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Every day, we wake up hungry. Every day, we break our fast. Hunger is both a natural and an unnatural human condition. In Hunger, Sharman Apt Russell explores the range of this primal experience. Step by step, Russell takes us through the physiology of hunger, from eighteen hours without food to thirty-six hours to three days to seven days to thirty days. In quiet, elegant prose, she asks a question as big as history and as everyday as skipping lunch: How does hunger work?… More >>
Hunger: An Unnatural History
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The Great Mahjong Book is a perfect resource for the beginning or experienced mahjong player. This comprehensive book covers the entire history of mahjong as it spread around the globe, on the equipment and accessories used in the game, the basic rules, how and where the game first developed and all the international variants of mahjong—including China, the U.S., Holland, the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Hong Kong. Filled with hints, fun facts and numerous illustrations of memorabilia and artifacts, this authoritative and thoroughly enjoyable book is a perfect gift for anyone interested in this ancient and beguiling game…. More >>
The Great Mahjong Book: History, Lore, and Play
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An inspiring sports memoir from the family who captured America’s heart at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
The Lopez family set new records at the Beijing Olympics with three siblings on the same U.S. taekwondo team-and a fourth sibling as their coach. Mark took the silver medal, and Steven and Diana both brought home the bronze, with big brother Jean coaching them to victory. Here, for the first time, is the inspiring story of a family united behind a dream.
In 1972 Julio Lopez and his wife Ondina emigrated from Nicaragua, hoping for a better life for their family in America. In an atmosphere of love, support, mutual respect, and healthy competition, their children trained hard in taekwondo, daring to dream they might reach the pinnacle of their athletic field in the Olympics. Told in turn by Steven, Mark, Diana, and Jean, this is the incredible story of how one close-knit family’s boundless determination and rock-solid support system to… More >>
Family Power: The True Story of How “The First Family of Taekwondo” Made Olympic History
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Acclaimed novelist Benjamin Cheever–author of The Plagiarist, Famous After Death, and The Good Nanny–brings his buoyant literary style to this impassioned memoir about the sport that changed his life. From Pheidippides, who rant the first marathon in 490 BC–bringing news to Athens of the Greek victory on the plains of Marathon–to our own soldiers in Iraq today, running is an integral part of human culture and legend. In Strides, heralded author Benjamin Cheever explores the role of running in human history while interspersing this account with revelations of his own decades-long devotion to the sport. Cheever has traveled the world writing features for Runner’s World magazine, and he draws from this rich experience on every page. His adventures have taken him to Kenya in search of the secrets of the world’s fastest long-distance runners and to a 10-K race with American soldeirs in Baghdad. Cheever celebrates the quotidian personal satisfaction of a m… More >>
Strides: Running Through History With an Unlikely Athlete
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From the foremost living authority on Yoga comes the most comprehensive and reliable treatment of the subject available today. This is a work of impeccable scholarship by a person who has dedicated his life to the understanding and practice of yoga. The book offers a complete overview of every Yogic tradition, from the familiar to the lesser-known forms. It also covers all aspects of Hindu, Buddhist and Jaina Yoga, including history, philosophy, literature, psychology and practice. In addition, included are * translations of twenty Yoga treatises * the first translation of the Goraksha Paddhati … More >>
The Yoga Tradition: Its History, Literature, Philosophy and Practice
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In November 2007, Gotham Books unleashed The Truth about Chuck Norris upon the world and changed publishing forever. Containing 400 farcical facts about pop culture icon Chuck Norris, the book burned through thirteen printings, roundhouse kicked the New York Times bestseller list, and left readers delighted (and a little bit terrified)….
Now Ian Spector has returned to his voluminous vault to bring readers 200 new Chuck Norris facts alongside 200 facts about his longtime antagonist Mr. T, in a battle that pits foot against fist, beard against mohawk, and Delta Force against A-Team. Included in this fearsome tome are such startling observations as:
• There is nothing to fear but fear itself, and fear itself fears Chuck Norris.
• King Kong once challenged Godzilla to an arm-wrestling match. Mr. T won.
• The reason newborn babies cry is because they know they have just entered a world with Chuck Norris.
• The last man to … More >>
Chuck Norris Vs. Mr. T: 400 Facts About the Baddest Dudes in the History of Ever
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In Why We Run, biologist, award-winning nature writer, and ultramarathoner Bernd Heinrich explores a new perspective on human evolution by examining the phenomenon of ultraendurance and makes surprising discoveries about the physical, spiritual — and primal — drive to win. At once lyrical and scientific, Why We Run shows Heinrich’s signature blend of biology, anthropology, psychology, and philosophy, infused with his passion to discover how and why we can achieve superhuman abilities…. More >>
Why We Run: A Natural History
This study gathers skeletal evidence on seven basic indicators of health to assess chronic conditions that affected individuals who lived in the Western Hemisphere from 5000 B.C. to the late nineteenth century. Signs of biological stress in childhood and of degeneration in joints and in teeth increased in the several millenia before the arrival of Columbus as populations moved into less healthy ecological environments…. More >>
The Backbone of History: Health and Nutrition in the Western Hemisphere
Here, Walter Gratzer offers a marvelous smorgasbord of stories taken from the history of nutrition, providing an engaging account of the struggle to find the ingredients of a healthy diet, and the fads and quackery that have waylaid the unwary.
Gratzer recounts this history with characteristic crispness and verve. The book teems with colorful personalities, a veritable who’s who of medical history, and highlights the brilliant flashes of insight as well as the sadly mistaken leaps of logic in the centuries-long effort to understand how the body uses food. We see the ingenious experiments used to reveal the workings of the stomach, the chemical analyses that uncovered the nature of proteins, carbohydrates, and vitamins, and the slow recognition that malnutrition lay behind such terrible diseases as scurvy, rickets, beriberi, and pellagra. Along the way, we read about the invention of the tin can (which originally had to be opened with a hammer and chisel), learn why ancient Egypt… More >>
Terrors of the Table: The Curious History of Nutrition
From the time of Malthus, the insufficient supply of food resources has been considered the main constraint of population growth and the main factor in the high mortality prevailing in pre-industrial times. In this essay, the mechanisms of biological, social and cultural nature linking subsistence, mortality and population and determining its short and long term cycles are discussed. The author’s analysis examines the existing evidence from the century of the Great Plague to the industrial revolution, interpreting the scanty quantitative information concerning caloric budgets and food supply, prices and wages, changes in body height and epidemiological history, demographic behaviours of the rich and of the poor. The emerging picture sheds doubts on the existence of a long term interrelation between subsistence of nutritional levels and mortality, showing that the level of the latter was determined more by the epidemiological cycles than by the nutritional level of the population. The … More >>
Population and Nutrition: An Essay on European Demographic History
