Catalog All books

Manès Sperber

And the Bush Became Ashes

Novelist, essayist, and philosopher Manès Sperber is a major witness of the twentieth century. Born in 1905, he became the closest disciple of Adler, a Viennese psychologist known for his rejection of psychoanalysis. Driven from Berlin by the Nazis in 1933, he definitely broke with communism during the 1937 Moscow trials and established himself in the Parisian intellectual circles of Malraux, Camus, Koestler and Aron. Recognized in German countries as a major writer, his work has received many literary prizes. By publishing his three novels in one newly translated volume, Odile Jecob proposes a reference edition of this epic.

Éric Baratay

And Man Created the Animal History of a Condition

In this book, Baratay holds a mirror up to humanity. He reviews the changing status of animals throughout human history: from ancient myths about animal domestication to the invention of bullfighting, from the great pastoral epics to modern slaughterhouses, from the ancient role played by animals in the human imagination to modern laboratory testing. Eric Baratay is a historian specialising in the contemporary world and in the status of animals.

Pascal Picq

And Evolution Created Woman Sexual Coercion and Violence in Men

An accessible, compelling assessment of what has been learned concerning the relationships between the sexes/genders from an evolutionary point of view.

Pascal Picq

And at the Beginning there was Man... From Toumaï to Cro-Magnon

In forty years, the genealogical tree of human evolution has grown so extensively that it now spans six million years.

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.

David Elbaz

and Alice Tao Remembered the Future

In his first novel, Le Vase de Pépi, David Elbaz blended quantum physics with Egyptian mythology to take us on a fascinating journey through time in the world of particles. The inspiration for his new novel is once again time-travel, but now his vivid physicist's imagination, always on the lookout for strange paradoxes, moves constantly back and forth between Ancient China and the future.

Alain Prochiantz

The Anatomies of Thought What do squid think about ?

“When we watch a squid facing up to a predator, we see it recoil, agitate the tentacles, spray a jet of ink, and then make use of the temporary blindness of the predator in order to escape to a safe hiding place. Are we able to say what it is thinking ? Evidently, we know that this behaviour is not the result of a reflex unleashed by the sight of an enemy. The mollusc is not however conscious of its acts, at least not in the sense that we, as human beings, understand this term. It is true that we are the product of a evolution of species, and that, although this may not be welcome news for everyone, we share a common ancestry with the octopus, or even the fly. Even if the structure of our cortex, and the invention of language allows us to write about octopuses (or flies), and not the other way round, the fact remains that these evolutive roots, in the same way as other animal species, including invertebrates, have something to teach us about the nature of our thoughts.” Alain Prochiantz

Douglas Hofstadter, Emmanuel Sander

Analogy:Surfaces and Depths A New Theory of Mind

Could analogy, which we use unconsciously every day, lie at the core of human thought?