Eighteen months after Vivien, his beloved transgender girlfriend, slipped into a coma after a suicide attempt, eighteen-year-old Miles begins healing while photographing her empty shoes against the stark landscapes of Iceland. Told through a series of instant messages.

"Do you shape the world or does the world shape you? Is freedom something we are born with or something we must work to attain? Offering a torrent of mind-expanding ideas and information THE LOTTERY OF BIRTH is going to make you think again about what it means to be free. Drawing on the best minds in philosophy, history, psychology, physics and economics, it employs decades of evidence to interrogate what we are, where we are and where we want to...

Are you above average? Every day we are measured against the yardstick of averages, judged according to how closely we resemble it or how far we deviate from it. In The End of Average, Todd Rose shows that no one is average. Not you. Not your kids. Not your employees or students. This isn't hollow sloganeering- it's a mathematical fact with enormous practical consequences. Weaving science, history, and his experiences as a high school dropout, Rose...

Explores why it is that we crave conformity, how that affects people who are different, and what they can do about it. Dives into the history of social norms and why some people hew to them more strictly than others, explores the causes behind-and the consequences of-social rejection, reveals the hidden upsides to being "weird," as well as the strategies that people who are different might use in order to achieve success in a society that values normalcy,...

"Bystander Society provides an overview of the notion of by standing within Nazi Germany. It details the social conditions before and during the Nazi regime in Germany that eventually facilitated a series of mass murders. The role of ordinary Germans enabled the emergence of Nazisms and its subsequent exclusion, persecution, and extermination of people. The creation of a bystander society coincides with how most Germans were unable to act or developed...