Before Humanity

The current crisis in thinking the “human” raises questions not only about who or what may come after the human, but also about what happened before. What dark secrets lie in our ancestral past that may be stopping us from becoming human “otherwise”?

This book recreates the lost world of the hominid species that lived and flourished for around one million years before, and in some cases after, the evolution of modern humans some 200,000 years ago.

Something happened in early 2011 that hasn't happened in decades, perhaps centuries—and we didn't even notice it. That is, we didn't see it for what it was. Massive unrest from Tunisia to Egypt to Libya rocked the Arab world and threw the globe into political crisis. Within days, an earthquake-tsunami-nuclear calamity of terrifying proportions shocked Japan and sent the world reeling once again, even as the globe's financial markets shuddered to sustain themselves while states and nations tottered on the brink of bankruptcy-where many still linger. All of this, of course, we did notice. What we may have missed was that ancient predictions for this period of time called for exactly this: simultaneous environmental, political, and financial disasters. Were we seeing the beginning of "the end of history"-and not picking up the signal? In The Storm Before The Calm, seven-time New York Times best-selling author Neale Donald Walsch offers a startling answer: yes. But Walsch also says there is nothing to fear, advancing an extraordinary explanation for what is happening even now all over the planet. Then-and more important-he provides a stunning prescription for healing our lives and our world through the answering of seven simple questions, inviting people everywhere to join in an earth-saving exchange at TheGlobalConversation.com. Compelling and perfectly timed, The Storm Before The Calm answers every question that is worth asking about December, 2012 and beyond.

Winner of the 2019 Phi Beta Kappa Award for Science "A valuable perspective on the most important problem of our time." —Adam Becker, NPR Light of the Stars tells the story of humanity’s coming of age as we realize we might not be alone in this universe. Astrophysicist Adam Frank traces the question of alien life from the ancient Greeks to modern thinkers, and he demonstrates that recognizing the possibility of its existence might be the key to save us from climate change. With clarity and conviction, Light of the Stars asks the consequential question: What can the likely presence of life on other planets tell us about our own fate?

Do aliens fear humans? According to our galactic neighbors they do! Five millennia in the future, Humanity as yet to set aside their capacity for war, which may end up being the galaxy’s salvation!

This volume explores the development of the idea of a common humanity for all human beings from Antiquity to the present time focussing on the "other" as "neighbour, enemy, and infidel", on the interpretation of the Biblical story of Abraham ́s sacrifice and on ancient and modern ethical and legal implications of the concept of human dignity.