The Secrets of Life series is written for everyone who, frankly, needs a spot of cheering up, and will provide conversation starters for years after reading! O'Connor's easy-going, conversational style brings an outsider's questioning eye to the great forces behind life. The third in the four-part series explains how game theory developed, and why it came to show us not only how humans arrive at their decisions, but why so much of the apparently bizarre behaviour of the natural world has the same mathematical logic to it. Instead of the confusion and chaos one might expect in life, O'Connor shows that there are profound reasons behind the choices organisms make when they interact, and how we humans refined this process through the addition of our intelligence and language skills. Starting with the mind-blowing new ways of thinking that Adam Smith opened the world's eyes to, the book progresses to the 20th century-and shows how there's a coherent rationale behind our thought processes-and how this was gradually revealed by scientists at a time when the very future of the world was at stake. As O'Connor unfolds the story in Why Do We All Behave In The Way We Do?, it becomes ever clearer how cooperation has evolved to be the critical force at every level of life. It was what built our world, and it would settle so deeply into the hardwiring of living things that it would eventually become instinctive and innate in us. Perhaps most pleasingly, game theory explains how the benefits of collaboration are bound to ratchet upwards-and how this will inevitably lead to ever-increasing levels of moral behaviour in our societies. It is so often an accepted fact that bad people will win. And yet, as Book Three so clearly explains, collaborative societies are bound to grow, that it's rational to forgive to overcome vendettas and feuds, and that nice folks will always win in life by coming second. Example questions posed (and answered) in Book Three - Why Do All We Behave In The Way We Do? What's Game Theory - and why is it so critical to understanding how to make the right decisions? Why, if humans are so convinced that most of us are bad, are we concerned about being fair in our lives? Why do we value trust so highly? What are the reasons for our surprising wish to care for each other? Why do we share things, even though we might not have to? How did a failed robbery explain human nature? Why can it be rational to be irrational? And why is life like a poker game?

-- Over 2,100 shipwrecks from the 16th century to the present; the most comprehensive listing now available
-- Arranged primarily by geographical section of the state. Within sections, wrecks are arranged chronologically
-- Extensive and heavily illustrated appendices offer a wealth of information on topics of interest to divers and researchers

During the past few years science and medicine have been converging with common sense, confirming a widespread belief that everything―especially the mind and the body―is far more connected than traditional physics ever allowed.

The Field establishes a new biological paradigm: it proves that our body extends electromagnetically beyond ourselves and our physical body. It is within this field that we can find a remarkable new way of looking at health, sickness, memory, will, creativity, intuition, the soul, consciousness, and spirituality.

The Field helps to bridge the gap that has opened up between mind and matter, between us and the cosmos. Original, well researched, and well documented by distinguished sources, this is the mind/body book for a new millennium.

For about as long as there has been a Texas there have been Texas mysteries, and many of them remain unsolved. What happened to the documents captured in the Alamo? Does a ghost actually haunt the state capitol in Austin? Did the U.S. Army secretly bury hundreds of guns in North Texas after WWII? Was John Wilkes Booth killed or did he escape and flee to Central Texas? The authors present the known facts and circumstances of these and other mysteries.

"I have always been intrigued by fringe science," writes Martin Gardner in the preface to this book, "perhaps for the same reason that I enjoy freak shows and circuses. Pseudoscientists, especially the extreme cranks, are fascinating creatures for psychological study. Moreover, I have found that one of the best ways to learn something about any branch of science is to find out where its crackpots go wrong."
A unique combination of horse sense and drollery has made Martin Gardner the undisputed dean of the critics of pseudoscience. This bountiful collection of essays and articles will be wholeheartedly greeted by Gardner's fans, as well as by new readers.
This collection of articles - many of which first appeared in the Skeptical Inquirer, The New York Review of Books, and Free Inquiry - explores pseudoscience and strange religious beliefs with the author's trademark wit and verve. Destined to be a classic of skeptical literature, this book covers a wide range of topics - including UFOs, rainmaking, ghosts, the Big Bang, ESP, Oral Roberts, as well as the early history of spiritualism and today's bizarre "trance channeling" cults.

In many parts of the contemporary world, spirit beliefs and practices have taken on a pivotal role in addressing the discontinuities and uncertainties of modern life. The myriad ways in which devotees engage the spirit world show the tremendous creative potential of these practices and their innate adaptability to changing times and circumstances. Through in-depth anthropological case studies from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam, the contributors to this book investigate the role and impact of different social, political, and economic dynamics in the reconfiguration of local spirit worlds in modern Southeast Asia. Their findings contribute to the re-enchantment debate by revealing that the "spirited modernities" that have emerged in the process not only embody a distinct feature of the contemporary moment, but also invite a critical rethinking of the concept of modernity itself.

Kirsten W. Endres is a Senior Research Fellow and Head of Research Group at Department II, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale. Her monograph, "Performing the Divine: Mediums, Markets and Modernity in Urban Vietnam" (2011), examines the flourishing of urban spirit mediumship as part of the recent revival of popular religion in Vietnam.

Andrea Lauser is Professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Georg-August-University, Gottingen, Germany. She is a member of and lecturer in a new area studies network "Dynamics of Religion in Southeast-Asia," composed of the Southeast Asia departments of Hamburg, Berlin, Muenster, Heidelberg and Gottingen, and funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

This book is a contribution to contemporary debates on social research with a unique focus on the relationship between methods and the crafting of knowledge. Nine experienced researchers from different disciplines have come together to explore what really matters to them in the process of doing qualitative research.

The Pahlavi Widewdad (Videvdad), The Law (Serving to Keep) Demons Away, a fifth-century Middle Persian commentary on the Avestan Videvdad, describes rules and regulations that serve to prevent pollution caused by dead matter, menstrual discharges, and other agents. It recognizes the perpetual presence of the demons, the forces of the Evil Spirit -forces that should be fought through law-abiding conduct. In spite of its formidable textual problems, the commentary provides an invaluable quarry for the rules of the Zoroastrian community through its citation of regulations for the conduct of its members. Many topics are covered, from jurisprudence to penalties, procedures for dealing with pollution, purification, and arrangements for funerals. Viewed together, they provide the reader with an exquisite interlace of a community's concerns.

AWAKENING THE PHARAOHHow to Avoid World Cataclysm in 2012* The story described in this book refers to real and authentic events and people.* Since May 2001 we have obtained information on the location of the tomb of Pharaoh who built the Great Pyramid in Egypt. This information was obtained from a Polish woman, Lucyna Lobos, through sessions of hypnotic age regression. * The excavation of the Pharaoh's tomb and placing the mummy in the sarcophagus of the Great Pyramid is suppose to "open" the Pyramid and create a protection from catastrophic changes such as global warming and natural disasters, especially from the danger of year 2012, i.e. changing of the Earth polarity.* According to obtained information, the Great Pyramid was constructed about 6,500 years ago by the Pharaoh whose name was THE ONE WHO CAME FROM HEAVEN. * The main builders of the Pyramid originated from a distant civilization in the Orion Constellation and were from a planet called Ashun. During the Pyramid's construction the people of the earth only performed basic lighter tasks.* In order to empirically validate this information from the age regression sessions with Lucyna Lobos, the University of Wroclaw (Poland) has initiated archeological excavations in the southern mountain in Poland called Sleza in August 2004. These excavations are still proceeding today.* To further validate this information, the University of Cairo performed radar ground penetrating research (GPR) in the area of the Great Pyramid to the depth of over 60 meters in February 2006. This was achieved with the permission of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt.

21 December 2012 was believed to mark the end of the thirteenth B'ak'tun cycle in the Long Count of the Mayan calendar. Many people believed this date to mark the end of the world or, at the very least, a shift to a new form of global consciousness. Examining how much of the phenomenon is based on the historical record and how much is contemporary fiction, the book explores the landscape of the modern apocalyptic imagination, the economics of the spiritual marketplace, the commodification of countercultural values, and the cult of celebrity.

This fascinating and bizarre collection compiles the most unusual, obscure books from the far reaches of the human imagination throughout history.

From the author of the critically acclaimed bestsellers The Phantom Atlas and The Sky Atlas comes a unique and beautifully illustrated journey through the history of literature. The Madman's Library delves into its darkest territories to hunt down the oddest books and manuscripts ever written, uncovering the intriguing stories behind their creation.

From the Qur'an written in the blood of Saddam Hussein, to the gorgeously decorated fifteenth-century lawsuit filed by the Devil against Jesus, to the most enormous book ever created, The Madman's Library features many long forgotten, eccentric, and extraordinary volumes gathered from around the world.

Books written in blood and books that kill, books of the insane and books that hoaxed the globe, books invisible to the naked eye and books so long they could destroy the Universe, books worn into battle and books of code and cypher whose secrets remain undiscovered. Spell books, alchemist scrolls, wearable books, edible books, books to summon demons, books written by ghosts, and more all come together in the most curiously strange library imaginable.

Featuring hundreds of remarkable images and packed with entertaining facts and stories to discover, The Madman's Library is a captivating compendium perfect for bibliophiles, literature enthusiasts, and collectors intrigued by bizarre oddities, obscure history, and the macabre.

Fear and ignorance have run rampant throughout human history, stifling creativity and unleashing unspeakable cruelty. Those sinister mythical dragons that often stood in the path of truth and knowledge seem to return century after century as each new generation succumbs to its own insecurities, misled by those who would feed off the fear of others. With great savoir vivre Robert E. Wheeler guides us through the twists and turns of our many and varied foibles, all the while aiming the clear light of reason on the root causes of human misery. His compassion and insight, humor and lively command of the language combine to explore a gallery of "rancid ascetics"; "gloating sadists"; "pontificating hierophants"; "saints, gnomes, and rogues"; "spurious religiosity"; "swaggering unreason"; "oratorical hokum"; and "mystical ballyhoo"; as well as the "whiplash of mass emotion" and the "torrential madness of hysteria-dominated crowds" to arrive at a "fuller, richer, and more abundant life" in which we will "no longer tolerate the coexistence of natural affluence and spiritual squalor". No longer blinded by fear, which undermines our reason, we can recover from our "allergic reaction to truth", turn away from magic - that "shuddering attempt to master a terrifying universe" - and stop behaving like "screaming moppets that want someone to pluck the moon from the sky for them". Guided by Wheeler's firm grasp of cultural history and modern psychology, Dragons for Sale exposes the roots of such mental maladies as witchcraft and its persecution, asceticism and unbridled hedonism, the crusades and millenarianism, nazism's monumental conceit, and the tactics of McCarthyism, as well as the more mundaneconsequences of belief in nostrum vendors and bogus messiahs. Books once regarded as the well-springs of wisdom - e.g., the Sibylline books and the Malleus Maleficarum (the witch hunter's handbook) - are discussed and assessed, uncovering the origins of our sexual misconceptions as readers examine the "seamier side of the Age of Reason" and learn how many beliefs act as "psychological toxins". When we realize that not even the learned have a monopoly on truth and that our collective anxieties should not be allowed to undermine our reason, only then may we realize our unparalleled potential for growing into healthy, fulfilled human beings.

This is a scientific expoe that will shatter our knowledge of ancient human history. Scholars have told us that the first civilisation on Earth emerged in a land called Sumer some 6000 years ago. New archaeological and scientific discoveries made by Michael Tellinger, Johan Heine and a team of leading scientists, show that the Sumerians and even the Egyptians inherited all their knowledge from an earlier civilisation that lived at the southern tip of Africa more than 200,000 years ago...mining gold.

These were also the people who carved the first Horus bird, the first Sphinx, built the first pyramids and built an accurate stone calendar right in the heart of it all. "Adam's Calendar" is the flagship among millions of circular stone ruins, ancient roads, agricultural terraces and thousands of ancient mines, left behind by a vanished civilisation which we now call the First People. They carved detailed images into the hardest rock, worshipped the sun, and are the first to carve an image of the Egyptian Ankh - key of life and universal knowledge, 200,000 years before the Egyptians came to light.

This book graphically exposes these discoveries and will be the catalyst for rewriting our ancient human history. The book is a continuation of Tellinger's previous books Slave Species of God and Adam's Calendar which have become favourites with readers in over 20 countries.

Misinformation has had dramatic and dangerous effects, as evidenced by numerous events of the late 2010s and early 2020s. Reading a steady stream of misinformation leads to distrust, potentially leading to conflict in one's family and workplace, and even to civil unrest. At the heart of many such matters is scientific illiteracy. Many people enjoy a life of ease and convenience because of science-and since science also crosses courtrooms, classrooms and cultures, it has great potential to debunk misinformation and untangle the confusion on such issues as vaccines, sexual identity, race and evolution, alternative medicine, and human reproduction. This book addresses those issues and the popular stories, conspiracies, and misleading headlines that circulate across media platforms. Bringing accurate knowledge into people's agendas is challenging, and this book uses science and facts as a basis of every deliberation over laws and policies. The chapters weave together history, politics, human biology, and law, and demonstrate how our lives are dependent on understanding the nature of things.

"I'm not asking you to believe every conspiracy theory you'll find in this book. . . . I didn't write this book to give you all the answers. The Warren Commission did that, and the answers were all wrong. I wrote this book to inspire you to do what the powers that be wish you wouldn't:  to question authority . . . and to keep an eye out for Elvis."
--RICHARD BELZER

In UFOs, JFK, and Elvis, the distinguished statesman of stand-up comedy tackles some of the biggest conspiracies and cover-ups this side of Roswell. Just what is it that they don't want you to know about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Area 51, and what the American astronauts really found on the moon? The unexplained crash at Roswell and the mysterious "face" on Mars? The link between the Nazis and the U.S. space program? Evidence of extraterrestrial experimentation?

Finally, one lone "nut" exposes the conspiracy to keep conspiracies a dirty little secret, standing up to the shadowy forces that would have us believe that Oswald acted alone, those lights in the sky are weather balloons, and fluoridated water is good for you (yeah, right). "Some of the smartest people I know . . . find it easier--and certainly more comforting--to believe that America is the only country on earth with no conspiracies at all." Just remember: do not ask on whom The Belz has told--he's told on them.