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New Adult Fiction

Into the Leopard's Den: A Bangalore Detectives Club Mystery

Into the Leopard's Den: A Bangalore Detectives Club Mystery

Bangalore, 1922: Pregnant and confined to the house by her protective mother-in-law, Kaveri Murthy has resolved to take a break from detection. But when an elderly woman is stabbed at night and dies clutching a photograph of Kaveri while asking for her help--how can she refuse? Missing the assistance of her husband Ramu, who is working in Coorg, Kaveri investigates her new case with her able assistants, milk boy Venu and housemaid Anandi. They find a trail of secrets that lead them to suspect the killer may be in Coorg. Eager to be reunited with her husband, Kaveri sets off to Coorg to investigate. When she arrives, she encounters a thorny thicket of cases. Why does a ghost leopard prowl the forests at night, terrorizing the plantation workers? And who is trying to kill Colonel Boyd, the Coffee King of Coorg? She finds suspects in every coffee bush and estate--from Boyd's surly plantation manager and security guard to the feuding brothers who own the neighboring plantation--and the many women the Coffee King has pursued and abandoned. When two vulnerable children appeal for her help, Kaveri is drawn deeper into the case, becoming emotionally involved in finding the killer. Soon, one murder turns into two--and then a few days later into three. Now the killer has tasted blood and needs to be stopped. Racing against time, Kaveri must take on her most complex challenge so far, with the assistance of Anandi and Venu in Bangalore, and with Ramu and Inspector Ismail in Coorg. In this stunning new novel by an acclaimed master of the form, the Bangalore Detectives Club must find and expose a brutally intelligent killer before they strike again."

What a Time to Be Alive: A Novel

What a Time to Be Alive: A Novel

A deeply moving and often hilarious novel following a woman who becomes an internet folk hero in the most unexpected way, catapulting her into fame and influence just as she's finally beginning to reckon with her complicated past. Lola Treasure Gold can't figure out her life. She's broke, she's unemployed, she's back in her childhood home, a crumbling cottage in the Hollywood Hills. Worse-unspeakably worse-one of her closest friends has just died. So nobody is more surprised than Lola when a jackpot falls in her lap: she stars in a Very Viral Video, opening a surprising path for her to become a self-help guru. With the encouragement of her other best friend, Celi-still alive, thank god-Lola embraces the public interest in her perceived message. But is she a scammer or a sage? Just as Lola is telling others to be their own guiding lights, she can't seem to find hers: she's grieving, she's accused of using the notoriety of her friend's death to fuel her rise, and she's full of questions about the fate of her mother, who came to America pregnant, fleeing China's one-child policy; got deported when Lola was eight; and now has totally disappeared. Driven by an exuberant, searching spirit, Jade Chang's kaleidoscopic new novel is a deep examination of the ways we commodify belief, the power and precarity of fame, and the delicious terror of being truly seen. What a Time to Be Alive asks if we can look honestly at the world and still love it: the answer is a brilliant, resounding yes.

My Other Heart

My Other Heart

A mother's missing child, a search for identity, and ever-changing notions of "home" - class and race intersect with belonging in this stunning debut novel of mothers, daughters and best friends In June 2000, Mimi Truang is on her way home to Vietnam when her toddler daughter vanishes in the Philadelphia airport. Seventeen years later, two best friends graduate from high school in the WASP-y town of Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania. Kit is half Japanese, half American, and interracially adopted by white well-to-do parents. Sabrina is the daughter of a Chinese immigrant single mother who brandishes strict household rules to hide her own secrets. During that last summer before college, Kit travels to Tokyo, determined to uncover her Japanese identity. Her dizzying weeks in Tokyo offer her a critical distance from everything she holds dear--and a taste of first love that refines her understanding of what it means to belong. Sabrina had hoped to take a similar trip to China, but money is tight. Her disappointment quickly subsides, however, as her bold, uncompromising boss becomes a mentor, prompting Sabrina to ask questions she's avoided all her life. Meanwhile, Mimi purchases a plane ticket to Philadelphia. She finally has a lead to renew her search in the country where she and her daughter were parted. When Mimi, Kit, and Sabrina come face to face at the end of this transformative summer, they will confront the people they truly are, dismantling their own assumptions about belonging and the importance of blood ties.

Clown Town

Clown Town

The ninth book in the series behind Slow Horses, an Apple original series now streaming on Apple TV+. "Old spies grow ridiculous, River. Old spies aren't much better than clowns." Or so David Cartwright, the late retired head of MI5, used to tell his grandson. He forgot to add that old spies can be dangerous, too, especially if they've fallen on hard times-as River Cartwright is about to learn the hard way. David Cartwright, long buried, has left his library to the Spooks' College in Oxford, and now it turns out that one of the books has gone missing. Or perhaps it never existed. Now River, once a "slow horse" of Slough House, MI5's outpost for demoted and disgraced spies, has some time to kill while awaiting medical clearance to return to work, and investigating the secrets of his grandfather's library seems a harmless activity. But nothing involving the slow horses ever stays harmless for long. Over at the Park, MI5 First Desk Diana Taverner is in a pickle. An operation carried out during the height of the Troubles revealed the ugly side of state security, and those involved are threatening to expose details. But every threat hides an opportunity, and Taverner has come up with a scheme in which the would-be blackmailer is a solution to a much newer problem. All she needs is the right dupe to get caught holding the bag. Jackson Lamb, the enigmatic and odiferous head of Slough House, does not want any of his joes involved. When Taverner starts plotting mischief people get hurt, and Lamb has no plans to send in the clowns. On the other hand, if the clowns ignore his instructions, any harm that befalls them is hardly his fault. But they're his clowns. And if they don't all make it home, there'll be a reckoning.

The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)

The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)

From the inimitable Rabih Alameddine-National Book Award finalist and winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award-comes a tragicomic saga set in Lebanon, a modern story of family, memory, and the unbreakable attachment of a son and his mother. Across his oeuvre, Rabih Alameddine has distinguished himself as a master of the intimate and the political, celebrated for his caustic wit and "compelling, often jarring, blend of cynicism and hope" (The Economist). In this lively new work, Alameddine returns to Beirut-the setting of his breakout novel An Unnecessary Woman-and delivers a compulsively readable story of a winning duo navigating modern life in Lebanon. In a tiny Beirut apartment, sixty-three-year-old Raja and his mother live side by side. A beloved high school philosophy teacher and "the neighborhood homosexual," Raja relishes books, meditative walks, order, and solitude. Zalfa, his octogenarian mother, views her son's desire for privacy as a personal affront. She demands to know every detail of Raja's work life and love life, boundaries be damned. When Raja receives an invite to an all-expenses-paid writing residency in America, the timing couldn't be better. It arrives on the heels of a series of personal and national disasters that have left Raja itching for peace and quiet away from his mother and the heartache of Lebanon. But what at first seems a stroke of good fortune soon leads Raja to recount and relive the very disasters and past betrayals he wishes to forget. Told in Raja's irresistible and wickedly funny voice, the novel dances across six decades to tell the unforgettable story of a singular life and its absurdities-a tale of mistakes, self-discovery, trauma, and maybe even forgiveness. Above all, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) is a wildly unique and sparkling celebration of love.

New Adult Nonfiction

Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age

Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age

A "brilliantly written, brilliantly conceived" (Tom Holland) history of the Viking Age, from mighty leaders to rebellious teenagers, told through their runes and ruins, games and combs, trash and treasure. In imagining a Viking, a certain image springs to mind: a barbaric warrior, leaping ashore from a longboat, and ready to terrorize the hapless local population of a northern European town. Yet while such characters define our imagination of the Viking Age today, they were in the minority. Instead, in the time-stopping soils, water, and ice of the North, Eleanor Barraclough excavates a preserved lost world, one that reimagines a misunderstood society. By examining artifacts of the past--remnants of wooden gaming boards, elegant antler combs, doodles by imaginative children and bored teenagers, and runes that reveal hidden loves, furious curses, and drunken spouses summoned home from the pub--Barraclough illuminates life in the medieval Nordic world as not just a world of rampaging warriors, but as full of globally networked people with recognizable concerns. This is the history of all the people--children, enslaved people, seers, artisans, travelers, writers--who inhabited the medieval Nordic world. Encompassing not just Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, but also Iceland, Greenland, the British Isles, Continental Europe, and Russia, this is a history of a Viking Age filled with real people of different ages, genders, and ethnicities, as told through the traces that they left behind. "Embers of the hands" is a poetic kenning from the Viking Age that referred to gold. But no less precious are the embers that Barraclough blows back to life in this book--those of ordinary lives long past.

Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

The unforgettable memoir by the late Virginia Roberts Giuffre, the woman who dared to take on Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. The world knows Virginia Roberts Giuffre as Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's most outspoken victim: the woman whose decision to speak out helped send both serial abusers to prison, whose photograph with Prince Andrew catalyzed his fall from grace. But her story has never been told in full, in her own words--until now. In April 2025, Giuffre took her own life. She left behind a memoir written in the years preceding her death and stated unequivocally that she wanted it published. Nobody's Girl is the riveting and powerful story of an ordinary girl who would grow up to confront extraordinary adversity. Here, Giuffre offers an unsparing and definitive account of her time with Epstein and Maxwell, who trafficked her and others to numerous prominent men. She also details the molestation she suffered as a child, as well as her daring escape from Epstein and Maxwell's grasp at nineteen. Giuffre remade her life from scratch and summoned the courage to not only hold her abusers to account but also advocate for other victims. The pages of Nobody's Girl preserve her voice--and her legacy--forever. Nobody's Girl is an astonishing affirmation of Giuffre's unshakable will--first, to claw her way out of victimhood, and then to shine light on wrongdoing and fight for a safer, fairer world. Equal parts intimate and fierce, it is a remarkable narrative of fortitude in the face of depravity and despair.

1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

From the bestselling author of Too big to fail, "the definitive history of the 2008 banking crisis," comes a spellbinding narrative of the most infamous stock market crash in history. With the depth of a classic history and the drama of a thriller, 1929 unravels the greed, blind optimism, and human folly that led to an era-defining collapse-one with ripple effects that still shape our society today. In 1929, the world watched in shock as the unstoppable Wall Street bull market went into a freefall, wiping out fortunes and igniting a depression that would reshape a generation. But behind the flashing ticker tapes and panicked traders, another drama unfolded-one of visionaries and fraudsters, titans and dreamers, euphoria and ruin. With unparalleled access to historical records and newly uncovered documents, New York Times bestselling author Andrew Ross Sorkin takes readers inside the chaos of the crash, behind the scenes of a raging battle between Wall Street and Washington and the larger-than-life characters whose ambition and naivete in an endless boom led to disaster. The dizzying highs and brutal lows of this era eerily mirror today's world-where markets soar, political tensions mount, and the fight over financial influence plays out once again. This is not just a story about money. 1929 is a tale of power, psychology, and the seductive illusion that "this time is different." It's about disregarded alarm bells, financiers who fell from grace, and skeptics who saw the crash coming-only to be dismissed until it was too late. Hailed as a landmark book, Too Big to Fail reimagined how financial crises are told. Now, with 1929, Sorkin delivers an immersive, electrifying account of the most pivotal market collapse of all time-with lessons that remain as urgent as ever. More than just a history, 1929 is a crucial blueprint for understanding the cycles of speculation, the forces that drive financial upheaval, and the warning signs we ignore at our peril.

Dirtbag Billionaire: How Yvon Chouinard Built Patagonia, Made a Fortune, and Gave It All Away

Dirtbag Billionaire: How Yvon Chouinard Built Patagonia, Made a Fortune, and Gave It All Away

This is the inside story of one of the most extraordinary brands in the corporate world, the rare company that is driven by environmental activism instead of cutthroat capitalism. Founded in 1973, Patagonia has grown into a wildly popular producer of jackets, hats, and fleece vests, with a cultlike following among hardcore alpinists and Wall Street traders alike, posting sales of more than $1 billion a year. But it's not just the clothes that make Patagonia unique. For decades, the company has distinguished itself as a singular beacon for socially responsible business, the rare company that can legitimately claim to be doing its damnedest to make the world a better place, while also making a profit. From its early efforts to take exemplary care of its employees, to its extensive work trying to clean up its supply chain, to its controversial activism, Patagonia has set itself apart from its peers with one unorthodox decision after another, proving that there is another way to do capitalism. At the heart of the story is Patagonia's founder, the legendary rock climber Yvon Chouinard. A perennial outsider who forged one of the most impressive resumes in the outdoor world, Chouinard also established himself as a pivotal figure in the history of American business. Guided by his anti-authoritarian streak and his unwavering commitment to preserving the natural world, Patagonia came to exert a powerful influence on other companies, paving the way for a new era of social and environmental responsibility. He started out as a dirtbag--a term affectionately bestowed on poor, itinerant outdoorsmen so uninterested in material possessions they are happy to sleep in the dirt--and he became a billionaire. Chouinard also proved that there was another way to be a philanthropist. In the twilight of his career, he gave away Patagonia, renouncing his wealth and committing all its future profits to fighting the climate crisis.

Baddest Man: The Making of Mike Tyson

Baddest Man: The Making of Mike Tyson

From the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author whose coverage of Mike Tyson and his inner circle dates back to the 1980s, a magnificent noir epic about fame, race, greed, criminality, trauma, and the creation of the most feared and mesmerizing fighter in boxing history. On an evening that defined the Greed is Good 1980s, Donald Trump hosted a raft of celebrities and high rollers in a carnival town on the Jersey Shore to bask in the glow created by a 21-year-old heavyweight champion. Mike Tyson knocked out Michael Spinks that night, and in 91 frenzied seconds earned more than the annual payrolls of the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics combined. It had been just eight years since Tyson, a feral child from a dystopian Brooklyn neighborhood was delivered to boxing's forgotten wizard, Cus D'Amato, living a self-imposed exile in upstate New York. Together, Cus and the Kid were an irresistible story of mutual redemption-darlings to the novelists, screenwriters and newspapermen long charmed by D'Amato, and perfect for the nascent industry of cable television. Long before anyone heard of Tony Soprano, Mike Tyson was HBO's leading man. It was the greatest sales job in the sport's history, and the most lucrative. But the business of Tyson concealed truths that were darker and more nuanced than the script would allow. The intervening decades have seen Tyson villainized, lionized, and fetishized-but never, until now, fully humanized. Mark Kriegel, an acclaimed biographer regarded as "the finest boxing writer in America," was a young cityside reporter at the New York Daily News when first swept up in the Tyson media hurricane, but here measures his subject not by whom he knocked out, but by what he survived. Though Tyson was billed as a modern-day Jack Dempsey, the truth was closer to Sonny Liston. Tyson was Black, feared, and born to die young. What made Liston a pariah, though, would make Tyson-in a way his own handlers could never understand-a touchstone for a generation raised on a soundtrack of hip hop and gunfire. What Peter Guralnick did for Elvis in Train to Memphis and James Kaplan for Sinatra in Frank, Kriegel does for Tyson. It's not just the mesmerizing ascent that he captures, but Tyson's place in the American psyche.

Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer's Legendary Editorship

Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer's Legendary Editorship

An insightful exploration that unveils the lesser-known dimensions of this legendary writer and her legacy, revealing the cultural icon's profound impact as a visionary editor who helped define an important period in American publishing and literature. A multifaceted genius, Toni Morrison transcended her role as an author, helping to shape an important period in American publishing and literature as an editor at one of the nation's most prestigious publishing houses. While Toni Morrison's literary achievements are widely celebrated, her editorial work is little known. Drawing on extensive research and firsthand accounts, this comprehensive study discusses Morrison's remarkable journey from her early days at Random House to her emergence as one of its most important editors. During her tenure in editorial, Morrison refashioned the literary landscape, working with important authors, including Toni Cade Bambara, Leon Forrest, and Lucille Clifton, and empowering cultural icons such as Angela Davis and Muhammad Ali to tell their stories on their own terms. Toni Morrison herself had great enthusiasm about Dana Williams's work on this story, generously sharing memories and thoughts with the author over the years, even giving her the book's title. From the manuscripts she molded, the authors she nurtured, and the readers she inspired, Toni at Random demonstrates how Toni Morrison has influenced American culture beyond the individual titles or authors she published. Morrison's contribution as an editor transformed the broader literary landscape and deepened the cultural conversation. With unparalleled insight and sensitivity, Toni at Random charts this editorial odyssey.

The Unexpected Journey: Finding Strength, Hope, and Yourself on the Caregiving Path

The Unexpected Journey: Finding Strength, Hope, and Yourself on the Caregiving Path

The day Emma Heming Willis' husband, Bruce Willis, was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD), all they were given was a pamphlet and told to check back in a few months. With no hope or direction, Emma walked out of that doctor's appointment frozen with fear, confusion and a sense that her world had just fallen apart. In fact, it had. Bruce and Emma had their story written, their future mapped out. Yet all those dreams crumbled with that diagnosis, and Emma felt alone and more isolated than ever. How would she care for her husband while parenting their young daughters? At that devastating time, Emma just wanted someone who'd been through it to tell her, "This feels terrible right now. Your life is in shambles. But it's going to be okay. Here are some things to think about and put in place so you cannot just survive but thrive." With The Unexpected Journey, Emma has written the book she wishes she'd been handed on the day of Bruce's diagnosis: a supportive guide to navigating the complicated, heartbreaking, and transformative experience that is caregiving for your loved one. Weaving her personal journey as a care partner with the latest research and insights from the world's top dementia, caregiving, and integrative experts she offers the guidance and wisdom caregivers everywhere so desperately need to hear, including: A diagnosis isn't just a label, it's a starting point. It helps you better understand your person's behavior and respond with more clarity and compassion; Taking care of yourself is not optional; it's mandatory. It will make you a better care partner. It's not selfish, it's self-preserving; You don't have a choice about being on the dementia caregiving journey. But you do have a choice in terms of how you approach it and reframe it; Caregivers are human so you aren't always going to be patient and selfless. You have challenges and struggle with conflicting emotions and that's okay. Ultimately, The Unexpected Journey shows you how to care for yourself while doing one of the hardest, most heartbreaking jobs in the world. Because if you don't take care of yourself, you are not going to be able to look after anyone else -- especially your loved one with dementia.

Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future

Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future

For close to a decade, technology analyst Dan Wang has been living through the country's astonishing, messy progress. China's towering bridges, gleaming railways, and sprawling factories have improved economic outcomes in record time. But rapid change has also sent ripples of pain through the society. This reality -- political repression and astonishing growth -- is not a paradox, but rather a feature of China's engineering mindset. In Breakneck, Wang blends political, economic, and philosophical analysis with reportage to reveal a provocative new framework for understanding China -- one that helps us see America more clearly, too. While China is an engineering state, relentlessly pursuing megaprojects, the United States has stalled. America has transformed into a lawyerly society, reflexively blocking everything, good and bad. Blending razor-sharp analysis with immersive storytelling, Wang offers a gripping portrait of a nation in flux. Breakneck traverses metropolises like Shanghai, Chongqing, and Shenzhen, where the engineering state has created not only dazzling infrastructure but also a sense of optimism. The book also exposes the downsides of social engineering, including the surveillance of ethnic minorities, political suppression, and the traumas of the one-child policy and zero-Covid. In an era of animosity and mistrust, Wang unmasks the shocking similarities between the United States and China. Breakneck reveals how each country points toward a better path for the other: Chinese citizens would be better off if their government could learn to value individual liberties, while Americans would be better off if their government could learn to embrace engineering -- and to produce better outcomes for the many, not just the few.

Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese

Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese

From New Yorker editor and writer Michael Luo, a vivid, urgent history of two centuries of Chinese exclusion and the birth of anti-Asian feeling in America. In 1889, when the Supreme Court upheld the Chinese Exclusion Act-a measure barring Chinese laborers from entering the United States that remained in effect for more than fifty years-Justice Stephen Johnson Field characterized the Chinese as a people "residing apart by themselves." They were, Field concluded, "strangers in the land." Today, there are more than twenty-two million people of Asian descent in the United States, yet this label still hovers over Asian Americans. In Strangers in the Land, Luo traces anti-Asian feeling in America to the first wave of immigrants from China in the mid-nineteenth-century: laborers who traveled to California in search of gold and railroad work. Their communities almost immediately faced mobs of white vigilantes who drove them from their workplaces and homes. In his rich, character-driven history, Luo tells stories like that of Denis Kearney, the sandlot demagogue who became the face of the anti-Chinese movement, and of activists who fought back, like Massachusetts Senator George Frisbie Hoar and newspaperman Wong Chin Foo. After the halt on immigration in 1889, the Chinese-American community who remained struggled to survive and thrive on the margins of American life. In 1965, when LBJ's Immigration and Nationality Act forbade discrimination by national origin, America opened its doors wide to families like those of Luo's parents, but he finds that the centuries of exclusion of Chinese-Americans left a legacy: many Asians are still treated, and feel, like outsiders today. Strangers in the Land is a sweeping narrative of a forgotten chapter in American history, and a reminder that America's present reflects its exclusionary past.

Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America

Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America

From political economist, cabinet member, beloved professor, media presence, and bestselling author of Saving Capitalism and The Common Good, a deeply-felt, compelling memoir of growing up in a baby-boom America that made progress in certain areas, fell short in so many important ways, and still has lots of work to do. A thought-provoking, principled, clear-eyed chronicle of the culture, politics, and economic choices that have landed us where we are today-with irresponsible economic bullies and corporations with immense wealth and lobbying power on top, demagogues on the rise, and increasing inequality fueling anger and hatred across the country. Nine months after World War II, Robert Reich was born into a united America with a bright future-that went unrealized for so many as big money took over our democracy. His encounter with school bullies on account of his height-4'11" as an adult-set him on a determined path to spend his life fighting American bullies of every sort. He recounts the death of a friend in the civil rights movement; his political coming of age witnessing the Berkeley free speech movement; working for Bobby Kennedy and Senator Eugene McCarthy; experiencing a country torn apart by the Vietnam War; meeting Hillary Rodham in college, Bill Clinton at Oxford, and Clarence Thomas at Yale Law. He details his friendship with John Kenneth Galbraith during his time teaching at Harvard, and subsequent friendships with Bernie Sanders and Ted Kennedy; his efforts as labor secretary for Clinton and economic advisor to Barack Obama. Ultimately, Reich asks: What did his generation accomplish? Did they make America better, more inclusive, more tolerant? Did they strengthen democracy? Or, did they come up short? In the end, though, Reich hardly abandons us to despair over a doomed democracy. With his characteristic spirit, humor, and inherent decency, he lays out how we can reclaim a sense of community and a democratic capitalism based on the American ideals we still have the power to salvage"-- Provided by publisher.

Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe

Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe

Every day we draw in two thousand gallons of air--and thousands of living things. From the ground to the stratosphere, the air teems with invisible life. This last great biological frontier remains so mysterious that it took over two years for scientists to finally agree that the Covid pandemic was caused by an airborne virus. In Air-Borne, award-winning New York Times columnist and author Carl Zimmer leads us on an odyssey through the living atmosphere and through the history of its discovery. We travel to the tops of mountain glaciers, where Louis Pasteur caught germs from the air, and follow Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh above the clouds, where they conducted groundbreaking experiments. We meet the long-forgotten pioneers of aerobiology including William and Mildred Wells, who tried for decades to warn the world about airborne infections, only to die in obscurity. Air-Borne chronicles the dark side of aerobiology with gripping accounts of how the United States and the Soviet Union clandestinely built arsenals of airborne biological weapons designed to spread anthrax, smallpox, and an array of other pathogens. Air-Borne also leaves readers looking at the world with new eyes--as a place where the oceans and forests loft trillions of cells into the air, where microbes eat clouds, and where life soars thousands of miles on the wind. Weaving together gripping history with the latest reporting on COVID and other threats to global health, Air-Borne surprises us on every page as it reveals the hidden world of the air.

Mellon vs. Churchill: The Untold Story of Treasury Titans at War

Mellon vs. Churchill: The Untold Story of Treasury Titans at War

The never-before-told story of the epic battle of wills between Andrew Mellon and Winston Churchill, as they debated the repayment of the enormous sums loaned by America to Great Britain during World War I. Andrew Mellon, one of the most accomplished businessmen of his era, is almost unknown today. To this shy, diffident (but brilliant) man fell the daunting task of collecting the war debts from European governments still devastated by World War I and struggling to recover economically. Dealing with the U.S. Congress and the heads of foreign governments on the world stage became one of the great adventures of his life. Winston Churchill is one of the best-known figures in history. Mellon vs. Churchill presents Churchill through a different lens, focusing on his service as Chancellor of the Exchequer when Great Britain was the largest debtor to the United States. That he became the most vocal critic of American foreign policy during that time is a scarcely told chapter of economic history, and his long and contentious debate with Mellon has seldom been explored. Yet, during the five years that Churchill served as Chancellor of the Exchequer (1924-1929), Mellon was his counterpart at the United States Treasury, and their debate and fierce differences of opinion about the handling of what Churchill called "the monstrous war debts" made frequent headlines on both sides of the Atlantic. No mention of any of their five meetings are included in the official biographies of either man. Now these confrontations are brought to vivid life in Mellon vs. Churchill, as are many other vignettes from their very public, but largely forgotten, rivalry. Mellon vs. Churchill brings the reader inside the adventurous lives of these two great public figures-men who were not afraid to take huge risks to pursue their grand ambitions.

Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America

Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America

At age 25 in 1951, with the publication of God and Man at Yale, a scathing attack on his alma mater, William F. Buckley, Jr. instantly seized the public stage-and commanded it for the next half century, leading a new generation of activists and ideologues to the heights of political power while he himself attained unique fame and public influence. Ten years before his death in 2008, Buckley chose prize-winning biographer Sam Tanenhaus to tell the full story of his life and times, granting him extensive interviews, entrée to his intimate circle, and unrestricted access to his most private papers. Thus began a deep investigation into the vast and often hidden universe of Bill Buckley and the conservative revolution. Buckley vividly captures its subject in all his facets and phases-founding editor of National Review, best-selling novelist and memoirist, jet-setting clubman and socialite, downhill skier and sailboat racer, wisecracking candidate for mayor of New York, flamboyant antagonist of James Baldwin and Gore Vidal, mentor and idol to hundreds who today populate the worlds of politics and media. Tanenhaus also reveals the private and at times secret life of Bill Buckley: his backstage collaborations with Senator Joseph McCarthy and Watergate felon Howard Hunt; thorny relationships with Presidents Nixon and Reagan; flirtations with financial ruin and legal censure-and, late in life, Buckley's lonely struggle to hold together a movement coming apart over AIDS, the culture wars, and the invasion of Iraq. Majestic in its sweep, lushly detailed, rich in ideas and argument, packed with news and revelations, Buckley is the definitive account of an American giant and the revolution he led.

We Might Just Make It After All: My Best Friendship with Kate Spade

We Might Just Make It After All: My Best Friendship with Kate Spade

A moving portrait of friendship by Elyce Arons as she reflects on her long relationship with Kate Spade, whom she met in college andwith whom she cofounded t he multi-billion-dollar fashion company as they came of age in 1990s New York. When Elyce Arons first met Katy Brosnahan in a University of Kansas dorm room, she had no idea that this polo shirt-wearing Missouri girl would not only become her best friend but also change the course of her life. Back then, Katy and Elyce were preoccupied with frat parties and The Mary Tyler Moore Show; within a decade, they'd be scraping by in New York City, working day jobs to spend nights building a new line of handbags that would one day revolutionize the accessories industry. We Might Just Make It After All brings us on the rollercoaster of adventures (and misadventures) that the best friends embarked on, from transferring colleges on a whim, to falling in and out of love with suitors, cramming into roach-infested Hell's Kitchen apartments, and eventually designing the chic, simple bag that would launch the pair to global fame. Through it all, Katy and Elyce's friendship remained unshakeable. This powerful friendship lasted nearly forty years, until Katy's tragic suicide in 2018. We Might Just Make It After All celebrates her legacy as a cultural icon and loyal friend. Set against the glitzy and gritty backdrop of downtown New York at the turn of the century, We Might Just Make It After All lovingly and candidly explores the power of a friendship as close as sisterhood, the challenges facing women entrepreneurs in the 1990s, and the timeless elegance of a generation-defining brand.

The Aviator and the Showman: Amelia Earhart, George Putnam, and the Marriage that Made an American Icon

The Aviator and the Showman: Amelia Earhart, George Putnam, and the Marriage that Made an American Icon

The riveting and cinematic story of a partnership that would change the world forever In 1928, a young social worker and hobby pilot named Amelia Earhart arrived in the office of George Putnam, heir to the Putnam & Sons throne and hitmaker, on the hunt for the right woman for a secret flying mission across the Atlantic. A partnership--professional and soon otherwise--was born. The Aviator and the Showman unveils the untold story of Amelia's decade-long marriage to George Putnam, offering an intimate exploration of their relationship and the pivotal role it played in her enduring legacy. Despite her outwardly modest and humble image, Amelia was fiercely driven and impossibly brave, a lifelong feminist and trailblazer in her personal and professional life. Putnam, the so-called "PT Barnum of publishing" was a bookselling visionary-but often pushed his authors to extreme lengths in the name of publicity, and no one bore that weight more than Amelia. Their ahead-of-its time partnership supported her grand ambitions--but also pressed her into more and more treacherous stunts to promote her books, influencing a certain recklessness up to and including her final flight. Earhart is a captivating figure to many, but the truth about her life is often overshadowed by myth and legend. In this cinematic new account, Laurie Gwen Shapiro emphasizes Earhart's human side, her struggles, and her authentic aspirations, the truths behind her brave pursuits and the compromises she made to fit into societal expectations. With a trove of new sources including undiscovered audio interviews from those closest to Amelia, Amelia and George presents her as a multifaceted woman--complete with flaws, desires, and competitive drive. It is a gripping and passionate tale of adventure, colorful characters, hubris, and a complex and a vivid portrait of a marriage that shaped the trajectory of an iconic life.

The Beast in the Clouds: The Roosevelt Brothers' Deadly Quest to Find the Mythical Giant Panda

The Beast in the Clouds: The Roosevelt Brothers' Deadly Quest to Find the Mythical Giant Panda

The Himalayas--a snowcapped mountain range that hides treacherous glacier crossings, raiders poised to attack unsuspecting travelers, and air so thin that even seasoned explorers die of oxygen deprivation. Yet among the dangers lies one of the most beautiful and fragile ecosystems in the world. During the 1920s, dozens of expeditions scoured the Chinese and Tibetan wilderness in search of the panda bear, a beast that many believed did not exist. When the two eldest sons of President Theodore Roosevelt sought the bear in 1928, they had little hope of success. Together with a team of scientists and naturalists, they accomplished what a decade of explorers could not, ultimately introducing the panda to the West. In the process, they documented a vanishing world and set off a new era of conservation biology. Along the way, the Roosevelt expedition faced an incredible series of hardships as they disappeared in a blizzard, were attacked by robbers, overcome by sickness and disease, and lost their food supply in the mountains. The explorers would emerge transformed, although not everyone would survive. Beast in the Clouds brings alive these extraordinary events in a potent nonfiction thriller featuring the indomitable Roosevelt family. From the soaring beauty of the Tibetan plateau to the somber depths of human struggle, Nathalia Holt brings her signature 'immersive, evocative' (Bookreporter) voice to this astonishing tale of adventure, harrowing defeat, and dazzling success.

The Spinach King: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty

The Spinach King: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty

Having left this material for his writer son, my father must have wanted the story told, even if he couldn't bear to tell it himself." So begins the story of a forgotten American dynasty, a farming family from the bean fields of southern New Jersey who became as wealthy and powerful as aristocrats -- only to implode in a storm of lies. The patriarch, C. F. Seabrook, was hailed as the "Henry Ford of Agriculture." His son Jack, a keen businessman, was poised to take over what Life called "the biggest vegetable factory on earth." But the carefully cultivated facade -- glamorous outings by horse-drawn carriage, hidden wine cellars, and movie star girlfriends -- hid dark secrets that led to the implosion of the family business. At the heart of the narrative is a multi-generational succession battle. It's a tale of family secrets and Swiss bank accounts, of half-truths, of hatred and passion -- and lots and lots of liquor. The Seabrooks' colorful legal and moral failings took place amid the trappings of extraordinary privilege. But the story of where that money came from is not so pretty. They say behind every great fortune there is a great crime. At Seabrook Farms, the troubling American histories of race, immigration, and exploitation arise like weeds from the soil. Great Migration Black laborers struck against the company for better wages in the 1930s, and Japanese Americans helped found a "global village" on the farm after World War II. Revealing both C. F. and Jack Seabrook's corruption, The Spinach King undermines the "great man" theory of industrial progress. It also shows how American farms evolved from Jeffersonian smallholdings to gigantic agribusinesses, and what such enormous firms do to the families whose fate is bound up in the land. A compulsively readable story of class and privilege, betrayal and revenge -- three decades in the making -- The Spinach King explores the author's complicated family legacy and the dark corners of the American Dream.

Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television

Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television

An illuminating biography of Desi Arnaz, the visionary, trailblazing Cuban American who revolutionized television and brought laughter to millions as Lucille Ball's beloved husband on I Love Lucy, leaving a remarkable legacy that continues to influence American culture today. Desi Arnaz is a name that resonates with fans of classic television, but few understand the depth of his contributions to the entertainment industry. In Desi Arnaz, Todd S. Purdum offers a captivating biography that dives into the groundbreaking Latino artist andbusinessman known to millions as Ricky Ricardo from I Love Lucy. Beyond his iconic role, Arnaz was a pioneering entrepreneur who fundamentally transformed the television landscape. His journey from Cuban aristocracy to world-class entertainer is remarkable. After losingeverything during the 1933 Cuban revolution, Arnaz reinvented himself in pre-World War II Miami, tapping into the rising demand for Latin music. By twenty, he had formed his own band and sparked the conga dance craze in America. Behind the scenes, he revolutionized television production by filming I Love Lucy before a live studio audience with synchronized cameras, a model that remains a sitcom gold standard today. Despite being underestimated due to his accent and origins, Arnaz's legacy is monumental. Purdum's biography, enriched withunpublished materials and interviews, reveals the man behind the legend and highlights his enduring contributions to pop culture and television.

Healthy Happy ADHD: Transform How You Move, Eat, and Feel, and Create Your Own Path to Well-Being

Healthy Happy ADHD: Transform How You Move, Eat, and Feel, and Create Your Own Path to Well-Being

ADHD makes it hard to maintain a healthy lifestyle, but an unhealthy lifestyle can make ADHD more difficult to live with. Health and fitness coach Lisa Dee experienced this firsthand when symptoms of her undiagnosed ADHD began wreaking havoc on her physical and mental health. Executive dysfunction left her in a constant state of overwhelm. She turned to unhealthy foods to cope with her exhaustion and seek stimulation, leading to unwanted weight gain. After finally receiving an ADHD diagnosis at age thirty-one, Lisa realized she needed to consider the unique ways her ADHD brain and body operated if she wanted to feel her best. In Healthy Happy ADHD, she shares the mindset shifts, systems, and habits that transformed her life and form her foundation for healthy living as a woman with ADHD. Drawing from her lived experience, she shows you how to revamp your routines, build new habits, and bring ease to your busy brain by learning to: Ditch the restrictive rules, shame-based ideas, and neurotypical expectations about what exercise, healthy eating, and rest "should" look like; Eat well with "ADHD Easy Meals," get curious about how food affects your energy and mood, and avoid the decision paralysis that comes with meal planning and grocery shopping; Prepare for the impacts of hormonal fluctuations on your ADHD symptoms and recognize the link between ADHD, PMS, and PMDD; Reconnect with yourself and practice self-compassion through introspective exercises that encourage self-reflection and mindfulness. Featuring creative wellness hacks and empowering practices presented in easy-to-digest chapters with an ADHD-friendly design, Healthy Happy ADHD offers a life-changing blueprint for becoming your most vibrant self, both inside and out.

The Good Mother Myth: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How to Be a Good Mom

The Good Mother Myth: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How to Be a Good Mom

Timely and thought-provoking, Nancy Reddy unpacks and debunks the bad ideas that have for too long defined what it means to be a "good" mom. When Nancy Reddy had her first child, she found herself suddenly confronted with the ideal of a perfect mother-a woman who was constantly available, endlessly patient, and immediately invested in her child to the exclusion of all else. Reddy had been raised by a single working mother, considered herself a feminist, and was well on her way to a PhD. Why did doing motherhood "right" feel so wrong? For answers, Reddy turned to the mid-20th century social scientists and psychologists whose work still forms the basis of so much of what we believe about parenting. It seems ludicrous to imagine modern moms taking advice from midcentury researchers. Yet, their bad ideas about so-called "good" motherhood have seeped so pervasively into our cultural norms. In The Good Mother Myth, Reddy debunks the flawed lab studies, sloppy research, and straightforward misogyny of researchers from Harry Harlow, who claimed to have discovered love by observing monkeys in his lab, to the famous Dr. Spock, whose bestselling parenting guide included just one (1!) illustration of a father interacting with his child. This timely and thought-provoking book will make you laugh, cry, and want to scream (sometimes all at once). Blending history of science, cultural criticism, and memoir, The Good Mother Myth pulls back the curtain on the flawed social science behind our contemporary understanding of what makes a good mom.

Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West

Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West

In Israel and Civilization, acclaimed journalist, legal expert, and pundit Josh Hammer makes a righteous case that the key to the prosperity of the West is the flourishing of the Jewish people and the Jewish State of Israel. Hammer's uplifting offense is our best defense against the enemies of the Jewish people's right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. And as Hammer makes clear, manifesting the promise of Israel requires action by the United States and its allies. There can be no overstating the impact of the trauma of October 7, 2023, on the Jewish people. Yet the anti-Israel reactions the world over have been equally devastating. Rallies of hundreds of thousands explicitly or implicitly promoting Hamas violence; demonstrations of Ivy League professors celebrating the pogrom as awesome and exhilarating; so-called human rights organizations that refuse to unequivocally condemn the use of rape as a weapon of war; and a hydra of multiculturalism, postmodern relativism, and tolerance--it all threatens the physical and metaphysical survival of the West and our essential Jewish heritage. Preserving the best of what's been thought and said throughout history and ensuring that there will be centuries more requires a West that is proud of its Jewish heritage. In other words, the continued existence of the Jewish people is inextricably tied to the endurance of Western civilization. Israel is the center of the battle, and Israel and Civilization explains why and how the Jewish state must win.

The Hiroshima Men: The Quest to Build the Atomic Bomb, and the Fateful Decision to Use It

The Hiroshima Men: The Quest to Build the Atomic Bomb, and the Fateful Decision to Use It

At 8:15 a.m. on August 6th, 1945, the Japanese port city of Hiroshima was struck by the world's first atomic bomb. Built in the US by the top-secret Manhattan Project and delivered by a B-29 Superfortress, a revolutionary long-range bomber, the weapon destroyed large swaths of the city, instantly killing tens of thousands. The world would never be the same again. The Hiroshima Men's unique narrative recounts the decade-long journey towards this first atomic attack. It charts the race for nuclear technology before and during the Second World War, as the allies fought the axis powers in Europe, North Africa, China, and across the vastness of the Pacific, and is seen through the experiences of several key characters: General Leslie Groves, leader of the Manhattan Project alongside Robert Oppenheimer; pioneering Army Air Force bomber pilot Colonel Paul Tibbetts II; the mayor of Hiroshima, Senkichi Awaya, who would die alongside over eighty-thousand of his fellow citizens; and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist John Hersey, who travelled to post-war Japan to expose the devastation the bomb had inflicted upon the city, and in a historic New Yorker article, described in unflinching detail the dangers posed by its deadly after-effect, radiation poisoning. This thrilling account takes the reader from the corridors of power in the White House and the Pentagon to the test sites of New Mexico; from the air war above Germany to the Potsdam Conference of Truman, Churchill, and Stalin to the savage reconquest of the Pacific to the deadly firebombing air raids across the Japanese islands. The Hiroshima Men also includes Japanese perspectives-a vital aspect often missing from Western narratives-to complete MacGregor's nuanced, deeply human account of the bombing's meaning and aftermath.

The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future

The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future

From an acclaimed Wall Street Journal reporter comes the first biography of the enigmatic leader of the AI revolution, charting his ascent within the tech world as well as his ambitions for this powerful new technology. On November 30, 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT, a chatbot that captivated the world with its uncanny ability to hold humanlike conversations. Not even a year later, on November 17, 2023, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, was summarily fired on a video call by the company's board. The firing made headlines around the globe: OpenAI is the leader in the race to build AGI--artificial general intelligence, or AI that can think like a human being--and Altman is the most prominent figure in the field. Yet it was mere days before Altman was back running the company he had co-founded, with most of the directors who voted to fire him themselves removed from the board. The episode was a demonstration of how quickly the industry is moving, and of Altman's power to bend reality to his will. In The Optimist, the Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey presents the most detailed account yet of Altman's rise, from his precocious childhood in St. Louis to his first, failed startup experience; his time as legendary entrepreneur Paul Graham's protégé and successor as head of Y Combinator, the start-up accelerator where Altman became the premier power broker in Silicon Valley; the founding of OpenAI and his recruitment of a small yet superior team; and his struggle to keep his company at the cutting edge while fending off determined rivals, including Elon Musk, a former friend and now Altman's bitter opponent. Hagey conducted more than 250 interviews, with Altman's family, friends, teachers, mentors, co-founders, colleagues, investors, and portfolio companies, in addition to spending hours with Altman himself. The person who emerges in her portrait is a brilliant dealmaker with a love of risk, who believes in technological progress with an almost religious conviction--yet who sometimes moves too fast for the people around him. With both the promise and peril of AI increasing by the day, Hagey delivers a nuanced, balanced, revelatory account of the individual who is leading us into what he himself has called "the intelligence age." Altman is a figure out of Isaac Asimov or Neal Stephenson. Or he is the author himself: if it feels as though we have all collectively stepped into a science fiction short story, it is Altman who is writing it.

Women of War: The Italian Assassins, Spies, and Couriers Who Fought the Nazis

Women of War: The Italian Assassins, Spies, and Couriers Who Fought the Nazis

From underground soldiers to intrepid spies, Women of War unearths the hidden history of the brave women who risked their lives to overthrow the Nazi occupation and liberate Italy. Using primary sources and brand new scholarship, historian Suzanne Cope illuminates the roles played by women while Italians struggled under dual foes: Nazi invaders and Italian fascist loyalists. Cope's research and storytelling introduces four brave and resourceful women who risked everything to overthrow the Nazi occupation and pry their future from the fascist grasp. We meet Carla Capponi in Rome, where she made bombs in an underground bunker then ferried them to their deadly destination wearing lipstick and a trenchcoat; and Bianca Guidetti Serra who rode her bicycle up switchbacks in the Alps, dodging bullets while delivering bags of clandestine newspapers and munitions to the anti-fascist armies hidden in the mountains. In Florence, the young future author of Italy's new constitution, Teresa Mattei, carried secret messages and hid bombs; while Anita Malavasi led troops across the Apennine Mountains. Women of War brings their experiences as underground resistance fighters, partisan combatants, spies, and saboteurs to life. Essential and original, Women of War offers not only a reexamination of the elision of women from vital WWII history but also a valuable perspective on the ongoing fight for gender equality and social justice. After all, these were the women who launched a feminist movement as they fought for the future of their country, and what that could mean for its women, all while under Nazi and fascist fire.

Gettysburg: The Tide Turns: An Oral History

Gettysburg: The Tide Turns: An Oral History

The definitive oral history of the battle that turned the tide of the Civil War that combines vivid first-hand accounts with rich historical narrative. In late June of 1863, one month after his victory over Union forces at Chancellorsville, Virginia, General Robert E. Lee, head of the Army of Northern Virginia, invaded the North. He would cross the Potomac River and head towards Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, with the goal of seizing the trains which would then take his army into Philadelphia and perhaps even New York City. He hoped that these victories would force U.S. President Abraham Lincoln to surrender. As he pushed north, Lee was operating without his cavalry leader, J.E.B. Stuart, whom he had allowed to go on a useless scouting mission. At the same time, the Union army, now led by little known commander George Meade was tracking Lee and his men. Both sides clashed at Gettysburg, a tiny Pennsylvania farm village on July 1 in what would be a three-day battle that would change the course of the war. The battle would reveal the mettle of the unheralded Meade and would also call into question General Lee’s reputation as a legendary commander when he unleashed the ill planned and ill prepared Pickett’s Charge. The battle proved costly to both sides. Some 50,000 men were killed across the battlefield and the defeated Lee’s army would never again invade the North. After so much bloodshed, President Lincoln's history-making and eloquent Gettysburg Address came to embody the essence of the war. The address, not even three minutes long, is considered the finest speech ever delivered buy an American President and has been memorized by generations ever since. Using letters, diaries, journals, newspaper articles, and other written sources, Bruce Chadwick has crafted another masterful oral history. Skillfully combining traditional historic narrative with the in-the-moment ethos of an oral history, Gettysburg: The Tide Turns brings this iconic battle to fresh and vivid life.

Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America

Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America

At age 25 in 1951, with the publication of God and Man at Yale, a scathing attack on his alma mater, William F. Buckley, Jr. instantly seized the public stage-and commanded it for the next half century, leading a new generation of activists and ideologues to the heights of political power while he himself attained unique fame and public influence. Ten years before his death in 2008, Buckley chose prize-winning biographer Sam Tanenhaus to tell the full story of his life and times, granting him extensive interviews, entrée to his intimate circle, and unrestricted access to his most private papers. Thus began a deep investigation into the vast and often hidden universe of Bill Buckley and the conservative revolution. Buckley vividly captures its subject in all his facets and phases-founding editor of National Review, best-selling novelist and memoirist, jet-setting clubman and socialite, downhill skier and sailboat racer, wisecracking candidate for mayor of New York, flamboyant antagonist of James Baldwin and Gore Vidal, mentor and idol to hundreds who today populate the worlds of politics and media. Tanenhaus also reveals the private and at times secret life of Bill Buckley: his backstage collaborations with Senator Joseph McCarthy and Watergate felon Howard Hunt; thorny relationships with Presidents Nixon and Reagan; flirtations with financial ruin and legal censure-and, late in life, Buckley's lonely struggle to hold together a movement coming apart over AIDS, the culture wars, and the invasion of Iraq. Majestic in its sweep, lushly detailed, rich in ideas and argument, packed with news and revelations, Buckley is the definitive account of an American giant and the revolution he led.

Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West

Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West

In Israel and Civilization, acclaimed journalist, legal expert, and pundit Josh Hammer makes a righteous case that the key to the prosperity of the West is the flourishing of the Jewish people and the Jewish State of Israel. Hammer's uplifting offense is our best defense against the enemies of the Jewish people's right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. And as Hammer makes clear, manifesting the promise of Israel requires action by the United States and its allies. There can be no overstating the impact of the trauma of October 7, 2023, on the Jewish people. Yet the anti-Israel reactions the world over have been equally devastating. Rallies of hundreds of thousands explicitly or implicitly promoting Hamas violence; demonstrations of Ivy League professors celebrating the pogrom as awesome and exhilarating; so-called human rights organizations that refuse to unequivocally condemn the use of rape as a weapon of war; and a hydra of multiculturalism, postmodern relativism, and tolerance--it all threatens the physical and metaphysical survival of the West and our essential Jewish heritage. Preserving the best of what's been thought and said throughout history and ensuring that there will be centuries more requires a West that is proud of its Jewish heritage. In other words, the continued existence of the Jewish people is inextricably tied to the endurance of Western civilization. Israel is the center of the battle, and Israel and Civilization explains why and how the Jewish state must win.

Mark Twain

Mark Twain

The Washington Post Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow illuminates the full, fascinating, and complex life of the writer long celebrated as the father of American literature, Mark Twain Before he was Mark Twain, he was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Born in 1835, the man who would become America’s first, and most influential, literary celebrity spent his childhood dreaming of piloting steamboats on the Mississippi. But when the Civil War interrupted his career on the river, the young Twain went west to the Nevada Territory and accepted a job at a local newspaper, writing dispatches that attracted attention for their brashness and humor. It wasn’t long before the former steamboat pilot from Missouri was recognized across the country for his literary brilliance, writing under a pen name that he would immortalize. In this richly nuanced portrait of Mark Twain, acclaimed biographer Ron Chernow brings his considerable powers to bear on a man who shamelessly sought fame and fortune, and crafted his persona with meticulous care. After establishing himself as a journalist, satirist, and lecturer, he eventually settled in Hartford with his wife and three daughters, where he went on to write The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . He threw himself into the hurly-burly of American culture, and emerged as the nation’s most notable political pundit. At the same time, his madcap business ventures eventually bankrupted him; to economize, Twain and his family spent nine eventful years in exile in Europe. He suffered the death of his wife and two daughters, and the last stage of his life was marked by heartache, political crusades, and eccentric behavior that sometimes obscured darker forces at play. Drawing on Twain’s bountiful archives, including thousands of letters and hundreds of unpublished manuscripts, Chernow masterfully captures the man whose career reflected the country’s westward expansion, industrialization, and foreign wars, and who was the most important white author of his generation to grapple so fully with the legacy of slavery. Today, more than one hundred years after his death, Twain’s writing continues to be read, debated, and quoted. In this brilliant work of scholarship, a moving tribute to the writer’s talent and humanity, Chernow reveals the magnificent and often maddening life of one of the most original characters in American history.

The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward

The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward

In a rare window into some of her life's pivotal moments, Melinda French Gates draws from previously untold stories to offer a new perspective on encountering transitions. "You don't get to be my age without navigating all kinds of transitions. Some you embraced and some you never expected. Some you hoped for and some you fought as hard as you could." - Melinda French Gates Transitions are moments in which we step out of our familiar surroundings and into a new landscape-a space that, for many people, is shadowed by confusion, fear, and indecision. The Next Day accompanies readers as they cross that space, offering guidance on how to make the most of the time between an ending and a new beginning and how to move forward into the next day when the ground beneath you is shifting. In this book, Melinda will reflect, for the first time in print, on some of the most significant transitions in her own life, including becoming a parent, the death of a dear friend, and her departure from the Gates Foundation. The stories she tells illuminate universal lessons about loosening the bonds of perfectionism, helping friends navigate times of crisis, embracing uncertainty, and more. Each one of us, no matter who we are or where we are in life, is headed toward transitions of our own. With her signature warmth and grace, Melinda candidly shares stories of times when she was in need of wisdom and shines a path through the open space stretching out before us all.

A Fire in His Soul: Van Gogh, Paris, and the Making of an Artist

A Fire in His Soul: Van Gogh, Paris, and the Making of an Artist

Vincent Van Gogh arrived in the French capital on the last day of February 1886, a month short of his thirty-third birthday. He was a man beaten down by life, half-starved, and nearly broken psychologically. He was saved by his brother Theo, who provided him with room, board, and, most crucially, emotional support while he attempted to master the difficult craft of painting. Thus far, Vincent's crude scenes of peasant life rendered in murky shades of brown and gray were both hackneyed and amateurish. Theo, a successful art dealer at a prestigious Parisian firm, dismissed them as gloomy, unappealing, and, worst of all, unmarketable. By the time Vincent left Paris, almost exactly two years later, he'd transformed himself into one of the most original artists of the age, turning out works of hallucinatory intensity in vivid hues and stamped with his own distinctive personality. A Fire in His Soul chronicles this remarkable transformation. It's a tale filled with tragedy and triumph, personal anguish and creative fulfillment, as Vincent, through sheer force of will, reinvents himself as a painter of unparalleled expressive power. Along the way, the reader will discover an unfamiliar Van Gogh: not the solitary genius of the popular imagination, shunned by an uncomprehending world and conjuring masterpieces from the depths of his lonely soul. In Paris, he was at the center of a community of like-minded seekers. Here, Van Gogh was able to engage in a lively dialogue with fellow artists almost as daring as he was, expanding his notion of what art could and should be. It was in the cafes and studios of Montmartre and in the grand galleries of the Louvre and Luxembourg, that Van Gogh received his artistic education--a crash course that at first disoriented him but ultimately sparked his creative breakthrough. Working alongside such legendary figures as Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Seurat, and Signac, Vincent perfected his technique and launched an artistic revolution.

The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto: A Fifteen-Year Quest to Unmask the Secret Genius Behind Crypto

The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto: A Fifteen-Year Quest to Unmask the Secret Genius Behind Crypto

A thrilling investigation into the mysterious identity of Bitcoin’s creator and a deep dive into crypto’s utopian origin story—from The New York Times bestselling author of The Billionaire’s Vinegar “Could be the best mystery story of the past twenty years.”—James Patterson “ The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto will leave you amazed, enlightened, and utterly breathless.”—Robert Kolker, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Valley Road In October 2008, someone going by the name Satoshi Nakamoto posted a white paper outlining “a peer-to-peer electronic cash system” called Bitcoin to an arcane listserv populated by Cypherpunks. No one in the community had heard of Nakamoto, and just as people were starting to wonder who he was, he vanished. As the years passed, and the scope of Nakamoto’s achievement became clear, the truth of his identity grew into the greatest unsolved mystery of our time. The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto traces Benjamin Wallace’s attempt to unmask the figure behind the currency and the world it wrought. Nakamoto’s Bitcoin at first seemed destined to fulfill the dreams of fringe 1990s utopians for a currency set free from governments and big banks. Yet after he disappeared, his creation took on a strange new life in the financial markets, where rampant speculation fueled a vision of crypto as a potential windfall, inviting charlatans and scammers and opening a vast gulf between Bitcoin’s idealistic origins and its troubled reputation. But who was Nakamoto? Whoever he was could rightly claim to have invented one of the most important technologies of the new century. And Nakamoto was a billionaire—his Bitcoin wallet held an untouched eleven-figure fortune waiting to be claimed. With the same propulsive-narrative flair that made his New York Times bestseller The Billionaire’s Vinegar an instant success, Benjamin Wallace presents a page-turning work of investigative journalism. Tracking leads from London to Oslo to Los Angeles, from coastal Australia to the Arizona desert, he takes readers through a rogues’ gallery tour of Nakamoto suspects—from benevolent geniuses like cryptographer Hal Finney to difficult ones like a reclusive polymath known to his followers only as Jim; from the mercurial Australian Craig Wright, who claims to be Nakamoto, to a secret team at the National Security Agency. With the forensic skill of Sherlock Holmes and the storytelling verve of Arthur Conan Doyle, Wallace follows the trail of computer code and personal writings to the heart of the Nakamoto mystery while interrogating the very nature of mystery itself.

No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson

No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson

An explosive, deeply reported exposé of Johnson & Johnson, one of America’s oldest and most trusted pharmaceutical companies—from an award-winning investigative journalist “A page-turning drama that raises life-or-death questions about the world’s largest healthcare conglomerate.”—Jonathan Eig, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of King: A Life One day in 2004, Gardiner Harris, a pharmaceutical reporter for The New York Times, was early for a flight and sat down at an airport bar. He struck up a conversation with the woman on the barstool next to him, who happened to be a drug sales rep for Johnson & Johnson. Her horrific story about unethical sales practices and the devastating impact they’d had on her family fundamentally changed the nature of how Harris would cover the company—and the entire pharmaceutical industry—for the Times . His subsequent investigations and ongoing research since that very first conversation led to this book—a blistering exposé of a trusted American institution and the largest healthcare conglomerate in the world. Harris takes us light-years away from the company’s image as the child-friendly “baby company” as he uncovers reams of evidence showing decades of deceitful and dangerous corporate practices that have threatened the lives of millions. He covers multiple disasters: lies and cover-ups regarding the link of Johnson’s Baby Powder to cancer, the surprising dangers of Tylenol, a criminal campaign to sell antipsychotics that have cost countless lives, a popular drug used to support cancer patients that actually increases the risk that cancer tumors will grow, and deceptive marketing that accelerated opioid addictions through their product Duragesic (fentanyl) that rival even those of the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma. Filled with shocking and infuriating but utterly necessary revelations, No More Tears is a landmark work of investigative journalism that lays bare the deeply rooted corruption behind the image of babies bathing with a smile.

Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools

Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools

A sweeping and trenchant exploration of the history of Native American boarding schools in the U.S., and the legacy of abuse wrought by systemic attempts to use education as a tool through which to destroy Native culture. From the mid-19th century to the late 1930s, tens of thousands of Native children were pulled from their families to attend boarding schools that claimed to help create opportunity for these children to pursue professions outside their communities and otherwise "assimilate" into American life. In reality, these boarding schools-sponsored by the US Government but often run by various religious orders with little to no regulation-were an insidious attempt to destroy tribes, break up families, and stamp out the traditions of generations of Native people. Children were beaten for speaking their native languages, forced to complete menial tasks in terrible conditions, and utterly deprived of love and affection. Ojibwe journalist Mary Pember's mother was forced to attend one of these institutions-a seminary in Wisconsin, and the impacts of her experience have cast a pall over Mary's own childhood, and her relationship with her mother. Highlighting both her mother's experience and the experiences of countless other students at such schools, their families, and their children, Medicine River paints a stark portrait of communities still reckoning with the legacy of acculturation that has affected generations of Native communities. Through searing interviews and assiduous historical reporting, Pember traces the evolution and continued rebirth of a culture whose country has been seemingly intent upon destroying it.

Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Great Power Prophet

Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Great Power Prophet

An intimate and masterful biography of Zbigniew Brzezinski -- President Carter's national security advisor and one of America's leading geopolitical thinkers -- from one of the finest columnists and political writers at work today. Zbigniew Brzezinski was a key architect of the Soviet Union's demise, which ended the Cold War. A child of Warsaw -- the heart of central Europe's bloodlands -- Brzezinski turned his fierce resentment at his homeland's razing by Nazi Germany and the Red Army into a lifelong quest for liberty. Born the year that Joseph Stalin consolidated power, and dying a few months into Donald Trump's first presidency, Brzezinski was shaped by and in turn shaped the global power struggles of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. As counsel to US presidents from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama, and chief foreign policy figure of the late 1970s under Jimmy Carter, Brzezinski converted his acclaim as a Sovietologist into Washington power. With Henry Kissinger, his lifelong rival with whom he had a fraught on-off relationship, he personified the new breed of foreign-born scholar who thrived in America's "Cold War University" -- and who ousted Washington's gentlemanly class of WASPs who had run U.S. foreign policy for so long. Brzezinski's impact, aided by his unusual friendship with the Polish-born John Paul II, sprang from his knowledge of Moscow's "Achilles heel" -- the fact that its nationalities, such as the Ukrainians, and satellite states, including Poland, yearned to shake off Moscow's grip. Neither a hawk nor a dove, Brzezinski was a biting critic of George W. Bush's Iraq War and an early endorser of Obama. Because he went against the DC grain of joining factions, and was on occasion willing to drop Democrats for Republicans, Brzezinski is something of history's orphan. His historic role has been greatly underweighted. In the almost cinematic arc of his life can be found the grand narrative of the American century and great power struggle that followed.

Rachel Carson and the Power of Queer Love

Rachel Carson and the Power of Queer Love

Reading Silent Spring as an outgrowth of Rachel Carson's love with Dorothy Freeman, Maxwell argues for the power of queer love now in the fight against climate change. There is something major missing from most accounts of Silent Spring and its impact: namely, Dorothy Freeman, with whom Rachel Carson had a love relationship for over a decade. Freeman had a summer house with her husband, Stan, on the island of Southport, Maine, where Carson settled after the success of her first bestseller, The Sea Around Us . Correspondence shows the women developing strong feelings as they connect over their shared pleasure in the rocky coast. In this moving new book, political theorist Lida Maxwell offers close readings that suggest Carson's relationship with Freeman was central to her writing of Silent Spring -a work whose defense of vibrant nonhuman nature allowed Carson and Freeman's love to flourish and for the pair to become their most authentic selves. What Maxwell calls Carson and Freeman's "queer love" unsettled their heteronormative ideas of the good life as based in bourgeois private life, and led Carson to an increasingly critical view of capitalism and its effects on nonhuman nature and human lives alike. From these women's experience Maxwell compellingly makes the case for an alternative democratic climate politics based on learning how to tune into authentic desire. Read through this lens, Carson's work begins to look different and shows us not that the human incursion into nature is dangerous, but that a particular relationship is: the loveless using up of nature for capitalism. When Carson and Freeman correspond in excited detail about the algae, anemones, and veery thrushes of the Maine coast, they give us a glimpse of a different, more loving use of nature. Inspired by Carson and Freeman's deep care for one another, Maxwell reveals how a form of loving available to all of us can help reshape political desire amidst contemporary environmental crises.

Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools

Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools

A sweeping and trenchant exploration of the history of Native American boarding schools in the U.S., and the legacy of abuse wrought by systemic attempts to use education as a tool through which to destroy Native culture. From the mid-19th century to the late 1930s, tens of thousands of Native children were pulled from their families to attend boarding schools that claimed to help create opportunity for these children to pursue professions outside their communities and otherwise "assimilate" into American life. In reality, these boarding schools-sponsored by the US Government but often run by various religious orders with little to no regulation-were an insidious attempt to destroy tribes, break up families, and stamp out the traditions of generations of Native people. Children were beaten for speaking their native languages, forced to complete menial tasks in terrible conditions, and utterly deprived of love and affection. Ojibwe journalist Mary Pember's mother was forced to attend one of these institutions-a seminary in Wisconsin, and the impacts of her experience have cast a pall over Mary's own childhood, and her relationship with her mother. Highlighting both her mother's experience and the experiences of countless other students at such schools, their families, and their children, Medicine River paints a stark portrait of communities still reckoning with the legacy of acculturation that has affected generations of Native communities. Through searing interviews and assiduous historical reporting, Pember traces the evolution and continued rebirth of a culture whose country has been seemingly intent upon destroying it.

Jane Austen's Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend

Jane Austen's Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend

Long before she was a rare book dealer, Rebecca Romney was a devoted reader of Jane Austen. She loved that Austen's books took the lives of women seriously, explored relationships with wit and confidence, and always, allowed for the possibility of a happy ending. She read and reread them, often wishing Austen wrote just one more. But Austen wasn't a lone genius. She wrote at a time of great experimentation for women writers -- and clues about those women, and the exceptional books they wrote, are sprinkled like breadcrumbs throughout Austen's work. Every character in Northanger Abbey who isn't a boor sings the praises of Ann Radcliffe. The play that causes such a stir in Mansfield Park is a real one by the playwright Elizabeth Inchbald. In fact, the phrase "pride and prejudice" came from Frances Burney's second novel Cecilia. The women that populated Jane Austen's bookshelf profoundly influenced her work; Austen looked up to them, passionately discussed their books with her friends, and used an appreciation of their books as a litmus test for whether someone had good taste. So where had these women gone? Why hadn't Romney -- despite her training -- ever read them? Or, in some cases, even heard of them? And why were they no longer embraced as part of the wider literary canon? Jane Austen's Bookshelf investigates the disappearance of Austen's heroes -- women writers who were erased from the Western canon -- to reveal who they were, what they meant to Austen, and how they were forgotten. Each chapter profiles a different writer including Frances Burney, Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Lennox, Charlotte Smith, Hannah More, Elizabeth Inchbald, Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, and Maria Edgeworth -- and recounts Romney's experience reading them, finding rare copies of their works, and drawing on connections between their words and Austen's. Romney collects the once-famed works of these forgotten writers, physically recreating Austen's bookshelf and making a convincing case for why these books should be placed back on the to-be-read pile of all book lovers today. Jane Austen's Bookshelf will encourage you to look beyond assigned reading lists, question who decides what belongs there, and build your very own collection of favorite novels.

Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritance

Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritance

In the tradition of When Time Stopped and The Hare with Amber Eyes, this extraordinary family memoir investigates the dark legacy of the author's great-grandfather, a talented German-Jewish chemist specializing in radioactive household products who wound up developing chemical weapons and gas mask filters for the Nazis. When novelist and poet Joe Dunthorne began researching his family history, he expected to write the account of their heroic escape from Nazi Germany in 1935. Instead, what he found in his great-grandfather's voluminous, unpublished, partially translated memoir was a much darker, more complicated story. "I confess to my descendants who will read these lines that I made a grave error. I betrayed myself, my most sacred principles," he wrote. "I cannot shake off the great debt on my conscience." Siegfried Merzbacher was a German-Jewish chemist living in Oranienburg, a small town north of Berlin, where he developed various household items, including a radioactive toothpaste called Doramad. But then he was asked by the government to work on products with a strong military connection-first he made and tested gas-mask filters, and then he was invited to establish a chemical weapons laboratory. Between 1933 and 1935, he was a Jewish chemist making chemical weapons for the Nazis. While he and his nuclear family escaped safely to Turkey before the war, Siegfried never got over his complicity, particularly after learning that members of his extended family were murdered in Auschwitz. Armed only with his great-grandfather's rambling, 2,000-page deathbed memoir and a handful of archival clues, Dunthorne traveled to Munich, Ammendorf, Berlin, Ankara, and Oranienburg-a place where hundreds of unexploded bombs remain hidden in the irradiated soil-to reckon with the remarkable, unsettling legacy of his family's past.

Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America

Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America

In 1664, England decided to invade the Dutch-controlled city of New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. Charles II and his brother, the Duke of York, had dreams of empire, and their archrivals, the Dutch, were in the way. But Richard Nicolls, the military officer who led the English flotilla bent on destruction, changed his strategy once he encountered Peter Stuyvesant, New Netherland’s canny director general. Bristling with vibrant characters, Taking Manhattan reveals the founding of New York to be an invention, the result of creative negotiations that would blend the multiethnic, capitalistic society of New Amsterdam with the power of the rising English empire. But the birth of what might be termed the first modern city is also a story of the brutal dispossession of Native Americans and of the roots of American slavery. The book draws from newly translated materials and illuminates neglected histories―of religious refugees, Indigenous tribes, and free and enslaved Africans. Taking Manhattan tells the riveting story of the birth of New York City as a center of capitalism and pluralism, a foundation from which America would rise. It also shows how the paradox of New York’s origins―boundless opportunity coupled with subjugation and displacement―reflects America’s promise and failure to this day. Russell Shorto, whose work has been described as “astonishing” (New York Times) and “literary alchemy” (Chicago Tribune), has once again mined archival sources to offer a vibrant tale and a fresh and trenchant argument about American beginnings.

Gettysburg: The Tide Turns

Gettysburg: The Tide Turns

The definitive oral history of the battle that turned the tide of the Civil War that combines vivid first-hand accounts with rich historical narrative. In late June of 1863, one month after his victory over Union forces at Chancellorsville, Virginia, General Robert E. Lee, head of the Army of Northern Virginia, invaded the North. He would cross the Potomac River and head towards Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, with the goal of seizing the trains which would then take his army into Philadelphia and perhaps even New York City. He hoped that these victories would force U.S. President Abraham Lincoln to surrender. As he pushed north, Lee was operating without his cavalry leader, J.E.B. Stuart, whom he had allowed to go on a useless scouting mission. At the same time, the Union army, now led by little known commander George Meade was tracking Lee and his men. Both sides clashed at Gettysburg, a tiny Pennsylvania farm village on July 1 in what would be a three-day battle that would change the course of the war. The battle would reveal the mettle of the unheralded Meade and would also call into question General Lee’s reputation as a legendary commander when he unleashed the ill planned and ill prepared Pickett’s Charge. The battle proved costly to both sides. Some 50,000 men were killed across the battlefield and the defeated Lee’s army would never again invade the North. After so much bloodshed, President Lincoln's history-making and eloquent Gettysburg Address came to embody the essence of the war. The address, not even three minutes long, is considered the finest speech ever delivered buy an American President and has been memorized by generations ever since. Using letters, diaries, journals, newspaper articles, and other written sources, Bruce Chadwick has crafted another masterful oral history. Skillfully combining traditional historic narrative with the in-the-moment ethos of an oral history, Gettysburg: The Tide Turns brings this iconic battle to fresh and vivid life.

Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live

Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live

Ever since its debut in the fall of 1975, Saturday Night Live's impact on the culture has been lasting and profound. It has been a breeding ground for our brightest comedy stars, launching the careers of John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Pete Davidson, and many many more. Its iconic sketches - from Wayne's World to Weekend Update to Coneheads to the Californians to of course, More Cowbell -- have dominated water cooler talk for five decades, and its catchphrases, from "we're not worthy!" to ""Daaaaa Beeeears" are embedded in the public lexicon. And at the center of it all, from the moment of its inception to the present day, is one man: producer Lorne Michaels. Over his 50 years running the show, Lorne Michaels has become a revered, inimitable and bewildering presence in the world of entertainment. He's a mogul, a kingmaker, a tastemaker, a grudge-holder, a mensch, a workaholic, a genius spotter of talent, a ruthless businessman, a name dropper, an obsessive step counter, the inspiration for Dr. Evil, a winner of 90 Emmys--and a mystery. Generations of writers, actors, and stars have spent their lives trying to figure him out. He's "Obi wan Kenobi" (Tracey Morgan), the "Great and Powerful Oz" (Kate McKinnon), the Godfather (Will Forte), or "some kind of very distant, strange Comedy God" (Bob Odenkirk). Lorne will introduce you to him, in full, for the first time. With unprecedented access to Michaels (who has spent his career mostly avoiding reporters) and the entire SNL apparatus, The New Yorker's Susan Morrison takes you behind the curtain for the rollicking, definitive story of how Lorne created the institution that would change comedy forever. Lorne features hundreds of interviews with Michaels, conducted over several years; his close friends (such as Paul Simon, Paul McCartney, and Steve Martin); and the candid, hilarious stars of the show, including Chris Rock, Amy Poehler, Jason Sudeikis, Bill Hader, Buck Henry, Chevy Chase, and more. Nearly a decade in the making, Lorne is an intimate, deeply reported, and wildly entertaining account of a man singularly obsessed with the show that would define his life - and change American culture.

The Killing Fields of East New York

The Killing Fields of East New York: The First Subprime Mortgage Scandal, a White-Collar Crime Spree, and the Collapse of an American Neighborhood

In this groundbreaking work of investigative journalism and true crime, Stacy Horn sheds light on how the subprime mortgage scandal of the 1970s and a long history of white-collar crime slowly devastated East New York, a Brooklyn neighborhood that would come to be known as the Killing Fields. On a warm summer evening in 1991, seventeen-year-old Julia Parker was murdered in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York. An area known for an exorbitant level of violence and crime, East New York had come to be known as the Killing Fields. In the six months after Julia Parker's death, 62 more people were murdered in the same area. In the early 1990s, murder rates in the neighborhood climbed to the highest in NYPD history. East New York was dying. But how did this once thriving, diverse, family neighborhood fall into such ruin? The answer can be found two decades earlier. In response to redlining and discriminatory housing practices, the Johnson administration passed the Housing and Urban Development Act in 1968. The Federal Housing Authority aimed to use this piece of legislation to help low-income families of color finally achieve homeownership. But they could never have predicted how banks, lenders, realtors, and corrupt FHA officials themselves would use the newly passed law to make victims of the very people they were supposed to help, and the devastation they would leave in their wake. A compulsively readable hybrid of true crime and investigative journalism, The Killing Fields of East New York reveals how white-collar crime reduced a prospering neighborhood to abandoned buildings and empty lots. Following the dual threads of the hunt for the network of criminals behind the first subprime mortgage scandal and the ensuing downfall of East New York, Stacy Horn weaves a compelling narrative of government failure, a desperate community, and ultimately the largest series of mortgage fraud prosecutions in American history. The Killing Fields of East New York deftly demonstrates how different types of crime are profoundly entangled, and how the crimes committed in nice suits and corner offices are just as destructive as those committed on the street.

Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima and the Surrender of Japan

Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima and the Surrender of Japan

With the development of the B-29 "Superfortress" in summer 1944, strategic bombing, a central component of the Allied war effort against Germany, arrived in the Pacific theater. In 1945 Japan experienced the three most deadly bombing attacks of the war. The firebombing of Tokyo in March burned the city's most densely populated sector, killed some 85,000 residents, and left more than one million homeless. The attack was part of a months-long campaign of incendiary bombing that destroyed almost two-thirds of Japan's cities. The two atomic blasts in August killed hundreds of thousands in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, most of them civilians. The bombing brought a destabilizing devastation that, combined with a declaration of war by the Soviet Union, induced Japan, as they put it, to terminate the war. Many at the time and since have credited American air power, and especially the two atomic bombs, with Japan's surrender. But Richard Overy tells a different, more dimensional story. Drawing on his expertise on the war and its bombing campaigns, he delivers a precise recounting of these aerial attacks, and a balanced, informed assessment of how and why they occurred. Overy is astute on the Allied decision-making, and, notably, integrates the Japanese leadership as well. He ably navigates the dramatic endgame of the war, which featured factional infighting within the Japanese cabinet, a scramble by American officials to formulate an acceptable version of "unconditional surrender," and the crucial role played by the emperor, Hirohito. The atomic bombing emerges as impactful but not decisive in this rich, multilayered history.

American Poison

American Poison: A Deadly Invention and the Woman Who Battled for Environmental Justice

a trailblazing doctor and public health activist who took on the booming auto industry--and the deadly invention of leaded gasoline, which would poison millions of people across America. At noon on October 27, 1924, a factory worker was admitted to a hospital in New York City, suffering from hallucinations and convulsions. Before breakfast the next day, he was dead. Alice Hamilton was determined to prevent such a tragedy from happening again. By the time of the accident, Hamilton had pioneered the field of industrial medicine in the United States. She specialized in workplace safety years before the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was created. She was the first female professor at Harvard. She spent decades inspecting factories and mines. But this time, she was up against a formidable new foe: America's relentless push for progress, regardless of the cost. The 1920s were an exciting decade. Industry was booming. Labor was flourishing. Automobiles were changing roads, cities, and nearly all parts of American life. And one day, an ambitious scientist named Thomas Midgley Jr. triumphantly found just the right chemical to ensure that this boom would continue. His discovery--tetraethyl leaded gasoline--set him up for great wealth and the sort of fame that would land his name in history books. Soon, Hamilton would be on a collision course with Midgley, fighting full force against his invention, which poisoned the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the basic structure of our brains. American Poison is the gripping story of Hamilton's unsung battle for a healthy planet--and the ramifications that continue to echo today.

Super-Italian

Super-Italian: More Than 110 Indulgent Recipes Using Italy's Healthiest Foods; A Cookbook

If the past few years have taught us anything, it's that life involves a series of pivots. Certainly, that has been true for Giada herself and her journey through the world of food and cooking. Although through it all her fundamental formula has not changed: good cooking = Technique + Ingredients + Ambience. In writing her 11th (yes, 11th!) cookbook, Giada has found that "healthy" needs to be a part of that fundatmental formula as well. Choosing ingredients that promote wellness is the starting point not just to better meals, but to better health and longevity. We all know that food can cause inflammation, weight gain, and other maladies that lead to chronic illness, but we rarely think about the fact that the flip side is equally true. A diet rich in a variety of nutrients can make a world of difference in how you look and feel. And this is where this cookbook comes in. Every single recipe in this book will include the vitamins and minerals our bodies need to stay strong and function properly; antioxidants that tame inflammation; protein to help our bodies repair cells and make new ones; and fiber to keep our guts happy and remove waste from the body. With a deep dive into the Italian superfoods (think olives, beans and legumes, and bitter greens) as well as 100 recipes to help us get the very most out of these ingredients, Giada proves once again that she is an essential member of the food world.

The World After Gaza: A History

The World After Gaza: A History

The postwar global order was in many ways shaped in response to the Holocaust. That event became the benchmark for atrocity, and, in the Western imagination, the paradigmatic genocide. Its memory orients so much of our thinking, and crucially, forms the basic justification for Israel's right first to establish itself and then to defend itself. But in many parts of the world, ravaged by other conflicts and experiences of mass slaughter, the Holocaust's singularity is not always taken for granted, even when its hideous atrocity is. Outside of the West, Pankaj Mishra argues, the dominant story of the twentieth century is that of decolonization. The World After Gaza takes the current war, and the polarized reaction to it, as the starting point for a broad reevaluation of two competing narratives of the last century: the Global North's triumphant account of victory over totalitarianism and the spread of liberal capitalism, and the Global South's hopeful vision of racial equality and freedom from colonial rule. At a moment when the world's balance of power is shifting, and the Global North no longer commands ultimate authority, it is critically important that we understand how and why the two halves of the world are failing to talk to each other. As old touchstones and landmarks crumble, only a new history with a sharply different emphasis can reorient us to the world and worldviews now emerging into the light. In this concise, powerful, and pointed treatise, Mishra reckons with the fundamental questions posed by our present crisis--about whether some lives matter more than others, how identity is constructed, and what the role of the nation-state ought to be. The World After Gaza is an indispensable moral guide to our past, present, and future.

New Prize for These Eyes: The Rise of America's Second Civil Rights Movement

New Prize for These Eyes: The Rise of America's Second Civil Rights Movement

In this highly anticipated follow-up to Eyes on the Prize, bestselling author Juan Williams turns his attention to the rise of a new 21st-century civil rights movement. More than a century of civil rights activism reached a mountaintop with the arrival of a Black man in the Oval Office. But hopes for a unified, post-racial America were deflated when Barack Obama's presidency met with furious opposition. A white, right-wing backlash was brewing, and a volcanic new movement--a second civil rights movement--began to erupt. In New Prize for These Eyes, award-winning author Juan Williams shines a light on this historic, new movement. Who are its heroes? Where is it headed? What fires, furies, and frustrations distinguish it from its predecessor? In the 20th century, Black activists and their white allies called for equal rights and an end to segregation. They appealed to the Declaration of Independence's defiant assertion that "all men are created equal." They prioritized legal battles in the courtroom and legislative victories in Congress. Today's movement is dealing with new realities. Demographic changes have placed progressive whites in a new role among the largest, youngest population of Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians in the nation's history. The new generation is social media savvy, and they have an agenda fueled by discontent with systemic racism and the persistent scourge of police brutality. Today's activists are making history in a new economic and cultural landscape, and they are using a new set of tools and strategies to do so. Williams brilliantly traces the arc of this new civil rights era, from Obama to Charlottesville to January 6th and a Confederate flag in the Capitol. An essential read for activists, historians, and anyone passionate about America's future, New Prize for These Eyes is more than a recounting of history. It is a forward-looking call to action, urging Americans to get in touch with the progress made and hurdles yet to be overcome.

 Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age

Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age

In imagining a Viking, a certain image springs to mind: a barbaric warrior, leaping ashore from a longboat, and ready to terrorize the hapless local population of a northern European town. Yet while such characters define our imagination of the Viking Age today, they were in the minority. Instead, in the time-stopping soils, water, and ice of the North, Eleanor Barraclough excavates a preserved lost world, one that reimagines a misunderstood society. By examining artifacts of the past--remnants of wooden gaming boards, elegant antler combs, doodles by imaginative children and bored teenagers, and runes that reveal hidden loves, furious curses, and drunken spouses summoned home from the pub--Barraclough illuminates life in the medieval Nordic world as not just a world of rampaging warriors, but as full of globally networked people with recognizable concerns. This is the history of all the people--children, enslaved people, seers, artisans, travelers, writers--who inhabited the medieval Nordic world. Encompassing not just Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, but also Iceland, Greenland, the British Isles, Continental Europe, and Russia, this is a history of a Viking Age filled with real people of different ages, genders, and ethnicities, as told through the traces that they left behind. "Embers of the hands" is a poetic kenning from the Viking Age that referred to gold. But no less precious are the embers that Barraclough blows back to life in this book--those of ordinary lives long past.

Realm of Ice and Sky: Triumph, Tragedy, and History's Greatest Arctic Rescue

Realm of Ice and Sky: Triumph, Tragedy, and History's Greatest Arctic Rescue

Arctic explorer and American visionary Walter Wellman pioneered both polar and trans-Atlantic airship aviation, making history's first attempts at each. Wellman has been cast as a self-promoting egomaniac known mostly for his catastrophic failures. Instead he was a courageous innovator who pushed the boundaries of polar exploration and paved the way for the ultimate conquest of the North Pole--which would be achieved not by dogsled or airplane, but by airship. American explorer Dr. Frederick Cook was the first to claim he made it to the North Pole in 1908. A year later, so did American Robert Peary, but both Cook's and Peary's claims had been seriously questioned. There was enough doubt that Norwegian explorer extraordinaire Roald Amundsen--who'd made history and a name for himself by being first to sail through the Northwest Passage and first man to the South Pole-picked up where Walter Wellman left off, attempting to fly to the North Pole by airship. He would go in the Norge, designed by Italian aeronautical engineer Umberto Nobile. The 350-foot Norge flew over the North Pole on May 12, 1926, and Amundsen was able to accurately record and verify their exact location. However, the engineer Nobile felt slighted by Amundsen. Two years later, Nobile returned, this time in the Italia, backed by Prime Minister Benito Mussolini. This was an Italian enterprise, and Nobile intended to win back the global accolades and reputation he believed Amundsen had stripped from him. The journey ended in disaster, death, and accusations of cannibalism, launching one of the great rescue operations the world had ever seen. Realm of Ice and Sky is the thrilling narrative of polar exploration via airship--and the men who sacrificed everything to make history.

The House of My Mother

The House of My Mother

From eldest daughter Shari Franke, the shocking true story behind the viral 8 Passengers family vlog and the hidden abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother, and how, in the face of unimaginable pain, she found freedom and healing. Shari Franke's childhood was a constant battle for survival. Her mother, Ruby Franke, enforced a severe moral code while maintaining a façade of a picture-perfect family for their wildly popular YouTube channel 8 Passengers , which documented the day-to-day life of raising six children for a staggering 2.5 million subscribers. But a darker truth lurked beneath the surface—Ruby's wholesome online persona masked a more tyrannical parenting style than anyone could have imagined. As the family's YouTube notoriety grew, so too did Ruby's delusions of righteousness. Fueled by the sadistic influence of relationship coach Jodi Hildebrandt, together they implemented an inhumane and merciless disciplinary regime. Ruby and Jodi were arrested in Utah in 2023 on multiple charges of aggravated child abuse. On that fateful day, Shari shared a photo online of a police car outside their home. Her caption had one word: "Finally." For the first time, Shari will reveal the disturbing truth behind 8 Passengers and her family's devastating involvement with Jodi Hildebrandt's cultish life coaching program, "ConneXions." No stone is left unturned as Shari exposes the perils of influencer culture and shares for the first time her battle for truth and survival in the face of her mother's cruelty.

Memorial Days: A Memoir

Memorial Days: A Memoir

A heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey towards peace, from the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of  Horse Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. This is exactly what happened to Geraldine Brooks when her partner of more than three decades, Tony Horwitz – just sixty years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy – collapsed and died on a Washington, D. C. sidewalk. After spending their early years together in conflict zones as foreign correspondents, Geraldine and Tony settled down to raise two boys on Martha’s Vineyard. The life they built was one of meaningful work, good humor, and tenderness, as they spent their days writing and their evenings cooking family dinners or watching the sun set with friends at the beach. But all of this ended abruptly when, on Memorial Day 2019, Geraldine received the phone call we all dread. The demands were immediate and many. Without space to grieve, the sudden loss became a yawning gulf. Three years later, she booked a flight to a remote island off the coast of Australia with the intention of finally giving herself the time to mourn. In a shack on a pristine, rugged coast she often went days without seeing another person. There, she pondered the various ways in which cultures grieve and what rituals of her own might help to rebuild a life around the void of Tony’s death. A spare and profoundly moving memoir that joins the classics of the genre, Memorial Days is a portrait of a larger-than-life man and a timeless love between souls that exquisitely captures the joy, agony, and mystery of life.

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