Following his best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997), geologist and anthropologist Jared Diamond published a companion book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, in 2006. Where Guns, Germs, and Steel described how various environments around the world helped or hindered human civilization, Collapse explains how environmental abuse ruined many past societies and how it threatens civilizations today. An updated edition, released in 2011 by Penguin Books, is the subject of this... Read Collapse Summary

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Atul Gawande’s Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science is a collection of essays that weaves narratives from Gawande’s personal experience as a surgical resident together with research, philosophy, and case studies in medicine. Published in 2002, Complications became a 2002 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction. Gawande, a Rhodes Scholar and MacArthur Fellow, is a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at... Read Complications Summary

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Consilience is the bringing together of facts and theories from many fields of study to create a coherent, unified system of knowledge. Consilience, published in 1998 by Harvard scientist Edward O. Wilson, argues that the grand quest to unite all human thought, begun during the post-Renaissance Enlightenment era, should continue today, centered on the intellectual power of the scientific method. Professor Wilson believes that science is the foremost method of organized thought ever developed, a... Read Consilience Summary

Written by Michael Frayn, Copenhagen is a two-act play based on a real-life meeting between physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg in 1941. Although based on real events, the play is nonlinear, as its three characters (Bohr, Heisenberg, and Bohr’s wife Margrethe) reunite after death to relive and better understand that fateful meeting. First performed in 1998, the play has won numerous awards, including a Tony Award for Best Play. The play was also adapted... Read Copenhagen Summary

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Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things is a work of nonfiction by William McDonough and Michael Braungart, published in 2002. The book argues that a radical change must be made to the Western world’s industrial and manufacturing systems, which are devastating to the natural world in their present state. Through discussions of environmentalism, industrialism, and design, the authors urge us, as a society, to think differently about what it means to be... Read Cradle To Cradle Summary

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German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is one of the most influential texts in the history of modern philosophy. Situated in the intellectual milieu of 18th century Europe, the Critique of Pure Reason is a philosophical document of the Age of Enlightenment and offers an answer to the philosophical debates of its day touching on metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical inquiries. Written in 1781 and substantially revised in 1787, Kant’s Critique inaugurated a philosophical... Read Critique of Pure Reason Summary

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Malcolm Gladwell’s 2013 book David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants is an investigation of the relationship—often distorted, in Gladwell’s view—between underdogs and giants. Taken from the Biblical account of David and Goliath, underdogs are cast as those battling (and overcoming) seemingly overwhelming odds, and giants are their adversaries. David and Goliath was a bestseller, but some critics and scholars found Gladwell’s conclusions unsatisfying and the stories he draws from unsubstantiated... Read David And Goliath Summary

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Published in 2001, Dan Brown’s techno-thriller Deception Point is a standalone novel that blends high-stakes conspiracy with cutting-edge science. The narrative follows Rachel Sexton, an intelligence analyst for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) whose estranged father, Senator Sedgewick Sexton, is challenging the incumbent President Zachary Herney for the presidency. When President Herney announces that a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) satellite has discovered a meteorite in the Arctic containing fossilized proof of extraterrestrial life... Read Deception Point Summary

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Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference, also known as Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences, is a 2010 work of feminist nonfiction by British psychologist and philosopher Dr. Cordelia Fine. Through an intensive but accessible review of neurological and sociological studies, the book debunks the idea that men and women have different brains. Nominated for numerous awards upon its publication, it went on to become a bestseller... Read Delusions of Gender Summary