Catalog All books
Antoine Danchin
The Delphic Boat What Genomes Tell Us
What is it that constitutes the unity and identity of a living creature ? This is the fundmental question of biology. The recent sequencing techniques provide a completely new response to this question, notably thanks to the knowledge of whole genomes. Antoine Danchin establishes a clear picture of this important biological discovery. He shows in particular that, just like the boat of Delphi, life is beyond prediction, and at the same time has an infinite capacity to create the unexpected. Antoine Danchin is the director of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics at the Institut Pasteur.
Alessandro Pignocchi
Art and Intention
The latest scientific research reveals how we perceive and judge works of art
Maurice Tubiana
Education and Life
This book is a reflection on the alarming fact that France has the highest level of violent deaths (from suicide, drugs, and road accidents) in all Europe among young people between 18 and 22 years old. Tubiana analyses the pleasure principle which runs through our culture and our values, the Freudian principle that demands the immediate satisfaction of our impulses. This brings him to denounce postmodern individualism which does not make any room for the collective interest. Maurice Tubiana is a world-reknowned oncologist and member of the French Academy of Science and the Academy of Medicine.
Mario Bettati
The Right of Interference Transformation of International Order
Inventor of the "right of interference", Mario Bettati, a professor of International Law, explains in this book the precise political circumstances and the legal context under which the right of humanitarian interference came about. This book is divided into four parts which follow both a chronological and a logical order. Beginning with interference as verbal denunciation, following with interference as medical assistance, he speaks of forced interference (Yugoslavia, Somalia and Rwanda) and finishes by dissuasive interference (courts for crimes against humanity and conflicts observatories). A thorough presentation of an important subject.
Marie-Jo Bonnet
What Does a Woman Desire when She Desires a Woman?
The desire of women for their own sex is a subject that has been concealed and heavily censored since Antiquity. Yet it has constantly resurfaced throughout history - despite repression, denial and today's feigned indifference - and its existence is a historical and anthropological fact, whatever the dominant opinion may say. Marie-Jo Bonnet argues that lesbianism transgresses social norms and female stereotypes, and breaks with the phallic model and the restricted social role that is assigned to women even today. She sees lesbian desire as a radical instrument of emancipation and offers an original analysis of the women's liberation movement, of recent discussions about homosexuality and, finally, of the persistence of lesbophobia. Desire, regardless of its subject, is always a unique and complex experience, and Bonnet does not ignore this fact. In an original, wide-ranging study of lesbian love through literature, she delves into the work of such major writers of the past as Marguerite Yourcenar, Violette Leduc, Simone de Beauvoir, Djuna Barnes and, surprisingly, Madame de Sévigné, as well as of more recent writers such as Monique Wittig, Anne Garreta and Christine Angot. The author's thesis is that women's desire for their own sex can serve as a tool to empower them to conquer their own space of creativity and liberation. Marie-Jo Bonnet, a writer and historian, is the author of Les Relations Amoureuses Entre Femmes (XVIe-XXe siècle).
Denis Le Bihan
The Crystal Brain The New Science of Neuroimaging
The latest findings about the brain, as revealed by the new science of neuroimaging
Pascal Picq
And at the Beginning there was Man...
In forty years, the genealogical tree of human evolution has grown so extensively that it now spans six million years. But fossils, the tree of evolution and the story they tell openly challenge all prevailing ideas about evolution; and though they have been shaken, these ideas have barely begun to change. In this book, Pascal Picq examines concrete, existing proof of our origins and then goes on to offer a new view of the human position in the evolutionary process. Pascal Picq is a senior lecturer in paleo-anthropology and prehistory at the Collège de France.
Jean-Pierre Changeux
The Life of Forms and the Forms of Life
Under the editorship of Jean-Pierre Changeux, a brilliant group of scientists and academics tackle the question of form
Christian de Duve
Seven Lives in One Nobel Prize winner's Memoirs
The life of an exceptional Nobel Prize winner, from childhood to scientific recognition and acclaim
Gisèle Gelbert
Speaking, Reading, Writing In Other Words
A completely original approach to aphasic language disorders...