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The dragons of Eden: speculations on the evolution of human intelligence
By Carl Sagan. 1977
Essays by an award-winning scientist about the possible development of human intelligence, written for nonspecialists. Discusses the biological functions of…
sleep, increasing brain size, and language learning among chimpanzees. Chronicles advances in understanding the brain and implications for the future. BestsellerBatman and psychology: a dark and stormy knight
By Travis Langley. 2020
Batman is one of the most compelling and enduring characters to come from the Golden Age of Comics, and interest…
in his story has only increased through countless incarnations since his first appearance in Detective Comics #27 in 1939. Why does this superhero without superpowers fascinate us? What does that fascination say about us? Batman and Psychology explores these and other intriguing questions about the masked vigilante, including the following: Does Batman have PTSD? Why does he fight crime? Why as a vigilante? Why the mask, the bat, and the underage partner? Why are his most intimate relationships with bad girls he ought to lock up? And why won't he kill that homicidal green-haired clown? This book, which is written by a psychology professor and Superherologist (a scholar of superheroes), gives fresh insight into the complex inner world of Batman and Bruce Wayne (and the other characters of Gotham City), using this popular comic-book character as a lens to help explain psychological theory and conceptsTrue talents
By David Lubar. 2007
The friends from Edgeview Alternative School wanted to keep their Hidden Talents (RC 56815) secret, but someone learns that Trash…
can move objects with his mind and kidnaps him. Torchie, Cheater, Lucky, Flinch, and Martin must use their talents to rescue Trash. For grades 5-8. 2007Aria of the sea
By Dia Calhoun. 2000
In a magical kingdom by the sea, talented thirteen-year-old commoner Cerinthe wins a place in the School of the Royal…
Dancers. She ignores her gift for healing until a life-threatening accident occurs. Then Cerinthe realizes she must decide which career to follow to truly be herself. For grades 6-9. 2000The Houdini box
By Brian Selznick. 2008
From the age of eight, Victor tries to perform Houdini's escape tricks, much to his mother's dismay. His admiration for…
the great magician leads him to inherit a box--supposedly Houdini's, but with the confusing initials "E.W." marked on it. For grades 3-6. 2008Siegel and Shuster's Funnyman
By Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Thomas Andrae, Mel Gordon. 2010
Here is a kaleidoscopic analysis of Jewish humor as seen through Funnyman, a little-known super-heroic invention by the creators of…
Superman. Included are complete comic-book stories and daily and Sunday newspaper panels from Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's creative fiasco.Siegel and Shuster, two Jewish teenagers from Cleveland, sold the rights to their amazing and astonishingly lucrative comic book superhero to Detective Comics for $130 in 1938. Not only did they lose the ownership of the Superman character, they also agreed to write and illustrate it for ten years at ten dollars per page. Their contract with the DC publishers was soon heralded as the most foolish agreement in the history of American popular culture.After toiling on workman's wages for a decade, Siegel and Shuster struggled to come up with a new superhero, one that would right their wrongs and prove that justice, fair-play, and zany craftsmanship was the true American way and would lead to ultimate victory. But when the naïve duo launched their new comic character Funnyman in 1947, it failed miserably. All the turmoil and personal disasters in Siegel and Shuster's postwar life percolated into the comic strip.This book tells the back story of the unsuccessful strip and Siegel and Shuster's ambition to have their funny Jewish superhero trump Superman.Mel Gordon is the author of Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin.Thomas Andrae is the author of Batman and Me.House of Secrets
By Kevin C. Murphy, James Moore. 1995
The first novel based on Vampire: The Eternal Struggle collectible card game from Wizards of the Coast. It takes you…
deep into the World of Darkness, a world where vampires engage in the ultimate struggle for power under the cover of darkness.His Master's Voice
By Stanislaw Lem. 2020
Scientists attempt to decode what may be a message from intelligent beings in outer space. By pure chance, scientists detect…
a signal from space that may be communication from rational beings. How can people of Earth understand this message, knowing nothing about the senders—even whether or not they exist? Written as the memoir of a mathematician who participates in the government project (code name: His Master's Voice) attempting to decode what seems to be a message from outer space, this classic novel shows scientists grappling with fundamental questions about the nature of reality, the confines of knowledge, the limitations of the human mind, and the ethics of military-sponsored scientific research.Highcastle: A Remembrance
By Stanislaw Lem. 2020
A playful, witty, reflective memoir of childhood by the science fiction master Stanisław Lem. With Highcastle, Stanisław Lem offers a…
memoir of his childhood and youth in prewar Lvov. Reflective, artful, witty, playful—“I was a monster,” he observes ruefully—this lively and charming book describes a youth spent reading voraciously (he was especially interested in medical texts and French novels), smashing toys, eating pastries, and being terrorized by insects. Often lonely, the young Lem believed that he could communicate with household objects—perhaps anticipating the sentient machines in the adult Lem's novels. Lem reveals his younger self to be a dreamer, driven by an unbridled imagination and boundless curiosity. In the course of his reminiscing, Lem also ponders the nature of memory, innocence, and the imagination. Highcastle (the title refers to a nearby ruin) offers the portrait of a writer in his formative years.Time and Chance: An Autobiography
By L. Sprague DeCamp. 1992
Time and Chance is the autobiography of Hugo, World Fantasy and SFWA Grand Master Award-winning author, L. Sprague de Camp.…
It is a fascinating insight into a man who began writing in the late 1930's and remained an active voice in the genre up until his death in the last year of the twentieth century, and who was a prime mover in the formation of the fields of Science Fiction and Fantasy as we know them today.The Natural Way of Things: 'The Handmaid's Tale for our age' (Economist)
By Charlotte Wood. 2015
'Savage: think Atwood in the outback' Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train'An unforgettable reading experience' Liane Moriarty,…
author of Big Little Lies'Ferocious... recalls the early Elena Ferrante' NPR'A masterpiece' Guardian'Devastating' EconomistShe hears her own thick voice deep inside her ears when she says, 'I need to know where I am.'The man stands there, tall and narrow, hand still on the doorknob, surprised.He says, almost in sympathy, 'Oh, sweetie. You need to know what you are.'"Two women awaken from a drugged sleep to find themselves imprisoned in a brokendownproperty in the middle of a desert.Strangers to each other, they have no idea where they are or how they came to be therewith eight other girls, their heads shaved, guarded by two inept yet vicious jailers.Doing hard labour under a sweltering sun, the prisoners soon learn what links them: ineach girl's past is a sexual scandal with a powerful man.They pray for rescue but as the hours turn into days and the days into weeks and months,it becomes clear only the girls can rescue themselves. Winner, 2016 Stella PrizeWinner, 2016 Indie Book of the Year AwardWinner, Fiction Book of the Year, 2016 Indie Book AwardWinner, 2016 Prime Minister's Literary Award for FictionWinner, Reader's Choice, 2016 ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year Shortlisted, 2016 Miles Franklin Literary AwardShortlisted, 2016 ABA Nielsen BookData Booksellers Choice AwardLonglisted, 2017 International Dublin Literary AwardInventing Iron Man: The Possibility of a Human Machine
By E. Paul Zehr. 2011
Tony Stark has been battling bad guys and protecting innocent civilians since he first donned his mechanized armor in the…
1963 debut of Iron Man in Marvel Comics. Over the years, Stark’s suit has allowed him to smash through walls, fly through the air like a human jet, control a bewildering array of weaponry by thought alone, and perform an uncountable number of other fantastic feats. The man who showed us all what it would take to become Batman probes whether science—and humankind—is up to the task of inventing a real-life Iron Man.E. Paul Zehr physically deconstructs Iron Man to find out how we could use modern-day technology to create a suit of armor similar to the one Stark made. Applying scientific principles and an incredibly creative mind to the question, Zehr looks at how Iron Man’s suit allows Stark to become a superhero. He discusses the mind-boggling and body-straining feats Iron Man performed to defeat villains like Crimson Dynamo, Iron Monger, and Whiplash and how such acts would play out in the real world. Zehr finds that science is nearing the point where a suit like Iron Man’s could be made. But superherodom is not just about technology. Zehr also discusses our own physical limitations and asks whether an extremely well-conditioned person could use Iron Man’s armor and do what he does.A scientifically sound look at brain-machine interfaces and the outer limits where neuroscience and neural plasticity meet, Inventing Iron Man is a fun comparison between comic book science fiction and modern science. If you’ve ever wondered whether you have what it takes to be the ultimate human-machine hero, then this book is for you.What's So Funny?: A Cartoonist's Memoir
By David Sipress. 2022
From a longtime New Yorker staff cartoonist, an evocative family memoir, a love letter to New York City, and a delightful exploration of…
the origins of creativity—richly interleaved with the author&’s witty, beloved cartoons A wry and brilliantly observed portrait of the budding young cartoonist and his Upper West Side Jewish family in the age of JFK and Sputnik. Sipress, a dreamer and obsessive drawer, goes hazy when it comes to the ceaselessly imparted lessons-on-life from his father, the meticulous, upwardly mobile proprietor of Revere Jewelers, and in the face of the angsty expectations of his migraine-prone mother. With self-deprecation, wit, and artistry, Sipress paints his hapless place in his indelibly dysfunctional family, from the time he was tricked by his unreliable older sister into rocketing his pet turtle out his twelfth-floor bedroom window, to the moment he walks away from a Harvard PhD program in Russian history to begin his journey as a professional cartoonist. In What&’s So Funny?—reminiscent of the masterly, humane recall of Roger Angell and the brainy humor of Roz Chast—Sipress's cartoons appear with spot-on precision, inducing delightful Aha moments in answer to the perennial question aimed at cartoonists: Where do you get your ideas?Full Immersion
By Gemma Amor. 2022
A traumatised woman with amnesia finds her own dead body and sets out to uncover the truth of her demise…
in a race against time, sanity, crumbling realities and the ever-present threat of the Silhouette. ---What can you do when you&’re reeling from trauma but you&’ve tried it all? Counselling, yoga, pills, meditation, art, healthy living… none of it makes a dent. What&’s left?Magpie is out of ideas. She&’s desperate enough to try anything. Just when she thinks her life can get no worse, she discovers herself, or rather her own dead body, partially buried in the mudbank of a river. A man stands by, a familiar stranger. What does he want? And why can&’t she remember getting here? Why can&’t she remember anything?Unbeknownst to her, two pairs of eyes watch from behind an observation screen, in a room filled with computers and sensors. An experiment is unfolding, but is Magpie the subject, or practitioner? Reality becomes a slippery concept. And beyond the glass is something worse still: a hint of an outline, shaped in darkness…Magpie realises all too soon that her journey has transformed from healing to survival. She must become the hunter rather than the hunted, with her missing memories the prey.In turn brutal, beautiful and absolutely terrifying, Full Immersion is the latest speculative horror from Bram Stoker Award-nominated author, Gemma AmorFile Under: Horror Fantasy [ Silhouette | Suspension | Bristol | Motherhood ] **Content Warnings** suicidal ideation; post-natal depression; implied acts of violence towards a child; birth sceneThe Science of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials: With an Introduction by Philip Pullman
By John Gribbin, Mary Gribbin. 2004
The amazing true science behind the fiction of His Dark Materials, ideal for fans of the original trilogy and The…
Book of Dust, with an introduction by Philip Pullman.Award-winning science writers Mary and John Gribbin reveal how the world of Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy (Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass) is rooted in astonishing scientific truth. Drawing on string theory and spacetime, quantum physics and chaos theory, they answer fascinating questions such as: could parallel worlds like Will's and Lyra's really exist? How does the subtle knife cut through anything? Could there be a bomb like the one made with Lyra's hair? And, of course, what are the Dark Materials?Dawn: A Proton's Tale of All That Came to Be (BioLogos Books on Science and Christianity)
By Gijsbert Van den Brink, Cees Dekker, Corien Oranje. 2020
This is an adventure that began almost fourteen billion years ago, one that so often threatened to fail. It's truly…
a miracle I'm still here. Despite everything, I wouldn't have wanted to miss one second of it. And the best is yet to come.With the help of an extraordinary narrator, you're invited to discover the wonder and drama of the history of the cosmos. In this story we follow the journey of one proton who comes into existence at the beginning of creation and makes it all the way through history to today. By becoming a part of atoms and molecules that turn up at some of the universe's most important moments, our friend Proton witnesses emerging galaxies, the origin of life, its evolution into a wild diversity of life forms, the first human beings, the birth and life of Jesus, the beginnings of the Christian church, all the way up to the present day. Through it all, the mysterious, seemingly unbelievable plans of the Creator continue to unfold. . . .DawnBioLogos Books on Science and Christianity invite us to see the harmony between the sciences and biblical faith on issues including cosmology, biology, paleontology, evolution, human origins, the environment, and more.Edge
By Koji Suzuki. 2012
Edge begins with a massive and catastrophic shifting of the San Andreas fault. The fears of California someday tumbling into…
the sea--that have become the stuff of parody--become real. But even the terror resulting from this catastrophe pales in comparison to the understanding behind its happening, a cataclysm extending beyond mankind's understanding of horror as it had previously been known. The world is falling apart because things are out of joint at the quantum level, about which of course there's never been any guarantee that everything has to remain stable.Koji Suzuki returns to the genre he's most famous for after many years of "not wanting to write any more horror." As expected from Suzuki, the chills are of a more cerebral, psychological sort, arguably more unsettling and scary than the slice-and-dice gore fests that horror has become known in the U.S. Never content to simply do "Suzuki"--as it were--but rather push the envelope on what horror is in general and for which readers have come to know him, Edge City borders on being cutting-edge science fiction. The author himself terms this novel, which he has worked on for some years, a work of "quantum horror."Heart and Brain: An Awkward Yeti Collection (Heart And Brain Ser. #1)
By The Awkward Yeti, Nick Seluk. 2015
Boasting more than two million pageviews per month, TheAwkwardYeti.com has become a webcomic staple since its creation in 2012. In…
addition to tons of fan favorites, Heart and Brain contains more than 75 brand new comics that have never been seen online. From paying taxes and getting up for work to dancing with kittens and starting a band, readers everywhere will relate to the ongoing struggle between Heart and Brain.How to Baby: A No-Advice-Given Guide to Motherhood, with Drawings
By Liana Finck. 2024
A wryly personal and deeply relatable graphic memoir skewering the &“traditional&” parenting book to chronicle the absurdities, frustrations, and soaring…
joys of new parenthood—from the acclaimed New Yorker cartoonist and authorHow do you know if you&’re ready to have a baby? How do you know if you might be pregnant? And how do you deal with peeing all the time and being hungry all the time and fielding well-meaning but kind of insulting advice and finding a doula and being dropped by your old friends and learning why it&’s called mom brain and not dad brain and the tyranny of the milestones you&’re not meeting and negotiating boundaries with in-laws and realizing that your heart now exists outside of your chest and in the body of this tiny little being whose entire existence depends on the quality of your care? To tackle these questions and many others, award-winning cartoonist and memoirist Liana Finck began illustrating her early years of motherhood, giving images and language to her insecurities, frustrations, and wild joy. In How to Baby, Liana takes her witty and lacerating cartoons (&“Hobbies for Pregnant Women: Waiting on Hold with the Insurance Company&”) and weaves them together with comic essays (&“You Married a Brute. Worse. You&’re a Nag: Go Ahead and Argue with Each Other&”), handy lists (&“Nesting. The Comprehensive List of What to Buy and Why Getting Things Used Is Dangerous and Unamerican&”), and profound observations. Together, these brilliant pieces form an immersive and comprehensive narrative whole—a baby book, a resource, and an emotional balm—for our time.