Philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith dons a wet suit and journeys into the depths of consciousness in Other Minds
Although mammals and birds are widely regarded as the smartest creatures on earth, it has lately become clear that a very distant branch of the tree of life has also sprouted higher intelligence: the cephalopods, consisting of the squid, the cuttlefish, and above all the octopus. In captivity, octopuses have been known

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The members of a southern family contribute their individual tribulations encompassing impression of rural poverty.

"Peter and his best friend, Tommy, have a goal for their last summer before middle school: finish their Discovery Journal, a catalog of the wildlife around their Florida town. When they spot a manatee in a canal, Peter knows they've found something special--and when the manatee is injured by a boat, something to protect! As Peter joins the fight to save Florida manatees, he also finds himself taking care of his ailing grandfather and facing an unwelcome...

How did humans come to be who we are? Foster explores three pivotal moments in the evolution of human consciousness in order to understand perhaps the strangest animal of all: the human being. Readers will experience the Upper Paleolithic era as a Cro-Magnon hunter-gatherer, living in makeshift shelters without amenities in the rural woods of England. For the Neolithic period, when humans stayed in one place and domesticated plants and animals, they...

London. Olivia's connection to Francis, a committed naturalist living off the grid, is immediate and startling. Eager to involve her friend Lucy in her joy, Olivia introduces the two-- but Lucy has received shocking news of her own that binds the trio unusually close. Over the months that follow Lucy's boss, Hunter, Olivia's psychoanalyst parents, and a young man named Sebastian are pulled into the friends' orbit, and not one of them will emerge unchanged....