"From SoulCycle to Scientology, we're all obsessed with cults. Linguist Amanda Montell examines the language cults use to draw us in"--

When he buys a beach house on the Carolina coast, David Sedaris envisions long, relaxing vacations spent playing board games and lounging in the sun with those he loves most. And life at the Sea Section, as he names the vacation home, is exactly as idyllic as he imagined, except for one tiny, vexing realization: it's impossible to take a vacation from yourself. Sedaris sets his powers of observation toward middle age and mortality, that vertiginous...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A special 25th anniversary edition of the beloved book that changed millions of lives—with a new afterword by the author
 
“A wonderful book, a story of the heart told by a writer with soul.”—Los Angeles Times

Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher, or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and...

Doing well with money isn't necessarily about what you know. It's about how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people.Money'investing, personal finance, and business decisions'is typically taught as a math-based field, where data and formulas tell us exactly what to do. But in the real world people don't make financial decisions on a spreadsheet. They make them at the dinner table, or in a meeting room, where personal...

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? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime? 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 riddles of everyday life;...

""The only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it -- and then dismantle it." Ibram X. Kendi's concept of antiracism reenergizes and reshapes the conversation about racial justice in America -- but even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi asks us to think about what an antiracist society might look like, and how we can play an...

Everyone knows that timing is everything. But we don't know much about timing itself. Our lives are a never-ending stream of "when" decisions: when to start a business, schedule a class, get serious about a person. Yet we make those decisions based on intuition and guesswork. Drawing on a rich trove of research from psychology, biology, and economics, Daniel Pink reveals how best to live, work, and succeed. How can we use the hidden patterns of the...

"Draws on history, psychology, and anthropology to discuss how the tribal connection--the instinct to belong to small groups with a clear purpose and common understanding--can satisfy the human quest for meaning and belonging, "--NoveList.

Ricky Lam had it all -- a thriving film career, the adoration of countless fans, incredible wealth, and a cocaine and alcohol problem that was about to destroy him. Luckily, he also had a business manager -- his straight-arrow older brother Philip -- who strong-armed him into an addiction clinic. But not even the passage of fifteen years, Ricky's rehabilitation, and undreamed-of success for both men can mend the rift that erupted between the brothers...

Tessa Young, an up-and-coming landscape architect who specializes in the design and creation of labyrinths, has immersed herself in the mythological, spiritual, and healing aspects of the elaborate structures. She also is searching for God and hoping to make sense of the nightmares that have plagued her since childhood. When Smith Chandler, an estranged colleague--with whom she'd half fallen in love a dozen times before catching herself every time--calls...