Basic Books: 1466 books
Finding Our Tongues
Mothers, Infants, and the Origins of Language
Language: English
Release Date: March 17, 2009
Scientists have long theorized that abstract, symbolic thinking evolved to help humans negotiate such classically male activities as hunting, tool making, and warfare, and eventually developed into spoken language. In Finding Our Tongues, Dean Falk overturns this established idea, offering a daring...
How We Do It
The Evolution and Future of Human Reproduction
Language: English
Release Date: June 11, 2013
Despite our seemingly endless fascination with sex and parenting, the origins of our reproductive lives remain a mystery. Why are a quarter of a billion sperm cells needed to fertilize one egg? Are women really fertile for only a few days each month? How long should women breast-feed? In How We Do...
Presidential Doodles
Two Centuries of Scribbles, Scratches, Squiggles, and Scrawls from the Oval Office squiggles & scraw
Language: English
Release Date: October 30, 2007
What were the leaders of the free world really doing during all those meetings? As the editors of Cabinet magazine reveal here for the first time, they were doodling. Our Founding Fathers doodled, and so did Andrew Jackson. Benjamin Harrison accomplished almost nothing during his time in the White...
The Royal Society
And the Invention of Modern Science
Language: English
Release Date: June 4, 2019
An engaging new history of the Royal Society of London, the club that created modern scientific thought
Founded in 1660 to advance knowledge through experimentally verified facts, The Royal Society of London is now one of the preeminent scientific institutions of the world. It published the...
The Pity of War
Explaining World War I
Language: English
Release Date: August 5, 2008
From a bestselling historian, a daringly revisionist history of World War I
The Pity of War makes a simple and provocative argument: the human atrocity known as the Great War was entirely England's fault. According to Niall Ferguson, England entered into war based on naive assumptions of German...
by Barbara Ellis
Language: English
Release Date: August 5, 2009
Language: English
Release Date: August 5, 2009
Everyone in the newsroom agrees that copy editors are the unsung heroes in the business who, until now, have never had a succinct and authoritative guide for on-the-job use. From counting the headline to line breaks, from decks to jumps, from editing numbers and photo captions to editing for organization,...
Crucible of Faith
The Ancient Revolution That Made Our Modern Religious World
Language: English
Release Date: September 19, 2017
One of America's foremost scholars of religion examines the tumultuous era that gave birth to the modern Judeo-Christian tradition
In The Crucible of Faith, Philip Jenkins argues that much of the Judeo-Christian tradition we know today was born between 250-50 BCE, during a turbulent "Crucible...
Chasing Churchill
The Travels of Winston Churchill
Language: English
Release Date: April 27, 2009
Sir Winston Churchill was a well-traveled man. By the time he was twenty-five, his thirst for adventure had taken him to Cuba, India's North-West frontier, the Sudan, and South Africa, as well as to battle, prison, and worldwide fame. During World War II, when as prime minister he held Britain's destiny...
The Collapse
The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall
Language: English
Release Date: October 7, 2014
"An authoritative and fast-moving account of the events that led up to the Wall's demise." --Financial Times
On November 9, 1989, massive crowds surged toward the Berlin Wall, drawn by an announcement that caught the world by surprise: East Germans could now move freely to the West....
How We Got Here
The 70's: The Decade that Brought You Modern Life (For Better or Worse)
Language: English
Release Date: August 4, 2008
For many, the 1970s evoke the Brady Bunch and the birth of disco. In this first, thematic popular history of the decade, David Frum argues that it was the 1970s, not the 1960s, that created modern America and altered the American personality forever. A society that had valued faith, self-reliance,...
Capture the Flag
A Political History of American Patriotism
Language: English
Release Date: May 26, 2009
Americans honor the flag with a fervor seen in few other countries: The Stars and Stripes decorate American homes and businesses; wave over sports events and funerals; and embellish everything from politicians' lapels to the surface of the moon.
But what does the flag mean? In Capture the Flag,...
Not Remotely Controlled
Notes on Television
Language: English
Release Date: August 1, 2007
Television has taken firm hold of American life ever since the first flickering images replaced the disembodied voices innocently crackling from the radio. Ever present and evolving, television thrives at the crossroads of commerce, art, and entertainment. In Not Remotely Controlled cultural critic...
Journey Of The Adopted Self
A Quest For Wholeness
Language: English
Release Date: August 4, 2008
Betty Jean Lifton, whose Lost and Found has become a bible to adoptees and to those who would understand the adoption experience, explores further the inner world of the adopted person. She breaks new ground as she traces the adopted child's lifelong struggle to form an authentic sense of self. And...
Rats in the Grain
The Dirty Tricks and Trials of Archer Daniels Midland, the Supermarket to the World
Language: English
Release Date: January 10, 2002
Beneath the wholesome image of Archer Daniels Midland lie some of the dirtiest practices in American business: price-fixing, bribery, and cover-ups. Unfolding like a legal thriller, Rats in the Grain portrays the crime and punishment of ADM during the largest white-collar criminal trial of the 1990s....