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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...

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...

You are surrounded by stickiness. With every step you take, air molecules cling to you and slow you down; the effect is harder to ignore in water. When you hit the road, whether powered by pedal or engine, you rely on grip to keep you safe. The Post-it note and glue in your...

For over half a century, DNA has dominated science and the popular imagination as the "secret of life." But over the last several decades, a quiet revolution has taken place. In a series of breathtaking discoveries, the biochemist Thomas R. Cech and a diverse cast of brilliant scientists have...

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...

**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 how...

Homer called salt a divine substance. Plato described it as especially dear to the gods. Today we take salt for granted, a common, inexpensive substance that seasons food or clears ice from roads, a word used casually in expressions ("salt of the earth," take it with a grain of salt") without...

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...

Now a major motion picture

New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice . A riveting narrative about the biggest earthquake in North American recorded history-the 1964 Alaska earthquake that demolished the city of Valdez and swept away the island village of Chenega-and the geologist who hunted for clues to explain how...

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

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 ...

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...

This National Book Award-winning story, a tour de force of historical reportage, rescues an iconic chapter of American history--the Dust Bowl that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression--from the shadows. Following a dozen families and their...

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 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...

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...

 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...

By the author of the acclaimed bestseller The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, a "brilliant" and "beautifully told" new history of mammals, illuminating the lost story of the extraordinary family tree that led to us [New Scientist; The Times UK] National Bestseller * Top...

A WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR * 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. "Enthralling and exuberant, Sarah Ogilvie tells the...

Prized as "the best stone in Britain" by Roman invaders who carved jewelry out of it, coal has transformed societies, powered navies, fueled economies, and expanded frontiers. It made China a twelfth-century superpower, inspired the writing of the Communist Manifesto, and helped the northern...

"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...

The definitive history of the world's most popular drug.Uncommon Grounds tells the story of coffee from its discovery on a hill in ancient Abyssinia to the advent of Starbucks. Mark Pendergrast reviews the dramatic changes in coffee culture over the past decade,...

The untold story of how America's Progressive-era war on smallpox sparked one of the great civil liberties battles of the twentieth century. At the turn of the last century, a powerful smallpox epidemic swept the United States from coast to coast. The age-old disease spread...

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...

In 1856 eighteen-year-old English chemist William Perkin accidentally discovered a way to mass-produce color. In a "witty, erudite, and entertaining" (Esquire) style, Simon Garfield explains how the experimental mishap that produced an odd shade of purple revolutionized fashion, as well as...