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The Social Atom: Why the Rich Get Richer, Cheaters Get Caught, and Your Neighbor Usually Looks Like You
The idiosyncrasies of human decision-making have confounded economists and social theorists for years. If each person makes choices for personal (and often irrational) reasons, how can people’s choices be predicted by a single theory? How can any economic, social, or political theory be valid? The truth is, none of them really are. Mark Buchanan makes the fascinating argument that the science of physics is beginning to provide a new picture of the human or “social atom,” and help us understand the surprising, and often predictable, patterns that emerge when they get together. Look at patterns, not people, Buchanan argues, and rules emerge that can explain how movements form, how interest groups operate, and even why ethnic hatred persists. Using similar observations, social physicists can predict whether neighborhoods will integrate, whether stock markets will crash, and whether crime waves will continue or abate. Brimming with mind games and provocative experiments, The Social Atom is an incisive, accessible, and comprehensive argument for a whole new way to look at human social behavior. .
Price: $9.95
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The Neuroscience of Fair Play: Why We (Usually) Follow the Golden Rule
We remember the admonition of our mothers: “Treat others as you want them to treat you.” But what if being nice was something we were inclined by nature to do anyway? Renowned neuroscientist Donald Pfaff upends our entire understanding of ethics and social contracts with an intriguing proposition: the Golden Rule is hardwired into the human brain.
Pfaff, the researcher who first discovered the connections between specific brain circuits and certain behaviors, contends that the basic ethics governing our everyday lives can be traced directly to brain circuitry. Writing with popular science journalist Sandra J. Ackerman, he explains in this clear and concise account how specific brain signals induce us to consider our actions as if they were directed at ourselves—and subsequently lead us to treat others as we wish to be treated. Brain hormones are a part of this complicated process, and The Neuroscience of Fair Play discusses how brain hormones can catalyze behaviors with moral implications in such areas as self-sacrifice, parental love, friendship, and violent aggression.
Drawing on his own research and other recent studies in brain science, Pfaff offers a thought-provoking hypothesis for why certain ethical codes and ideas have remained constant across human societies and cultures throughout the world and over the centuries of history. An unprecedented and provocative investigation, The Neuroscience of Fair Play offers a new perspective on the increasingly important intersection of neuroscience and ethics.
(09/14/2007).
Price: $10.21
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He Usually Lived with a Female: The Life of a California Newspaperman
In 1925, a young Arizona reporter, virtually fresh off the farm, wrote a love letter to a sophisticated Jewish New Yorker he had met at a dinner dance. It was the first of scores of letters they would exchange across the continent over the next four decades. She, Fanny (Toni) Strassman, became his literary agent. He, C.H. (Brick) Garrigues, became a graft-busting investigator in Los Angeles, a jazz reviewer in San Francisco, a husband and father, a target of Red-hunters - and a man haunted by a secret from his high school past. This book is his story..
Price: $12.49
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Dictionary of Americanisms: A Glossary of Words and Phrases, Usually Regarded as Peculiar to the United States
A rediscovered classic of American slang-now with a Foreword by bestselling language maven Richard Lederer, author of Anguished English and The Miracle of Language From abisselfa to yourn, John Russell Bartlett's groundbreaking Dictionary of Americanisms celebrated the language of a budding nation, whose rebellious declaration of independence was most evident in its own evolving colloquialisms. Originally published in 1848, the Dictionary of Americanisms was the first lexicon to portray the entire tapestry of uniquely American expressions in one volume, from the New England coast to the Far West and everything in between. The result is a window into everyday life and culture in a rapidly growing United States, with entries representing every region, linguistic heritage, and field of interest: - New England: funkify, plaguy sight, kedge
- The South: marooning, catawamptiously chawed up
- New York: clockmutch, rullichies, soap-lock
- The West: scrouger, prairie bitters, I dad!
- Spanish: sangaree, chaparral, vamos
- Native American languages: netop, sagamore, supawn
- Politics: slang-whanging, Dough-Faces, to row up Salt river
- Business: wild cat bank, corner, Peter Funk
Filled with amusing anecdotes, editorial asides, and some surprisingly modern slang, this facsimile of the book's first edition is a great rediscovery for a new generation of readers and a fascinating snapshot of life in the early decades of the United States of America. .
Price: $5.99
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