Books published by Basic Books

"I have found The Einstein Syndrome filled with insight, acute observations, and fertile ideas...This is an invaluable contribution to human knowledge by one of the great minds of our time."--Steven Pinker, author of How the Mind Works

From Paleolithic flax to 3D knitting, a global history of textiles and the world they made

A preeminent music historian and critic presents a global history of music from the bottom up

"Arthur Benjamin... joyfully shows you how to make nature's numbers dance. Let his book be your partner for a lifetime of learning."-Bill Nye, Science Educator and CEO, The Planetary Society

The classic work on group psychotherapy

The classic work on the rules of sex, still as provocative as the day it was published, updated for a new generation.

A bestselling military historian provides a comprehensive account of how World War II was fought, showing how disparate conflicts waged across the globe in the air, on land, and at sea coalesced into a single war-and how the Allied powers won it

World-renowned urbanist Richard Florida's bestselling classic on the transformation of our cities in the twenty-first century -- now updated with a new preface

Case transcripts with introductions and interviews with Boscolo and Cecchin shed light on their acclaimed methods for treating families.

An acclaimed parenting and childhood development expert argues that kids today are suffering, both physically and mentally, because parents have abdicated authority,and explains how to reverse this trend.

"Nobody has ever articulated so passionately and intelligently what we're doing to ourselves by substituting technologically mediated social interaction. Equipped with penetrating intelligence and a sense of humor, Turkle surveys the front lines of the social-digital transformation." - Lev Grossman, TIME

"[Sowell's] take on how culture, geography, politics and social factors affect how societies progress"or don't"will rile those addicted to political correctness but leave everyone else wiser."-Forbes

A revolutionary argument for how putting patients in charge will make healthcare better for everyone

"[T]he genius of Hanson's fascinating, inspiring, and entertaining book stems from the fact that it is not about how all kinds of things grow from seeds it is about the seeds themselves."-Mark Kurlansky, New York Times Book Review

The natural and cultural history of how people, birds, and the feather came together

Everyone talks to their pets; Chad Orzel tells his about relativity.

"In December 1937, in what was then the capital of China, one of the most brutal massacres in the long annals of wartime barbarity occurred. The Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking (Na"

In a memoir more chilling than a John le Carre novel, we meet the senior KGB officer who recruited and handled two of America's most dangerous traitors, and whose career spanned four continents

Distills the essence of a wide range of therapies into a creative synthesis, opening up a new way of understanding each person's confrontation with four ultimate concerns: isolation, meaninglessness, death, and freedom.

Selected as one of the six best nonfiction books of 1990 by the editors f the New York Times Book Review , this is a compelling and entertaining account of the author's two-and-a-half year adventure in Equatorial Guinea, and his efforts to get this small bankrupt African nation on the path of structural development.

The dual reflections of psychiatrist and patient during therapy: a collaboration between the author of Love's Executioner and a talented young writer labeled as "schizoid."

Migrations and Cultures goes beyond the political view of immigration and presents the whole phenomena of migration and immigration and the major role it plays in the general advancement of the human race.

A 1976 forecast that predicts a radically altered social structure, within thirty to fifty years, by which a more sophisticated technology is employed to harness science toward more instrumental purposes.