The record of an astonishing adventure across the Pacific Ocean. Intrigued by Polynesian folklore, biologist Thor Heyerdahl suspected that the South Sea Islands had been settled by an ancient race from thousands of miles to the east. He decided to prove his theory by building a boat using the materials that would have been available to those pre-Columbian sailors and duplicating their legendary voyage.

Conquests and Cultures is the culmination of fifteen years of research and travels that have taken the author completely around the world twice. Its purpose has been to try to understand the role of cultural differences within nations and between nations, today and over the centuries of history, in shaping the economic and social fates of peoples and of whole civilizations. Focusing on four major cultural areas—that of the British, the Africans

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"Jon Ronson meets David Grann in this fascinating, wildly entertaining adventure and travel story about how culture can make us go totally insane The Geography of Madness is an investigation of "culture-bound" syndromes, which are far stranger than they sound. Why is it, for example, that some men believe, against all reason, that vandals stole their penises, even though they're in good physical shape? In The Geography of Madness, acclaimed magazine...

The author of Doing Mathematics explores the concepts of physics by demonstrating how physicists think and approach their work.
Doing Physics makes concepts of physics easier to grasp by relating them to everyday knowledge. Addressing some of the models and metaphors that physicists use to explain the physical world, Martin H. Krieger describes the conceptual world of physics by means of analogies to economics, anthropology, theater,...

A scintillatingly witty memoir telling the story of a young woman's determined struggle for freedom
This is the unforgettable memoir of an 'odd, rich, exotic' childhood, of growing up in Azerbaijan in the turbulent early twentieth century, caught between East and West, tradition and modernity.
Banine remembers her luxurious home, with endless feasts of sweets and fruit; her beloved, flaxen-haired German governess; her imperious, swearing,...

Although the idea that all human beings are descended from Adam is a long standing conviction in the West, another version of this narrative exists - humans inhabited the Earth before, or alongside, Adam, and their descendants still occupy the planet. This book traces the history of and debates surrounding the idea of non-Adamic humanity.

"This book presents readers with a new way of thinking about religious doubt through an ethnographic exploration of how Ahmadi Muslims in India--members of a minority's minority--confront an impossible question: how do I prove that I'm Muslim"--

Having worked for several decades in North Africa, anthropologist Lawrence Rosen is uniquely placed to ask what factors contribute to the continuity and changes characterizing the present-day Muslim world. In The Culture of Islam, he brings his erudition and his experiences to illuminating key aspects of Muslim life and how central tenets of that life are being challenged and culturally refashioned.

Through a series of poignant tales—from

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"From Olympic gold medalist and two-time professional basketball MVP A'ja Wilson comes an inspirational collection on what it means to grow up as a Black girl in America. This is a book for all the girls with an apostrophe in their name. This is for all the girls who are "too loud" and "too emotional." This is for all the girls who are constantly asked, "Oh, what did you do with your hair? That's new." This is for my Black girls. In this empowering...

With a timely new chapter on immigration in the current age of globalization, a new Preface, and new appendixes with the most recent statistics, this revised edition is an engrossing study of immigration to the United States from the colonial era to the present. Annotation. With a timely new chapter on immigration in the current age of globalization, a new Preface, and new appendixes with the most recent statistics, this revised edition is an engrossing...