By Julia Shaw

Dr. Julia Shaw, a criminal psychologist, uses the latest scientific research to offer a more enlightened and nuanced explanation for why people behave so badly and how we can prevent evil acts by understanding more profoundly how such acts come about - and what truly makes us evil.

By Robyn Ryle

Written in the style of a choose-your-own-adventure, this book takes the reader through an adventure of gender, race, sexual orientation, and more to help readers empathize with and understand the challenges that we all face, and how those challenges are influenced by our assigned and chosen genders, sexuality, and other variables.

By Mark Miodownik

Each chapter focuses on a trait of some of the liquids that we encounter every day, such as glues and adhesives, alcohol and other intoxicants, and explosive liquids. Exploring liquid chemistry has never been so entertaining.

By Mark Forsyth

Almost every culture on earth has drink, and where there's drink there's drunkenness. But in every age and in every place drunkenness is a little bit different. A Brief History of Drunkenness traces humankind's love affair with booze from our primate ancestors through to Prohibition and modern Japanese Nomikai.

By Gaston Dorren

A tour of the world's twenty most-spoken languages explores the history, geography, linguistics, and cultures that have been shaped by languages and their customs.

By Ruth Goodman

Arguing that one can discern more about a society from what was singled out as unacceptable, Goodman shows how many of the insults and conflicts of the time centered on reputation and honor, as a good name was currency in Elizabethan society. Covering issues such as physical violence, offensive speech, and impolite gestures, this latest work addresses the ways in which one could be set apart from society, either intentionally or unintentionally.

By Ryan North

A rollicking history of the key technologies that made each stage of human civilization possible details the science, engineering, mathematics, art, music, philosophy, facts and figures required for even the most clueless time traveler to build a civilization. Come for the history, stay for the witty asides.

By Randall Munroe

Millions of people visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe's iconic webcomic. His stick-figure drawings about science, technology, language, and love have a large and passionate following. Fans of xkcd ask Munroe a lot of strange questions. What if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light? How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? If there was a robot apocalypse, how long would humanity last? In pursuit of answers, Munroe runs computer simulations, pores over stacks of declassified military research memos, solves differential equations, and consults with nuclear reactor operators. His responses are masterpieces of clarity and hilarity, complemented by signature xkcd comics. They often predict the complete annihilation of humankind, or at least a really big explosion. The book features new and never-before-answered questions, along with updated and expanded versions of the most popular answers from the xkcd website.

By Lisa Monosci

How to eat for maximum brain power and health from an expert in both neuroscience and nutrition. Like our bodies, our brains have very specific food requirements. And in this eye-opening book from an author who is both a neuroscientist and a certified integrative nutritionist, we learn what should be on our menu. Dr. Lisa Mosconi, whose research spans an extraordinary range of specialties including brain science, the microbiome, and nutritional genomics, notes that the dietary needs of the brain are substantially different from those of the other organs, yet few of us have any idea what they might be. Her innovative approach to cognitive health incorporates concepts that most doctors have yet to learn. Busting through advice based on pseudoscience, Dr. Mosconi provides recommendations for a complete food plan, while calling out noteworthy surprises, including why that paleo diet you are following may not be ideal, why avoiding gluten may be a terrible mistake, and how simply getting enough water can dramatically improve alertness. Including comprehensive lists of what to eat and what to avoid, a detailed quiz that will tell you where you are on the brain health spectrum, and 24 mouth-watering brain-boosting recipes that grow out of Dr. Mosconi's own childhood in Italy, Brain Food gives us the ultimate plan for a healthy brain. Brain Food will appeal to anyone looking to improve memory, prevent cognitive decline, eliminate brain fog, lift depression, or just sharpen their edge

By Jose Andres