Book cover of Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English by Valerie Fridland
Politics & Social Science

Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English

A lively linguistic exploration of the speech habits we love to hate—and why our “like”s  and “literally”s actually make us better communicators

Paranoid about the “ums” and “uhs” that pepper your presentations? Concerned that people notice your vocal fry? Bewildered by “hella” or the meteoric rise of “so”?  What if these features of our speech weren’t a sign of cultural and linguistic degeneration, but rather, some of the most dynamic and revolutionary tools at our disposal? […Learn More]

Book cover of After the Ivory Tower Falls: How College Broke the American Dream and Blew Up Our Politics—and How to Fix It by Will Bunch
Business & Money

After the Ivory Tower Falls: How College Broke the American Dream and Blew Up Our Politics—and How to Fix It

Today there are two Americas, separate and unequal, one educated and one not. And these two tribes—the resentful “non-college” crowd and their diploma-bearing yet increasingly disillusioned adversaries—seem on the brink of a civil war. The strongest determinant of whether a voter was likely to support Donald Trump in 2016 was whether or not they attended college, and the degree of loathing they reported feeling toward the so-called “knowledge economy” of clustered, educated elites. […Learn More]

Book cover of Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Plane by George Monbiot
Biological Sciences

Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Plane

For the first time in millennia, we have the opportunity to transform not only our food system but our entire relationship to the living world.
 
Farming is the world’s greatest cause of environmental destruction—and the one we are least prepared to talk about. We criticize urban sprawl, but farming sprawls across thirty times as much land. We have plowed, fenced, and grazed great tracts of the planet, felling forests, killing wildlife, and poisoning rivers and oceans to feed ourselves. Yet millions still go hungry and the price of food is rising faster than ever. […Learn More]

Book cover of Bully Market: My Story of Money and Misogyny at Goldman Sachs by Jamie Higgins
Biography & Autobiography

Bully Market: My Story of Money and Misogyny at Goldman Sachs 

Jamie Fiore Higgins became one of the few women at the highest ranks of Goldman Sachs. Spurred on by the obligation she felt to her working-class immigrant family, she rose through the ranks and saw it all: out-of-control, lavish parties flowing with never-ending drinks; affairs flouted in the office; rampant drug use; and most pervasively, a discriminatory culture that seemed designed to hold back the few women and people of color employed at the company. […Learn More]

Book cover of An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong
Biological Sciences

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

In An Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth’s magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and even humans who wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile’s scaly face is as sensitive as a lover’s fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision. […Learn More]

Book cover of The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us by Steve Brusatte
Biological Sciences

The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us

We humans are the inheritors of a dynasty that has reigned over the planet for nearly 66 million years, through fiery cataclysm and ice ages: the mammals. Our lineage includes saber-toothed tigers, woolly mammoths, armadillos the size of a car, cave bears three times the weight of a grizzly, clever scurriers that outlasted Tyrannosaurus rex, and even other types of humans, like Neanderthals. Indeed humankind and many of the beloved fellow mammals we share the planet with today—lions, whales, dogs—represent only the few survivors of a sprawling and astonishing family tree that has been pruned by time and mass extinctions. How did we get here? […Learn More]

Book cover of Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us by Brian Klaas
Health and Psychology

Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us

An “absorbing, provocative, and far-reaching” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) look at what power is, who gets it, and what happens when they do, based on over 500 interviews with those who (temporarily, at least) have had the upper hand—from the creator of the Power Corrupts podcast and Washington Post columnist Brian Klaas. […Learn More]