Becoming Animal
An Earthly Cosmology
Written by David Abram

Format: Trade Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: September 6, 2011
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-0-375-71369-9 (0-375-71369-7)

David Abram’s first book, The Spell of the Sensuous, hailed as “revolutionary” by the Los Angeles Times, as “daring” and “truly original” by Science, has become a classic of environmental literature. Now he returns with a startling exploration of our human entanglement with the rest of nature.

As the climate veers... Read more >

The Spell of the Sensuous
Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World
Written by David Abram

Format: Trade Paperback, 352 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: February 25, 1997
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-77639-0 (0-679-77639-7)

Winner of the Lannan Award for Nonfiction

David Abram's award-winning work of natural philosophy is already transforming debates at the forefront of environmental studies, psychology, anthropology, literary theory, and philosophy.  Praised for "combining poetic passion with intellectual rigor and daring," (Lannan Award citation), The Spell of the Sensuous explores the earthly, ecological dimensions... Read more >

Deep Play

Written by Diane Ackerman

Format: Trade Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: August 8, 2000
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-77135-7 (0-679-77135-2)

With A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman let her free-ranging intellect loose on the natural world.  Now in Deep Play she tackles the realm of creativity, by exploring one of the most essential aspects of our characters: the abitlity to play.

"Deep play" is that more intensified form of play that... Read more >

A Natural History of the Senses

Written by Diane Ackerman

Format: Trade Paperback, 352 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: September 10, 1991
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-73566-3 (0-679-73566-6)

Diane Ackerman's lusciously written grand tour of the realm of the senses includes conversations with an iceberg in Antarctica and a professional nose in New York, along with dissertations on kisses and tattoos, sadistic cuisine and the music played by the planet Earth.

PRAISE FOR A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SENSES

"Delightful... Read more >

Brothel
Mustang Ranch and Its Women
Written by Alexa Albert

Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books
On Sale: June 25, 2002
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-449-00658-0 (0-449-00658-1)

When Harvard medical student Alexa Albert conducted a public-health study as the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada, the only state in the union where prostitution is legal, neither she nor the brothel could have predicted the end result. Having worked with homeless prostitutes in Times Square, Albert was intimate with human... Read more >

Woman
An Intimate Geography
Written by Natalie Angier

Format: Trade Paperback, 464 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: February 15, 2000
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-49841-8 (0-385-49841-1)

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST
Natalie Angier's text is a detailed exploration of female anatomy. By showing how culture based assumptions have influenced research in evolutionary psychology and have consequently lead to dubious conclusions about "female nature," she deals a body blow to Darwinian-based gender stereotypes.  Her ability to choose just the right word... Read more >

Makuna
Portrait of an Amazonian People
Written by Kaj Arhem
Photographed by Diego Samper

Format: Trade Paperback, 192 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
On Sale: November 17, 2003
Price: $34.95
ISBN: 978-1-58834-092-4 (1-58834-092-9)

Throughout their history, the Makuna have withstood the social and environmental stresses inflicted upon them by European arrival, the Amazonian rubber boom at the turn of the century, and a black-market demand for coca leaves during the 1970s and 1980s. Most recently, gold mining is threatening to destroy their hills and... Read more >

The Hour of Our Death

Written by Philippe Aries

Format: Trade Paperback, 696 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: February 12, 1982
Price: $24.00
ISBN: 978-0-394-75156-6 (0-394-75156-6)

This remarkable book—the fruit of almost two decades of study—traces in compelling fashion the changes in Western attitudes toward death and dying from the earliest Christian times to the present day. A truly landmark study, The Hour of Our Death reveals a pattern of gradually developing evolutionary stages in our perceptions... Read more >

The Vulnerable Observer
Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart
Written by Ruth Behar

Format: Trade Paperback, 208 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: November 6, 1997
Price: $18.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-4631-9 (0-8070-4631-0)

Eloquently interweaving ethnography and memoir, award-winning anthropologist Ruth Behar offers a new theory and practice for humanistic anthropology. She proposes an anthropology that is lived and written in a personal voice. She does so in the hope that it will lead us toward greater depth of understanding and feeling, not only... Read more >

Sicily
Three Thousand Years of Human History
Written by Sandra Benjamin

Format: Trade Paperback, 512 pages
Publisher: Steerforth
On Sale: December 18, 2007
Price: $19.95
ISBN: 978-1-58642-131-1 (1-58642-131-X)

The rich, recorded history of Sicily reaches back for more than three thousand years. Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Goths, Byzantines, Muslims, Normans, Hohenstaufens, Spaniards, Bourbons, the Savoy Kingdom of Italy and the modern era have all held sway, and left lasting influences on the island’s culture and architecture. And yet no contemporary... Read more >

A Fortunate Man
The Story of a Country Doctor
Written by John Berger

Format: Trade Paperback, 176 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: March 25, 1997
Price: $13.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-73726-1 (0-679-73726-X)

In this quietly revolutionary work of social observation and medical philosophy, Booker Prize-winning writer John Berger and the photographer Jean Mohr train their gaze on an English country doctor and find a universal man--one who has taken it upon himself to recognize his patient's humanity when illness and the fear of... Read more >

The Sacred Canopy
Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion
Written by Peter L. Berger

Format: Trade Paperback, 240 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: September 1, 1990
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-07305-9 (0-385-07305-4)

This absorbing examination of the sociological roots of religious belief expands on Berger's theories of knowledge. With illustrations drawn from a variety of primitive, ancient, and contemporary religions, Berger argues that religion is a "sacred canopy" that every society builds to give its world meaning. Read more >

One Hundred Days
My Unexpected Journey from Doctor to Patient
Written by David Biro

Format: Trade Paperback, 304 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: March 13, 2001
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-70673-8 (0-375-70673-9)

It is a situation we all fear and none of us can imagine: a life-threatening diagnosis. But what if the person receiving the diagnosis—young, physically fit, poised for a bright future—is himself a doctor?

At thirty-one David Biro has just completed his residency and joined his father’s successful dermatology practice. Struck with... Read more >

Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity
Written by Katherine Boo

Format: Hardcover, 288 pages
Publisher: Random House
On Sale: February 7, 2012
Price: $27.00
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6755-8 (1-4000-6755-3)

Winner of the National Book Award, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and American Academy of Arts and Letters Award

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award


Selected for Common Reading at Michigan State University, Northeastern University, Skidmore College and University of Delaware


From Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo, a... Read more >

Return to Laughter
An Anthropological Novel
Written by Elenore Smith Bowen

Format: Trade Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: February 20, 1964
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-385-05312-9 (0-385-05312-6)

"The first introspective account ever published of what it's like to be a field worker among a primitive people."—Margaret Mead Read more >

Fist Stick Knife Gun
A Personal History of Violence
Written by Geoffrey Canada
Illustrated by Jamar Nicholas

Format: Trade Paperback, 144 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: September 14, 2010
Price: $14.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-4449-0 (0-8070-4449-0)

A 2011 Great Graphic Novel for Teens (YALSA)

Long before President Barack Obama praised his work as “an all-encompassing, all-hands-on-deck anti-poverty effort that is literally saving a generation of children,” and First Lady Michelle Obama called him “one of my heroes,” Geoffrey Canada was a small and scared boy growing up in... Read more >

Factory Girls
From Village to City in a Changing China
Written by Leslie T. Chang

Format: Trade Paperback, 448 pages
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
On Sale: August 4, 2009
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-52018-8 (0-385-52018-2)

Winner of the 2009 Asian American Literary Award For Nonfiction, given by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop
Winner of the PEN USA Literary Award for Research Nonfiction
A New York Times Notable Book of 2008
One of the Washington Post’s best books of 2008
A Seattle Times best nonfiction book of 2008
One of the Christian... Read more >

Glass, Paper, Beans
Revolutions on the Nature and Value of Ordinary Things
Written by Leah Hager Cohen

Format: Trade Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: Crown Business
On Sale: August 17, 1998
Price: $19.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-49257-7 (0-385-49257-X)

Once upon a time we knew the origins of things: what piece of earth the potato on our dinner plate came from, which well our water was dipped from, who cobbled our shoes, and whose cow provided the leather. In many parts of the world, that information is still readily available... Read more >

Honky

Written by Dalton Conley

Format: Trade Paperback, 224 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: September 18, 2001
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-375-72775-7 (0-375-72775-2)

As recalled in Honky, Dalton Conley’s childhood has all of the classic elements of growing up in America. But the fact that he was one of the few white boys in a mostly black and Puerto Rican neighborhood on Manhattan’s Lower East Side makes Dalton’s childhood unique.

At the age of three... Read more >

Newjack
Guarding Sing Sing
Written by Ted Conover

Format: Trade Paperback, 352 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: June 12, 2001
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-375-72662-0 (0-375-72662-4)

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction

Ted Conover, the intrepid author of Coyotes, about the world of illegal Mexican immigrants, spent a year as a prison guard at Sing Sing. Newjack, his account of that experience, is a milestone in American journalism: a book that casts... Read more >

Rolling Nowhere
Riding the Rails with America's Hoboes
Written by Ted Conover

Format: Trade Paperback, 304 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: September 11, 2001
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-72786-3 (0-375-72786-8)

In Ted Conover’s first book, now back in print, he enters a segment of humanity outside society and reports back on a world few of us would chose to enter but about which we are all curious.

Hoboes fascinated Conover, but he had only encountered them in literature and folksongs. So, he... Read more >

Living Our Cultures, Sharing Our Heritage
The First Peoples of Alaska
Edited by Aron A. Crowell, Rosita Worl, Paul C. Ongtooguk and Dawn D. Biddison

Format: Hardcover, 312 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
On Sale: May 18, 2010
Price: $50.00
ISBN: 978-1-58834-270-6 (1-58834-270-0)

Living Our Cultures, Sharing Our Heritage: The First Peoples of Alaska features more than 200 objects representing the masterful artistry and design traditions of twenty Alaska Native peoples. Based on a collaborative exhibition created by Alaska Native communities, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the... Read more >

The Cave Painters
Probing the Mysteries of the World's First Artists
Written by Gregory Curtis

Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: October 9, 2007
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-1-4000-7887-5 (1-4000-7887-3)

The Cave Painters is a vivid introduction to the spectacular cave paintings of France and Spain—the individuals who rediscovered them, theories about their origins, their splendor and mystery.

Gergory Curtis makes us see the astonishing sophistication and power of the paintings and tells us what is known about their creators, the Cro-Magnon... Read more >

The Origin of Species
By Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life
Written by Charles Darwin

Format: Paperback, 512 pages
Publisher: Bantam Classics
On Sale: June 1, 1999
Price: $6.95
ISBN: 978-0-553-21463-5 (0-553-21463-2)

Darwin's classic and highly influential work about evolutionary processes and their role in shaping the origin of all species. Read more >

Artifacts of the Spanish Colonies of Florida and the Caribbean, 1500-1800
Volume 2: Portable Personal Possessions
Written by Kathleen Deagan

Format: Hardcover, 528 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
On Sale: June 17, 2002
Price: $60.00
ISBN: 978-1-58834-035-1 (1-58834-035-X)

This long-awaited follow-up to Deagan’s first volume on ceramics, glassware, and beads focuses on the portable personal objects owned and used by the residents of Spanish colonial America. These objects are not only of Spanish origin; the collection includes many English, French, Dutch, German, Italian, and American pieces as well. Deagan... Read more >