On their 100th anniversary, the story of the extraordinary scientific expeditions that ushered in the era of relativity

In 1919, British scientists led extraordinary expeditions to Brazil and Africa to test Albert Einstein’s revolutionary new theory of general relativity in what became the...

How Cold War America came to attribute human evolutionary success to our species' unique capacity for murder

After World War II, the question of how to define a universal human nature took on new urgency. Creatures of Cain charts the rise and precipitous fall in Cold War America of a theory that...

An in-depth exploration of documentary forgery at the turn of the first millennium

Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium takes a fresh look at documentary forgery and historical memory in the Middle Ages. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, religious houses across Europe began...

An in-depth look at how mortuary cultures and issues of death and the dead in Africa have developed over four centuries

In My Time of Dying is the first detailed history of death and the dead in Africa south of the Sahara. Focusing on a region that is now present-day Ghana, John Parker explores...

A compelling exploration of how our pursuit of happiness makes us unhappy

We live in an age of unprecedented prosperity, yet everywhere we see signs that our pursuit of happiness has proven fruitless. Dissatisfied, we seek change for the sake of change?even if it means undermining the foundations of our...

A savory account of how the pursuit of delicious foods shaped human evolution

Nature, it has been said, invites us to eat by appetite and rewards by flavor. But what exactly are flavors? Why are some so pleasing while others are not? Delicious is a supremely entertaining foray into the heart of...