Social sciences

Let's face it: Recent years have been tough on optimists. Hopes that the Internet might bring people together have been crushed by the ills of social media. Is there a way back? As head of TED, Chris Anderson has had a ringside view of the world's boldest thinkers sharing their most uplifting ideas. Inspired by them, he believes it's within our grasp to transform outrage back int

Come inside a jury room as one juror leads a starkly divided room to consensus. Join a young CIA officer as he recruits a reluctant foreign agent. And sit with an accomplished surgeon as he tries, and fails, to convince yet another cancer patient to opt for the less risky course of treatment. In Supercommunicators, Charles Duhigg blends deep research and his trademark storytelling skills to sho

CRUSADE AGAINST THE GRAIL is the book that popularised the legend of the Cathars and the Holy Grail. The first edition appeared in Germany in 1933 and drew upon Rahn's account of his thrilling explorations of the Pyrenean caves where the heretical Cathar sect took refuge during the 13th century.

Mystics and sages have long maintained that there exists an interconnecting cosmic field at the roots of reality that conserves and conveys information, a field known as the Akashic record. Recent discoveries in vacuum physics show that this Akashic Field is real and has its equivalent in science's zero-point field that underlies space itself.

In the Amazon, shamans do not talk in terms of hallucinogens but of tools for communicating with other life-forms. Ayahuasca, for example, is first and foremost a means of breaking down the barrier that separates humans from other species, allowing us to communicate with them.

Of all forms taken by the undead, the vampire wields the most powerful pull on the modern imagination. But the countless movies and books inspired by this child of the night who has a predilection for human blood are based on incidents recorded as fact in newspapers and judicial archives in the centuries preceding the works of Bram Stoker and other writers.

Exploring the healing, spiritual power of slow sex, this book offers a step-by-step guide for committed couples to transform sex into a meditative, loving union of complementary energies.

Toward the end of his fifties, Christopher Gray took, for the first time in years, a 100-microgram acid trip. So extraordinary, and to his surprise so enjoyable, were the effects that he began to take the same dose in the same way - quietly and on his own - once every two to three weeks.

· Explores the shamanic use of healing songs, psychoactive plants and vision quests at the heart of the Odyssey and the fantasy works of J. R. R. Tolkien · Examines odysseus's encounters with plant divinities, altered consciousness, animal shapeshifting and sacred topography - all concepts vital to shamanism · Reveals how the Odyssey emerged precisely at the rupture ...

· Explores the use of crystals throughout history, including their role in Atlantis and in alien technology · Offers step-by-step instructions to successfully use crystals in scrying, meditation and Enochian magic · Includes never-before-published scientific findings on the author's crystal skull as well as other crystal skulls researched at the British Museum · Explains how the Space-Time ...

The "barbarians" of ancient Europe had a system of social classes and familial clans with complex spiritual customs, rites of passage, black magic practices and shamanic ecstatic states.