Psychology History

One of the country's most eminent practitioners of the art and science of negotiation offers practical advice for the most challenging conflicts - when you are facing an adversary you don't trust, who may harm you, or who you may even feel is evil. The head of Harvard's famed Program on Negotiation, Robert Mnookin provides tools for confronting devils of all kinds - in business, politics, and family life.

In this astonishing and startling book, award-winning science and history writer Robert Whitaker investigates a medical mystery: Why has the number of disabled mentally ill in the United States tripled over the past two decades? Every day, 1,100 adults and children are added to the government disability rolls because they have become newly disabled by mental illness, with this epidemic spreading most rapidly among our nations children. What is going on?

We congratulate ourselves when we resist the donut in the office breakroom. We celebrate our restraint when we hold back from sending an email in anger. We feel virtuous when we wake up at dawn to get a jump on the day. We put others’ needs ahead of our own and believe this makes us exemplary. In On Our Best Behavior, journalist Elise Loehnen explains that these impulses—often lauded as unselfish, distinctly feminine instincts—are actually ingrained in us by a culture that reaps the benefits, via an extraordinarily effective collection of mores known as the Seven Deadly Sins.

When the circus leaves town, the horror stays behind. Clowns have entertained crowds for centuries, but behind the painted smiles lurks something far more sinister. Criminal Clowns: True Crimes and Urban Legends of Killer Clowns dives deep into real-life cases, terrifying encounters, and urban myths surrounding the most unsettling figures in history. From notorious serial killers in clown suits to eerie sightings of silent, lurking clowns on empty streets, this book explores the chilling truth behind the painted faces. ✔ Real-life criminals who hid behind clown makeup ✔ Famous creepy ...

Empathy is in short supply. We struggle to understand people who aren’t like us, but find it easy to hate them. Studies show that we are less caring than we were even 30 years ago. In 2006, Barack Obama said that the United States was suffering from an “empathy deficit.” Since then, things seem to have only gotten worse. In this groundbreaking book, Jamil Zaki shares cutting-edge research, including experiments from his own lab, showing that empathy is not a fixed trait - something we’re born with or not - but rather a skill that can be strengthened through effort.

The field of psychology is concerned with the study of the mind, behavior, and feelings, and it contributes to a better understanding of how individuals perceive, feel, and interact with their surroundings. It seeks to bridge the gap that exists between scientific knowledge and the human experience to achieve the goal of gaining a greater understanding of the conscious and unconscious factors that form persons and civilizations.

From the Silicon Valley tech billionaires currently trying to work out whether or not the universe is one giant video game simulation to the self-proclaimed community of Italian time-travelers who are trying to save the world from destruction; The Theory of Everything Else will act as a handbook for those who want to think differently.

While plenty of entertaining books have been written about the history of alcohol and other intoxicants, none have offered a comprehensive, convincing answer to the basic question of why humans want to get high in the first place. Drunk elegantly cuts through the tangle of urban legends and anecdotal impressions that surround our notions of intoxication to provide the first rigorous, scientifically grounded explanation for our love of alcohol.

Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their 12 children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins—aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the 10 Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic.

Nobody needs telling that there isn't enough time. We're obsessed by our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, the struggle against distraction and the sense that our attention spans are shrivelling. Yet we rarely make the conscious connection that these problems only trouble us in the first place, thanks to the ultimate time-management problem: the challenge of how best to use our 4,000 weeks. Four Thousand Weeks is an uplifting, engrossing and deeply realistic exploration of this problem.

Militarized police officers with tanks and drones. Pervasive government surveillance and profiling. Social media that distract and track us. All of these, contends Bernard E. Harcourt, are facets of a new and radical governing paradigm in the United States - one rooted in the modes of warfare originally developed to suppress anticolonial revolutions and, more recently, to prosecute the war on terror. The Counterrevolution is a penetrating and disturbing account of the rise of counterinsurgency, first as a military strategy but increasingly as a way of ruling ordinary Americans.

Not only can we not currently explain the origin of the universe, it is questionable we will ever be able to explain it. The notion that there are universes within particles, or that particles are conscious, is ascientific, as is the hypothesis that our universe is a computer simulation. On the other hand, the idea that the universe itself is conscious is difficult to rule out entirely.

To err is human. Yet most of us go through life assuming (and sometimes insisting) that we are right about nearly everything, from the origins of the universe to how to load the dishwasher. If being wrong is so natural, why are we all so bad at imagining that our beliefs could be mistaken, and why do we react to our errors with surprise, denial, defensiveness, and shame?

A new field of collective intelligence has emerged in the last few years, prompted by a wave of digital technologies that make it possible for organizations and societies to think at large scale. This "bigger mind" - human and machine capabilities working together - has the potential to solve the great challenges of our time. So why do smart technologies not automatically lead to smart results?

Francis Ouimet and Harry Vardon came from different worlds and different generations, but their passion for golf set them on parallel paths that would collide in the greatest match their sport had ever known.

John Forbes Nash, Jr., a prodigy and legend by the age of 30, dazzled the mathematical world by solving a series of deep problems deemed "impossible" by other mathematicians. But at the height of his fame, Nash suffered a catastrophic mental breakdown and began a harrowing descent into insanity, resigning his post at MIT, slipping into a series of bizarre delusions, and eventually becoming a dreamy, ghostlike figure at Princeton, scrawling numerological messages on blackboards.

Have you ever wondered how some people can effortlessly influence others, control conversations, and shape decisions—often without anyone realizing it? Dark Psychology Exposed pulls back the curtain on the powerful techniques of manipulation, persuasion, and mind control used by history’s most influential figures — from ancient philosophers to modern-day leaders, marketers, and influencers.

On October 20, 1973, in San Francisco, a White couple strolling down Telegraph Hill was set upon and butchered by four young Black men. Thus began a reign of terror that lasted six months and left 15 Whites dead and the entire city in a state of panic. The perpetrators wanted nothing less than a race war.

The first-ever social and scientific history of masturbation, which unapologetically critiques a system that has sought to control the very human desire for self-pleasure. Part sex-positive expose, part fascinating science, DIY spotlights generations of sex education countering anti-masturbation pseudoscience with empowering truths about pleasure. This sex book is perfect for fans of Mary Roach books like Bonk or anyone curious about the history of sex and masturbation.

James Gleick explains the theories behind the fascinating new science called chaos. Alongside relativity and quantum mechanics, it is being hailed as the 20th century's third revolution.