Adult cognitive development is one of the most important, yet neglected aspects in the study of human psychology. Although the development of cognition and intelligence during childhood and adolescence is of great interest to researchers, educators, and parents, they assume that this development stops progressing in any significant manner when people reach adulthood. In fact, cognition and intelligence do continue to progress in very significant ways.

The  Companion to Wilkie Collins

Wilkie Collins was one of the most popular writers of the nineteenth century. He is best known for The Woman in White, which inaugurated the sensation novel in the 1860s, and The Moonstone, one of the first detective novels; but he wrote over 20 novels, plays and short stories during a career that spanned four decades. This Companion offers a fascinating overview of Collins's writing.

Dementia

Age-related loss of memory and other cognitive abilities has been recognized since antiquity. However, the need to understand the causes and consequences of dementia has become urgent over the past quarter-century because of the large and increasing proportion of persons in the world's population who live into their 9th and 10th decades -- the ages at which people are at greatest risk for dementia. Dementia is now one of the most common and feared conditions of old age and is a major public health problem throughout the world.

Venice came to life on spongy mudflats at the edge of the habitable world. Protected in a tidal estuary from barbarian invaders and Byzantine overlords, the fishermen, salt gatherers, and traders who settled there crafted an amphibious way of life unlike anything the Roman Empire had ever known. In an astonishing feat of narrative history, James H. S. McGregor recreates this world-turned-upside-down, with its waterways rather than roads, its boats tethered alongside dwellings, and its livelihood harvested from the sea.

Asian Literary Voices: From Marginal to Mainstream

The essays in this collection give voice to a wide range of artists and writers from China, Japan, Korea, and India who to this day remain largely unknown or poorly understood in literary circles around the world. Contributors from Asia, Europe, and the United States cover a wide range of topics from a vast expanse of time, from Sanskrit poetry dating back over a thousand years to Chinese fiction of the twenty-first century.