Exploring the historical contexts in France, Italy, and England within which the idea was developed, this text traces the political issues to which the concept of degeneration gave rise during the period from the revolutions of 1848 to the First World War and beyond.

The answers for perfect teeth, unblemished skin, and pristine hair are in this book. Dr. Price was 75 years ahead of his time. In this book, he demonstrates that isolated groups of people living in accordance with Nature have the best overall physical and mental health. Diseases inflicting “modern” humans are unheard of in most of these study groups. Dr. Weston Andrew Price, DDS, was called the “Isaac Newton of Nutrition” and the “Darwin of Nutrition.” This edition of Dr. Price’s classic is modernized with the epub format. It is easier to read on smartphones and tablets. It also includes updated statistics and additional images. Dr. Price shows that illness, disease, behavior, criminality, anemia, voice, and even cheek-line, are all within the domain of Nutrition. “If civilized man is to survive, he must incorporate the fundamentals of primitive nutritional wisdom into his modern lifestyle.” —Dr. Weston A. Price, DDS

How does one deal with a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease at the age of forty-three? My Degeneration, by former Anchorage Daily News staff cartoonist Peter Dunlap-Shohl, answers the question with humor and passion, recounting the author’s attempt to come to grips with the “malicious whimsy” of this chronic, progressive, and disabling disease. This graphic novel tracks Dunlap-Shohl’s journey through depression, the worsening symptoms of the disease, the juggling of medications and their side effects, the impact on relations with family and community, and the raft of mental and physical changes wrought by the malady. My Degeneration examines the current state of Parkinson’s care, including doctor/patient relations and the repercussions of a disease that, among other things, impairs movement, can rob patients of their ability to speak or write, degrades sufferers’ ability to deal with complexity, and interferes with the sense of balance. Readers learn what it’s like to undergo a dramatic, demanding, and audacious bit of high-tech brain surgery that can mysteriously restore much of a patient’s control over symptoms. But My Degeneration is more than a Parkinson’s memoir. Dunlap-Shohl gives the person newly diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease the information necessary to cope with it on a day-to-day basis. He chronicles the changes that life with the disease can bring to the way one sees the world and the way one is seen by the wider community. Dunlap-Shohl imparts a realistic basis for hope—hope not only to carry on, but to enjoy a decent quality of life.

A new strain of realism has emerged in France. The novels that embody it represent diverse fears—immigration and demographic change, radical Islam, feminism, new technologies, globalization, American capitalism, and the European Union—but these books, often best-sellers, share crucial affinities. In their dystopian visions, the collapse of France, Europe, and Western civilization is portrayed as all but certain and the literary mode of realism begins to break down. Above all, they depict a degenerative force whose effects on the nation and on reality itself can be felt. Examining key novels by Michel Houellebecq, Frédéric Beigbeder, Aurélien Bellanger, Yann Moix, and other French writers, Christy Wampole identifies and critiques this emergent tendency toward “degenerative realism.” She considers the ways these writers draw on social science, the New Journalism of the 1960s, political pamphlets, reportage, and social media to construct an atmosphere of disintegration and decline. Wampole maps how degenerative realist novels explore a world contaminated by conspiracy theories, mysticism, and misinformation, responding to the internet age’s confusion between fact and fiction with a lament for the loss of the real and an unrelenting emphasis on the role of the media in crafting reality. In a time of widespread populist anxieties over the perceived decline of the French nation, this book diagnoses the literary symptoms of today’s reactionary revival.

How do you trap someone in a lie? For centuries, all manner of truth-seekers have used the lie detector. In this eye-opening book, Geoffrey C. Bunn unpacks the history of this device and explores the interesting and often surprising connection between technology and popular culture. Lie detectors and other truth-telling machines are deeply embedded in everyday American life. Well-known brands such as Isuzu, Pepsi Cola, and Snapple have advertised their products with the help of the “truth machine,” and the device has also appeared in countless movies and television shows. The Charles Lindbergh “crime of the century” in 1935 first brought lie detectors to the public’s attention. Since then, they have factored into the Anita Hill–Clarence Thomas sexual harassment controversy, the Oklahoma City and Atlanta Olympics bombings, and one of the most infamous criminal cases in modern memory: the O. J. Simpson murder trial. The use of the lie detector in these instances brings up many intriguing questions that Bunn addresses: How did the lie detector become so important? Who uses it? How reliable are its results? Bunn reveals just how difficult it is to answer this last question. A lie detector expert concluded that O. J. Simpson was “one hundred percent lying” in a video recording in which he proclaimed his innocence; a tabloid newspaper subjected the same recording to a second round of evaluation, which determined Simpson to be “absolutely truthful.” Bunn finds fascinating the lie detector’s ability to straddle the realms of serious science and sheer fantasy. He examines how the machine emerged as a technology of truth, transporting readers back to the obscure origins of criminology itself, ultimately concluding that the lie detector owes as much to popular culture as it does to factual science.