Zone

"From renowned neuroscientist Adrian Owen comes a thrilling, heartbreaking tale of discovery in one of the least-understood scientific frontiers: the twilight region between full consciousness and brain death. People who inhabit this middle region called the 'gray zone' have sustained traumatic brain injuries or are the victims of stroke or degenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Many are oblivious to the outside world, and their doctors and families often believe they're incapable of thought. But a sizable number of patients--as many as twenty percent--are experiencing something different: intact minds adrift within damaged brains and bodies. In 2006, Adrian Owen led a team that discovered this lost population and made medical history, provoking an ongoing debate among scientists, physicians, and philosophers about the meaning, value, and purpose of life. In Into the Gray Zone, we follow Owen as he pushes forward the boundaries of science, using a variety of sophisticated brain scans, auditory prompts, and even Alfred Hitchcock film clips to not only 'find' patients who are trapped inside their heads but to actually communicate with them and elicit answers to moving questions, such as 'Are you in pain?' and 'Do you want to go on living?' and 'Are you happy?' (Many gray zone patients do, in fact, claim to be satisfied with their quality of life.) Into the Gray Zone shines a fascinating light on how we think, remember, and pay attention. And it shows us how the field of brain-computer interfaces is about to explode, radically changing prognoses for people with impaired brain function and creating, for all of us, the tantalizing possibility of telepathy and augmented intelligence. Ultimately; this is not just a spellbinding story of scientific discovery but a deeply human, affirming book that causes us to wonder anew at the indomitable bonds of love."--Jacket.

Using bright colours and fun illustrations, this book will show children with Autism Spectrum Disorder aged 7 and above how to identify common interests in conversation, and how to go on to talk about them successfully. The photocopiable worksheets and activities encourage children to engage with this visual model and reinforce the method.

How the far North offered a different kind of terra incognita for the Renaissance imagination. European narratives of the Atlantic New World tell stories of people and things: strange flora, wondrous animals, sun-drenched populations for Europeans to mythologize or exploit. Yet, as Christopher Heuer explains, between 1500 and 1700, one region upended all of these conventions in travel writing, science, and, most unexpectedly, art: the Arctic. Icy, unpopulated, visually and temporally “abstract,” the far North—a different kind of terra incognita for the Renaissance imagination—offered more than new stuff to be mapped, plundered, or even seen. Neither a continent, an ocean, nor a meteorological circumstance, the Arctic forced visitors from England, the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy, to grapple with what we would now call a “non-site,” spurring dozens of previously unknown works, objects, and texts—and this all in an intellectual and political milieu crackling with Reformation debates over art's very legitimacy. In Into the White, Heuer uses five case studies to probe how the early modern Arctic (as site, myth, and ecology) affected contemporary debates over perception and matter, representation, discovery, and the time of the earth—long before the nineteenth century Romanticized the polar landscape. In the far North, he argues, the Renaissance exotic became something far stranger than the marvelous or the curious, something darkly material and impossible to be mastered, something beyond the idea of image itself.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys: A pandemic has devastated the planet, sorting humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead. • "One of the best books of the year." —Esquire After the worst of the plague is over, armed forces stationed in Chinatown’s Fort Wonton have successfully reclaimed the island south of Canal Street—aka Zone One. Mark Spitz is a member of one of the three-person civilian sweeper units tasked with clearing lower Manhattan of the remaining feral zombies. Zone One unfolds over three surreal days in which Spitz is occupied with the mundane mission of straggler removal, the rigors of Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder (PASD), and the impossible task of coming to terms with a fallen world. And then things start to go terribly wrong… At once a chilling horror story and a literary novel by a contemporary master, Zone One is a dazzling portrait of modern civilization in all its wretched, shambling glory. Look for Colson Whitehead’s new novel, Crook Manifesto, coming soon!

Objectivity has a history, and it is full of surprises. In Objectivity, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison chart the emergence of objectivity in the mid-nineteenth-century sciences — and show how the concept differs from alternatives, truth-to-nature and trained judgment. This is a story of lofty epistemic ideals fused with workaday practices in the making of scientific images. From the eighteenth through the early twenty-first centuries, the images that reveal the deepest commitments of the empirical sciences — from anatomy to crystallography — are those featured in scientific atlases: the compendia that teach practitioners of a discipline what is worth looking at and how to look at it. Atlas images define the working objects of the sciences of the eye: snowflakes, galaxies, skeletons, even elementary particles. Galison and Daston use atlas images to uncover a hidden history of scientific objectivity and its rivals. Whether an atlas maker idealizes an image to capture the essentials in the name of truth-to-nature or refuses to erase even the most incidental detail in the name of objectivity or highlights patterns in the name of trained judgment is a decision enforced by an ethos as well as by an epistemology. As Daston and Galison argue, atlases shape the subjects as well as the objects of science. To pursue objectivity — or truth-to-nature or trained judgment — is simultaneously to cultivate a distinctive scientific self wherein knowing and knower converge. Moreover, the very point at which they visibly converge is in the very act of seeing not as a separate individual but as a member of a particular scientific community. Embedded in the atlas image, therefore, are the traces of consequential choices about knowledge, persona, and collective sight. Objectivity is a book addressed to any one interested in the elusive and crucial notion of objectivity — and in what it means to peer into the world scientifically.

The compelling story of one family's life among the rugged landscapes of British Columbia's Coast Mountains, converting youthful ideals, raw land and a passion for the outdoors into a practical off-grid homestead. Rob Wood grew up in a village on the edge of the Yorkshire Moors, where he eventually developed a preoccupation with rock climbing. After studying architecture for five years at the Architectural Association School in London, England, he made his way to Montreal and ended up in Calgary. During his time in Calgary, Rob became a pioneer of ice climbing and posted numerous first ascents in the Rockies during the early 1970's. Eventually, life in corporate Alberta proved unfulfilling and Rob realized that he needed to find a place where he could reconnect with nature, which brought him to the remote reaches of Canada's West Coast. Settling on Maurelle Island, he and his wife built an off-the-grid homestead and focussed on alternative communities and developing a small house-design practice specializing in organic and wholesome building techniques. At Home in Nature is a gentle and philosophical memoir that focuses on living a life deeply rooted in the natural world, where citizens are connected to the planet and individuals work together to help, enhance and make the world a better -- and sustainable -- place.

Over the last 25 years, Geoffrey Moore has established himself as one of the most influential high-tech advisors in the world—once prompting Conan O’Brien to ask “Who is Geoffrey Moore and why is he more famous than me?” Following up on the ferociously innovative ESCAPE VELOCITY, which served as the basis for Moore’s consulting work to such companies as Salesforce, Microsoft, and Intel, ZONE TO WIN serves as the companion playbook for his landmark guide, offering a practical manual to address the challenge large enterprises face when they seek to add a new line of business to their established portfolio. Focused on spurring next-generation growth, guiding mergers and acquisitions, and embracing disruption and innovation, ZONE TO WIN is a high-powered tool for driving your company above and beyond its limitations, its definitions of success, and ultimately, its competitors. Moore’s classic bestseller, CROSSING THE CHASM, has sold more than one million copies by addressing the challenges faced by start-up companies. Now ZONE TO WIN is set to guide established enterprises through the same journey. “For any company, regardless of size or industry, ZONE TO WIN is the playbook for succeeding in today’s disruptive, connected, fast-paced business world.” —Marc Benioff, CEO, Salesforce “Once again Geoffrey Moore weighs in with a prescient examination of what it takes to win in today’s competitive, disruptive business environment.” —Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft "With this book, Geoffrey Moore continues to lead us all through ever-changing times...His work has changed the game of changing the game!" —Gary Kovacs, CEO, AVG “ZONE TO WIN uses crystal-clear language to describe the management plays necessary to win in an ever-disrupting marketplace. Regardless of your level of management experience, you will find this book an invaluable tool for building long-term success for your business.” —Lip-Bu Tan, President and CEO, Cadence Design Systems

The #1 New York Times bestseller and “compulsive page-turner” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) about a reluctant clairvoyant man who must weigh his options when he suddenly sees the terrible future awaiting mankind—from master storyteller Stephen King. When Johnny Smith was six years old, head trauma caused by a bad ice-skating accident left him with a nasty bruise on his forehead and, from time to time, those hunches…infrequent but accurate snippets of things to come. But it isn’t until Johnny’s a grown man—now having survived a horrifying auto injury that plunged him into a coma lasting four-and-a-half years—that his special abilities really push to the fore. Johnny Smith comes back from the void with an extraordinary gift that becomes his life’s curse…presenting visions of what was and what will be for the innocent and guilty alike. But when he encounters a ruthlessly ambitious and amoral man who promises a terrifying fate for all humanity, Johnny must find a way to prevent a harrowing predestination from becoming reality.