Product Description: The definition of intelligence has become the object of many controversies - particularly about its nature and the causes of its development - with essential social implications at stake. To get out of this deadlock, the authors of this book propose a social conception of intelligence and of its development: they consider intelligence as resulting from the inter-individual coordinations of actions and judgements...read more

Product Description: Robert Rivers is an honorable thief who has made a living conducting well planned heists on the various businesses that dot the idyllic environs of southern California. But during a routine robbery of a local steakhouse, Rivers comes across something that shakes him from his comfortable existence...read more

Product Description: The dust storms that terrorized America's High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since, and the stories of the people that held on have never been fully told. Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times journalist and author Timothy Egan follows a half-dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, going from sod huts to new framed houses to huddling in basements with the windows sealed by damp sheets in a futile effort to keep the dust out...read more

Product Description: A riveting history of how the cataclysmic Lisbon earthquake shook the religious and intellectual foundations of Enlightenment Europe.Along with the volcanic destruction of Pompeii and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the Lisbon quake of 1755 is one of the most destructive natural disasters ever recorded...read more

A riveting history of how the cataclysmic Lisbon earthquake shook the religious and intellectual foundations of Enlightenment Europe.Along with the volcanic destruction of Pompeii and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the Lisbon quake of 1755 is one of the most destructive natural disasters ever recorded. After being jolted by a massive quake, Lisbon was then pounded by a succession of tidal waves and finally reduced to ash by a fire that raged for five straight days. In The Last Day, Nicholas Shrady provides not only a vivid account of this horrific disaster but also a stimulating survey of the many shock waves it sent throughout Western civilization. When news of the quake spread, it inspired both a lurid fascination in the popular imagination of Europe and an intellectual debate about the natural world and God's place in human affairs. Voltaire, Alexander Pope, Immanuel Kant, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, among other eminent figures, took up the disaster as a sort of cause célèbre and a vehicle to express Enlightenment ideas. More practically, the Lisbon quake led to the first concerted effort at disaster control, modern urban planning, and the birth of seismology. The Last Day is popular history writing at its best and will appeal to readers of Simon Winchester's Krakatoa and A Crack in the Edge of the World.

It was a moment unique in human history, the face-to-face meeting between two men from civilizations a world apart. In 1519, Hernán Cortes arrived on the shores of Mexico, determined not only to expand the Spanish expire but to convert the natives to Catholicism and carry off a fortune in gold. That he saw nothing paradoxical in his intentions is one of the most remarkable and tragic aspects of this unforgettable story. In Tenochtitlán, Cortes met his Aztec counterpart, Montezuma: king, divinity, and commander of the most powerful military in the Americas. Yet in less than two years, Cortes defeated the entire Aztec nation in one of the most astounding battles ever waged. The story of a lost kingdom, a relentless conqueror, and a doomed warrior, Conquistador is history at its most riveting.

Product Description: It was a moment unique in human history, the face-to-face meeting between two men from civilizations a world apart. In 1519, Hernán Cortes arrived on the shores of Mexico, determined not only to expand the Spanish expire but to convert the natives to Catholicism and carry off a fortune in gold...read more

Product Description: After the death of his parents, Jim Burden is sent to live with his grandparents on the Nebraska plains. By chance, on that same train is Ántonia, a bright-eyed girl who will become his neighbor and lifelong friend. Her family has emigrated from Bohemia to start a new life farming but soon lose their money and must work hard just to survive...read more

Product Description: After the death of his parents, Jim Burden is sent to live with his grandparents on the Nebraska plains. By chance, on that same train is Ántonia, a bright-eyed girl who will become his neighbor and lifelong friend. Her family has emigrated from Bohemia to start a new life farming but soon lose their money and must work hard just to survive...read more

Product Description: To Dream... To Dare... To Win...The ancient motto, inscribed in Latin on a mysterious golden medallion recovered from the ruins of the Roman Empire, has guided Michael Tiranno to heights few men have achieved. Once an orphaned farm boy in his native Sicily, Michael made millions by mastering the intricate world of high finance and is now the fabulously wealthy owner of Las Vegas's Seven Sins, the grandest and most extravagant casino in the world...read more

Product Description: It's happened to the best of us. You have a job opening to fill. You interview a range of qualified candidates and hire the best of the bunch-or so you think. You soon realize that the person who seemed like a perfect fit during the interview doesn't have what it takes to do the job...read more

Product Description: Robert Timberg weaves together the lives of Annapolis graduates John McCain, James Webb, Oliver North, Robert McFarlane, and John Poindexter to reveal how the Vietnam War continues to haunt America. Casting all five men as metaphors for a legion of well-meaning if ill-starred warriors, Timberg probes the fault line between those who fought the war and those who used money, wit, and connections to avoid battle...read more

Product Description: Robert Timberg weaves together the lives of Annapolis graduates John McCain, James Webb, Oliver North, Robert McFarlane, and John Poindexter to reveal how the Vietnam War continues to haunt America. Casting all five men as metaphors for a legion of well-meaning if ill-starred warriors, Timberg probes the fault line between those who fought the war and those who used money, wit, and connections to avoid battle...read more

Product Description: A parallel army lives on the margins of the Iraq war-nearly 100,000 armed men, invisible yet in plain sight, doing jobs the overstretched and understaffed military can't or won't do. The U.S. media call them "security contractors...read more