"The bestselling author of Give and Take and Originals examines the critical art of rethinking: learning to question your beliefs and to know what you don't know, which can position you for success at work and happiness at home. The difficulty of rethinking our assumptions is surprisingly common--maybe even fundamentally human. Our ways of thinking become habits that we don't bother to question, and mental laziness leads us to prefer the ease of old...

Shermer demonstrates how our brains selectively assess data in an attempt to confirm the conclusions (beliefs) we've already reached. Drawing on evolution, cognitive science, and neuroscience, he considers not only supernatural beliefs but political and economic ones as well.

"Dr. Stephen Hawking was the most renowned scientist since Einstein, known both for his groundbreaking work in physics and cosmology and for his mischievous sense of humor. He educated millions of readers about the origins of the universe and the nature of black holes, and inspired millions more by defying a terrifying early prognosis of ALS, which originally gave him only two years to live. In later life he could communicate only by using a few facial...

Identifies a loss of common-sense wisdom that has coincided with a collapsing economy, failing schools, and other setbacks, and offers recommendations to identify and cultivate wisdom by combining experience with empathy and intellect.

Looks at the state of knowledge in the American public, and demonstrates how many areas of knowledge correlate with quality of life, politics, and behavior, arguing that being knowledgeable has significant value even when facts can be looked up with little effort.

The "Long Debate" on the nature of truth, the scale of real values, the life one should aspire to live, the character of justice, the sources of law, and the terms of civic and political life is encompassed by the name philosophy. Three persistent themes--understood as problems--are knowledge, conduct, and governance, on which there is a storehouse of insights, some so utterly persuasive as to have shaped thought itself. Beginning with Plato and Aristotle,...

A leading social researcher explains why humans so consistently misunderstand the outside world. Duffy draws on his research into public perception across more than 40 countries, offering a sweeping account of the stubborn problem of human delusion: how society breeds it, why it will never go away, and what each individual's misperceptions say about what they really believe.

"One of the simplest and most powerful ways we understand people is as members of a generation. Your uncle is a bit racist because he's a baby boomer; your gen x boss is not a good team player; your cousin is constantly trying to go viral because he's gen z, and his generation is obsessed with fame. We also use generations as a tool for tracking how a society's values change over time (baby boomers liberated sex; millennials made it problematic),...