NCW Libraries

As our civilization careens toward climate breakdown, ecological destruction, and gaping inequality, people are losing their existential moorings. The dominant worldview of disconnection, which tells us we are split between mind and body, separate from each other, and at odds with the natural world, has been invalidated by modern science. Award-winning author, Jeremy Lent, investigates humanity's age-old questions -- Who am I? Why am I? How should...

"Who are we? What is it about our species that sets us apart from every other living creature, past and present, on this planet? These are perennially compelling questions about human evolution and development that continue to cudgel the best brains on earth. Know-It-All Anthropology seeks to understand the roots of our common humanity, the diversity of cultures and world-views, and the organization of social relations and practices. If you only have...

It's a belief that unites the left and right, psychologists and philosophers, writers and historians. It drives the headlines that surround us and the laws that touch our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Dawkins, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. Human beings, we're taught, are by nature selfish and governed by self-interest. Humankind makes a new argument: that it is realistic, as well as revolutionary, to assume...

When forensic expert Gwen Marcey discovers a skull and a tortured girl in a cabin near her Montana home, her investigations into the matter lead her to believe that she is dealing with a neo-Nazi serial killer with a score to settle with Gwen.

"An anthropologist working with forensic teams and victims' families to investigate crimes against humanity in Latin America explores what science can tell us about the lives of the dead in this haunting account of grief, the power of ritual, and a quest for justice. 'Exhumation can divide brothers and restore fathers, open old wounds and open the possibility of regeneration-of building something new with the pile of broken mirrors that is loss and...

Lewis Gates, a bounty hunter haunted by the past, was hired to track down three escaped convicts in the Oxbow region of the Rockies. Their trail leads him to a secluded spot and signs of a struggle, but no bodies only a strange arrow shaft remains. Gates takes the arrow to an expert in Native American culture, Lillian Sloan, and together they set off in search of an impossible mystery a tribe they believe cannot exist, massacred over 100 years ago....

"Why the modern world forgot how to sleep Why is sleep frustrating for so many people? While human history presents a vast diversity of sleeping styles, today we define a good night's sleep very narrowly: eight hours in one shot, sealed off in private bedrooms, children apart from parents. These sleeping rules have become ingrained in our culture over the past two hundred years, yet few seem able to live by them. For the world's poor, modern sleep...

"The 21st century is rife with tensions and conflict among cultures, peoples, and persons. In this thought-provoking book, Claes G. Ryn explores the great danger of turbulence and war and propounds a strongly argued thesis about what can make peaceful relations possible. Many trust in "democracy," "capitalism," "liberal tolerance," scientific progress, or general enlightenment to create peace and order. Ryn contends that the problem is deeper and...