Role-playing game historian Ben Riggs unveils the secret history of TSR-- the company that unleashed imaginations with Dungeons & Dragons, was driven into ruin by disastrous management decisions, and then saved by their bitterest rival. "Ben Riggs manages to...

A Best Book of 2021 by NPR and The Washington Post Part graphic novel, part memoir, Wake is an imaginative tour-de-force that tells the "powerful" (The New York Times Book Review) story of women-led slave revolts and chronicles scholar Rebecca Hall's...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Executive producer and host Mike Rowe presents a delightfully entertaining, seriously fascinating collection of his favorite episodes from America's #1 short-form podcast, The Way I Heard It, along with a host of personal memories,...

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...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR * A grand, devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, famed for their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin. From...

Known as the 'American Sherlock Holmes,' Edward Oscar Heinrich was one of America's greatest forensic scientists, with a skill level that seemed almost supernatural. Heinrich spearheaded the invention of new forensic tools that police still use today, including blood spatter analysis, ballistics,...

The bestselling author of The Secret Lives of Color returns with this rollicking narrative of the 30,000-year history of fabric, briskly told through thirteen charismatic episodes. From colorful 30,000-year-old threads found on the...

A "deeply researched and bracing retelling" (Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian) of the American Revolution, showing how the Founders were influenced by overlooked Americans--women, Native Americans, African Americans, and religious dissenters. Using more than...

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 humble inch to the speed of light, measurement is a powerful tool that humans invented...

The New York Timesbestselling author of The Year of Living Biblicallygoes on a rollicking journey to understand the enduring power of puzzles- why we love them, what they do to our brains, and how they can improve our world. "Even though I've never attempted the...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE * Every day, thousands of new secrets are created by the United States government. What is all this secrecy really for? And whom does it benefit? "A brilliant, deeply unsettling look at the history and inner workings of 'the dark state'.......

In a tale as twisted as any spy thriller, discover how three women delivered critical evidence of Axis war crimes to Allied forces during World War II: "A tantalizingly novelistic history lesson" (Kirkus).   In 1944, news of secret diaries kept by...

Ahead of the 400th anniversary of the first Thanksgiving, a new look at the Plymouth colony's founding events, told for the first time with Wampanoag people at the heart of the story.In March 1621, when Plymouth's survival was hanging in the balance, the Wampanoag sachem (or chief),...

Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction Five devastating human stories and a dark and moving portrait of Victorian London--the untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper. Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine...