Destiny and Development is an engaging narrative of one remarkable person's life and the life of her community that blends psychology, anthropology, and history to reveal the integral role that culture plays in human development.

Born with the destiny of becoming a Mayan sacred midwife, Chona Pérez has carried on centuries-old traditional Indigenous American birth and healing practices over her 85 years. At the same time, Chona developed new approaches to the care of pregnancy, newborns, and mothers based on her own experience and ideas. In this way, Chona has contributed to both the cultural continuities and cultural changes of her town over the decades. In Developing Destinies, Barbara Rogoff illuminates how individuals worldwide build on cultural heritage from prior generations and at the same time create new ways of living. Throughout Chona's lifetime, her Guatemalan town has continued to use longstanding Mayan cultural practices, such as including children in a range of community activities and encouraging them to learn by observing and contributing. But the town has also transformed dramatically since the days of Chona's own childhood. For instance, although Chona's upbringing included no formal schooling, some of her grandchildren have gone on to attend university and earn scholarly degrees. The lives of Chona and her town provide extraordinary examples of how cultural practices are preserved even as they are adapted and modified. Developing Destinies is an engaging narrative of one remarkable person's life and the life of her community that blends psychology, anthropology, and history to reveal the integral role that culture plays in human development. With extensive photographs and accounts of Mayan family life, medical practices, birth, child development, and learning, Rogoff adeptly shows that we can better understand the role of culture in our lives by examining how people participate in cultural practices. This landmark book brings theory alive with fascinating ethnographic findings that advance our understanding of childhood, culture, and change.

A major new book overturning our assumptions about how evolution works Earth’s natural history is full of fascinating instances of convergence: phenomena like eyes and wings and tree-climbing lizards that have evolved independently, multiple times. But evolutionary biologists also point out many examples of contingency, cases where the tiniest change—a random mutation or an ancient butterfly sneeze—caused evolution to take a completely different course. What role does each force really play in the constantly changing natural world? Are the plants and animals that exist today, and we humans ourselves, inevitabilities or evolutionary flukes? And what does that say about life on other planets? Jonathan Losos reveals what the latest breakthroughs in evolutionary biology can tell us about one of the greatest ongoing debates in science. He takes us around the globe to meet the researchers who are solving the deepest mysteries of life on Earth through their work in experimental evolutionary science. Losos himself is one of the leaders in this exciting new field, and he illustrates how experiments with guppies, fruit flies, bacteria, foxes, and field mice, along with his own work with anole lizards on Caribbean islands, are rewinding the tape of life to reveal just how rapid and predictable evolution can be. Improbable Destinies will change the way we think and talk about evolution. Losos's insights into natural selection and evolutionary change have far-reaching applications for protecting ecosystems, securing our food supply, and fighting off harmful viruses and bacteria. This compelling narrative offers a new understanding of ourselves and our role in the natural world and the cosmos.

Have you ever wondered about your life’s purpose? The next step in the life-changing Human Design system, The Book of Destinies presents in-depth profiles of the 192 Life Themes that encompass humanity. Based on the place, date, and time of your birth, your Life Theme reveals a remarkably detailed portrait of your true nature, allowing you the peace of knowing who you really are so you can live your life with clarity and fulfillment. Instead of struggling to achieve unsuitable goals, you can align yourself with a deeper plan for your relationships, career, and decision making. Many passages include a list of noted people who share that Life Theme. The culmination of the authors’ twenty years of research, practice, meditation, and readings, The Book of Destinies is for anyone who has ever stopped to wonder, “What is my life purpose, and how do I realize it?” To determine your Life Theme, visit www.humandesignforusall.com

This interdisciplinary work presents an integration of theory and research on how children develop their thinking as they participate in cultural activity with the guidance and challenge of their caregivers and other companions. The author, a leading developmental psychologist, views development as an apprenticeship in which children engage in the use of intellectual tools in societally structured activities with parents, other adults, and children. The author has gathered evidence from various disciplines--cognitive, developmental, and cultural psychology; anthropology; infancy studies; and communication research--furnishing a coherent and broadly based account of cognitive development in its sociocultural context. This work examines the mutual roles of the individual and the sociocultural world, and the culturally based processes by which children appropriate and extend skill and understanding from their involvement in shared thinking with other people. The book is written in a lively and engaging style and is supplemented by photographs and original illustrations by the author.

A leader in the fields of animal ethics and neurology, Dr. Aysha Akhtar examines the rich human-animal connection and how interspecies empathy enriches our well-being. Deftly combining medicine, social history and personal experience, Our Symphony with Animals is the first book by a physician to show that humans and animals have a shared destiny—our well-being is deeply entwined. Dr. Akhtar reveals how empathy for animals is the next step in our species’ moral evolution and a vital component of human health. When we include animals in our circle of empathy, we not only liberate animals, we also liberate ourselves. Drawing on the accounts of a varied cast of characters—a former mobster, a pediatrician, an industrial chicken farmer, a serial killer, and a deer hunter—to reveal what happens when we both break and forge bonds with animals. Interwoven is Dr. Akhtar’s own story, an immigrant who was bullied in school and abused by her uncle. Feeling abandoned by humanity, it was only when she met Sylvester, a dog who had also been abused, that she find the strength to sound the alarm for them both. Humans are neurologically designed to empathize with animals. Violence against animals goes against our nature. In equal measure, the love we give to animals biologically reverberates back to us. Our Symphony with Animals is the definitive account for why our relationships with animals matter.

While all have reason to celebrate the greening of Christian-Jewish relations since the Shoah and the promulgation of Nostra Aetate (4), few will deny that much work remains to be done by Christians and Jews seeking the best way forward that they might best serve God's purposes in the world, the mission of God. This book addresses that need by first surveying how each community has historically conceived of its own mission and from that stance assigned an identity to the other. The text illuminates how such construals have often impeded progress and therefore need to be upgraded and supplemented. But how shall this be done? Converging Destinies proposes an eschatological vision and practical suggestions to summon Jews and Christians to prepare for that day when each will be both commended and reproved by the judge of all, sounding a call for more determined action, greater humility, and cooperative effort as together Jews and Christians serve the mission of God, accountable to him for how they have served him and each other in the world that he has created according to his will.