The Corner Bookstore

Wednesday Martin’s newest work of non-fiction, Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Adultery is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free cuts through the junk science and regressive cultural narratives that have shaped our beliefs about female infidelity for centuries, revealing a truth both liberating and disconcerting: women are no more “naturally monogamous” than men; nor are their libidos shrinking violets. Far from it.

Offering insights from thirty experts as well as real women from all walks of life who refuse monogamy, Untrue also analyzes cultural shifts from plow agriculture to polyamory; introduces readers to two important “hidden figures” of American sex research; and takes readers on an immersive, fascinating journey—from the bonobo enclosure at the San Diego Zoo to an exclusive all-female sex party in Manhattan where most of the revelers identify as heterosexual. Untrue asserts that monogamy is a tighter fit for the fairer sex; that females of many species evolved to be “promiscuous”; and that female sexual autonomy may be the most meaningful metric of gender equality. Rich with game-changing data and polemical writing, it promises to take us far out of our comfort zone, and may change the way you think about women and sex forever.

Looking for companionship after a near-fatal car crash, Elena Mannes, an award-winning television journalist and producer, decided to get her first dog. But what she found with her dog Brio shook the foundations of her physical and spiritual worlds, sending her on a quest to discover the nature of his spiritual origins and to contemplate and seek out the possibility of interspecies communication–even after death.

Soon after bringing her puppy home, Mannes realized that the master-companion relationship would not be possible with Brio, who quickly showed that he had a mind–and a spirit–of his own. A healer Mannes visited immediately focused on Brio, exclaiming that he was an old soul. Mannes’s growing curiosity about the intelligence, emotions, and consciousness of Brio and other dogs led her to contact an animal psychic in California who described, with amazing accuracy, Brio’s favorite walks and the author’s apartment from the dog’s point of view. Motivated by her experience, Mannes produced a filmed segment with Diane Sawyer featuring the same psychic, who described Sawyer’s country house and her dog’s favorite spots in the yard. Mannes’s skeptical journalist background compelled her to investigate further. She delved into the world of animal communicators, psychics, and scientists studying animal intelligence, including Rupert Sheldrake, to find answers to her multiplying questions: Do animals have thoughts and feelings? Consciousness? Souls? Is interspecies communication possible? Can animals reincarnate?

This book is about the denial in contemporary France of the period of German occupation and, in particular, about French disavowal of participation in the final solution. Using then and now pictures of places where terrible and momentous events occurred and of significant actors in the history of the time, it functions as a guidebook to the events that took place and as a guide to understanding how such atrocities could have happened in an eminently civilized nation.