Behave - The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
ISBN : 9780099575061
Why do human beings behave as they do ? We are capable of savage acts of violence but also spectacular feats of kindness : is one side of our nature destined to win out over the other ? Every act of human behaviour has multiple layers of causation, spiralling back seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, even centuries, right back to the dawn of time and the origins of our species. In the epic sweep of history, how does our biology affect the arc of war and peace, justice and persecution ? How have our brains evolved alongside our cultures ? This is the exhilarating story of human morality and the science underpinning the biggest question of all : what makes us human ?
Social Intelligence ; The New Science of Human Relatioships
ISBN : 9780099464921
Presents a synthesis of the findings in biology and brain science, revealing a fundamental discovery: we are designed for sociability, constantly engaged in a 'neural ballet' that connects us brain-to-brain with those around us. This work explains the surprising accuracy of first impressions, the basis of charisma and emotional power, and more.
JAZZ
ISBN : 9780099750918
BY THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF BELOVED Joe Trace - in his fifties, door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, erstwhile devoted husband - shoots dead his lover of three months, the impetuous, eighteen-year-old Dorcas. At the funeral, his determined, hard-working wife, Violet, who is given to stumbling into dark mental cracks, tries with a knife to disfigure the corpse. Passionate and profound, Jazz brings us back and forth in time, in a narrative assembled from the hopes, fears and realities of black urban life. Winner of the PEN/Saul Bellow award for achievement in American fiction
Home
ISBN : 9780099555940
It begins with a letter from a woman Frank has never met. A pleading letter. A letter that closed his throat. 'Come fast. She be dead if you tarry.' And that is it all it takes.
Chronicles of a Liquid Society
ISBN : 9781784705206
Umberto Eco was an international cultural superstar. A celebrated essayist as well as novelist, in this, his last collection, he explores the modern world with irrepressible curiosity and wisdom written in his uniquely ironic voice. Written by Eco as articles for his regular column in l'Espresso magazine, he brings his dazzling erudition, incisiveness and keen sense of the everyday to bear on topics such as popular culture and politics, unbridled individualism, conspiracies, the old and the young, mobile phones, mass media, racism, good manners and the crisis in ideological values. It is a final gift to his readers — astute, witty and illuminating.
The Couple Next Door
ISBN : 9780552174060
You never know what's happening on the other side of the wall. Your neighbour told you that she didn't want your six-month-old daughter at the dinner party. Nothing personal, she just couldn't stand her crying. Your husband said it would he fine. After all, you only live next door. You'll have the baby monitor and you'll take it in turns to go back every half-hour. Your daughter was sleeping when you checked on her last. But now, as you race up the stairs in your deathly quiet house, your worst fears are realized. She's gone. You've never had to call the police before. But now they're in your home, and who knows what they'll find there... What would you be capable of, when pushed past your limit ?
The Heart's Invisible Furies
ISBN : 9781784161002
Cast out from her West Cork village, sixteen years old and pregnant, Catherine Goggin makes her way to Dublin to start afresh. She has no choice but to believe that the nun to whom she entrusts her child will find him a better life.The baby is named Cyril by his adoptive parents, Charles and Maude Avery, a well-to-do but deeply eccentric couple who treat him more like a curiosity than a son. You're not a real Avery, they tell him. And perhaps he isn't. But through them he meets Julian Woodbead who, even from childhood, seems destined for an infinitely more glamorous and dangerous life. And so begins one man's funny and moving search to find his place in a world that seems to delight in gently tormenting him at every turn. Buffeted by circumstance and, at times, the consequences of his own questionable judgement, Cyril must navigate his emotions and desires in a search for that most elemental human need, happiness.
Transcription
ISBN : 9781784164393
In 1940, eighteen-year-old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage. Sent to an obscure department of MIS tasked with monitoring the comings and goings of British Fascist sympathizers, she discovers the work to be by turns both tedious and terrifying. But after the war has ended, she presumes the events of those years have been relegated to the past for ever. Ten years later, now a producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her past. A different war is being fought now, on a different battleground, but Juliet finds herself once more under threat. A bill of reckoning is due, and she finally begins to realize that there is no action without consequence.
On Chesil Beach
ISBN : 9781784705565
It is July 1962. Edward and Florence, young innocents married that morning, arrive at a hotel on the Dorset coast. At dinner in their rooms they struggle to suppress their private fears of the wedding night ton come and, unbeknownst ti them bost, the events of the evening will haunt them for the rest of their lives.
PERSEPOLIS I AND II
ISBN : 9780099523994
Tells the story of Marjane Satrapi's life in Tehran from the ages of six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah's regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. This book paints a portrait of daily life in Iran and of the contradictions between home life and public life.