHow to capitalize on your livestock's output by selling eggs, milk, meat, fiber, and feathersRevised edition vetted and updated by Dr. Mark McConnon, DVM, hobby farm professionals, and veterinarians for the most up-to-date information available on the market for shelter, care, health, medicine, nutrition, behavior, marketing, and profitWhat's a hobby farm without a small flock or herd (or several) ?A single, information-packed volume with everything a small-scale hobby farmer, breeder, or homesteader needs to know about farm animals, this updated and comprehensive manual to selecting, caring for, and breeding livestock provides the expertise of five seasoned hobby farmers, each of whom has real life on-the-farm experience with the animals discussed.
Pairing STEAM with Stories
By Mcchesney, Elizabeth M.
Laying the groundwork for building children's curiosity, openness to learning, ability to persist in the face of failure, and interest in connecting learning from one subject to the other are important objectives for today's libraries. Partnering with cultural institutions, such as the Chicago Public Library (CPL) does with Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry (MSI) , libraries can forge powerful connections between literacy and science. This resource shares the fruits of that partnership, offering ready-to-go, library-tested activities that meld cutting-edge STEAM education principles with some of the best books available for youth today. It's a model that can be used in a variety of library or museum settings and can also be adapted for outreach.
Framed
By Grisham, John
In his first work of nonfiction since The Innocent Man, #1 bestselling author John Grisham and Centurion Ministries Founder Jim McCloskey share ten harrowing true stories of wrongful convictions. Impeccably researched and grippingly told, Framed offers an inside look at the injustice faced by the victims of the United States criminal justice system.. A fundamental principle of our legal system is a presumption of innocence, but once someone has been found guilty there is very little room to prove doubt. Framed shares ten true stories of men who were innocent but found guilty and forced to sacrifice friends, families, wives, and decades of their lives to prison while the guilty parties remained free. In each of the stories, John Grisham and Jim McCloskey recount the dramatic hard-fought battles for exoneration.