Twins are nature's living laboratories. Through them we are able to uncover new information concerning the genetic and environmental factors affecting who we are. Studies using identical and fraternal twins hold the keys to understanding our intellectual abilities, personality traits, social attitudes, and behavior. In Entwined Lives, Dr. Nancy Segal brings together cutting-edge information with illustrative case histories of twins and their families. In addition to the fascinating stories of identical twins reared apart and reunited as adults, Dr. Segal provides insights into the unusual language patterns of twins, how twin studies affect legal decisions, the role of fertility treatments in twin and "twinlike" conceptions, and more. This groundbreaking book explores the ways in which twins enhance our knowledge of human behavioral and physical development, while shedding new light on the nature/nurture debate and on the burgeoning field of evolutionary psychology.
A groundbreaking study of twins brings together the latest scientific research and case studies to explore the complexities of human behavior and development as it examines such topics as twins separated at birth, pseudotwins, the loss of a twin, the implications of new fertility drugs, and more. 10,000 first printing. Tour.
"[A] stunning, deeply researched, and gracefully written social history." -- Leslie Schwalm, University of Iowa This study of women in antebellum Charleston, South Carolina, looks at the roles of women in an urban slave society. Cynthia M. Kennedy takes up issues of gender, race, condition (slave or free), and class and examines the ways each contributed to conveying and replicating power. She analyses what it meant to be a woman in a world where historically specific social classifications determined personal destiny and where at the same time people of color and white people mingled daily. Kennedy's study examines the lives of the women of Charleston and the variety of their attempts to negotiate the web of social relations that ensnared them.
One Woman. Her ultimate desire. The three men who love her. Can they overcome their haunted pasts to give her life she has yearned for? ~All I'd ever wanted was to be loved. I had two men who I cared about and they both loved me in different ways. One gave me the romance that I wanted and the other gave me the thrill that I craved. Separately they gave me what I needed, but I wanted more. I wanted it all. So when my best friend stirred the pot, I knew that these three men could give me a glimpse of everything my heart and soul ever yearned for. Why did I have to choose? None of us realized how deeply my lovers were connected, in ways I couldn't fathom. It should have brought us closer together, or would it all be too much for us to overcome?**Contains scenes of mild BDSM & M/M; M/M/M//F
A leading expert on twins delves into the stories behind her research to reveal the profound joys and real-life traumas of 12 remarkable sets of twins, triplets, and quadruplets. Segal unravels these moving stories with an eye for the challenges that life as a twin (or triplet or quadruplet) can pose to parents, friends, and spouses, as well as the twins themselves.
Should digital technology be viewed as a new life form, sharing our ecosystem and coevolving with us? Are humans defining technology, or is technology defining humans? In this book, Edward Ashford Lee considers the case that we are less in control of the trajectory of technology than we think. It shapes us as much as we shape it, and it may be more defensible to think of technology as the result of a Darwinian coevolution than the result of top-down intelligent design. Richard Dawkins famously said that a chicken is an egg's way of making another egg. Is a human a computer's way of making another computer? To understand this question requires a deep dive into how evolution works, how humans are different from computers, and how the way technology develops resembles the emergence of a new life form on our planet. Lee presents the case for considering digital beings to be living, then offers counterarguments. What we humans do with our minds is more than computation, and what digital systems do—be teleported at the speed of light, backed up, and restored—may never be possible for humans. To believe that we are simply computations, he argues, is a “dataist” faith and scientifically indefensible. Digital beings depend on humans—and humans depend on digital beings. More likely than a planetary wipe-out of humanity is an ongoing, symbiotic coevolution of culture and technology.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “brilliant [and] entrancing” (The Guardian) journey into the hidden lives of fungi—the great connectors of the living world—and their astonishing and intimate roles in human life, with the power to heal our bodies, expand our minds, and help us address our most urgent environmental problems. “Grand and dizzying in how thoroughly it recalibrates our understanding of the natural world.”—Ed Yong, author of An Immense World ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—Time, BBC Science Focus, The Daily Mail, Geographical, The Times, The Telegraph, New Statesman, London Evening Standard, Science Friday When we think of fungi, we likely think of mushrooms. But mushrooms are only fruiting bodies, analogous to apples on a tree. Most fungi live out of sight, yet make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that supports and sustains nearly all living systems. Fungi provide a key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel, and behave. In the first edition of this mind-bending book, Sheldrake introduced us to this mysterious but massively diverse kingdom of life. This exquisitely designed volume, abridged from the original, features more than one hundred full-color images that bring the spectacular variety, strangeness, and beauty of fungi to life as never before. Fungi throw our concepts of individuality and even intelligence into question. They are metabolic masters, earth makers, and key players in most of life’s processes. They can change our minds, heal our bodies, and even help us remediate environmental disaster. By examining fungi on their own terms, Sheldrake reveals how these extraordinary organisms—and our relationships with them—are changing our understanding of how life works. Winner of the Wainwright Prize, the Royal Society Science Book Prize, and the Guild of Food Writers Award • Shortlisted for the British Book Award • Longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize
The remarkable story of “outsider” artist Judith Scott, who was institutionalized for more than thirty years before being reunited with her sister From birth, fraternal twins Judith and Joyce Scott lived as if they were one person in two bodies, understanding instinctively what the other wanted and felt, despite the fact that Judy had Down syndrome, profound deafness, and never learned to speak or sign. But this idyllic childhood of color, texture, and feeling ended abruptly when, at age seven, Judy was taken from their shared bed while Joyce slept, not knowing that the wholeness they had known was being shattered. For the next three decades, Joyce is left without her other half and must grieve unexpected loss while navigating her relationship with an emotionally distant mother—alone. Even so, her life parallels her twin’s in surprising ways. While in college, Joyce too is sent away, pressured to relinquish the secret daughter she bore in hiding to adoption. Decades later, Joyce resolves to reunite with her sister and fill their remaining years with joy. After overcoming legal hurdles to become Judy’s legal guardian, she enrolls her in an art center for adults with disabilities in Oakland, California. Judy is hesitant at first, but after two years of uninterested painting and drawing, her untapped creativity suddenly ignites when she is introduced to fiber art, and she begins carefully and intentionally winding yarn and other materials around combinations of found objects. With unflagging intensity, Judy works five days a week for the next eighteen years, producing more than two-hundred astoundingly diverse fiber sculptures. Unconcerned with her growing fame, she remains fully immersed in her artistic vision until her death in 2005. Today, Judith Scott’s work is displayed in museums and galleries around the world, in some of the most prestigious collections of contemporary art. Entwined is a penetrating personal narrative that explores a complex world of disability, loss, reunion, and the resiliency of the human spirit. Part memoir, part biography, Entwined is a poignant and astonishing story about sisters finding their voices in each other’s love and through art.
