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From New York Times bestselling author Sam Kean comes incredible stories of science, history, finance, mythology, the arts, medicine, and more, as told by the Periodic Table. Why did Gandhi hate iodine (I, 53)? How did radium (Ra, 88) nearly ruin Marie...

Discover the secret method used to build the world... For millennia, humans have used one simple method to solve problems. Whether it's planting crops, building skyscrapers, developing photographs, or designing the first microchip, all creators follow the same steps to engineer progress....

A NEW YORK TIMES AND INDIE BESTSELLER! Part travelogue, part culinary history, all capitalist critique--comedian Jamie Loftus's debut, Raw Dog, will take you on a cross-country road trip in the summer of 2021, and reveal what the creation, culture,...

Winner of the New American Voices Award Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medals of Excellence This witty personal and cultural history of travel from the perspective of a Third World-raised woman of color, Airplane Mode, asks: what does it mean to be a joyous traveler...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER * TIME'S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE * ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES'S FIVE BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY * A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE CENTURY * A LOS ANGELES TIMES...

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * "A riveting feat of science writing that recasts that most familiar of celestial objects into something eerily extraordinary, pivotal to our history, and awesome in the original sense of the word."--Ed Yong, New York Times...

Stiff is an oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem. For two thousand years, cadavers--some willingly, some unwittingly--have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. They've tested France's first guillotines,...

An intimate and revelatory dive into the world of the beaver--the wonderfully weird rodent that has surprisingly shaped American history and may save its ecological future.  From award-winning writer Leila Philip, Beaverland is a masterful work of narrative science writing,...

**The instant New York Times bestseller.** *An international bestseller.* "Hugely impressive, a major work."--NPR A pioneering and groundbreaking work of narrative nonfiction that offers a dramatic new perspective on the history of humankind, showing...

The author of Cod and The Basque History of the World takes an extraordinary look at an ordinary substance--salt, the only rock humans eat--and how it has shaped civilization from the very beginning. Mark Kurlansky has produced a kaleidoscope of history, a multi-layered masterpiece...

Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award A Bloomberg Best Nonfiction Book of 2021 A startling work of historical sleuthing and synthesis, Of Fear and Strangers reveals the forgotten histories of xenophobia--and what they mean for us today. By 2016, it...

2018 James Beard Foundation Book of the Year | 2018 James Beard Foundation Book Award Winner inWriting | Nominee for the 2018 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Nonfiction | #75 on The Root100 2018 A renowned culinary historian offers a fresh perspective on our most divisive cultural...

Carpet specialist Dorothy Armstrong tells the stories surrounding twelve of the world's most fascinating carpets. Dorothy Armstrong's Threads of Empire is a spellbinding look at the history of the world through the stories of twelve carpets. Beautiful, sensuous, and...

A New York Times Notable Book   The Professor and the Madman is an extraordinary tale of madness, genius, and the incredible obsessions of two remarkable men that led to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary--and literary history. The making of the OED was one of the...

Hailed as "the great nature writer of this generation" (Wall Street Journal), Robert Macfarlane is the celebrated author of books about the intersections of the human and the natural realms. In Underland, he delivers his masterpiece: an epic exploration of the Earth's underworlds as they exist in...

The bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman and The Map That Changed the World examines the enduring and world-changing effects of the catastrophic eruption off the coast of Java of the earth's most dangerous volcano -- Krakatoa. The legendary annihilation in...

The rollicking saga of reality television, a "sweeping" (The Washington Post) cultural history of America's most influential, most divisive artistic phenomenon, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning New Yorker writer--"a must-read for anyone interested in television or popular culture"...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From bestselling author Susan Casey, an awe-inspiring portrait of the mysterious world beneath the waves, and the men and women who seek to uncover its secrets "An irresistible mix of splendid scholarship, heart-stopping adventure...

Rain is elemental, mysterious, precious, destructive.   It is the subject of countless poems and paintings; the top of the weather report; the source of the world's water. Yet this is the first book to tell the story of rain. Cynthia Barnett's Rain <...

The Guardian's Best Science Book of 2017: the fascinating science and history of the air we breathe. It's invisible. It's ever-present. Without it, you would die in minutes. And it has an epic story to tell. In Caesar's Last Breath, New York Times<...

"THE ULTIMATE DINOSAUR BIOGRAPHY," hails Scientific American: A thrilling new history of the age of dinosaurs, from one of our finest young scientists. "A masterpiece of science writing." --Washington Post A New York Times Bestseller * Goodreads Choice Awards ...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The riveting true story of the Galveston hurricane of 1900, still the deadliest natural disaster in American history--from the acclaimed author of The Devil in the White City "A gripping account ... fascinating to its core, and all the...

The bestselling author of Intern and Doctored tells the story of the thing that makes us tick For centuries, the human heart seemed beyond our understanding: an inscrutable shuddering mass that was somehow the driver of emotion and the seat of the soul. As the...

A fascinating exploration of the skin in its multifaceted physical, psychological, and social aspects Providing a cover for our delicate and intricate bodies, the skin is our largest and fastest-growing organ. We see it, touch it, and live in it every day. It is a habitat for a...

The fascinating, untold story of the air we breathe, the hidden life it contains, and invisible dangers that can turn the world upside down Every day we draw in two thousand gallons of air--and thousands of living things. From the ground to the stratosphere, the air teems...

"Pollan keeps you turning the pages . . . cleareyed and assured." --New York Times A #1 New York Times Bestseller, New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2018, and New York Times Notable Book A brilliant and brave investigation into...

What won't we try in our quest for perfect health, beauty, and the fountain of youth? Well, just imagine a time when doctors prescribed morphine for crying infants. When liquefied gold was touted as immortality in a glass. And when strychnine--yes, that...

The #1 NEW YORK TIMES Bestseller The basis for the PBS Ken Burns Documentary The Gene: An Intimate History From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies--a fascinating history of the gene and "a magisterial account of...

Instant #1 New York Times bestseller! * #1 Washington Post bestseller! * #1 Indie Bestseller! * USA Today Bestseller! John Green, acclaimed author and passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the...

From an eminent surgeon and historian comes the "by turns fascinating and ghastly" (The New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice) story of surgery's development--from the Stone Age to the present day--blending meticulous medical research with vivid storytelling. ...

Winner, 2018 PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing Short-listed for the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize A Top 10 Science Book of Fall 2017, Publishers Weekly A Best History Book of 2017, The Guardian "Warning: She...

A National Bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book, and an Entertainment Weekly Best Book of the Year from the author of Extra Life   "By turns a medical thriller, detective story, and paean to city life, Johnson's account of the...

Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award  From the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, a "suspenseful" ( WSJ) and "adrenaline-fueled" ( Outside) entwined narrative of the most adventurous year of all time, when three expeditions simultaneously raced to...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the bestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the enthralling story of the sinking of the Lusitania "Both terrifying and enthralling."--Entertainment Weekly"Thrilling, dramatic and powerful."...

A Chicago Tribune Noteworthy Book A GoodReads Reader's ChoiceIn One Summer Bill Bryson, one of our greatest and most beloved nonfiction writers, transports readers on a journey back to one amazing season in American life. The summer of 1927 began with one of the...

"David Laskin deploys historical fact of the finest grain to tell the story of a monstrous blizzard that caught the settlers of the Great Plains utterly by surprise. . . . This is a book best read with a fire roaring in the hearth and a blanket and box of tissues near at hand."  -- Erik...

In a tour de force of historical reportage, Timothy Egan's National Book Award-winning story rescues an iconic chapter of American history from the shadows.   The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing...

Telling perhaps the most important forgotten story in American history, eminent historian Nell Irvin Painter guides us through more than two thousand years of Western civilization, illuminating not only the invention of race but also the frequent praise of "whiteness" for economic, scientific,...

An eye-opening account of life inside North Korea--a closed world of increasing global importance--hailed as a "tour de force of meticulous reporting" (The New York Review of Books)   NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST * NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST

A globe-trotting work of relentless investigative reporting, this is the first major book to expose the catastrophic reality of the multi-billion-dollar global garbage trade.                            ...

"A fascinating look at how we talk about women. . . . Dense with information and anecdotes, Mother Tongue touches on the hilarious and the devastating, with ample dashes of an ingredient so painfully absent from most discussions of sex and gender: humor." ―Lisa Selin Davis, The...

The term "home economics" may conjure traumatic memories of lopsided hand-sewn pillows or sunken muffins. But common conception obscures the story of the revolutionary science of better living. The field exploded opportunities for women in the twentieth century by reducing domestic work and...

A Time Magazine Must-Read Book of 2020 A Best Book of the Season: BuzzFeed * Bustle * San Francisco Chronicle A Best Book of the Year: NPR's Book Concierge * Washington Independent Review of Books...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the author of the runaway phenomenon Unbroken comes a universal underdog story about the horse who came out of nowhere to become a legend. "Fascinating . . . Vivid . . . A first-rate piece of storytelling, leaving us not only...

Selected as One of the Best Books of the 21st Century by The New York Times Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, adapted as a documentary from Ken Burns on PBS, this New York Times bestseller is "an extraordinary achievement" (The New Yorker)--a magnificent,...

New York Times Bestseller New York Times Notable Book of 2016 * NPR Great Read of 2016 * Named a Best Book of 2016 by The Economist, Smithsonian, NPR's Science Friday, MPR, Minnesota Star Tribune, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, The Guardian, Times (London) From Pulitzer Prize...

Winner of the 2023 PROSE Award for Excellence in Biological and Life Sciences and the 2023 Chautauqua Prize! Named a New York Times Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year by The Economist, Oprah Daily, BookPage, Book Riot, the New York Public...

The international bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman and Krakatoa vividly brings to life the 1906San Francisco Earthquake that leveled a city symbolic of America's relentless western expansion. Simon Winchester has also fashioned an enthralling and informative informative look at...

Winner of the James Beard Award for Literary Writing "Engrossing...hard to put down." -- The New York Times Book Review "Frostbite is a perfectly executed cold fusion of science, history, and literary verve . . . as a fellow nonfiction writer, I bow down....

 The National Book Award winning history of how racist ideas were created, spread, and deeply rooted in American society. Some Americans insist that we're living in a post-racial society. But racist thought is not just alive and well in America -- it is more sophisticated...

A thought-provoking microhistory of the humble pocket that uncovers what pockets reveal about us--and why it matters. It's a subject that stirs up plenty of passion: Why do men's clothes have so many pockets and women's so few? In her captivating book, Hannah...

A WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR * WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION FINALIST * The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice * A history and celebration of the many far-flung volunteers who helped define the English language, word by word. ...

What does it mean to be out walking in the world, whether in a landscape or a metropolis, on a pilgrimage or a protest march? In Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Rebecca Solnit draws together many histories--of anatomical evolution and city design, of treadmills and labyrinths, of walking clubs and...

Award-winning food writer Bee Wilson's secret history of kitchens, showing how new technologies - from the fork to the microwave and beyond - have fundamentally shaped how and what we eat. Since prehistory, humans have braved sharp knives, fire, and grindstones to transform raw...

"A charming fish tale and a pretty gift for your favorite seafood cook or fishing monomaniac. But in the last analysis, it's a bitter ecological fable for our time." -Los Angeles Times An unexpected, energetic look at world history via the humble cod fish from the bestselling...

Growing out of a Popular Science feature article, this work combines a pop-science journey around the globe with a fascinating tale of an iconic American business enterprise that takes readers into the high-tech labs where new bananas are literally being built in test tubes.

Uncommon Grounds tells the story of coffee from its discovery on a hill in Abyssinia to its role in intrigue in the American colonies to its rise as a national consumer product in the twentieth century and its rediscovery with the advent of Starbucks at the end of the century . A...

From one of the most beloved authors of our  time--more than six million copies of his books have been sold in this country alone--a fascinating excursion into the history behind the place we call home. "Houses aren't refuges from history. They are where history ends up."  ...

From evolution to the epidural and beyond, Tina Cassidy presents a lively, enlightening, and impeccably researched cultural history of how and why we are born the way we are. Women have been giving birth for millennia, so why is it that every culture--and every generation--seems to have its own...

The study of sexual physiology--what happens, and why, and how to make it happen better--has been a paying career or a diverting sideline for scientists as far-ranging as Leonardo da Vinci and James Watson. The research has taken place behind the closed doors of laboratories, brothels, MRI centers,...

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER * This magisterial and acclaimed history offers the first fully documented portrait of the Gulag, from its origins in the Russian Revolution, through its expansion under Stalin, to its collapse in the era of glasnost. "A tragic testimony to how evil...

Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction "There Kevin Young goes again, giving us books we greatly need, cleverly disguised as books we merely want. Unexpectedly essential."--Marlon James Award-winning poet and critic Kevin Young tours us...