Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

How the Mind Works

by Robert Edward Fussell, Gary Michael Smith, Steven Pinker

In this extraordinary bestseller, Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading cognitive scientists, does for the rest of the mind what he did for language in his 1994 book, The Language Instinct. He explains what the mind is, how it evolved, and how it allows us to see, think, feel, laugh, interact, enjoy the arts, and ponder the mysteries of life. And he does it with the wit that prompted Mark Ridley to... (more)

A Town Like Alice

by Nevil Shute

"A harrowing, exciting, and in the end very satisfying war romance." HARPER'S A TOWN LIKE ALICE tells of a young woman who miraculously survived a Japanese "death march" in World War II, and of an Australian soldier, also a prisoner of war, who offered to help her--even at the cost of his life....

Mao: The Unknown Story

by Jon Halliday, Jung Chang

The most authoritative life of the Chinese leader every written, Mao: The Unknown Story is based on a decade of research, and on interviews with many of Mao’s close circle in China who have never talked before — and with virtually everyone outside China who had significant dealings with him. It is full of startling revelations, exploding the myth of the Long March, and showing a completely unknown Mao: he was... (more)

The Language Instinct

How the Mind Creates Language

by Steven Pinker

In this classic study, the world's leading expert on language and the mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about languages: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it envolved. With wit, erudition, and deft use it everyday examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a... (more)

Midaq Alley

by Naguib Mahfouz

Never has Nobel Prize-winner Naguib Mahfouz's talent for rich and luxurious storytelling been more evident than in this outstanding novel, first published in Arabic in 1947. One of his most popular books (and considered by many to be one of his best), Midaq Alley centers around the residents of one of the teeming back alleys of Cairo.

The Aztecs (Peoples of America)

by Michael Ernest Smith

This book is a vivid and comprehensive account of the Aztecs, the best-known people of pre-Columbian America. It examines their origins, civilization, and the distinctive realms of Aztec religion, science, and thought. It describes the conquest of their empire by the Spanish, and the fate of their descendants to the present day in Central Mexico, making use of the results of the latest excavations, historical... (more)

Medieval Scandinavia: From Conversion to Reformation, Circa 800-1500 (The Nordic, Vol 17)

Medieval Scandinavia: From Conversion to Reformation, Circa 800-1500 (The Nordic, Vol 17)

by Birgit Sawyer

Genes, Peoples, and Languages

by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza

Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza was among the first to ask whether the genes of modern populations contain a historical record of the human species. Cavalli-Sforza and others have answered this question-anticipated by Darwin-with a decisive yes. Genes, Peoples, and Languages comprises five lectures that serve as a summation of the author's work over several decades, the goal of which has been nothing less than tracking... (more)

SHOUT! the Beatles in Their Generation

by Philip Norman

UPDATED TO INCLUDE PAUL McCARTNEY'S KNIGHTING AND THE DEATHS OF JOHN LENNON AND GEORGE HARRISON Philip Norman's biography of the Beatles is the definitive work on the world's most influential band -- a beautifully written account of their lives, their music, and their times. Now brought completely up to date, this epic tale charts the rise of four scruffy Liverpool lads from their wild, often comical early days... (more)

Farthest North (The Complete Journey - Unabridged)

Farthest North (The Complete Journey - Unabridged)

by Fridtjof Nansen

Nansen's three-year expedition to the North Pole with the Fram marked the beginning of the modern age of exploration. This book is an account, by Freidtjof Nansen, of that expedition. It describes his plan, ridiculed by his peers, to allow the specially designed Fram to become frozen in the treacherous pack ice of the Arctic Oceans. Drifting with the current, he and his crew of twelve would be carried to the Pole.... (more)

Undiscovered Ocean from Marco Polo to Francis Drake

Undiscovered Ocean from Marco Polo to Francis Drake

by Anthony Deane

When, in 1271, Marco Polo set off with his father to travel to Cathay, the age of the great explorers had begun. In the ensuing three centuries, much of the world was explored for the first time. Within a century, men had sailed to the mystical east and sailed across the Atlantic. All this in search of new lands, treasure, spices and tradable commodities. These men brought back new animals, plants and tales of sea... (more)

The Apache Indians: In Search of the Missing Tribe

The Apache Indians: In Search of the Missing Tribe

by Helge Ingstad

Available in English for the first time, The Apache Indians tells the story of the Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad’s sojourn among the Apaches near the White Mountain Reservation in Arizona and his epic journey to locate the “lost” group of their brethren in the Sierra Madres in the 1930s. Ingstad traveled to Canada, where he lived as a trapper for four years with the Chipewyan Indians. The Chipewyans told him... (more)