Non-Fiction Books

Get High Now is an illustrated, mind-blowing magic carpet ride of more than 175 ways to alter human perception and consciousness without drugs or alcohol. Culled from science, physiology, spiritual practices, and the audio visual arts, these "all natural" highs playfully and safely explore the mind-body connection to entertaining and illuminating effect. Accessible and well-researched, each entry introduces concepts such as lucid dreaming, optical and auditory illusions, controlled breathing, meditation, time compression, and physical and mental exercises, explaining the ways in which they affect our minds and bodies and how to do them. Readers follow the author and his "HighLab" testing team through mind-bending and sometimes hilarious investigations, such as how to lull the mind into hallucinatory states with audio loops; why multiple bee stings lead to euphoric states; what cheeses to eat to induce psychedelic lucid dreams; how to control your breathing to create an out-of-body experience; and many more. Including solo, tandem, and group highs, Get High Now features hundreds of ways to calm or stimulate the senses and open new windows to experiencing the world.

An Amazon Best Book of 2014 While on assignment in Greece, journalist James Nestor witnessed something that confounded him: a man diving 300 feet below the ocean’s surface on a single breath of air and returning four minutes later, unharmed and smiling. This man was a freediver, and his amphibious abilities inspired Nestor to seek out the secrets of this little-known discipline. In Deep, Nestor embeds with a gang of extreme athletes and renegade researchers who are transforming not only our knowledge of the planet and its creatures, but also our understanding of the human body and mind. Along the way, he takes us from the surface to the Atlantic’s greatest depths, some 28,000 feet below sea level. He finds whales that communicate with other whales hundreds of miles away, sharks that swim in unerringly straight lines through pitch-black waters, and seals who dive to depths below 2,400 feet for up to eighty minutes—deeper and longer than scientists ever thought possible. As strange as these phenomena are, they are reflections of our own species’ remarkable, and often hidden, potential—including echolocation, directional sense, and the profound physiological changes we undergo when underwater. Most illuminating of all, Nestor unlocks his own freediving skills as he communes with the pioneers who are expanding our definition of what is possible in the natural world, and in ourselves.

How our own imaginations enrich our lives is a book that brings to light the incredible role that fiction plays in our lives and also the great role that we play in the writing and creating of fiction. From the moment we enter this world, we are literally surrounded by fiction. As babies, and then kids, and even adults we are constantly surrounded by fiction, from Disney to the Muppet Babies and everything in between. We are totally engrossed by fiction and then we, in return, play such a huge role in the writing and creating of fiction. Along the way, we simply lose track of the role that fiction plays in our lives and eventually take it for granted. The role of fiction brings to light the important role that we so often take for granted. So, as you delve into this great Novel, please take a moment to remember the role that fiction has played in YOUR life and how you can further enrich the world by your creation of fiction. But through it all, please take time to remember the importance of The Role of Fiction.

A New York Times Bestseller A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2020 Named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR “A fascinating scientific, cultural, spiritual and evolutionary history of the way humans breathe—and how we’ve all been doing it wrong for a long, long time.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Big Magic and Eat Pray Love No matter what you eat, how much you exercise, how skinny or young or wise you are, none of it matters if you’re not breathing properly. There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat twenty-five thousand times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences. Journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren’t found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of São Paulo. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe. Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can jump-start athletic performance; rejuvenate internal organs; halt snoring, asthma, and autoimmune disease; and even straighten scoliotic spines. None of this should be possible, and yet it is. Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will never breathe the same again.