psychological aspects

"A crusading legal scholar exposes the powerful psychological forces that undermine our criminal justice system--and affect us all ... In Unfair, law professor Adam Benforado shines a light on this troubling new research, showing, for example, that people with certain facial features receive longer sentences and that judges are far more likely to grant parole first thing in the morning. In fact, over the last two decades, psychologists and neuroscientists have uncovered many cognitive forces that operate beyond our conscious awareness--and Benforado argues that until we address these hidden biases head-on, the social inequality we see now will only widen, as powerful players and institutions find ways to exploit the weaknessesin our legal system"--Provided by publisher.

Examines why, despite scientific evidence, we ignore climate change, discussing values, assumptions, prejudices, and how the human brain is wired.

"Poet Brian Turner retraces his war experience, pre-deployment to combat zone, homecoming to aftermath. Free of self-indulgence or self-glorification, his account combines recollection with the imagination's efforts to make reality comprehensible"--Provided by publisher.

"In the aftermath of a heartbreaking tragedy, a scholar and writer uses Dante's Divine Comedy to shepherd him through the dark wood of grief and mourning--a rich and emotionally resonant memoir of suffering, hope, love, and the power of literature to inspire and heal the most devastating loss. ... When Luzzi's pregnant wife was in a car accident--and died forty-five minutes after giving birth to their daughter, Isabel--he finds himself a widower and first-time father at the same moment. While he grieves and cares for his infant daughter, miraculously delivered by caesarean before his wife passed, he turns to Dante's Divine Comedy for solace..."--Provided by publisher.

Christal Presley describes the thirty days she spent reconnecting and having difficult conversations with her Vietnam veteran father who has severe post-traumatic stress disorder. At the age of eighteen he was drafted into the army. Unlike many soldiers of the Vietnam War, he returned home but he was never the same man again. Christal learned to avoid doing anything to annoy him and at the age of eighteen she moved out. She barely spoke to her father for the next thirteen years. In 2009 she came up with the idea of the Thirty-Day Project, a month's worth of conversations with a man she hardly knew, but wanted to.

On January 31, 2012, in an internet cafe on the outskirts of New Taipei City, Taiwan, 23-year-old student Chen Rong-yu was found dead at his keyboard while the video game he had been playing for three days straight continued to flash on the screen in front of his corpse. As Simon Parkin reconstructs what happened that night, he begins a journey that takes him around the world in search of answers: What is it about video games that inspires such tremendous acts of endurance and obsession? Why do we lose our sense of time and reality within this medium, arguably more than any other? And what is it about video games that often proves compelling, comforting and irresistible to the human mind? Simon Parkin meets the players and game developers at the frontline of virtual extremism.

The story of Travis Hugh Culley and how he taught himself to read. When Travis moved with his family to Miami in the spring of 1980, the bright six-year-old hoped things would be easier for him. Labeled as a discipline problem in school, and made fun of at home, Travis faked his way through tests and homework assignments and pretended he knew how to read. When his music teacher suggested that he audition for an acting program, a new world opened up for him. His father was not happy that his son was acting and so Travis began to write down his experiences. Once he began his journal, he saw the relationship between words and actions. When his parents separated, Travis ran away from home but stayed in school, committed to an education in the theater.

Two years after being airlifted out of Vietnam in 1975, Matt Pin is haunted by the terrible secret he left behind and, now, in a loving adoptive home in the United States, a series of profound events forces him to confront his past.