Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey
Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey

Author: Florence Williams

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2022-02-01

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 1324003499

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Winner of the 2023 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award A Five Books "Best Literary Science Writing" Book of 2023 • A Smithsonian Best Science Book of 2022 • A Prospect Magazine Top Memoir of 2022 • A KCRW Life Examined Best Book of 2022 "Keen observer [and] deft writer" (David Quammen) Florence Williams explores the fascinating, cutting-edge science of heartbreak while seeking creative ways to mend her own. When her twenty-five-year marriage suddenly falls apart, journalist Florence Williams expects the loss to hurt. But when she starts feeling physically sick, losing weight and sleep, she sets out in pursuit of rational explanation. She travels to the frontiers of the science of "social pain" to learn why heartbreak hurts so much—and why so much of the conventional wisdom about it is wrong. Soon Williams finds herself on a surprising path that leads her from neurogenomic research laboratories to trying MDMA in a Portland therapist’s living room, from divorce workshops to the mountains and rivers that restore her. She tests her blood for genetic markers of grief, undergoes electrical shocks while looking at pictures of her ex, and discovers that our immune cells listen to loneliness. Searching for insight as well as personal strategies to game her way back to health, she seeks out new relationships and ventures into the wilderness in search of an extraordinary antidote: awe. With warmth, daring, wit, and candor, Williams offers a gripping account of grief and healing. Heartbreak is a remarkable merging of science and self-discovery that will change the way we think about loneliness, health, and what it means to fall in and out of love.

The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative
The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative

Author: Florence Williams

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2017-02-07

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 0393242722

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"Highly informative and remarkably entertaining." —Elle From forest trails in Korea, to islands in Finland, to eucalyptus groves in California, Florence Williams investigates the science behind nature’s positive effects on the brain. Delving into brand-new research, she uncovers the powers of the natural world to improve health, promote reflection and innovation, and strengthen our relationships. As our modern lives shift dramatically indoors, these ideas—and the answers they yield—are more urgent than ever.

Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War
Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War

Author: Mary Roach

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2016-06-07

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 0393245454

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A New York Times / National Bestseller "America's funniest science writer" (Washington Post) Mary Roach explores the science of keeping human beings intact, awake, sane, uninfected, and uninfested in the bizarre and extreme circumstances of war. Grunt tackles the science behind some of a soldier's most challenging adversaries—panic, exhaustion, heat, noise—and introduces us to the scientists who seek to conquer them. Mary Roach dodges hostile fire with the U.S. Marine Corps Paintball Team as part of a study on hearing loss and survivability in combat. She visits the fashion design studio of U.S. Army Natick Labs and learns why a zipper is a problem for a sniper. She visits a repurposed movie studio where amputee actors help prepare Marine Corps medics for the shock and gore of combat wounds. At Camp Lemmonier, Djibouti, in east Africa, we learn how diarrhea can be a threat to national security. Roach samples caffeinated meat, sniffs an archival sample of a World War II stink bomb, and stays up all night with the crew tending the missiles on the nuclear submarine USS Tennessee. She answers questions not found in any other book on the military: Why is DARPA interested in ducks? How is a wedding gown like a bomb suit? Why are shrimp more dangerous to sailors than sharks? Take a tour of duty with Roach, and you’ll never see our nation’s defenders in the same way again.

Breakup Bootcamp
Breakup Bootcamp

Author: Amy Chan

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2020-12-01

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0062914758

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“A relationship expert whose work is like that of a scientific Carrie Bradshaw.” —THE OBSERVER A self-affirming, holistic guide for everyone—single or married, divorced or dating—to transforming heartbreak into healing by the founder of the innovative and revolutionary Renew Breakup Bootcamp Amy Chan hit rock bottom when she discovered that her boyfriend cheated on her. Although she was angry and broken-hearted, Chan soon came to realize that the breakup was the shakeup she needed to redirect her life. Instead of descending into darkness, she used the pain of the breakup as a bridge to self-actualization. She devoted herself to learning various healing modalities from the ancient to the scientific, and dived into the psychology of love. It worked. Fast forward years later, Amy completely transformed her life, her relationships and founded a breakup bootcamp helping countless women heal their hearts. In Breakup Bootcamp, Amy Chan directs her experience as a relationship columnist and as the creator of Renew Breakup Bootcamp into a practical, thoughtful guide to turning broken hearts into an opportunity to break out of complacency and destructive habits. Dubbed "the Chief Heart Hacker," Amy Chan grounds her practical advice and tried and tested methods rooted in cutting-edge psychology and research, helping first her bootcamp attendees and now her readers most effectively heal and reclaim their self-love. Breakup Bootcamp comes at the perfect time, when many are feeling the intensity of being in or out of a relationship, lonely or suffocated, and flirting with old toxic relationships they’ve outgrown. Relatable, life-changing, and backed by sound scientific research, Breakup Bootcamp can help anyone turn their greatest heartbreak into a powerful tool for growth.

The Stone Girl: A Novel
The Stone Girl: A Novel

Author: Dirk Wittenborn

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2020-06-16

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 1324005823

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The Stone Girl is a riveting tale of deception, vengeance, and power set against the haunting beauty of the Adirondack wilderness. Deep in the Adirondack Mountains lies a speck of a town called Rangeley. There isn’t much to this tiny town, but it is at the crossroads of serene fishing streams off the Mink River, pristine hunting grounds in the surrounding mountains, and vast estates of the extremely rich. It is also the gateway to the Mohawk Club, which houses the Lost Boys, an exclusive group of wealthy and powerful men with global influence and a taste for depravity. Raised wild and poor in the shadows of the Mohawk Club, Evie Quimby was a teenager when she first fell victim to the Lost Boys. Seventeen years later, she is now a world-renowned art restorer famous for repairing even the most-broken statues. After spending half her life in Paris, establishing her reputation and raising her daughter Chloé, Evie has come a long way from the girl who left Rangeley behind. But when Chloé receives a visit from an elegant stranger who claims to be an old friend of her mother’s, the ghosts of Evie’s past return in full force, pulling her back to the North Country of her girlhood and into the tangled, intricate web of the Lost Boys. Evie bands together with her formidable mother and an embattled heiress, both victims of the Lost Boys, in pursuit of an unusual and heart-stopping vengeance.

Floaters: Poems
Floaters: Poems

Author: Martín Espada

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2021-01-19

Total Pages: 75

ISBN-13: 0393541045

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Winner of the 2021 National Book Award for Poetry From the winner of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize come masterfully crafted narratives of protest, grief and love. Martín Espada is a poet who "stirs in us an undeniable social consciousness," says Richard Blanco. Floaters offers exuberant odes and defiant elegies, songs of protest and songs of love from one of the essential voices in American poetry. Floaters takes its title from a term used by certain Border Patrol agents to describe migrants who drown trying to cross over. The title poem responds to the viral photograph of Óscar and Valeria, a Salvadoran father and daughter who drowned in the Río Grande, and allegations posted in the "I’m 10-15" Border Patrol Facebook group that the photo was faked. Espada bears eloquent witness to confrontations with anti-immigrant bigotry as a tenant lawyer years ago, and now sings the praises of Central American adolescents kicking soccer balls over a barbed wire fence in an internment camp founded on that same bigotry. He also knows that times of hate call for poems of love—even in the voice of a cantankerous Galápagos tortoise. The collection ranges from historical epic to achingly personal lyrics about growing up, the baseball that drops from the sky and smacks Espada in the eye as he contemplates a girl’s gently racist question. Whether celebrating the visionaries—the fallen dreamers, rebels and poets—or condemning the outrageous governmental neglect of his father’s Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane María, Espada invokes ferocious, incandescent spirits.

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal
Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal

Author: Mary Roach

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2014-04

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0393348741

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The irresistible, ever-curious, and always bestselling Roach returns with a new adventure to the invisible realm that people carry around inside.

Breasts
Breasts

Author: Florence Williams

Publisher: Text Publishing

Published: 2012-05-23

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 1921922648

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Feted and fetishised, the breast is an evolutionary masterpiece. But in the modern world, the breast is changing. Breasts are getting bigger, developing earlier and attracting newfangled chemicals. Increasingly, the odds are stacked against us in the struggle against breast cancer—even among men. So what makes breasts so mercurial—and so vulnerable? As part of the research for this book, science journalist Florence Williams underwent tests on her own breasts and breast milk. She was shocked to learn that she was feeding her baby not just milk but also fire retardants and a whole host of other chemicals, all ingested throughout her life and stored in her breast tissue. At its heart, Breasts: a natural and unnatural history is the story of how our breasts went from being honed by the environment to being harmed by it; a revealing and at times alarming look at the way the changes in our environments, diets and lifestyles have altered our breasts, our health and, ultimately, the health of future generations. Accessible and entertaining—part biology, part anthropology and part medical journalism—Breasts is a wake-up call for all women.

Wired for Love
Wired for Love

Author: Stephanie Cacioppo

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Published: 2022-04-05

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 125079062X

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From the world’s foremost neuroscientist of romantic love comes a personal story of connection and heartbreak that brings new understanding to an old truth: better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. At thirty-seven, Dr. Stephanie Cacioppo was content to be single. She was fulfilled by her work on the neuroscience of romantic love—how finding and growing with a partner literally reshapes our brains. That was, until she met the foremost neuroscientist of loneliness. A whirlwind romance led to marriage and to sharing an office at the University of Chicago. After seven years of being inseparable at work and at home, Stephanie lost her beloved husband, John, following his intense battle with cancer. In Wired for Love, Stephanie tells not just a science story but also a love story. She shares revelatory insights into how and why we fall in love, what makes love last, and how we process love lost—all grounded in cutting-edge findings in brain chemistry and behavioral science. Woven through it all is her moving personal story, from astonishment to unbreakable bond to grief and healing. Her experience and her work enrich each other, creating a singular blend of science and lyricism that’s essential reading for anyone looking for connection.

Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs
Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs

Author: Beth Ann Fennelly

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2017-10-10

Total Pages: 94

ISBN-13: 0393609480

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“A surprisingly maximalist portrait of a life.” —New York Times Book Review The 52 micro-memoirs in genre-defying Heating & Cooling offer bright glimpses into a richly lived life, combining the compression of poetry with the truth-telling of nonfiction into one heartfelt, celebratory book. Alternatingly wistful and wry, ranging from childhood recollections to quirky cultural observations, these micro-memoirs build on one another to shape a life from unexpectedly illuminating moments.