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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.
A Global Human History 20,000-5000 BC
20,000 B.C., the peak of the last ice age--the atmosphere is heavy with dust, glaciers span vast regions, and people face the threat of extinction. But these people live on the brink of seismic change--10,000 years of climate shifts culminating in abrupt global warming that will usher in a fundamentally changed human world. This is the story of this momentous period--one in which a seemingly minor alteration in temperature could presage anything from the spread of lush woodland to the coming of apocalyptic floods--and one in which we find the origins of civilization itself.
Perpetual Youth, Eternal Life, and Other Dangerous Fantasies
Someday, as Muriel Gillick points out in this important yet unsettling book, you too will be old. How do you prepare? What will you need? With passion and compassion, Gillick chronicles the stories of elders who have struggled with housing options, with medical care decisions, and with finding meaning in life. Skillfully incorporating insights from medicine, health policy, and economics, she lays out action plans for individuals and for communities.
Tales of Resilient Teens
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.
Living with Antidepressants
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.
In this forcefully argued book, the leading evolutionary theorist of language provides a framework for studying the evolution of human language and cognition. Philip Lieberman asserts that the widely influential theories of language's development are inconsistent with principles and findings of evolutionary biology and neuroscience. In his view, the human language ability is the confluence of a succession of separate evolutionary developments, jury-rigged by natural selection to work together for an evolutionarily unique ability.
Laws That Deprive People with Mental Disability of Life and Liberty
Minding Justice offers a comprehensive examination of the laws governing the punishment, detention, and protection of people with mental disabilities. A milestone in criminal mental health law, this book provides innovative solutions to ancient problems associated with criminal responsibility, protection of society from "dangerous" individuals, and the state's authority to act paternalistically.
A History of American Childhood
Today, adults impose ever-increasing demands on the young for self-discipline, cognitive development, and academic achievement, even as the influence of the mass media and consumer culture has grown. With a nod to the past, Mintz revisits an alternative to the goal-driven realities of contemporary childhood. An odyssey of psychological self-discovery and growth, this book suggests a vision of childhood that embraces risk and freedom--like the daring adventure on Huck's raft.
new in paperback
Delinquent Boys to Age 70
This book analyzes newly collected data on crime and social development up to age 70 for 500 men who were remanded to reform school in the 1940s. Updating their lives at the close of the twentieth century, and connecting their adult experiences to childhood, this book is arguably the longest longitudinal study of age, crime, and the life course to date.
Lives of Extraordinary Twins
L.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.
How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens
How could anyone believe he or she was abducted by aliens? Or want to believe it? Clancy argues that abductees are sane and intelligent people who have unwittingly created vivid false memories from a mélange of nightmares, culturally available texts, and a powerful drive for meaning that science is unable to satisfy. This book is not only a subtle exploration of the workings of memory, but a sensitive inquiry into the nature of belief.
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.
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.
Creating Meaning in Everyday Life
Engel argues that the "scientist in a crib" view held by many parents and teachers encourages them to expect more logical reasoning and emotional self-control from children than they possess. She provides a concise and valuable overview of what modern developmental psychologists have learned about children's developing powers of perception and capacity for reasoning, but also suggests new ways of studying children that better capture the truth about their young minds.
Recognition, though it figures profoundly in our understanding of objects and persons, identity and ideas, has never before been the subject of a single, sustained philosophical inquiry. This work, by one of contemporary philosophy's most distinguished voices, pursues recognition through its various philosophical guises and meanings and, through the "course of recognition," seeks to develop nothing less than a proper hermeneutics of mutual recognition.
In a book that explores the phenomenon of stuttering from its practical and physical aspects to its historical profile to its existential implications, Marc Shell plumbs the depths of this murky region between will and flesh, intention and expression, idea and word. This provocative and wide-ranging book shows that stuttering has implications for myriad types of expression and helps to define what it means to be human.
In this natural history of primate parenting, Smith compares parenting by nonhuman and human primates. In a narrative rich with vivid anecdotes derived from interviews with primatologists, from her own experience breeding cottontop tamarin monkeys for over thirty years, and from her clinical psychology practice, Smith describes the ways that primates care for their offspring, from infancy through young adulthood.
new in paperback
Teenage Girls Talk about Sexuality
What teenage girls make of their awakening sexuality--distant from and yet susceptible to cultural stereotypes--emerges for the first time in Deborah Tolman's Dilemmas of Desire. Thoughtful, vivid, and richly informed, this revealing book begins the critical work of understanding the sexuality of young women in all its personal, social, and emotional significance.
new in paperback
How Young People Cope with Moral Dilemmas at Work
Making Good explores the choices confronting young workers who join the ranks of three dynamic professions--journalism, science, and acting--and looks at how the novices navigate moral dilemmas posed by a demanding, frequently lonely, professional life. It offers extensive insights into how young workers view their respective domains, the nature of their ambitions, the sacrifices they are willing to make, and the lines they are prepared to cross.
new in paperback
How Our Hands Help Us Think
This book explores how we move our hands when we talk, and what it means when we do so. Focusing on what we can discover about speakers--adults and children alike--by watching their hands, Goldin-Meadow discloses the active role that gesture plays in conversation and, more fundamentally, in thinking. In general, we are unaware of gesture, which occurs as an undercurrent alongside an acknowledged verbal exchange. This book makes clear why we must not ignore the background conversation.
new in paperback
This book, one of the few comprehensive attempts at integrating behavioral research into human and nonhuman primates, does precisely that--and in doing so, offers a clear, in-depth look at the mutually enlightening work being done in psychology and primatology. The authors focus primarily on social processes in areas including aggression, conflict resolution, sexuality, attachment, parenting, social development and affiliation, cognitive development, social cognition, personality, emotions, vocal and nonvocal communication, cognitive neuroscience, and psychopathology.
new in paperback