Archives de l’auteur : WebmasterBenisti

MISBELIEF de Dan Ariely

The renowned social scientist, professor, and bestselling author of Predictably Irrational delivers his most urgent and compelling book—an eye-opening exploration of the human side of the misinformation crisis—examining what drives otherwise rational people to adopt deeply irrational beliefs.

MISBELIEF:
What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things
by Dan Ariely
HarperCollins, September 2023
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan)

Misinformation affects all of us on a daily basis—from social media to larger political challenges, from casual conversations in supermarkets, to even our closest relationships. While we recognize the dangers that misinformation poses, the problem is complex—far beyond what policing social media alone can achieve—and too often our limited solutions are shaped by partisan politics and individual interpretations of truth.
In MISBELIEF, preeminent social scientist Dan Ariely argues that to understand the irrational appeal of misinformation, we must first understand the behavior of “misbelief”—the psychological and social journey that leads people to mistrust accepted truths, entertain alternative facts, and even embrace full-blown conspiracy theories. Misinformation, it turns out, appeals to something innate in all of us—on the right and the left—and it is only by understanding this psychology that we can blunt its effects. Grounded in years of study as well as Ariely’s own experience as a target of disinformation, MISBELIEF is an eye-opening and comprehensive analysis of the psychological drivers that cause otherwise rational people to adopt deeply irrational beliefs. Utilizing the latest research, Ariely reveals the key elements—emotional, cognitive, personality, and social—that drive people down the funnel of false information and mistrust, showing how under the right circumstances, anyone can become a misbeliever.
Yet Ariely also offers hope. Even as advanced artificial intelligence has become capable of generating convincing fake news stories at an unprecedented scale, he shows that awareness of these forces fueling misbelief make us, as individuals and as a society, more resilient to its allure. Combating misbelief requires a strategy rooted not in conflict, but in empathy. The sooner we recognize that misbelief is above all else a human problem, the sooner we can become the solution ourselves.

Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University. He is a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight; co-creator of the film documentary (Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies; and a three-time New York Times bestselling author. His books include Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, The Honest Truth About Dishonesty, Irrationally Yours, Payoff, Dollars and Sense, and Amazing Decisions. His TED talks have been viewed more than 27 million times. Dan has what appears to be bad luck in terms of the troubles he gets into, but also the good fortune to learn and develop from these challenges.

HARD BODY de Robert James Russell

A graphic narrative of body dysmorphia; a memoir of obsession, shame, and what it means to face the physical space you take up in the world.

HARD BODY:
A Personal History of the Self on Display
by Robert James Russell
Simon & Schuster, 2024
(via The Lark Group)

In the vein of graphic memoirs from Meichi Ng, Alison Bechdel, and Adrian Tomine, HARD BODY by Robert James Russell is a graphic narrative – a blend of comics, memoir, and history – about the author’s experience of male body dysmorphia. From personal stories about how the author’s body has been a commodity for others – while modeling or working at the cult-like Abercrombie & Fitch or teaching – to examining the history and current climate of “get fit” culture, the rise of personal fitness in the early 20th Century (Muscular Christianity, anyone?), and our collective obsession with our appearance throughout history, HARD BODY is a memoir of obsession, shame, and what it means to face the physical space you take up in the world.

Robert James Russell is a wellpublished, former creative writing professor who has taught national workshops for fiction, nonfiction, and graphic narratives across the country. He is the founder of two national literary brands (Midwestern Gothic and CHEAP POP).

THE HEARTBEAT OF THE WILD de David Quammen

In this inspiring collection of essays, acclaimed author David Quammen journeys to places where civilization meets raw nature and explores the challenge of balancing the needs of both.

THE HEARTBEAT OF THE WILD:
Dispatches From Landscapes of Wonder, Peril, and Hope
by David Quammen
National Geographic, May 2023
(via Kaplan/DeFiore Rights)

For more than two decades, award-winning science and nature writer David Quammen has traveled to Earth’s most far-flung and fragile destinations, sending back field notes from places caught in the tension between humans and the wild. This illuminating book features 20 of those assignments: elegantly written narratives, originally published in National Geographic magazine and updated for today, telling colorful and impassioned stories from some of the planet’s wildest locales. 
Quammen shares encounters with African elephants, chimpanzees, and gorillas (and their saviors, including Jane Goodall); the salmon of northeastern Russia and the people whose livelihood depends on them; the lions of Kenya and the villagers whose homes border on parks created to preserve the species; and the champions of rewilding efforts in southernmost South America, designed to rescue iconic species including jaguars and macaws.
With a new introduction, afterword, and notes framing each story, Quammen reminds us of the essential role played by wild nature at the heart of the planet.

Three-time winner of the National Magazine Award (the Ellie) and author of 15 books, David Quammen is one of the world’s top nature and science writers. His 2012 book Spillover, which predicted a worldwide pandemic, was shortlisted for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award and has made him one of the most sought-after commentators on the coronavirus. He is a regular contributor to National Geographic, The New Yorker, and the New York Times. He lives in Bozeman, Montana.

LIKE THE APPEARANCE OF HORSES d’Andrew Krivak

A novel of one family, a century of war, and the promise of homecoming from Dayton Literary Peace Prize winner and National Book Award finalist Andrew Krivak.

LIKE THE APPEARANCE OF HORSES
by Andrew Krivak
Bellevue Press, May 2023
(via Kaplan/DeFiore Rights)

Rooted in the small, mountain town of Dardan, Pennsylvania, where patriarch Jozef Vinich settled after surviving World War I, LIKE THE APPEARANCE OF HORSES immerses us in the intimate lives of a family whose fierce bonds have been shaped by the great conflicts of the past century.
After Bexhet Konar escapes fascist Hungary and crosses the ocean to find Jozef, the man who saved his life in 1919, he falls in love with Jozef’s daughter, Hannah, enlists in World War II, and is drawn into a personal war of revenge. Many years later, their youngest son, Samuel, is taken prisoner in Vietnam and returns home with a heroin addiction and deep physical and psychological wounds. As Samuel travels his own path toward healing, his son will graduate from Annapolis as a Marine on his way to Iraq.
In spare, breathtaking prose, LIKE THE APPEARANCE OF HORSES  is the freestanding, culminating novel in Andrew Krivak’s award-winning Dardan Trilogy, which began with 
The Sojourn and The Signal Flame. It is a story about borders drawn within families as well as around nations, and redrawn by ethnicity, prejudice, and war. It is also a tender story of love and how it is tested by duty, loyalty, and honor.

Subtle and nuanced.” —Kirkus (starred review)

Krivak’s resplendent multigenerational family saga expertly braids the horrors of war with the struggles of those waiting for loved ones to return home.” —Booklist (starred review)

Krivak impresses with this layered story of deferred homecomings and the elusive nature of peace.” —Publishers Weekly

Andrew Krivak is the author of The Bear, a Mountain Book Competition winner and NEA Big Read selection, and the novels of the Dardan Trilogy: The Sojourn, a National Book Award finalist and winner of both the Chautauqua Prize and Dayton Literary Peace Prize; and The Signal Flame, a Chautauqua Prize finalist. He lives with his wife and three children in Somerville, Massachusetts, and Jaffrey, New Hampshire.

THE NATURALIST OF AMSTERDAM de Melissa Ashley

Set in 1700s Amsterdam, this historical novel explores the life of entomologist and artist Maria Sibylla Merian’s daughter Dorothea Graff.

THE NATURALIST OF AMSTERDAM
by Melissa Ashley
Affirm Press (Australia), September 2023
(via Kaplan/DeFiore Rights)

Credit: David Merrylees

Set in 1700s Amsterdam, The Naturalist of Amsterdam follows the life of Dorothea Graff, daughter of the famed artist and naturalist, Maria Sybilla Merian. From her early years within the confines of the Labadist community of Walter Schloss to her mother’s artist studio in Amsterdam and the wilds of South America, Dorothea’s story charts an amazingly rich and colourful period of discovery and explores the challenge of being the offspring of one of the most famous female artists in history. For as long as she can remember, Dorothea Graff has served her scientist-artist mother, Maria Sibylla Merian, in the family atelier with her older sister Hanna.
At just twenty years old, Dorothea decides to join her mother on a once in a lifetime expedition to the Dutch Colony of Suriname to observe and paint its insect and plant life. A commercial artist, businesswoman and printmaker, Maria has previously published illustrated volumes of her studies of European butterflies and plants, but entranced by displays of Suriname insects in the collections of Amsterdam’s rich burgher merchant-traders, Maria decides to travel to their source, where she will conduct studies in their habitat to feature them in a magnificent, hand-coloured publication.
All Maria and Dorothea’s savings have been ploughed into the expedition, which is fraught with danger and peril, but fame and greatness are never achieved without enormous sacrifice and suffering – The Metamorphosis of the Insects of Suriname will one day make Maria world-famous.
THE NATURALIST OF AMSTERDAM
asks the question: who are we really outside of our work, and given another chance at happiness, should we take it?

Melissa Ashley is a writer, poet, birder and academic who tutors in poetry and creative writing at the University of Queensland in Australia. Her first novel, The Birdman’s Wife, has been printed in three formats and sold more than 35,000 copies in Australia, and her follow-up novel The Bee and the Orange Tree was also a bestseller. She lives in Brisbane, Australia.