Buy from our bookstore and 25% of the cover price will be given to a school of your choice to buy more books. *15% of eBooks.
Audiobooks Narrated by Mike Cooper
Browse audiobooks narrated by Mike Cooper, listen to samples and when you're ready head over to Audiobooks.com where you can get 3 FREE audiobooks on us
A deeply researched history of assassination in the modern world, from Franz Ferdinand to Osama bin Laden
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Leon Trotsky, Reinhard Heydrich, Mahatma Gandhi, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto, Osama bin Laden, Qasem Soleimani: assassination—the murder of a specific individual by an organized conspiracy in pursuit of political ends—has rarely failed to grip the imagination.
In this incisive new history, Simon Ball shows how targeted political murder has become a tool of democratic states but also a key strategy of those who wish to topple them. Ball introduces us to the techniques of assassination and those who wield them, as well as the security regimes that have developed to prevent this violent practice. From the First World War and the age of empire to terrorism and the development of pilotless drones, Death to Order places assassination at the heart of modern political history—and shows how it continues to impact our world.
Generative AI is the hottest topic in tech. This practical book teaches machine learning engineers and data scientists how to use TensorFlow and Keras to create impressive generative deep learning models from scratch, including variational autoencoders (VAEs), generative adversarial networks (GANs), Transformers, normalizing flows, energy-based models, and denoising diffusion models.
The book starts with the basics of deep learning and progresses to cutting-edge architectures. Through tips and tricks, you'll understand how to make your models learn more efficiently and become more creative. You will discover how VAEs can change facial expressions in photos; train GANs to generate images based on your own dataset; build diffusion models to produce new varieties of flowers; train your own GPT for text generation; learn how large language models like ChatGPT are trained; explore state-of-the-art architectures such as StyleGAN2 and ViT-VQGAN; compose polyphonic music using Transformers and MuseGAN; understand how generative world models can solve reinforcement learning tasks; and dive into multimodal models such as DALL.E 2, Imagen, and Stable Diffusion.
This book also explores the future of generative AI and how individuals and companies can proactively begin to leverage this remarkable new technology to create competitive advantage.
A contemporary look at Albert Einstein's classic call for socialism
First published more than seventy-five years ago in the inaugural issue of Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine, Albert Einstein's 'Why Socialism?' is an unheralded classic. Written during the McCarthyite witch-hunt in the United States, it constituted an act of defiance, making a case for socialism unrivaled in its time or ours. Yet, its very existence has been an embarrassment to an establishment which has continually sought to downplay the significance of his iconoclastic essay, together with Einstein's socialism itself.
This volume includes Einstein's essay along with a detailed commentary on his essay by Monthly Review editor, John Bellamy Foster. Foster's introduction tells the story of Einstein's life-long commitment to socialism and the events leading to the publication of 'Why Socialism?' and contextualizes the importance of his essay as we enter a time of planetary crisis and new threats of world war. Over the three-quarters of century since its publication, 'Why Socialism?' is one of those rare statements whose power has only grown, reaching untold numbers of readers over the years. It is of crucial importance that―for the sake of the future of humanity―Einstein's message continues to proliferate.
Explore a new approach to understanding the evolution of mind and consciousness by examining the perceptual abilities of animals and the way they experience their world
The Human Place in Nature offers a science-based bottom-up approach to our own conscious worldview by seeing it through the eyes of others. It emphasizes the role of context in evolution and the way animals internalize and engage with the contextual properties of their world that are meaningful for them.
The core argument is that a context, which is subjective and comprised of the perceptual capacities, offers new insights into the evolution of mind. Rather than seeing biological evolution in terms of the emergence of mindless forms and cultural evolution as the emergence of disembodied minds, the book seeks to integrate these two perspectives through the rigorous mapping of contexts.
Key Features
How do animals experience the world? Human ecologist John Schooneveldt uncovers an understanding of animal minds. The book formulates a hypothesis for the evolution of consciousness, including a discussion of the origin of technological innovation. It provides a rationale for the ecology of mind and proposes a theory of the evolution of language.
A mind-expanding exploration of consciousness that outlines the science of experience and how it influences choice, explaining the role of context and choice with respect to human ecology
A groundbreaking account of how the Roman Empire shaped the life and death of Jesus, overturning centuries of historical beliefs around the world-from the New York Times bestselling author of The First Clash.
In late 31 AD, after the Roman senators murdered Lucius Sejanus, the Roman Emperor Tiberius's closest confidant, the Empire was forever changed. If Sejanus had not been murdered, Jesus would never have been crucified.
This profound connection between the lives of Sejanus and Jesus is the first of many revelations in this startling reexamination of the Roman world in which Jesus walked. With new evidence and meticulous research, Dr. James Lacey weaves a majestic and accurate description of who Jesus was.
The Year God Died contradicts longstanding historical malpractice to reveal the most comprehensive and accurate view of the New Testament. Lacey explains how the events in Rome drove events in Judea-which is directly linked to Jesus' crucifixion. He uncovers a vibrant and rich world, but one still coming to grips with the reality of Roman power. He introduces ten-year-old Boadicea, who is destined to lead Britain's tribes in a great revolt against Rome. He depicts Varus marching his legions past a four-year-old Jesus on his war to Jerusalem. And he describes how Herod prospered by appeasing some of the most dangerous people in history-Pompey, Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony, Cleopatra, and Augustus.
In this sweeping chronicle, Lacey dissects reams of misinformation to reveal, for the first time, Jesus, as he was born and lived within the grand spectacle of the Roman world.
The Olympic Class ships were intended to be the greatest liners to ever sail the oceans, but the Britannic sank only four years after her sister ship the Titanic. While the wreck of the Titanic is two miles below the surface and rapidly deteriorating, the Britannic is much more accessible (only 400 ft down) and remains largely intact. One of the largest passenger ships ever to have sunk, her wreck presents a unique opportunity to explore the interior of the Olympic Class liners, and examine areas which on the Titanic simply no longer exist.
Simon Mills bought the wreck of the Britannic in 1996 and has spent more time exploring it than anyone else. Inside the Britannic is the sum of decades of work covering every inch of the shipwreck as he searches for answers to century-old questions, and discovers new mysteries to solve. Simon takes a forensic approach but this book is more than just the autopsy report of a ship.
The Britannic may have been lost over a century ago, but Simon Mills's fascinating new book gives everyone unparalleled access to rediscover her.
An acclaimed science writer tells the story of cosmic projectiles that may be on a collision course with our Earth.
The impact of an asteroid led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Could another giant cosmic missile soon be heading our way? In Target Earth, acclaimed Dutch astronomy writer Govert Schilling provides a full account of what we know, and need to know, about all the extraterrestrial matter constantly bombarding our planet—from microscopic dust particles and space debris to massive meteorites, comets, and asteroids.
Drawing upon the latest scientific discoveries, Schilling explores virtually every aspect of cosmic impacts—from small meteorites to devastating collisions, from the craters that marked our planet's surface to the impacts that left their mark on other celestial bodies, and from searches for near-miss lumps of rock to ways of protecting humanity from an assault from the cosmos. Along the way, he considers near misses in the past and the possibility of others in the future and ponders the positive side of these visitations from space: If our planet had not been the target of cosmic rubble from its very formation, life on Earth would likely never have gotten started.
A leading scientist's guide to the way our immune system protects us—but only most of the time
What is our immune system, and how does it work? A vast array of cells, proteins and chemicals spring into action whenever our bodies are damaged, but immunity is not something you can see, touch, or feel. It can fight off malicious bacteria and viruses, locate cancerous growths, and even rewire our brains—but sometimes our own tissues can get caught in its crossfire, with catastrophic consequences.
Humans may be the most disease-ridden animals on the planet. Professor John Trowsdale shows how the immune system protects us, and how our bodies invest huge resources to keep it running. Immunity influences how we age, and controls how we learn to fight off recurring diseases, and how our bodies respond to chronic conditions such as heart disease and dementia. But, in the case of allergies and autoimmune conditions, it can also easily get things wrong.
What the Body Knows is an account of a fascinating phenomenon—one which, for good or for ill, impacts every aspect of our lives.
There are many books claiming to explain the Enlightenment, but most assume that it was a thing. J. C. D. Clark shows what it actually was, namely a historiographical concept.
The Enlightenment: An Idea and Its History provides a critical historical analysis of the Enlightenment in England, Scotland, France, Germany, and the United States from c. 1650 to the present. It argues that the degree of commonality between social and intellectual movements in each—and, more broadly, between the five societies—has been overstated for polemical purposes. Clark shows that the concept of 'the Enlightenment' was not widely adopted in those societies until the mid-twentieth century; indeed, that it was unknown in the eighteenth. Without the concept, people at the time were unable to act in ways that would have created the Enlightenment as a coherent movement. Since the conventional account has held that the Enlightenment was a phenomenon, the idea could be used as a component of what has been called a 'civil religion': a summing up of the myths of origin, aims, and essential values of a society from which dissent is not permitted. An appreciation that it was instead a historiographical concept undermines, in turn, the idea that there was any great transition to what came to be called 'modernity'.
This introduction to the philosophy of medicine surveys the landscape of western philosophy as it pertains to healthcare in an accessible way. Written by a doctor for doctors and other health professionals, framing the 'toolbox' of philosophy within the community of medicine, it encourages examination of the implicit assumptions made in the construction of medical knowledge and practice.
Taking the listener step by step through the concepts that underpin modern philosophy, they will be challenged to reflect upon the premises within clinical practice which might benefit from scrutiny and challenge, including the nature of scientific knowledge, the limits of our biomedical model, the cultural and relational context, and the failure to recognize or manage adequately the fact/value distinction in medicine and healthcare.
The book is an ideal textbook for students of medicine and medical philosophy and will also be of interest to bioethicists, medical sociologists, clinical commissioners, and to practicing clinicians in medicine and the allied health professions seeking to improve their understanding of philosophy and ethics and sharpen their critical thinking skills.
Simon Schama explores the mysterious contradictions of the Dutch nation that invented itself from the ground up, attained an unprecedented level of affluence, and lived in constant dread of being corrupted by happiness. Drawing on a vast array of period documents and sumptuously reproduced art, Schama recreates in precise detail a nation's mental state. He tells of bloody uprisings and beached whales, of the cult of hygiene and the plague of tobacco, of thrifty housewives and profligate tulip-speculators. He tells us how the Dutch celebrated themselves and how they were slandered by their enemies.
