"Adventures in Human Being, with its deft mix of the clinical and the lyrical, is a triumph of the eloquent brain and the compassionate heart." -- Wall Street Journal We assume we know our bodies intimately, but for many of us they remain uncharted territory, an enigma of bone and muscle, neurons and synapses. How many of us understand the way seizures affect the brain, how the heart is connected to well-being, or the why the foot holds the key to our humanity? In Adventures in Human Being, award-winning author Gavin Francis leads readers on a journey into the human body, offering a guide to its inner workings and a celebration of its marvels. Drawing on his experiences as a surgeon, ER specialist, and family physician, Francis blends stories from the clinic with episodes from medical history, philosophy, and literature to describe the body in sickness and in health, in living and in dying. At its heart, Adventures in Human Being is a meditation on what it means to be human. Poetic, eloquent, and profoundly perceptive, this book will transform the way you view your body.

Gavin Francis fulfilled a lifetime's ambition when he spent fourteen months as the basecamp doctor at Halley, a profoundly isolated British research station on the Caird Coast of Antarctica. So remote, it is said to be easier to evacuate a casualty from the International Space Station than it is to bring someone out of Halley in winter. Antarctica offered a year of unparalleled silence and solitude, with few distractions and a very little human history, but also a rare opportunity to live among emperor penguins, the only species truly at home in he Antarctic. Following Penguins throughout the year –– from a summer of perpetual sunshine to months of winter darkness –– Gavin Francis explores the world of great beauty conjured from the simplest of elements, the hardship of living at 50 c below zero and the unexpected comfort that the penguin community bring. Empire Antarctica is the story of one man and his fascination with the world's loneliest continent, as well as the emperor penguins who weather the winter with him. Combining an evocative narrative with a sublime sensitivity to the natural world, this is travel writing at its very best

The award-winning science writer shares “a winding romp through advances in cell biology [that] pushes readers to ponder the boundaries of life” (Science). In the summer of 2017, scientists removed a tiny piece of flesh from Philip Ball’s arm and turned it into a rudimentary “mini-brain.” The skin cells, removed from his body, did not die but were instead transformed into nerve cells that independently arranged themselves into a dense network and communicated with each other, exchanging the raw signals of thought. This was life—but whose? That disconcerting question is the focus of Philip Ball’s How to Grow a Human. In this mind-bending tour of cutting-edge cell biology, Ball shows how recent innovations could lead to tailor-made replacement organs; new medical advances for repairing damage and assisting conception; and new ways of “growing a human.” Such methods would also create new options for gene editing, with all the attendant moral dilemmas. Ball argues that these advances can never be “just about the science,” because they are already laden with a host of social narratives, preconceptions, and prejudices. But beyond even that, these developments raise provocative questions about identity and self, birth and death, and force us to ask how mutable the human body really is—and what forms it might take in years to come.

"A radically immersive exploration of three pivotal moments in the evolution of human consciousness, asking what kinds of creatures humans were, are, and might yet be"--

In this volume, Calvin Luther Martin proposes that the Europeans learned what they wished to learn from the native Americans, not what the Americans actually meant. Drawing on his own experience with native people and on their stories, he offers the reader a different conceptual landscape.

Previously listed (and titled "The F Word") in the Spring/Summer 2013 Hotlist. Back orders are holding. From bad blind dates to modern childbirth to handling her six-year-old daughter's use of the f-word -fat - for the first time, Jennifer Weiner goes there, with the wit and candor that have endeared her to readers all over the world. Print run 250,000.

This undergraduate psychology text acknowledges the diverse backgrounds and learning styles of students by blending Adlerian "tasks of life" with the developmental psychology of Adler, Catalano, Dreikurs, Erikson, Fowler, Fromm, Gilligan, Hoffberger, Kierkegaard, Kohlberg, Levinson, Maslow, May, Piaget, Rogers, Sekkaran and Sternberg. Each chapter examines one of life's greatest adventures and offers the wisdom and advice of psychologists and counsellors most familiar with that aspect of life. Chapters cover adventures such as birth, loss, loving, leaving, growing up, growing old, children who succeed and fail, stagnant and fulfilling careers, faith, despair and crisis and transformation. Reflection questions precede each chapter to stimulate class discussion.