The secret behind France's astonishingly well-behaved children. When American journalist Pamela Druckerman has a baby in Paris, she doesn't aspire to become a "French parent." French parenting isn't a known thing, like French fashion or French cheese. Even French parents themselves insist they aren't doing anything special.

Yet, the French children Druckerman knows sleep through the night at two or three months old while those of her American friends take a year or more. French kids eat well-rounded meals that are more likely to include braised leeks than chicken nuggets. And while her American friends spend their visits resolving spats between their kids, her French friends sip coffee while the kids play.

With a notebook stashed in her diaper bag, Druckerman-a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal-sets out to learn the secrets to raising a society of good little sleepers, gourmet eaters, and reasonably relaxed parents. She discovers that French parents are extremely strict about some things and strikingly permissive about others. And she realizes that to be a different kind of parent, you don't just need a different parenting philosophy. You need a very different view of what a child actually is.

Learn what sets high achievers apart — from Bill Gates to the Beatles — in this #1 bestseller from "a singular talent" (New York Times Book Review).

In this stunning book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"—the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different?

His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.

Brilliant and entertaining, Outliers is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.

The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry is a compelling exploration into the world of psychopaths and the industry of doctors, scientists, and others who study them. Bestselling journalist Jon Ronson delves into a potential hoax that has been played on the world's top neurologists, leading him into the heart of the madness industry.

An influential psychologist, convinced that many CEOs and politicians are actually psychopaths, teaches Ronson to identify these individuals through subtle verbal and nonverbal clues. With his newfound skills, Ronson navigates the corridors of power, encountering a death-squad leader institutionalized for mortgage fraud, a CEO renowned for his psychopathy, and a patient in an asylum for the criminally insane who claims his sanity.

Through his journey, Ronson not only uncovers the mystery of the hoax but also reveals the disturbing truth that those at the forefront of the madness industry can be as mad as those they study. He highlights how increasingly, ordinary people are defined by their most extreme traits.

It’s the twenty-first century, and although we tried to rear unisex children—boys who play with dolls and girls who like trucks—we failed. Even though the glass ceiling is cracked, most women stay comfortably beneath it. And everywhere we hear about vitally important “hardwired” differences between male and female brains. The neuroscience that we read about in magazines, newspaper articles, books, and sometimes even scientific journals increasingly tells a tale of two brains, and the result is more often than not a validation of the status quo.

Women, it seems, are just too intuitive for math, men too focused for housework. Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience and psychology, Cordelia Fine debunks the myth of hardwired differences between men’s and women’s brains, unraveling the evidence behind such claims as men’s brains aren’t wired for empathy and women’s brains aren’t made to fix cars. She then goes one step further, offering a very different explanation of the dissimilarities between men’s and women’s behavior. Instead of a “male brain” and a “female brain,” Fine gives us a glimpse of plastic, mutable minds that are continuously influenced by cultural assumptions about gender.

Passionately argued and unfailingly astute, Delusions of Gender provides us with a much-needed corrective to the belief that men’s and women’s brains are intrinsically different—a belief that, as Fine shows with insight and humor, all too often works to the detriment of ourselves and our society.

Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? What kind of impact did Roe v. Wade have on violent crime? Freakonomics will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.

These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much heralded scholar who studies the stuff and riddles of everyday life -- from cheating and crime to sports and child rearing -- and whose conclusions regularly turn the conventional wisdom on its head. He usually begins with a mountain of data and a simple, unasked question. Some of these questions concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. Thus the new field of study contained in this book: freakonomics.

Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives -- how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In Freakonomics, they set out to explore the hidden side of ... well, everything. The inner workings of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. The secrets of the Ku Klux Klan.

What unites all these stories is a belief that the modern world, despite a surfeit of obfuscation, complication, and downright deceit, is not impenetrable, is not unknowable, and -- if the right questions are asked -- is even more intriguing than we think. All it takes is a new way of looking. Steven Levitt, through devilishly clever and clear-eyed thinking, shows how to see through all the clutter.

Freakonomics establishes this unconventional premise: If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work. It is true that readers of this book will be armed with enough riddles and stories to last a thousand cocktail parties. But Freakonomics can provide more than that. It will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.

In The Life You Can Save, Peter Singer compellingly lays out the case for why and how we can take action to provide immense benefit to others, at minimal cost to ourselves. Using ethical arguments, illuminating examples, and case studies of charitable giving, he shows that our current response to world poverty is not only insufficient but morally indefensible. And he provides practical recommendations of charities proven to dramatically improve, and even save, the lives of children, women and men living in extreme poverty.

The Life You Can Save teaches us to be a part of the solution, helping others as we help ourselves.

The future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind: artists, inventors, storytellers—creative and holistic "right-brain" thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn't.

Drawing on research from around the world, Pink (author of To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Motivating Others) outlines the six fundamentally human abilities that are absolute essentials for professional success and personal fulfillment—and reveals how to master them. A Whole New Mind takes readers to a daring new place, and a provocative and necessary new way of thinking about a future that's already here.

En este libro, el periodista estadounidense Malcolm Gladwell nos explica cómo pensamos sin pensar, de dónde proceden las decisiones que parece que tomamos en dos segundos, pero que no son tan simples como aparentan. ¿Por qué algunas personas son brillantes tomando decisiones y otras son torpes una y otra vez? ¿Por qué algunos siguen su instinto y triunfan, mientras que otros acaban siempre dando un paso en falso? ¿Cuál es el funcionamiento real del cerebro en el trabajo, en clase, en la cocina o en la cama? ¿Y por qué las mejores decisiones suelen ser las más difíciles de explicar?

Este libro revela que quienes son buenos tomando decisiones no son aquellos que procesan más información o que dedican más tiempo a deliberar, sino aquellos que han perfeccionado el arte de hilar fino, de extraer los pocos factores que realmente importan a partir de una cantidad desmesurada de variables.

From the New York Times bestselling author of All About Love, a brave and astonishing work that challenges patriarchal culture and encourages men to reclaim the best part of themselves.

Everyone needs to love and be loved—even men. But to know love, men must be able to look at the ways that patriarchal culture keeps them from knowing themselves, from being in touch with their feelings, from loving. In The Will to Change, bell hooks gets to the heart of the matter and shows men how to express the emotions that are a fundamental part of who they are—whatever their age, marital status, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.

But toxic masculinity punishes those fundamental emotions, and it's so deeply ingrained in our society that it's hard for men to not comply—but hooks wants to help change that. With trademark candor and fierce intelligence, hooks addresses the most common concerns of men, such as fear of intimacy and loss of their patriarchal place in society, in new and challenging ways. She believes men can find the way to spiritual unity by getting back in touch with the emotionally open part of themselves—and lay claim to the rich and rewarding inner lives that have historically been the exclusive province of women.

Social Capital is a comprehensive introduction to the concept of social capital, which defines the intangible resources of community, shared values, and trust that we rely on in everyday life. The term has gained significant traction across the social sciences due to the diverse contributions of Pierre Bourdieu in France, and James Coleman and Robert Putnam in the United States, and has become a central explanation for the observed decline in social cohesion and community values in Western societies.

The book not only delves into the theoretical aspects of the subject but also examines the empirical work that has been conducted to understand its workings. Moreover, it discusses the impact social capital has had on policy-making, particularly within international organizations such as the World Bank and the European Commission.

With its clear and thorough approach, this fully revised third edition of Social Capital offers valuable insights into changing policy perceptions of social capital, its relationship with the internet and economics, and its resilience during challenging times. Complete with guides for further reading and a list of the most important websites, this book is an essential resource for anyone interested in the intersection of sociology, politics, and social policy.

Teresa Caldeira's pioneering study of fear, crime, and segregation in S�o Paulo poses essential questions about citizenship and urban change in contemporary democratic societies. Focusing on S�o Paulo, and using comparative data on Los Angeles, she identifies new patterns of segregation developing in these cities and suggests that these patterns are appearing in many metropolises.

The book provides a brilliant analysis of the dynamics of urban fear and its impact on the city's geography. Caldeira's work is recognized for its theoretical boldness, rich ethnography, and specific historical insights. It addresses the many challenges and obstacles that government and civil society face in new democracies, shedding light on authoritarian continuity under political reform.

From the bestselling author of The Bomber Mafia: discover Malcolm Gladwell's breakthrough debut and explore the science behind viral trends in business, marketing, and human behavior. The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas. “A wonderful page-turner about a fascinating idea that should affect the way every thinking person looks at the world.” —Michael Lewis

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, by James C. Scott, is an essential work that delves into the reasons behind the failure of states to execute large-scale social planning successfully. It presents an analysis of various disasters, from Russia to Tanzania, probing why such efforts often result in calamity.

The book argues that disasters occur when states impose oversimplified visions on complex realities that they cannot fully comprehend. Scott emphasizes the importance of recognizing local, practical knowledge alongside formal, systematic knowledge. He critiques 'development theory' and state planning that ignores the values and wishes of the people it affects. This persuasive narrative identifies four conditions common to all planning disasters: the state's administrative ordering of nature and society; a 'high-modernist ideology' that overestimates the role of science in improving human life; the use of authoritarian power to implement broad interventions; and the inability of a weakened civil society to resist such plans.

Written with clarity, Seeing Like a State brings to light the intricate nature of the world we inhabit and serves as a cautionary tale about the limits of grand societal engineering.

Discover a chillingly powerful and prescient dystopian vision from one of Europe's greatest writers. A driver waiting at the traffic lights goes blind. An ophthalmologist tries to diagnose his distinctive white blindness, but is affected before he can read the textbooks. It becomes a contagion, spreading throughout the city. Trying to stem the epidemic, the authorities herd the afflicted into a mental asylum where the wards are terrorised by blind thugs. And when fire destroys the asylum, the inmates burst forth and the last links with a supposedly civilised society are snapped. This is not anarchy, this is blindness.

Saramago repeatedly undertakes to unite the pressing demands of the present with an unfolding vision of the future. This is his most apocalyptic, and most optimistic, version of that project yet.

When lives are dominated by hunger, what becomes of love? When assaulted by daily acts of violence and untimely death, what happens to trust? Set in the lands of Northeast Brazil, this is an account of the everyday experience of scarcity, sickness, and death that centres on the lives of the women and children of a hillside favela. Bringing her readers to the impoverished slopes above the modern plantation town of Bom Jesus de Mata, where she has worked on and off for 25 years, Nancy Scheper-Hughes follows three generations of shantytown women as they struggle to survive through hard work, cunning and triage.

It is a story of class relations told at the most basic level of bodies, emotions, desires and needs. Most disturbing – and controversial – is her finding that mother love, as conventionally understood, is something of a bourgeois myth, a luxury for those who can reasonably expect, as these women cannot, that their infants will live.

All Our Kin: Strategies For Survival In A Black Community is a landmark study by Carol B. Stack that challenges the misconception of poor families as unstable and disorganized. The book provides an in-depth chronicle of a young white woman's sojourn into The Flats, an African-American ghetto community, where she studies the support systems that family and friends form to cope with poverty.

Eschewing the traditional methods used by anthropologists, which often involve approaching through authority figures and community leaders, the author enters the community via an acquaintance from school. This approach allows her to become one of the first sociologists to explore the black kinship network from the inside.

The result is a revealing study that shows how families in The Flats adapt to their poverty conditions by forming large, resilient, lifelong support networks based on friendship and family. These networks are shown to be powerful, highly structured, and surprisingly complex. The book also serves as an indictment of a social system that reinforces welfare dependency and chronic unemployment.

Cien años de soledad es una obra clave en la literatura hispanoamericana, una magnífica creación del escritor colombiano Gabriel Garcíaa Márquez. Reconocida como una de las más importantes novelas del siglo XX, esta obra se considera un pilar del realismo mágico, un estilo literario que mezcla lo maravilloso con la realidad.

La novela se centra en la historia de la familia Buendía a lo largo de siete generaciones, en el pueblo ficticio de Macondo. Este relato épico abarca diversos temas como el amor, la muerte, la soledad, la riqueza, la guerra y la paz, creando un universo literario donde lo cotidiano y lo fantástico se entrelazan de manera natural y poética.

Con su poderosa narrativa y su rica imaginación, Gabriel García Márquez teje una historia que no solo cuenta la vida de los personajes, sino que también refleja la historia y el espíritu de toda una época y cultura.

Aldous Huxley's profoundly important classic of world literature, Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order–all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. “A genius [who] spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine” (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history's keenest observers of human nature and civilization.

Brave New World, his masterpiece, has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New World also speaks to a 21st-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites.

“Aldous Huxley is the greatest 20th century writer in English.” —Chicago Tribune

Un mundo feliz es un clásico de la literatura del siglo XX, una sombría metáfora sobre el futuro. La novela describe un mundo en el que finalmente se han cumplido los peores vaticinios: triunfan los dioses del consumo y la comodidad y el orbe se organiza en diez zonas en apariencia seguras y estables. Sin embargo, este mundo ha sacrificado valores humanos esenciales, y sus habitantes son procreados in vitro a imagen y semejanza de una cadena de montaje.

En 1928 a Virginia Woolf le propusieron dar una serie de charlas sobre el tema de la mujer y la novela. Lejos de cualquier dogmatismo o presunción, planteó la cuestión desde un punto de vista realista, valiente y muy particular. Una pregunta: ¿qué necesitan las mujeres para escribir buenas novelas? Una sola respuesta: independencia económica y personal, es decir, Una habitación propia. Sólo hacía nueve años que se le había concedido el voto a la mujer y aún quedaba mucho camino por recorrer.

Son muchos los repliegues psicológicos y sociales implicados en este ensayo de tan inteligente exposición; fascinantes los matices históricos que hacen que el tema de la condición femenina y la enajenación de la mujer en la sociedad no haya perdido ni un ápice de actualidad.

Partiendo de un tratamiento directo y empleando un lenguaje afilado, irónico e incisivo, Virginia Woolf narra una parábola cautivadora para ilustrar sus opiniones. Un relato de lectura apasionante, la contribución de una exquisita narradora al siempre polémico asunto del feminismo desde una perspectiva inevitablemente literaria.

Louisa May Alcott's classic tale of four sisters.

Grown-up Meg, tomboyish Jo, timid Beth, and precocious Amy. The four March sisters couldn't be more different. But with their father away at war, and their mother working to support the family, they have to rely on one another. Whether they're putting on a play, forming a secret society, or celebrating Christmas, there's one thing they can't help wondering: Will Father return home safely?

It is no secret that Alcott based Little Women on her own early life. While her father, the freethinking reformer and abolitionist Bronson Alcott, hobnobbed with such eminent male authors as Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne, Louisa supported herself and her sisters with "woman’s work,” including sewing, doing laundry, and acting as a domestic servant. But she soon discovered she could make more money writing. Little Women brought her lasting fame and fortune, and far from being the "girl’s book” her publisher requested, it explores such timeless themes as love and death, war and peace, the conflict between personal ambition and family responsibilities, and the clash of cultures between Europe and America.

Published to great acclaim and fierce controversy in 1866, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment has left an indelible mark on global literature and on our modern world.

Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, a Napoleon: acting for a higher purpose beyond conventional moral law. But as he embarks on a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a suspicious police investigator, Raskolnikov is pursued by the growing voice of his conscience and finds the noose of his own guilt tightening around his neck. Only Sonya, a downtrodden sex worker, can offer the chance of redemption.