31 Best 「intelectual」 Books of 2024| Books Explorer
- I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home: A novel
- Crime and Punishment (Penguin Classics)
- I Love Russia: Reporting from a Lost Country
- Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
- Monologues from the Makom: Intertwined Narratives of Sexuality, Gender, Body Image, and Jewish Identity
- Tools Of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers
- Wrong Way
- A Brief History of Time
- Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
- Einstein: His Life and Universe
A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • A NEW YORKER ESSENTIAL READ • From “one of the most acute and lasting writers of her generation” (The New York Times)—a ghost story set in the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, an elegiac consideration of grief, devotion (filial and romantic), and the vanishing and persistence of all things—seen and unseen.A Best Book of the Year: The New Yorker, NPR, Vulture, Lit Hub“Who else but Lorrie Moore could make, in razor-sharp irresistible prose, a ghost story about death buoyant with life?” —PEOPLE“Is it an allegory? Is it real? It doesn’t matter...[It’s] a novel with big questions, no answers, and it’s absolutely brilliant.” —Lit Hub“[A] triumph of tone and, ultimately, of the imagination.” —The GuardianLorrie Moore’s first novel since A Gate at the Stairs—a daring, meditative exploration of love and death, passion and grief, and what it means to be haunted by the past, both by history and the human heartA teacher visiting his dying brother in the Bronx. A mysterious journal from the nineteenth century stolen from a boarding house. A therapy clown and an assassin, both presumed dead, but perhaps not dead at all...With her distinctive, irresistible wordplay and singular wry humor and wisdom, Lorrie Moore has given us a magic box of longing and surprise as she writes about love and rebirth and the pull towards life. Bold, meditative, theatrical, this new novel is an inventive, poetic portrait of lovers and siblings as it questions the stories we have been told which may or may not be true.I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home takes us through a trap door, into a windswept, imagined journey to the tragic-comic landscape that is, unmistakably, the world of Lorrie Moore.
Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American ReadRaskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, a Napoleon: acting for a higher purpose beyond conventional moral law. But as he embarks on a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a suspicious police investigator, Raskolnikov is pursued by the growing voice of his conscience and finds the noose of his own guilt tightening around his neck. Only Sonya, a downtrodden prostitute, can offer the chance of redemption.This vivid translation by David McDuff has been acclaimed as the most accessible version of Dostoyevsky’s great novel, rendering its dialogue with a unique force and naturalism. This edition also includes a new chronology of Dostoyevsky’s life and work.
* Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and TIME * A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice * Shortlisted for the Pushkin House Book Prize *“A haunting book of rare courage.” —Clarissa Ward, CNN chief international correspondent and author of On All FrontsTo be a journalist is to tell the truth. I Love Russia is Elena Kostyuchenko’s unrelenting attempt to document her country as experienced by those whom it systematically and brutally erases: village girls recruited into sex work, queer people in the outer provinces, patients and doctors at a Ukrainian maternity ward, and reporters like herself.Here is Russia as it is, not as we imagine it. The result is a singular portrait of a nation, and of a young woman who refuses to be silenced. In March 2022, as a correspondent for Russia’s last free press, Novaya Gazeta, Kostyuchenko crossed the border into Ukraine to cover the war. It was her mission to ensure that Russians witnessed the horrors Putin was committing in their name. She filed her pieces knowing that should she return home, she would likely be prosecuted and sentenced to up to fifteen years in prison. Yet, driven by the conviction that the greatest form of love and patriotism is criticism, she continues to write.I Love Russia stitches together reportage from the past fifteen years with personal essays, assembling a kaleidoscopic narrative that Kostyuchenko understands may be the last work from her homeland that she’ll publish for a long time—perhaps ever. It exposes the inner workings of an entire nation as it descends into fascism and, inevitably, war. She writes because the threat of Putin’s Russia extends beyond herself, beyond Crimea, and beyond Ukraine. We fail to understand it at our own peril.
Over a year on the New York Times bestseller list and more than a million copies sold.The essential universe, from our most celebrated and beloved astrophysicist.What is the nature of space and time? How do we fit within the universe? How does the universe fit within us? There’s no better guide through these mind-expanding questions than acclaimed astrophysicist and best-selling author Neil deGrasse Tyson.But today, few of us have time to contemplate the cosmos. So Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in tasty chapters consumable anytime and anywhere in your busy day.While you wait for your morning coffee to brew, for the bus, the train, or a plane to arrive, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry will reveal just what you need to be fluent and ready for the next cosmic headlines: from the Big Bang to black holes, from quarks to quantum mechanics, and from the search for planets to the search for life in the universe.
A collection of first-person poetry and prose designed to break the observant Jewish community's taboo against open discussion of female sexuality "A loud and needed contribution to the Jewish feminist library... A great step forward in our work towards a Jewish world where women's experiences and voices are heard and valued." --Rabbanit Leah Sarna, director of religious engagement, Anshe Sholom B'nai Israel Congregation, Chicago "Truly inspiring. This brave collection explores the tension between religious norms and the lived experience of young Jewish women." --Professor Lisa Fishbayn Joffe, director, Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University "Courageous, heart-breaking, passionate, honest, so vividly transcribed that these poets and storytellers seem to be baring their souls." --Dr. Joy Ladin, author, The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective "Should be required reading for men, all men." --Chaim Trachtman, M.D., editor, Women and Men in Communal Prayer: Halakhic Perspectives
The latest groundbreaking tome from Tim Ferriss, the #1 New York Times best-selling author of The 4-Hour Workweek.From the author:“For the last two years, I’ve interviewed more than 200 world-class performers for my podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show. The guests range from super celebs (Jamie Foxx, Arnold Schwarzenegger, etc.) and athletes (icons of powerlifting, gymnastics, surfing, etc.) to legendary Special Operations commanders and black-market biochemists. For most of my guests, it’s the first time they’ve agreed to a two-to-three-hour interview. This unusual depth has helped make The Tim Ferriss Show the first business/interview podcast to pass 100 million downloads.“This book contains the distilled tools, tactics, and ‘inside baseball’ you won’t find anywhere else. It also includes new tips from past guests, and life lessons from new ‘guests’ you haven’t met.“What makes the show different is a relentless focus on actionable details. This is reflected in the questions. For example: What do these people do in the first sixty minutes of each morning? What do their workout routines look like, and why? What books have they gifted most to other people? What are the biggest wastes of time for novices in their field? What supplements do they take on a daily basis?“I don’t view myself as an interviewer. I view myself as an experimenter. If I can’t test something and replicate results in the messy reality of everyday life, I’m not interested.“Everything within these pages has been vetted, explored, and applied to my own life in some fashion. I’ve used dozens of the tactics and philosophies in high-stakes negotiations, high-risk environments, or large business dealings. The lessons have made me millions of dollars and saved me years of wasted effort and frustration.“I created this book, my ultimate notebook of high-leverage tools, for myself. It’s changed my life, and I hope the same for you.”
Named a Best Book of 2023 by the New Yorker and one of the Top 20 Best Books of 2023 by Esquire magazine.For years, Teresa has passed from one job to the next, settling into long stretches of time, struggling to build her career in any field or unstick herself from an endless cycle of labor. The dreaded move from one gig to another is starting to feel unbearable. When a recruiter connects her with a contract position at AllOver, it appears to check all her prerequisites for a “good” job. It’s a fintech corporation with progressive hiring policies and a social justice-minded mission statement. Their new service for premium members: a functional fleet of driverless cars. The future of transportation. As her new-hire orientation reveals, the distance between AllOver’s claims and its actions is wide, but the lure of financial stability and a flexible schedule is enough to keep Teresa driving forward.Joanne McNeil, who often reports on how the human experience intersects with labor and technology brings blazing compassion and criticism to Wrong Way, examining the treacherous gaps between the working and middle classes wrought by the age of AI. Within these divides, McNeil turns the unsaid into the unignorable, and captures the existential perils imposed by a nonstop, full-service gig economy.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERA landmark volume in science writing by one of the great minds of our time, Stephen Hawking’s book explores such profound questions as: How did the universe begin—and what made its start possible? Does time always flow forward? Is the universe unending—or are there boundaries? Are there other dimensions in space? What will happen when it all ends?Told in language we all can understand, A Brief History of Time plunges into the exotic realms of black holes and quarks, of antimatter and “arrows of time,” of the big bang and a bigger God—where the possibilities are wondrous and unexpected. With exciting images and profound imagination, Stephen Hawking brings us closer to the ultimate secrets at the very heart of creation.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize • New York Times Bestseller • Over Two Million Copies Sold“One of the most significant projects embarked upon by any intellectual of our generation” (Gregg Easterbrook, New York Times), Guns, Germs, and Steel presents a groundbreaking, unified narrative of human history.Why did Eurasians conquer, displace, or decimate Native Americans, Australians, and Africans, instead of the reverse? In this “artful, informative, and delightful” (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, a classic of our time, evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond dismantles racist theories of human history by revealing the environmental factors actually responsible for its broadest patterns.The story begins 13,000 years ago, when Stone Age hunter-gatherers constituted the entire human population. Around that time, the developmental paths of human societies on different continents began to diverge greatly. Early domestication of wild plants and animals in the Fertile Crescent, China, Mesoamerica, the Andes, and other areas gave peoples of those regions a head start at a new way of life. But the localized origins of farming and herding proved to be only part of the explanation for their differing fates. The unequal rates at which food production spread from those initial centers were influenced by other features of climate and geography, including the disparate sizes, locations, and even shapes of the continents. Only societies that moved away from the hunter-gatherer stage went on to develop writing, technology, government, and organized religions as well as deadly germs and potent weapons of war. It was those societies, adventuring on sea and land, that invaded others, decimating native inhabitants through slaughter and the spread of disease.A major landmark in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way in which the modern world, and its inequalities, came to be.
By the author of the acclaimed bestsellers Benjamin Franklin and Steve Jobs, this is the definitive biography of Albert Einstein.How did his mind work? What made him a genius? Isaacson’s biography shows how his scientific imagination sprang from the rebellious nature of his personality. His fascinating story is a testament to the connection between creativity and freedom.Based on newly released personal letters of Einstein, this book explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk—a struggling father in a difficult marriage who couldn’t get a teaching job or a doctorate—became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos, the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom, and the universe. His success came from questioning conventional wisdom and marveling at mysteries that struck others as mundane. This led him to embrace a morality and politics based on respect for free minds, free spirits, and free individuals.These traits are just as vital for this new century of globalization, in which our success will depend on our creativity, as they were for the beginning of the last century, when Einstein helped usher in the modern age.
An "essential guide" (Beverly Gage, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of G-Man) to how the Espionage Act gave rise to a vast American security state that keeps citizens in the darkIn State of Silence, political historian Sam Lebovic uncovers the troubling history of the Espionage Act. First passed in 1917, it was initially used to punish critics of World War I. Yet as Americans began to balk at the act’s restrictions on political dissidents and the press, the government turned its focus toward keeping its secrets under wraps. The resulting system for classifying information is absurdly cautious, staggeringly costly, and shrouded in secrecy, preventing ordinary Americans from learning what their country is doing in their name, both at home and abroad.Shedding new light on the bloated governmental security apparatus that’s weighing our democracy down, State of Silence offers the definitive history of America’s turn toward secrecy—and its staggering human costs.
Ulysses by James Joyce COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED. With a new Introduction by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex. James Joyces astonishing masterpiece, Ulysses, tells of the diverse events which befall Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus in Dublin on 16 June 1904, during which Blooms voluptuous wife, Molly, commits adultery. Initially deemed obscene in England and the USA, this richly-allusive novel, revolutionary in its Modernistic experimentalism, was hailed as a work of genius by W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot and Ernest Hemingway. Scandalously frank, wittily erudite, mercurially eloquent, resourcefully comic and generously humane, Ulysses offers the reader a life-changing experience.
AN AMAZON BEST BOOK OF 2O16 PICK IN BUSINESS & LEADERSHIPWALL STREET JOURNAL BUSINESS BESTSELLERA BUSINESS BOOK OF THE WEEK AT 800-CEO-READMaster one of our economy’s most rare skills and achieve groundbreaking results with this “exciting” book (Daniel H. Pink) from an “exceptional” author (New York Times Book Review).Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep Work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there's a better way.In Deep Work, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four "rules," for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill.1. Work Deeply2. Embrace Boredom3. Quit Social Media4. Drain the ShallowsA mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, Deep Work takes the reader on a journey through memorable stories-from Carl Jung building a stone tower in the woods to focus his mind, to a social media pioneer buying a round-trip business class ticket to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air-and no-nonsense advice, such as the claim that most serious professionals should quit social media and that you should practice being bored. Deep Work is an indispensable guide to anyone seeking focused success in a distracted world.
Designed to appeal to the book lover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautifully bound pocket-sized gift editions of much loved classic titles. Bound in real cloth, printed on high quality paper, and featuring ribbon markers and gilt edges, Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure. \nWidely regarded as one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote de La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza. Together they journey through sixteenth-century Spain in search of adventure, taking on spirits, evil enchanters and giants in a quest to perform acts of valour worthy of Dulcinea, his lady love.\n A masterpiece of world fiction and a brilliant satire on traditional romances, Don Quixote is not only the world’s first modern novel - it is also an uproarious comedy that continues to delight readers today.\n This Macmillan Collector’s Library edition is translated by the acclaimed J. M. Cohen and features an afterword by Ned Halley.
As the Second World War loomed to a close, the German military bombarded Europe with V-2 rockets. The British Intelligence make a startling discovery: the rockets are landing on those locations pinpointed by the sexual conquests of a Lieutenant Tyrone Slothrop, U.S. Army. This leads Slothrop on an investigation across Europe, to try and stop the Germans before they have any chance of winning the war. Comic and dark in its tones, this book is a classic tale of war and the inescapable stupidity of men trying to kill other men.
EXPANDED THIRD EDITION includes Charlie's 2007 USC Law School Commencement address. Edited by Peter D. Kaufman. Brand New.
“An absolutely essential addition to the history of the Catholic Church, whose involvement in New World slavery sustained the Church and, thereby, helped to entrench enslavement in American society.”—Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello and On JuneteenthNew York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie MedalA BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Time, Chicago Public Library, Kirkus ReviewsIn 1838, a group of America’s most prominent Catholic priests sold 272 enslaved people to save their largest mission project, what is now Georgetown University. In this groundbreaking account, journalist, author, and professor Rachel L. Swarns follows one family through nearly two centuries of indentured servitude and enslavement to uncover the harrowing origin story of the Catholic Church in the United States. Through the saga of the Mahoney family, Swarns illustrates how the Church relied on slave labor and slave sales to sustain its operations and to help finance its expansion.The story begins with Ann Joice, a free Black woman and the matriarch of the Mahoney family. Joice sailed to Maryland in the late 1600s as an indentured servant, but her contract was burned and her freedom stolen. Her descendants, who were enslaved by Jesuit priests, passed down the story of that broken promise for centuries. One of those descendants, Harry Mahoney, saved lives and the church’s money in the War of 1812, but his children, including Louisa and Anna, were put up for sale in 1838. One daughter managed to escape, but the other was sold and shipped to Louisiana. Their descendants would remain apart until Rachel Swarns’s reporting in The New York Times finally reunited them. They would go on to join other GU272 descendants who pressed Georgetown and the Catholic Church to make amends, prodding the institutions to break new ground in the movement for reparations and reconciliation in America.Swarns’s journalism has already started a national conversation about universities with ties to slavery. The 272 tells an even bigger story, not only demonstrating how slavery fueled the growth of the American Catholic Church but also shining a light on the enslaved people whose forced labor helped to build the largest religious denomination in the nation.
FINALIST FOR THE 2024 GOTHAM BOOK PRIZEThe devolution of the Sullivan Institute, from psychoanalytic organization to insular, radical cult.In the middle of the Ozzie and Harriet 1950s, the birth control pill was introduced and a maverick psychoanalytic institute, the Sullivan Institute for Research in Psychoanalysis, opened its doors in New York City. Its founders, Saul Newton and Jane Pearce, wanted to start a revolution, one grounded in ideals of creative expression, sexual liberation, and freedom from the expectations of society, and the revolution, they felt, needed to begin at home. Dismantling the nuclear family―and monogamous marriage―would free people from the repressive forces of their parents. In its first two decades, the movement attracted many brilliant, creative people as patients: the painter Jackson Pollock and a swarm of other abstract expressionist artists, the famed art critic Clement Greenberg, the singer Judy Collins, and the dancer Lucinda Childs. In the 1960s, the group evolved into an urban commune of three or four hundred people, with patients living with other patients, leading creative, polyamorous lives.But by the mid-1970s, under the leadership of Saul Newton, the Institute had devolved from a radical communal experiment into an insular cult, with therapists controlling virtually every aspect of their patients’ lives, from where they lived and the work they did to how often they saw their sexual partners and their children. Although the group was highly secretive during its lifetime and even after its dissolution in 1991, the noted journalist Alexander Stille has succeeded in reconstructing the inner life of a parallel world hidden in plain sight in the middle of Manhattan. Through countless interviews and personal papers, The Sullivanians reveals the nearly unbelievable story of a fallen utopia.
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEARTIME Magazine・NPR・Library Journal・The Globe and Mail・Lilith・Forward Magazine・Toronto Star・The New YorkerWinner of the Choix Goncourt Prize, Anne Berest’s The Postcard is a vivid portrait of twentieth-century Parisian intellectual and artistic life, an enthralling investigation into family secrets, and poignant tale of a Jewish family devastated by the Holocaust and partly restored through the power of storytelling.January, 2003. Together with the usual holiday cards, an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest family home. On the front, a photo of the Opéra Garnier in Paris. On the back, the names of Anne Berest’s maternal great-grandparents, Ephraïm and Emma, and their children, Noémie and Jacques—all killed at Auschwitz.Fifteen years after the postcard is delivered, Anne, the heroine of this novel, is moved to discover who sent it and why. Aided by her chain-smoking mother, family members, friends, associates, a private detective, a graphologist, and many others, she embarks on a journey to discover the fate of the Rabinovitch family: their flight from Russia following the revolution, their journey to Latvia, Palestine, and Paris. What emerges is a moving saga that shatters long-held certainties about Anne’s family, her country, and herself.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “bracing” (Vox) guide for surviving and resisting America’s turn towards authoritarianism, from “a rising public intellectual unafraid to make bold connections between past and present” (The New York Times)“Timothy Snyder reasons with unparalleled clarity, throwing the past and future into sharp relief. He has written the rare kind of book that can be read in one sitting but will keep you coming back to help regain your bearings.”—Masha GessenThe Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.On Tyranny is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come.
Unique, practical and straightforward way to learn music theory and discover how music really works.Newly updated and massively expanded edition with new content, exercises and images.This book also features the links to audio examples (hosted on external website). These examples allow you to hear the relevant music theory concepts and understand them better!Have you ever wanted: To know how music theory can make you a better player (on any instrument)?To understand how music works, why we have 12 notes, how they relate to each other and why we use intervals with imperfect resonance?To understand how music theory is not just some made up rules we invented out of thin air; how it’s actually based on the natural laws and stems from natural occurrences, like overtone series?To unlock the mysteries of notes, intervals, music scales, modes, keys, circle of fifths, chords and chord progressions, rhythms and other important concepts in music, and how they all relate to one another?To get a deep understanding of scales, modes and chords, where they come from, what are the different types that exist, how they're built, and how to use any chord or scale in your playing?To learn how to form, name and play any chord that is possible to play?To learn how rhythm works and how to master your rhythm and timing skills that will make you sound like a pro on any instrument?To understand harmony and the magic behind all the beautiful music that you love and how you can (re)create it by yourself?To get a wider perspective on tonal harmony and how melody, harmony, and rhythm work together?To understand composition and improvisation, and how to use voice leading and chord inversions to create beautiful harmonies?To get a grasp on the advanced concepts (such as modal playing, atonality, polychords and polytonality, free music, etc.) that usually only advanced jazz musicians may consider using?But... Have you ever had trouble learning music theory or thought that it was unnecessary, boring or too hard to learn?Have you perhaps thought using intellect will be bad for your playing?If you find yourself in any of this, then this book is the answer you’ve been looking for. It covers pretty much everything that anyone who plays or wants to play music should know. It is the book to have if you want to become a better musician, and have by your side as an immensely useful reference of knowledge.This book is structured in a way that makes it very easy to follow, digest and internalize all important concepts that constitute music theory. What's great is that you don't have to be a college musician in order to understand and use any of this – anyone can do it, even a total newbie. It also doesn't matter what instrument(s) you play, nor your current level of knowledge and playing ability, because music theory is universal and all about what sounds good together! Anyone can benefit from it. It explains the WHY and HOW, and it is your roadmap - a skill and a tool, guided by your ears, for creating your best music.This is the most comprehensive and evergreen book on music theory that you can find – a book you'll wish to study and refer to often, and keep it forever. You’ll also wish to gift it your friends and discuss about its content with other musicians.It will give you what is necessary to become an expert in music theory without frustration and feeling overwhelmed in the process, and this in-turn will have immense benefits to your playing and musicianship!But don’t take my word for it, use the Look Inside feature by clicking on the book cover to get a preview of what you'll find inside.Get this book now and solve all your problems with music theory!
The mesmerizing, darkly original novel that heralded the arrival of now New York Times bestselling author Dennis Lehane, the master of the new noir—and introduced Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, his smart and tough private investigators weaned on the blue-collar streets of Dorchester.A cabal of powerful Boston politicians is willing to pay Kenzie and Gennaro big money for a seemingly small job: to find a missing cleaning woman who stole some secret documents. As Kenzie and Gennaro learn, however, this crime is no ordinary theft. It's about justice, about right and wrong. But in Boston, finding the truth isn’t just a dirty business . . . it’s deadly.
The classic personal account of Watson and Crick’s groundbreaking discovery of the structure of DNA, now with an introduction by Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind.By identifying the structure of DNA, the molecule of life, Francis Crick and James Watson revolutionized biochemistry and won themselves a Nobel Prize. At the time, Watson was only twenty-four, a young scientist hungry to make his mark. His uncompromisingly honest account of the heady days of their thrilling sprint against other world-class researchers to solve one of science’s greatest mysteries gives a dazzlingly clear picture of a world of brilliant scientists with great gifts, very human ambitions, and bitter rivalries.With humility unspoiled by false modesty, Watson relates his and Crick’s desperate efforts to beat Linus Pauling to the Holy Grail of life sciences, the identification of the basic building block of life. Never has a scientist been so truthful in capturing in words the flavor of his work.
Why is cows’ milk, which few nonwhite people can digest, promoted as a science-backed dietary necessity in countries where the majority of the population is lactose-intolerant? Why are gigantic new dairy farms permitted to deplete the sparse water resources of desert ecosystems? Why do thousands of U.S. dairy farmers every year give up after struggling to recoup production costs against plummeting wholesale prices?Exploring these questions and many more, Spoiled is an unflinching and meticulous critique of the glorification of fluid milk and its alleged universal benefits. Anne Mendelson’s groundbreaking book chronicles the story of milk from the Stone Age peoples who first domesticated cows, goats, and sheep to today’s troubled dairy industry. Spoiled shows that drinking fresh milk was rare until Western scientific experts who were unaware of genetic differences in the ability to digest lactose deemed it superior to traditional fermented dairy products. Their flawed beliefs fueled the growth of a massive and environmentally devastating industry that turned milk into a cheap, ubiquitous commodity.Mendelson’s wide-ranging account also examines the consequences of homogenization and refrigeration technologies, the toll that modern farming takes on dairy cows, and changing perceptions of raw milk since the advent of pasteurization. Unraveling the myths and misconceptions that prop up the dairy industry, Spoiled calls for more sustainable, healthful futures in our relationship with milk and the animals that provide it.
In this evocative and heart-wrenching memoir, a hard-working Welsh molecatcher reveals his double life as a poet and a dreamer • “A wonderful memoir … hands down the most charming book I read last year.”—Margaret Renkl, The New York Times“How to Catch a Mole is a small book of many things. In quiet, crystalline prose, it blends memoir, keen observations of nature, and ruminations about life, aging and death.”—Wall Street JournalKneeling in a muddy field in the Welsh countryside, clutching a creature that is soft and blue-black, Marc Hamer vows he will stop trapping moles—forever. In this earnest, understated, and sublime work of literary memoir, the molecatcher shares what led him to this strange career and what caused him to stop: from sleeping among hedges as a homeless teen, to toiling on the railway, to weeding windswept gardens in Wales and witnessing the beauty of every living thing.Hamer infuses his wanderings with radiant poetry and stark, simple observations on nature’s oft-ignored details. He also reveals how to catch a mole—a craft long kept secret by its masters—and burrows into the unusual lives of his muses. Moles, we learn, are colorblind. Their blood holds unusual amounts of carbon dioxide. Their vast tunnel networks are intricate and deceptive. And, like Hamer, they work alone.Beautifully written, life-affirming, and highly original, How to Catch a Mole offers a gorgeous portrait of one man's deep, unbreakable bond with his natural surroundings, and offers hope and inspiration for anyone looking to improve their relationship with the natural world.
For readers of Late Migrations and H is for HawkA stunning meditation on gardening and the wisdom of plants, " that rare book that will appeal to nonfiction readers everywhere. . . Candid, tender, thoughtful and absorbing."—Shelf Awareness (STARRED Review)"With chapters. . . [that] shimmer like lantern slides, lit with luminous imagery. . . Seed to Dust is an invitation to read this world as Mr. Hamer does—with a close eye to what changes, and what does not."—The Wall Street JournalMarc Hamer has nurtured the same 12-acre garden in the Welsh countryside for over two decades. The garden is vast and intricate. It’s rarely visited, and only Hamer knows of its secrets. But it’s not his garden. It belongs to his wealthy and elegant employer, Miss Cashmere. But the garden does not really belong to her, either. As Hamer writes, "Like a book, a garden belongs to everyone who sees it."In Seed to Dust, Marc Hamer paints a beautiful portrait of the garden that "belongs to everyone." He describes a year in his life as a country gardener, with each chapter named for the month he’s in. As he works, he muses on the unusual folklores of his beloved plants. He observes the creatures who scurry and hide from his blade or rake. And he reflects on his own life: living homeless as a young man, his loving relationship with his wife and children, and—now—feeling the effects of old age on body and mind.As the seasons change, Hamer also reflects on the changes he has observed in Miss Cashmere’s life from afar: the death of her husband and the departure of her children from the stately home where she now lives alone. At the book’s end, Hamer’s connection to Miss Cashmere changes shape, and new insights into relationships and the beauty and brutality of nature emerge.Just like all good books and gardens, Seed to Dust is filled with equal parts life and death, beauty and decay, and every reader will find something different to admire.
A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR • A VANITY FAIR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR“Riveting and darkly funny and in all senses of the word, unclassifiable.” – The New York TimesA wild, humane, and hilarious meditation on post-privacy America—from the acclaimed author of ThrownWho are you? You are data about data. You are a map of connections—a culmination of everything you have ever posted, searched, emailed, liked, and followed. In this groundbreaking work of narrative nonfiction, Kerry Howley investigates the curious implications of living in the age of the indelible. Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs tells the true story of intelligence specialist Reality Winner, a lone young woman who stuffs a state secret under her skirt and trusts the wrong people to help. After printing five pages of dangerous information she was never supposed to see, Winner finds herself at the mercy of forces more invasive than she could have possibly imagined.Following Winner’s unlikely journey from rural Texas to a federal courtroom, Howley maps a hidden world, drawing in John Walker Lindh, Lady Gaga, Edward Snowden, a rescue dog named Outlaw Babyface Nelson, and a mother who will do whatever it takes to get her daughter out of jail. Howley’s subjects face a challenge new to history: they are imprisoned by their past selves, trapped for as long as the Internet endures. A soap opera set in the deep state, Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs is a free fall into a world where everything is recorded and nothing is sacred, from a singular writer unafraid to ask essential questions about the strangeness of modern life.
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERNPR’s 2023 Books We Love“Riveting, essential reading.” —Rick Perlstein, author of ReaganlandThe definitive biography of Vince McMahon, former WWE chairman and CEO, charts his rise from rural poverty to the throne of one of the world’s most influential media empires—and features never-before-seen research and exclusive interviews with more than 150 people who witnessed, aided, and suffered from his ascent.Even if you’ve never watched a minute of professional wrestling, you are living in Vince McMahon’s world.In his four decades as the defining figure of American pro wrestling, McMahon was the man behind Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, John Cena, Dave Bautista, Bret “The Hitman” Hart, and Hulk Hogan, to name just a few of the mega-stars who owe him their careers. For more than twenty-five years, he has also been a performer in his own show, acting as the diabolical “Mr. McMahon”—a figure who may have more in common with the real Vince than he would care to admit.Just as importantly, McMahon is one of Donald Trump’s closest friends—and Trump’s experiences as a performer in McMahon’s programming were, in many ways, a dress rehearsal for the 45th President’s campaigns and presidency. McMahon and his wife, Linda, are major Republican donors. Linda was in Trump’s cabinet. McMahon makes deals with the Saudi government worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And for generations of people who have watched wrestling, he has been a defining cultural force.Accessible to anyone, regardless of wrestling knowledge, Ringmaster is an unauthorized, independent, investigative chronicle of Vince McMahon’s origins and rise to supreme power. It is built on exclusive interviews with more than 150 people, from McMahon’s childhood friends to those who accuse him of destroying their lives. Far more than just an athletics or entertainment biography, Ringmaster uses Vince’s story as a new lens for understanding the contemporary American apocalypse.
“A profoundly emotional book, and a brave one.” —The New YorkerA literary sensation in Brazil, Luiz Schwarcz’s brave and tender memoir interrogates his ordeal of bipolar disorder in the context of a family story of murder, dispossession, and silence—the long echo of the Holocaust across generationsAs a child, Luiz Schwarcz knew little about his grandfather and namesake, Lajos. Only later did he learn that Lajos, a devout Hungarian Jew, had been put on a train to a Nazi death camp with his son André, whom he ordered to leap to freedom at a rail crossing while he himself was carried on to death. What young Luiz did know was that his father, André, who had emigrated to Brazil, was an unhappy and silent man. Luiz blossomed into the family prodigy, becoming a groundbreaking literary publisher. He found a home in the family silence—a home that he filled with reading.But then, at a high point of outward success, Luiz was brought low by a mental breakdown. The Absent Moon is the story of his journey both to that point and back from it, as Luiz learned to forge a more honest relationship with his own mind, with his family, and with their shared past. The culmination is this extraordinary book—the product of a lifetime’s reflection, by a master storyteller.
Winner of the 2023 National Book Critics Circle for Nonfiction and the Los Angeles Times Book PrizeA Washington Post best nonfiction book of 2023 | Winner of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction“A riveting indictment of the child welfare system . . . [A] bracing gut punch of a book.” ―Robert Kolker, The Washington Post“[A] moving and superbly reported book.” ―Jessica Winter, The New Yorker“A harrowing account . . . [and] a powerful critique of [the] foster care system . . . We Were Once a Family is a wrenching book.” ―Jennifer Szalai, The New York TimesA New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice | One of Publishers Weekly's best nonfiction books of 2023The shocking, deeply reported story of a murder-suicide that claimed the lives of six children―and a searing indictment of the American foster care system.On March 26, 2018, rescue workers discovered a crumpled SUV and the bodies of two women and multiple children at the bottom of a cliff along the Pacific Coast Highway. Investigators soon concluded that the crash was a murder-suicide, but there was more to the story: Jennifer and Sarah Hart, it turned out, were a white married couple who had adopted six Black children from two different Texas families in 2006 and 2008. Behind the family’s loving facade was an alleged pattern of abuse and neglect that had been ignored as the couple withdrew the children from school and moved west. It soon became apparent that the State of Texas knew all too little about the two individuals to whom it had given custody of six children.Immersive journalism of the highest order, Roxanna Asgarian’s We Were Once a Family is a revelation of precarious lives; it is also a shattering exposé of the foster care and adoption systems that produced this tragedy. As a journalist in Houston, Asgarian sought out the children’s birth families and put them at the center of the story. We follow the lives of the Harts’ adopted children and their birth parents, and the machinations of the state agency that sent the children far away. Asgarian’s reporting uncovers persistent racial biases and corruption as young people of color are separated from birth parents without proper cause. The result is a riveting narrative and a deeply reported indictment of a system that continues to fail America’s most vulnerable children while upending the lives of their families.