**“All at once funny, touching, dazzlingly informative and fascinating, brilliantly imaginative and altogether wonderful. Capable of switching between divine silliness and genuinely tender sweetness, tragedy, and wonder.”—STEPHEN FRYHistory belongs to the heroes. But to get the full story, sometimes you have to ask the side characters.**The lives of Leonardo da Vinci, Henry VIII, and Queen Victoria fill bookshelves and fascinate scholars all over the world. But little atten...

The New York Times bestselling author of The Year of Living Biblically goes on a rollicking journey to understand the enduring power of puzzles: why we love them, what they do to our brains, and how they can improve our world.What makes puzzles—jigsaws, mazes, riddles, sudokus—so satisfying? Be it the formation of new cerebral pathways, their close link to insight and humor, or their community-building properties, they’re among the fundamental ele...

Winner of the 2021 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, HAD I KNOWN contains the most provocative, incendiary, and career-making pieces by bestselling author, essayist, political activist, and "veteran muckraker" Barbara Ehrenreich (The New Yorker).A self-proclaimed "myth buster by trade," Barbara Ehrenreich has covered an extensive range of topics as a journalist and political activist, and is unafraid to dive into i...