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To celebrate the holidays we asked some of our favorite people in publishing what their favorite book was. Let us know in the comments what your favorite book is and be sure to check back throughout the week for more “favorites”.

Dylan Moulton is an Associate Marketing Manager at Palgrave Macmillan.

The book that stuck with me this year was Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us. With so much attention directed to the environment lately, it’s a thought experiment with teeth. The imagery of a human impact on the earth – that millions of years from now Manhattan could be a lush forest while the only evidence of human beings may lie in degraded plastics – not only lingered but sparked conversation.

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I’ve been blogging about the Place of the Week for nearly two years now, choosing a new location every seven days that I knew little about but had caught my attention or that appeared in the news. In the last year global warming has become much more than another subject debated within academia; in fact its found its way into our language, popular culture, and even our shopping habits. As I thought about this while I tried to pick my first Place of the Year, I kept coming back to the very visible ways the Earth’s landscape has been altered by the phenomena. (more…)

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Saturday is World Aids Day. We asked authors Gerald M. Oppenheimer and Ronald Bayer to help us commemorate this important holiday, to help us remember why AIDS research, awareness and education is so very important to our society. Oppenheimer and Bayer are the authors of Shattered Dreams: An Oral History of the South African AIDS Epidemic which uses interviews to tell the story of how physicians and nurses in South Africa struggled to ride the tiger of the world’s most catastrophic AIDS epidemic. In the original article below they reflect on the progress made and work still to be accomplished.

Once again it is almost World AIDS Day and in cities and communities around the world, there will be commemorations marking the date, December 1. But this year may be different. Some will begin to say, as they did in the United States, “Enough!” Too much energy, too many resources, have been devoted to an epidemic whose dimensions may have been exaggerated. They will point to a recent report from the United Nations suggesting that the global burden of HIV have been overestimated. Instead of the approximately 39 million people, as the world body previously reported, it is now thought that the numbers are closer to 33 million individuals. The number of newly infected, said the report, is declining where it is not leveling off. Seizing on these numbers, we will be urged to breathe a collective sigh of relief. (more…)

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David Bornstein, author of How To Change The World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas is a journalist who specializes in writing about social innovation. In his book, Bornstein profiles some of the incredible individuals who have successfully changed the world by blurring the line between business and social action. In the excerpt below Bornstein looks at why studying social entrepreneurship is so critical.

Over the past century, researchers have studied business entrepreneurs extensively. They have analyzed their orientation to action, to risk, and to growth; they have explored the entrepreneur’s “personal value orientation” and “internal locus of control” and searched for clues to explain the entrepreneur’s propensity to seek out and exploit change. Not only have business entrepreneurs been thoroughly studied, but their talents have been nurtured by value systems, government policies, and a wide array of institutional supports. (more…)

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Afyon, Turkey

Coordinates: 38 45 N 30 33 E

Elevation: 3,392 feet (1,034 m)

When speaking of edible plants (and their medicinal properties), the opium poppy tends to get a bad rap. Most likely this is because while its harmless leaves, oil, paste, and ripened seeds can be found in various Turkish, Arabian, and Persian dishes, the narcotic properties of unripe poppy seeds have made it a lucrative black market crop in recent decades. (more…)

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Earlier today, Mary Ann Cohen, co-editor of the Comprehensive Textbook of AIDS Psychiatry helped us better understand the AIDS epidemic in young American men. Cohen’s book (with Jack M. Gorman), navigates the ample evidence supporting the fact that psychiatric treatment can decrease transmission, diminish suffering, improve adherence, and decrease morbidity and mortality in AIDS patients. In the excerpt below, Jimmie Holland, MD the Wayne E. Chapman Chair in Psychiatric Oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and a Professor of Psychiatry at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University provides a forward which puts the Comprehensive Textbook of AIDS Psychiatry into historical perspective.

The publication of the Comprehensive Textbook of AIDS Psychiatry, edited by two psychiatrists who have ‘‘been there’’ since the beginning of the epidemic, is a benchmark for the field —it has come of age. (more…)

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Ahhhh, Paris. Your lure is strong: art, food, nightlife, architecture. One could get caught up in your graces forever! Travel with us this month to the city of lights as we read The Ambassadors by Henry James. Since we are announcing the book a bit late, we will hold the discussion on Thursday, October 4th. So get yourself a copy and start reading!

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Congratulations to our contest winners! The summer pick is indeed Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. You have two months to read this American classic which we will discuss on August 30th. So crack open a book and travel to Mississippi!

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Rebecca OUP-US

I’m emotional. I sob in movies. Even bad movies like Boiler Room. Remember that one? It came out in like 1999 or 2000 and starred Giovanni Ribisi. There was a scene in which Ribisi’s character has an emotional break down in front of his father while reminiscing about a childhood biking accident. I sobbed like a baby and I didn’t even like the movie! So you can just imagine my reaction to the end of Tess of The D’Urbervilles. (more…)

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Merowe Dam, Sudan

Coordinates: 18 47 N 32 3 E

Estimated number of lost sites: 2,500

Stars of the silver screen, beloved by millions, and visible from space, Egypt’s pyramids are easily the most famous monumental structures on the continent of Africa—but they aren’t the only ones. Further up the Nile, the Kushites or Nubians, another pyramid-building society, flourished for a period of about 500 years although less is known of their culture. (more…)

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Just in case you haven’t had a chance to start reading Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent we thought we would give you a little teaser. Below is the first page. Be sure to check back on May 24th for our discussion as part of our Oxford World’s Classics Book Club.

Mr. Verloc, going out in the morning, left his shop nominally in charge of his brother-in-law. (more…)

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