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A thrilling historical account of the worst cholera outbreak in Victorian London-and a brilliant exploration of how Dr. John Snow's solution revolutionized the way we think about disease, cities, science, and the modern world. From the dynamic thinker routinely compared to Malcolm Gladwell, E. O....

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...

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...

On bookshelves around the world, surrounded by ordinary books bound in paper and leather, rest other volumes of a distinctly strange and grisly sort: those bound in human skin. Would you know one if you held it in your hand? In Dark Archives, Megan Rosenbloom seeks out...

The cod has played a vital part in livelihoods, diets, and health in general--as well as roles in national economies and international wars. Drawing on his love of food and food culture, Mark Kurlansky leaps into history and folklore to explore how this innocuous fish had such an impact over the...

Paper is one of the simplest and most essential pieces of human technology. For the past two millennia, the ability to produce it in ever more efficient ways has supported the proliferation of literacy, media, religion, education, commerce, and art; it has formed the foundation of civilizations,...

Mark Kurlansky's first global food history since the bestselling Cod and Salt; the fascinating cultural, economic, and culinary story of milk and all things dairy--with recipes throughout. According to the Greek creation myth, we are so much spilt milk; a...

An oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem. For 2,000 years, cadavers-some willingly, some unwittingly-have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. They've tested France's first guillotines, ridden the NASA Space...

Longlisted for the Porchlight Business Book Awards "A smart and accessible cultural history." -Los Angeles Times "A fantastic examination of what became the mall . . . envision[ing] a more meaningful public afterlife for our shopping centers."-...

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...

"A house of wonders itself. . . . Wonderland inspires grins and well-what-d'ya-knows" --The New York Times Book Review From the New York Times-bestselling author of How We Got to Now and Extra Life, a look at...

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,...

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 the New York Timesbestselling author of K- A History of Baseball in Ten Pitchescomes the ultimate history of the World Series-a vivid portrait of baseball at its finest and most intense, filled with humor, lore, analysis, and fascinating behind-the-scenes stories from 117 years...

A New Yorker Best Book of 2022 Finalist for the 2023 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science & Technology A vibrant account of how measurement has invisibly shaped our world, from ancient civilizations to the modern day. From the cubit to the kilogram, the...

Throughout human history, certain drinks have done much more than just quench thirst. As Tom Standage relates with authority and charm, six of them have had a surprisingly pervasive influence on the course of history, becoming the defining drink during a pivotal historical period.A History of the...

Finalist for the 2020 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction | One of Time Magazines's 100 Must-Read Books of 2020 | Longlisted for the 2020 Porchlight Business Book Awards "An entertaining quest to trace the origins and implications of the names of the roads on...

"Delightful." --Mary Norris, The New Yorker A page-turning, existential romp through the life and times of the world's most polarizing punctuation mark The semicolon. Stephen King, Hemingway, Vonnegut, and Orwell detest it. Herman Melville, Henry James, and...