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PSYCHOLOGY

Endocrinology of Social Relationships
Edited by Peter T. Ellison
Edited by Peter B. Gray
Hardcover February 2009
The Accidental Mind
David J. Linden
A guide to the strange and often illogical world of neural function, this book shows how the brain is not an optimized, general-purpose problem-solving machine, but rather a weird agglomeration of ad-hoc solutions that have been piled on through millions of years of evolutionary history.
Paperback October 2008
Seeing Red
Nicholas Humphrey
Beginning with the seemingly simple act of seeing red, this brilliantly unsettling essay builds toward an explanation of why consciousness makes compelling evolutionary sense. From sensations that probably began in bodily expression to the evolutionary advantages of a conscious self, Seeing Red tracks the "hard problem" of consciousness to its source and its solution, a solution in which the very hardness of the problem may make all the difference.
Paperback October 2008
Expression and the Inner
David H. Finkelstein
At least since Descartes, philosophers have been interested in the special knowledge or authority that we exhibit when we speak about our own thoughts, attitudes, and feelings. This book contends that even the best work in contemporary philosophy of mind fails to account for this sort of knowledge or authority because it does not pay the right sort of attention to the notion of expression. What's at stake is not only how to understand self-knowledge and first-person authority, but also what it is that distinguishes conscious from unconscious psychological states, what the mental life of a nonlinguistic animal has in common with our sort of mental life, and how to think about Wittgenstein's legacy to the philosophy of mind.
Paperback September 2008
Islamicate Sexualities
Edited by Kathryn Babayan
Edited by Afsaneh Najmabadi
Paperback September 2008
Loneliness as a Way of Life
Thomas Dumm
Hardcover September 2008
Rethinking Juvenile Justice
Elizabeth S. Scott
Laurence Steinberg
Hardcover September 2008
Coding and Redundancy
Jack P. Hailman
This book explores the strikingly similar ways in which information is encoded in nonverbal man-made signals (e.g., traffic lights and tornado sirens) and animal-evolved signals (e.g., color patterns and vocalizations). Appealing not only to specialists in semiotics, animal behavior, psychology, and allied fields but also to general readers, it serves as an introduction to animal signaling and to an important class of human communication.
Hardcover June 2008
How Infants Know Minds
Vasudevi Reddy
Most psychologists claim that we begin to develop a “theory of mind at age two or three, by inference, deduction, and logical reasoning. But does this mean that small babies are unaware of minds? Reddy deals with the persistent problem of “other minds” by proposing a “second-person” solution: we know other minds if we can respond to them. And we respond most richly in engagement with them.
Hardcover April 2008
The Dalai Lama at MIT
Edited by Anne Harrington
Edited by Arthur Zajonc
Their meeting captured headlines; the waiting list for tickets was nearly 2000 names long. If you were unable to attend, this book will take you there. Including both the papers given at the conference, and the animated discussion and debate that followed, The Dalai Lama at MIT reveals scientists and monks reaching across a cultural divide, to share insights, studies, and enduring questions.
Paperback April 2008
Out of the Woods
Stuart T. Hauser
Joseph P. Allen
Eve Golden
Deeply troubled teenagers spend time in a locked psychiatric ward. They are out of control--violent or suicidal, in trouble with the law, unpredictable, and dangerous. Twenty years later, a handful of them are thriving. In a series of interviews that began during their hospitalizations and ended years later, these teens tell their stories. Out of the Woods portrays edgy teenagers developing into thoughtful, responsible adults. Listening in on the poignant, dramatic, and funny interviews, we hear the kids growing into more composed versions of their tough and feisty selves.
Paperback April 2008
Radical Hope
Jonathan Lear
Shortly before he died, Plenty Coups, the last great Chief of the Crow Nation, said, "When the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground and they could not lift them up again. After this nothing happened." In Jonathan Lear's view, Plenty Coups' story raises a profound ethical question that transcends his time and challenges us all: how should one face the possibility that one's culture might collapse? Radical Hope is a deeply moving, philosophical inquiry into a peculiar vulnerability that goes to the heart of the human condition.
Paperback April 2008
Making Dead Birds
Robert Gardner
This detailed and candid account of the process of making Gardner’s classic Dead Birds is more than the chronicle of a single work. Gardner’s classic Dead Birds is one of the most highly acclaimed and controversial documentary films ever made. It is also a thoughtful examination of what it meant to record the moving and violent rituals of warrior-farmers in the New Guinea highlands and to present to the world a graphic story of their behavior as a window onto our own. This book not only addresses the art and practice of filmmaking, but also explores issues of representation and the discovery of meaning in human lives.
Paperback March 2008
Education for Thinking
Deanna Kuhn
Bringing insights from research in developmental psychology to pedagogy, Kuhn argues that inquiry and argument should be at the center of a "thinking curriculum"--a curriculum that makes sense to students as well as to teachers and develops the skills and values needed for lifelong learning.
Paperback March 2008
The Fundamentals of Brain Development
Joan Stiles
In a remarkable synthesis of research from the last two decades, a leading developmental neuroscientist provides psychologists with a sophisticated introduction to the brain. In clear terms, with ample illustrations, Stiles explains the complexities of genetic variation and transcription, and the variable paths of neural development, from embryology through early childhood.
Hardcover February 2008
Police Interrogation and American Justice
Richard A. Leo
"Read him his rights." We all recognize this line from cop dramas. But what happens afterward? In this book, Leo sheds light on a little-known corner of our criminal justice system--the police interrogation. An important study of the criminal justice system, this book provides interesting answers and raises some unsettling questions.
Hardcover February 2008
Sexual Fluidity
Lisa M. Diamond
Is love "blind" when it comes to gender? For women, it just might be. This original book offers a radical new understanding of the context-dependent nature of female sexuality. Diamond argues that for some women, love and desire are not rigidly heterosexual or homosexual but fluid, changing as women move through the stages of life, various social groups, and, most important, different love relationships.
Hardcover February 2008
Is It Me or My Meds?
David A. Karp
In this book, David Karp explores the relationship between pills and personhood by listening to a group of experts who rarely get the chance to speak on the matter--those who are taking the medications. Through their honest and vivid stories, this book provides unflinching portraits of people attempting to make sense of a process far more complex and mysterious than doctors or pharmaceutical companies generally admit.
Paperback October 2007
Indivisible by Two
Nancy L. Segal
A leading expert on twins delves into the stories behind her research to reveal the profound joys and real-life traumas of twelve remarkable sets of twins, triplets, and quadruplets. Segal unravels these stories with an eye for the challenges that life as a twin can pose to parents, friends, spouses, and the twins themselves. These moving stories remind us of how incompletely any theory explains real life--twin or not.
Paperback September 2007
The Science and Fiction of Autism
Laura Schreibman
In The Science and Fiction of Autism, one of the country's leading experts in behavioral treatments approaches autism through the context of its controversies, showing where extraordinary and unfounded claims have falsely raised hopes, stirred fears, and ruined lives.
Paperback September 2007
Why People Die by Suicide
Thomas Joiner
Drawing on extensive clinical and epidemiological evidence, as well as personal experience, Thomas Joiner provides the most coherent and persuasive explanation ever given of why and how people overcome life's strongest instinct, self-preservation. He tests his theory against diverse facts about suicide rates among men and women; white and African-American men; anorexics, athletes, prostitutes, and physicians; members of cults, sports fans, and citizens of nations in crisis.
Paperback September 2007