Gregory Stock A hopeful and optimistic perspective on the future of human beings as Metaman superorganisms with humanity as the core and soul. Well-researched and densely packed, but highly readable and free of academic jargon and New Age leaps of faith. 320 $29.00 September, 1993 Simon & Schuster 067170723X James C. Collins Jerry I. Porras The authors spent six years in research, and they freely admit that their own preconceptions about business success were devastated by their actual findings--along with the preconceptions of virtually everyone else. They identify 18 "visionary" companies and set out to determine what's special about them. To get on the list, a company had to be world famous, have a stellar brand image, and be at least 50 years old. The core myth, according to the authors, is that visionary companies must start with a great product and be pushed into the future by charismatic leaders. 368 $17.00 January, 1997 Harperbusiness 0887307396 Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins' brilliant reformulation of the theory of natural selection has the rare distinction of having provoked as much excitement and interest outside the scientific community as within it. His theories have helped change the whole nature of the study of social biology, and have forced thousands of readers to rethink their beliefs about life. The world of the selfish gene revolves around savage competition, ruthless exploitation, and deceit, and yet, Dawkins argues, acts of apparent altruism do exist in nature. Bees, for example, will commit suicide when they sting to protect the hive, and birds will risk their lives to warn the flock of an approaching hawk. 352 $13.95 September, 1990 Oxford University Press 0192860925 Michael Talbot Talbot explains the theory advanced by U. of London physicist David Bohm and Stanford U. neurophysiologist Karl Pribram that despite its apparent tangible reality, the universe is actually a kind of three-dimensional projection and is ultimately no more real than a hologram, quite literally a kind of image or construct created, at least in part, by the human mind. This remarkable new way of looking at the universe explains now only many of the unsolved puzzles of physics, but also such mysterious occurrences as telepathy, out-of-body and near death experiences, "lucid" dreams, and even religious and mystical experiences such as feelings of cosmic unity and miraculous healings. 352 $14.00 July, 1991 Harper Perennial 0060922583 Gary Zweiger In Transducing the Genome, scientist Gary Zweiger provides us with our most lucid explanation yet of the significance of the Human Genome Project and the dramatic paradigm shift that it has engendered in the life sciences. He explains how the marriage of information technology and biology necessitated by the race to sequence the human genome has led to the emergence of genomics, a revolutionary new science that provides unprecedented access to the processes of life. Going beyond the traditional one-gene-one-trait approach, genomics transduces biological data into digital information, which then can be analyzed and manipulated using powerful computer algorithms, data mining tools, and other advanced information technologies to reveal meaningful patterns among vast networks of millions of life's molecules. 269 $24.95 January, 2001 McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing 0071369805