Now in paperback. The bestselling author of The Willpower Instinct introduces a surprising science-based book that doesn't tell us why we should exercise but instead shows us how to fall in love with movement. Exercise is health-enhancing and life-extending, yet many of us feel it's a chore. But, as Kelly McGonigal reveals, it doesn't have to be. Movement can and should be a source of joy. Through her trademark blend of science and storytelling, McGonigal draws on insights from neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, and evolutionary biology, as well as memoirs, ethnographies, and philosophers. She shows how movement is intertwined with some of the most basic human joys, including self-expression, social connection, and mastery--and why it is a powerful antidote to the modern epidemics of depression, anxiety, and loneliness. McGonigal tells the stories of people who have found fulfillment and belonging through running, walking, dancing, swimming, weightlifting, and more, with examples that span the globe, from Tanzania, where one of the last hunter-gatherer tribes on the planet live, to a dance class at Juilliard for people with Parkinson's disease, to the streets of London, where volunteers combine fitness and community service, to races in the remote wilderness, where athletes push the limits of what a human can endure. Along the way, McGonigal paints a portrait of human nature that highlights our capacity for hope, cooperation, and self-transcendence. The result is a revolutionary narrative that goes beyond familiar arguments in favor of exercise, to illustrate why movement is integral to both our happiness and our humanity. Readers will learn what they can do in their own lives and communities to harness the power of movement to create happiness, meaning, and connection.

How is it that the person who created and defined the field of Black Studies and drafted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's prophetic Beyond Vietnam speech needs an introduction, even in movement circles today? In this provocative and poignant interview, Dr. Vincent Harding reflects on the communities that shaped his early life, compelled him to join movements for justice, and sustained his ongoing transformation. He challenges those committed to justice today to consider the enduring power of nonviolent social change and to root out white supremacy in all of its forms. With his relentless commitment to education and relationship-building across lines of difference, Harding never doubted the capacity of people to create the world we need.

The book tells the story of how we never evolved to exercise - to do voluntary physical activity for the sake of health. Using his own research and experiences throughout the world, the author recounts how and why humans evolved to walk, run, dig, and do other necessary and rewarding physical activities while avoiding needless exertion. Drawing on insights from biology and anthropology, the author suggests how we can make exercise more enjoyable, rather that shaming and blaming people for avoiding it

Why do we walk on two legs? How do our muscles know how to work together when we dance? How does our brain work with our hands to sink a basketball? In Human Movement: How the Body Walks, Runs, Jumps, and Kicks, readers ages 12 to 15 learn the basic anatomy and physiology of the human body and discover how bones, muscles, tendons, and nerves work together to make movement possible. Bones give the body structure and the ability to stay upright. Muscles make possible the movement of the bones. The brain tells the muscles what to do and when to do it. And your heart, lungs, and other organs provide the fuel that powers movement. Human Movement takes a look at all of the components of the human body and examines how they allow you to move and interact with the world around you. Readers also learn what they can do to keep their bodies healthy and fit and moving well. Combining hands-on activities with biology, chemistry, biomechanics, and nutrition, Human Movement offers entertaining graphic novel illustrations and fascinating sidebars to illuminate the topic and engage readers further. Human Movement integrates a digital learning component by providing links to primary sources, videos, and other relevant websites to deepen readers’ experiences and strengthen practical connections to the material. Projects include building a hand model with working muscles and tendons, testing what makes bones strong, examining how changing your center of gravity affects balance and motion, identifying how different types of joints work, and using yeast to investigate how the body metabolizes food into energy. Additional materials include a glossary, and a list of current reference works, websites, and Internet resources.

An incisive and inspiring call to look beyond capitalism to chart a road map for a planet ravaged by pandemics, climate crisis, and wars. Prompted by trenchant questions by international solidarity organizer Frank Barat, renowned author and activist Vijay Prashad shows that the path toward hope and liberation lies in looking closely at myriad, under covered struggles being waged all across the world by workers in countries such as India, Kenya, Peru, Tunisia, and Argentina. A marvelously global but grassroots perspective. Prashad also examines pressing topics such as debt cancellation, a wealth tax, austerity, the pandemic, the arms industry, the climate crisis, socialism, working-class social movements and much more.

An eye-opening journey into the power of human movement and how we can harness it to optimize our brain health, boost our mood and improve every aspect our lives For our earliest ancestors who hunted and gathered, movement meant survival. Our brains evolved to reward physical activity. Moving, thinking and feeling have always been inextricably linked. Yet what happens when we stop moving? Today, on average, we spend around 70% of our lives sitting or lying completely still. Our sedentary lifestyle—desk jobs, long commutes and lots of screen time—is not only bad for our bodies. It can also result in anxiety, depression and a lower overall IQ. But there’s good news. Even the simplest movements can reactivate our bodies and open up a hotline to our minds, improving our overall well-being and longevity. And we don’t have to spend countless hours in the gym. In fact, exercise as we understand it misses the point. Veteran science journalist Caroline Williams explores the cutting-edge research behind brain health and physical activity, interviewing scientists from around the world to completely reframe our relationship to movement. Along the way she reveals easy tricks that we could all use to improve our memory, maximize our creativity, strengthen our emotional literacy and more. A welcome counterpoint to the current mindfulness craze, Move offers a more stimulating and productive way of freeing our caged minds to live our best life.

This book is about how water becomes people – or, put another way, how people and water flow together and shape each other. While the focus of the book is on the relationships held between water and people, it also has a broader message about human relationships with the environment generally – a message that illustrates not only that people are existentially entangled with the material world, but that the materials of the world shape, determine and enable humans to be ‘humans’ in the ways that they are. Offering a selection of anthropological examples from Kenya, Wales and Spain to illustrate how water’s materiality coproductively generates the way people are able to engage with water, this book uses cross-disciplinary perspectives to provide and promote a new analytic – one that encourages ethical, holistic and sustainable relationships with the world around us. This approach challenges representations that ignore, sidestep or are blind to the fleshy materiality of being human, and aims to encourage a re-imagining of the world that acknowledges humanity as intrinsically active-with and part of the fabric of the collection of materials we call planet Earth.