Thomas Gradgrind is an eminently practical man who believes in facts and statistics and has brought up his two children, Louisa and Tom, accordingly, thoroughly suppressing the imaginative sides of their nature. They are raised in ignorance of love and affection, and the consequences are devastating. No other work of Dickens presents so harsh an indictment against the attitude of life he associated with Utilitarianism. With savage bitterness Dickens...

"There's one thing Jay Collier knows for sure--he's a statistical anomaly as the only out gay kid in his small rural Washington town. While all his friends can't stop talking about their heterosexual hookups and relationships, Jay can only dream of his own firsts, compiling a romance to-do list of all the things he hopes to one day experience--his Gay Agenda. Then, against all odds, Jay's family moves to Seattle and he starts his senior year at a...

"For readers of The Rosie Project and One Plus One, an "entertaining and moving" novel about what happens when a matchmaking company finds an ideal match in an unlikely pair, by the author of The Unhoneymooners"-- Single mom Jessica Davis is a data and statistics wizard, but no amount of number crunching can convince her to step back into the dating world. Jess has been left behind too often to feel comfortable letting anyone in; she holds her loved...

Set against the backdrop of civil war and chaos in 1990's Sierra Leone, Blood Diamond is the story of Danny Archer - an ex mercenary from Zimbabwe - and Solomon Vandy - a Mende fisherman. Both men are African, but their histories as different as any can be, until their fates become joined in a common quest to recover a rare pink diamond that can transform their lives. While in jail for smuggling, Archer learns that Solomon - who was taken from his...

"The only world atlas updated annually, guaranteeing that users will find the most current geographic information ... Full of crisp, clear cartography of urban areas and virtually uninhabited landscapes around the globe, the Atlas is filled with maps of cities and regions at carefully selected scales that give a striking view of the Earth's surface. It opens with a fascinating look at world statistics, a six-page special on 'Land and Maritime Boudaries,...

"A powerful mystery about a Native American archaeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs who must reckon with her past when she is called back to Oklahoma to investigate both the disappearance of her sister and a new case of a missing Native girl that turns up evidence with her name on it. Syd Walker fled her rural Oklahoma hometown-scarred by abandoned mines and a mounting opioid crisis-and never looked back. Now, she lives in Rhode Island as an...

Don Tillman, professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. He is a man who can count all his friends on the fingers of one hand, whose lifelong difficulty with social rituals has convinced him that he is simply not wired for romance. So when an acquaintance informs him that he would make a "wonderful" husband, his first reaction is shock. Yet he must concede to the statistical probability that there is someone for everyone, and he embarks...

We are bombarded with more information each day than our brains can process -- especially in election season. It's raining bad data, half-truths, and even outright lies. Daniel J. Levitin shows how to recognize misleading announcements, statistics, graphs, and written reports revealing the ways lying weasels can use them. It's becoming harder to separate the wheat from the digital chaff. How do we distinguish misinformation, pseudo-facts, distortions,...

Harness the brain's most powerful faculty to solve math problems with ease.

"Indispensable introduction to Brazil for students and general readers includes short scholarly articles, interviews, documents, photographs, and many autobiographical pieces. Begins with precontact indigenous peoples, but about half deals with Brazil since 1945. Topics include indigenous peoples, slavery, Vargas and labor, political protest, women, race relations, marginal groups, and popular culture. Overarching themes are mobility and repression"--Handbook...