What do the music of J. S. Bach, the basic forces of nature, Rubik's Cube, and the selection of mates have in common? They are all characterized by certain symmetries. Symmetry is the concept that bridges the gap between science and art, between the world of theoretical physics and the everyday world we see around us. Yet the "language" of symmetry--group theory in mathematics--emerged from a most unlikely source: an equation that couldn't be solved.
Over the millennia, mathematicians solved progressively more difficult algebraic equations until they came to what is known as the quintic equation. For several centuries it resisted solution, until two mathematical prodigies independently discovered that it could not be solved by the usual methods, thereby opening the door to group theory. These young geniuses, a Norwegian named Niels Henrik Abel and a Frenchman named Evariste Galois, both died tragically. Galois, in fact, spent the night before his fatal duel (at the age of twenty) scribbling another brief summary of his proof, at one point writing in the margin of his notebook "I have no time."
The story of the equation that couldn't be solved is a story of brilliant mathematicians and a fascinating account of how mathematics illuminates a wide variety of disciplines. In this lively, engaging book, Mario Livio shows in an easily accessible way how group theory explains the symmetry and order of both the natural and the human-made worlds.

The brilliant, controversial, bestselling critique of American culture that “hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy” ( The New York Times )—now featuring a new afterword by Andrew Ferguson in a twenty-fifth anniversary edition. A cultural phenomenon with more than 750,000 copies in print, The Closing of the American Mind is as penetrating a criticism of our culture today as it was twenty-five years ago. In this acclaimed number one national bestseller, Allan Bloom, one of our country’s most distinguished political philosophers, argues that the social and political crises of contemporary America are really an intellectual crisis—a dangerous narrowing of curiosity and exploration by the university elites. In his new afterword, author Andrew Ferguson recounts why the book caused such a furor at publication and why its argument continues to provoke and endure.

The Classic Freewheeling Look at Race Relations Through the Ages
Mumbo Jumbo is Ishmael Reed's brilliantly satiric deconstruction of Western civilization, a racy and uproarious commentary on our society. In it, Reed, one of our preeminent African-American authors, mixes portraits of historical figures and fictional characters with sound bites on subjects ranging from ragtime to Greek philosophy. Cited by literary critic Harold Bloom as one of the five hundred most significant books in the Western canon, Mumbo Jumbo is a trenchant and often biting look at black-white relations throughout history, from a keen observer of our culture.

The book that sheds new light on the extraordinary healing potential of past life therapy, by the bestselling author of Many Lives, Many Masters. Brian Weiss made headlines with his ground-breaking research on past life therapy in Many Lives, Many Masters. Now, based on his extensive clinical experience, he builds on time-tested techniques of psychotherapy, revealing how regression to past lifetimes provides the necessary breakthrough to healing mind, body, and soul. Using vivid past life case studies, Dr. Weiss shows how regression therapy can heal grief, create more loving relationships, uncover hidden talents, and ultimately shows how near death and out of body experiences help confirm the existence of past lives. Dr. Weiss includes his own professional hypnosis, dream recall, meditation and journaling techniques for safe past life recall at home. Compelling and provocative, Through Time Into Healing shows us how to help ourselves lead healthy, productive lives, secure in the knowledge that death is not the final word and that the doorways to healing and wholeness are inside us.

In his seminal work The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Samuel Huntington argued provocatively and presciently that with the end of the cold war, "civilizations" were replacing ideologies as the new fault lines in international politics. Now in his controversial new work, Who Are We?, Huntington focuses on an identity crisis closer to home as he examines the impact other civilizations and their values are having on our own country. America was founded by British settlers who brought with them a distinct culture, says Huntington, including the English language, Protestant values, individualism, religious commitment, and respect for law. The waves of immigrants that later came to the United States gradually accepted these values and assimilated into America's Anglo-Protestant culture. More recently, however, our national identity has been eroded by the problems of assimilating massive numbers of primarily Hispanic immigrants and challenged by issues such as bilingualism, multiculturalism, the devaluation of citizenship, and the "denationalization" of American elites. September 11 brought a revival of American patriotism and a renewal of American identity, but already there are signs that this revival is fading. Huntington argues the need for us to reassert the core values that make us Americans. Timely and thought-provoking, Who Are We? is an important book that is certain to shape our national conversation about who we are.

Once upon a time, in the haunted city
of Derry (site of the classics It and
lnsomnia), four boys stood together
and did a brave thing. Certainly a good thing,
perhaps even a great thing. Something that
changed them in ways they could never begin
to understand.
Twenty-five years later, the boys are now
men with separate lives and separate troubles.
But the ties endure. Each hunting season the
foursome reunite in the woods of Maine. This
year, a stranger stumbles into their camp, dis-
oriented, mmnbling something about lights in
the sky. His incoherent ravings prove to be
disturbingly prescient. Before long, these men
will be plunged into a horrifying struggle with
a creature from another world. Their only chance
of survival is locked in their shared past--and
in the Dreamcatcher.
Stephen King s first full-length novel since
BagofBones is, more than anything, a story of
how men remembar, and how they find their
courage. Not since The Stand has King crafted
a story of such astonishing range--and never
before has he contended so frankly with the
heart of darkness.

Leadership: The Ultimate Guide
Few Americans have observed the ups and downs of presidential leadership more closely over the past thirty years -- from Nixon to Clinton and Watergate to Whitewater -- than David Gergen. A White House adviser to four presidents, both Republican and Democrat, he offers a vivid, behind-the-scenes account of their struggles to exercise power and draws from them key lessons for leaders of the future. Taking us inside the administrations of Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton, Gergen reflects on everything from why Nixon was the best global strategist among recent presidents to how the Bill-and-Hillary seesaw rocked the White House during Clinton's tenure as president.
Gergen argues that, as the twenty-first century begins, our success as a country will depend heavily upon the success of a new generation in power. Drawing upon his many experiences in the White House, he offers seven vital elements for future leaders. What they must have, he says, are inner mastery; a central, compelling purpose rooted in moral values; a capacity to persuade; skills in working within the system; a fast start; a strong, effective team; and a passion that inspires others to keep the flame alive.

hrough the compelling stories of three American teenagers living abroad and attending the world’s top-notch public high schools, an investigative reporter explains how these systems cultivate the “smartest” kids on the planet.
How Do Other Countries Create “Smarter” Kids?
In a handful of nations, virtually all children are learning to make complex arguments and solve problems they’ve never seen before. They are learning to think, in other words, and to thrive in the modern economy.
What is it like to be a child in the world’s new education superpowers?
In a global quest to find answers for our own children, author and Time magazine journalist Amanda Ripley follows three Americans embedded in these countries for one year. Kim, fifteen, raises $10,000 so she can move from Oklahoma to Finland; Eric, eighteen, exchanges a high-achieving Minnesota suburb for a booming city in South Korea; and Tom, seventeen, leaves a historic Pennsylvania village for Poland.
Through these young informants, Ripley meets battle-scarred reformers, sleep-deprived zombie students, and a teacher who earns $4 million a year. Their stories, along with groundbreaking research into learning in other cultures, reveal a pattern of startling transformation: none of these countries had many “smart” kids a few decades ago. Things had changed. Teaching had become more rigorous; parents had focused on things that m

The Road of Bones is the story of Russia's greatest road. For over 200 years, the route of the Vladimirka Road has been at the centre of the nation's history, having witnessed everything from the first human footsteps to the rise of Putin and his oil-rich oligarchy. Tsars, wars, famine and wealth: all have crossed and travelled this road, but no-one has ever told its story. In pursuit of the sights, sounds and voices both past and present, Jeremy Poolman travels the Vladimirka. Both epic and intimate, The Road of Bones is a record of his travels - but much more. It looks into the hearts and reveals the histories of those whose lives have been changed by what is known by many as simply The Greatest of Roads. This is a book about life and about death and about the strength of will it takes to celebrate the former while living in the shadow of the latter. Anecdotal and epic, The Road of Bones follows the author's journey along this road, into the past and back again. The book takes as its compass both the voices of history and those of today and draws a map of the cities and steppes of the Russian people's battered but ultimately indefatigable spirit.

On the Midwinter Day that is his eleventh birthday, Will Stanton discovers a special gift -- that he is the last of the Old Ones, immortals dedicated to keeping the world from domination by the forces of evil, the Dark. At once, he is plunged into a quest for the six magical Signs that will one day aid the Old Ones in the final battle between the Dark and the Light. And for the twelve days of Christmas, while the Dark is rising, life for Will is full of wonder, terror, and delight.

Since its first publication in 1945, Russell's A History of Western Philosophy has been universally acclaimed as the outstanding one-volume work on the subject — unparalleled in its comprehensiveness, its clarity, its erudition, its grace and wit. In seventy-six chapters he traces philosophy from the rise of Greek civilization to the emergence of logical analysis in the twentieth century. Among the philosophers considered are: Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, the Atomists, Protagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Cynics, the Sceptics, the Epicureans, the Stoics, Plotinus, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Benedict, Gregory the Great, John the Scot, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Occam, Machiavelli, Erasmus, More, Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, the Utilitarians, Marx, Bergson, James, Dewey, and lastly the philosophers with whom Lord Russell himself is most closely associated — Cantor, Frege, and Whitehead, co-author with Russell of the monumental Principia Mathematica.

Detective Kessler is a Washington, D.C. cop, sidelined to routine investigations. So it's a surprise when he's targeted by a "lifter," a person who "lifts" information from people by whatever means necessary. And this lifter is one of the most terrifying: he prefers to get an "edge" on his target by kidnapping or endangering their family.
While the FBI and other organizations race to learn which of Kessler's seemingly insignificant cases is making somebody so uneasy they've called in a lifter, the task of safeguarding the cop, his wife and daughter, falls to expert in personal security, Corte. What ensues is a deadly contest between Corte and the lifter as each tries to outmaneuver the other — and a surprising conclusion that even Deaver fans won't see coming . . .
Edge will be released in the UK and Ireland on October 28, 2010, and in the USA and Canada on November 2. We will post an excerpt and more about the Edge very soon.

The Fox is after Rosie, but Rosie doesn't know it. Unwittingly, she leads him into one disaster after the other, each funnier than the last. To enjoy Rosie's walk as much as Rosie does, just look inside!

Bestselling master of suspense Jeffery Deaver is back with a brand-new Lincoln Rhyme thriller. To save the life of a young girl who's being stalked by a ruthless hit man, Lincoln and his protégé, Amelia Sachs, are called upon to do the impossible: solve a truly "cold case" -- one that's 140 years old.
The Twelfth Card is a two-day cat-and-mouse chase through the streets of uptown Manhattan as quadriplegic detective Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs try to outguess Thompson Boyd -- by all appearances a nondescript, innocuous man, but one whose past has turned him into a killing machine as unfeeling and cunning as a wolf. Boyd is after Geneva Settle, a high school girl from Harlem, and it's up to Lincoln and Amelia to figure out why.
The motive may have to do with a term paper that Geneva is writing about her ancestor, Charles Singleton, a former slave. A teacher and farmer in New York State, Charles was active in the early civil rights movement but was arrested for theft and disgraced. Assisted by their team, Fred Dellray, Mel Cooper and Lon Sellitto (suffering badly from a case of nerves due to a near miss by the killer), Lincoln and Amelia work frantically to figure out where the hired gun will strike next and stop him, all the while trying to determine what actually happened on that hot July night in 1868 when Charles was arrested. What went on at the mysterious meetings he attended in Gallows Heights, a neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan that was a tense mix of wealthy financiers, political crooks like Boss Tweed and working-class laborers and thugs? And, most important for Geneva Settle's fate, what was the "secret" that tormented Charles's every waking hour?
Deaver's inimitable plotting keeps all these stories -- the past and the present -- racing at a lightning-fast clip as we learn stunning revelations that strike at the very heart of the U.S. Constitution and that could have disastrous consequences for today's human and civil rights in America. With breathtaking twists and multiple surprises that will keep readers on tenterhooks until the last page, this is Deaver's most compelling Lincoln Rhyme book to date.

The New York Times bestselling author of Contagious explores the subtle, secret influences that affect the decisions we make—from what we buy, to the careers we choose, to what we eat—in this fascinating and groundbreaking work.
If you’re like most people, you think that your choices and behaviors are driven by your individual, personal tastes, and opinions. You wear a certain jacket because you liked the way it looked. You picked a particular career because you found it interesting. The notion that our choices are driven by our own personal thoughts and opinions is patently obvious. Right? Wrong.
Without our realizing it, other people’s behavior has a huge influence on everything we do at every moment of our lives, from the mundane to the momentous occasion. Even strangers have a startling impact on our judgments and decisions: our attitudes toward a welfare policy shift if we’re told it is supported by Democrats versus Republicans (even though the policy is the same in both cases).
But social influence doesn’t just lead us to do the same things as others. In some cases we conform, or imitate others around us. But in other cases we diverge, or avoid particular choices or behaviors because other people are doing them. We stop listening to a band because they go mainstream. We skip buying the minivan because we don’t want to look like a soccer mom.
In Invisible Influence, Jonah Berger integrates research and thinking from business, psychology, and social science to focus on the subtle, invisible influences behind our choices as individuals. By understanding how social influence works, we can decide when to resist and when to embrace it—and how we can use this knowledge to make better-informed decisions and exercise more control over our own behavior.
Reviews
“With great insight, Jonah Berger removes the cloak of invisibility from powerful sources of influence and resolves fascinating mysteries of human behavior.”
–ROBERT CIALDINI, AUTHOR OF INFLUENCE
“From the very first page, this book will change the way you look at yourself—and others. Eye-opening and thoroughly engaging.”
–AMY CUDDY, AUTHOR OF PRESENCE
“Whether you want to influence others, make smarter decisions, or just better understand the mystery that is human behavior, this book will show you how. A terrific, insightful read.”
–TONY HSIEH, CEO OF ZAPPOS
“If you want to know what really influences your behavior, read Jonah Berger’s latest eye-opening book, packed with thought-provoking research, memorable stories, and powerful insights. A terrific read!”
–WILLIAM URY, AUTHOR OF GETTING TO YES WITH YOURSELF
“As he did with Contagious, Jonah Berger takes us deep beneath the surface of things, with mesmerizing results. Invisible Influence is a book with the power to transform the way we see ourselves and our place in the world.”
–ARIANNA HUFFINGTON, AUTHOR OF THRIVE
“Jonah Berger has done it again: Written a fascinating book that brims with ideas and tools for how to think about the world.”
–CHARLES DUHIGG, AUTHOR OF THE POWER OF HABIT
Research that Appeared in Invisible Influence
Berger, Jonah, Eric Bradlow, Alex Braunstein, and Yao Zhang (2012), “From Karen to Katie: Using Baby names to Study Cultural Evolution” Psychological Science, 23 (10), 1067-1073.
Chan, Cindy, Jonah Berger, and Leaf Van Boven (2012), “Identifiable but not Identical: Combining Social Identity and Uniqueness Motives in Choice” Journal of Consumer Research, 39(3), 561-573.
Berger, Jonah and Devin Pope (2011), “Can Losing Lead to Winning?” Management Science, 57(5), 817-827.
Berger, Jonah and Morgan Ward, (2010) “Subtle Signals of Inconspicuous Consumption,” Journal of Consumer Research, 37(4), 555-569.
Berger, Jonah and Chip Heath (2008) “Who Drives Divergence? Identity Signaling, Outgroup Dissimilarity, and the Abandonment of Cultural Tastes,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(3), 593-607.
Berger, Jonah and Lindsay Rand (2008), “Shifting Signals to Help Health: Using Identity Signaling to Reduce Risky Heath Behaviors,” Journal of Consumer Research, 35(2), 509-518.
Berger, Jonah and Chip Heath (2007), “Where Consumers Diverge from Others: Identity-Signaling and Product Domains,” Journal of Consumer Research, 34(2), 121-134.
Pronin, Emily, Jonah Berger, and Sarah Molouki (2007), “Alone in a Crowd of Sheep: Asymmetric Perceptions of Conformity and Their Roots in an Introspection Illusion,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(4), 585-595.

Now a major motion picture, this remarkable classic recounts, moment by moment, the spellbinding process that gave birth to the state of Israel. Collins and Lapierre weave a brilliant tapestry of shattered hopes, fierce pride, and breathtaking valor as the Arabs, Jews, and British collide in their fight for control of Jerusalem. "O Jerusalem!" meticulously re-creates this historic struggle. Collins and Lapierre penetrate the battle from the inside, exploring each party's interests, intentions, and concessions as the city of all of their dreams teeters on the brink of destruction. From the Jewish fighters and their heroic commanders to the charismatic Arab chieftain whose death in battle doomed his cause but inspired a generation of Palestinians, "O Jerusalem!" tells the three-dimensional story of this high-stakes, emotional conflict. Now with a new introduction by Dominique Lapierre, "O Jerusalem!" remains, as ever, a towering testament to the fiery dawn of Israel and an unforgettable tale of faith and violence, of betrayal and indomitable courage.