“A bright, shiny gift to popular-science collections.”—BooklistTrained as a musician, amateur scientist William Herschel found international fame after discovering the planet Uranus in 1781. Though he is still best known for this finding, his partnership with his sister Caroline yielded other groundbreaking work that affects how we see the world today. The Herschels made comprehensive surveys of the night sky, carefully categorizing every visible object in...

In the aftermath of a shattering illness, Lonni Sue Johnson lives in a "perpetual now," where she has almost no memories of the past and a nearly complete inability to form new ones. The Perpetual Now is the moving story of this exceptional woman, and the groundbreaking revelations about memory, learning, and consciousness her unique case has uncovered.Lonni Sue Johnson was a renowned artist who regularly produced covers for The New Yorker, a gift...

In the aftermath of a shattering illness, Lonni Sue Johnson lives in a "perpetual now," where she has almost no memories of the past and a nearly complete inability to form new ones. The Perpetual Now is the moving story of this exceptional woman, and the groundbreaking revelations about memory, learning, and consciousness her unique case has uncovered.Lonni Sue Johnson was a renowned artist who regularly produced covers for The New Yorker, a gift...

In the mid-1990s, astronomers made history when they began to find planets orbiting stars in the Milky Way. More than eight hundred planets have been found since then, yet none of them is anything like Earth and none could support life.Now, armed with more powerful technology, planet hunters are racing to find a true twin of Earth. Science writer Michael Lemonick has unique access to these exoplaneteers, as they call themselves, and Mirror Earth unveils their passionate qu...

Responsible for the greatest advances in astronomy since Copernicus, William and Caroline Herschel forever transformed our view of the heavens.Trained as a musician, amateur scientist William Herschel found international fame after discovering the planet Uranus in 1781. Though he is still best known for this finding, his partnership with his sister Caroline yielded groundbreaking work, including techniques that remain in use today. The duo pioneered comprehensive s...

The consensus view of the Civil War—that it was first and foremost a war to restore the Union, and an antislavery war only later when it became necessary for Union victory—dies here. James Oakes’s groundbreaking history shows how deftly Lincoln and congressional Republicans pursued antislavery throughout the war, pragmatic in policy but steadfast on principle.In the disloyal South the federal government quickly began freeing slaves, immediately and without slaveholder compensation,...

Gerald Durrell’s last book, The Aye-Aye and I records his final animal-collecting expedition, a trip to Madagascar in 1990, and his efforts to save the elusive and mythical lemuroid known as the Aye-Aye. Prompted by the country’s radical deforestation, and slash-and-burn agriculture, Durrell, his wife, and their team of zoologists embark on a mission to capture and conserve the species distinguished by its ‘giant, chisel-like teeth’, ‘round, hypnotic eyes’ and large ‘spoon-like ears’. Duri...

The United States has always been a nation of immigrants—never more so than in 1917 when the nation entered the First World War. Of the 2.5 million soldiers who fought with U.S. armed forces in the trenches of France and Belgium, some half a million—nearly one out of every five men—were immigrants. In The Long Way Home, David Laskin, author of the prizewinning history The Children's Blizzard, tells the stories of twelve of these immigrant heroes. Starting with their child...

"Ferris is a master analogist who conveys his insights on the history of cosmology with a lyrical flair." —The New York Times Book ReviewIn The Science of Liberty, award-winning author Timothy Ferris—called "the best popular science writer in the English language today" by the Christian Science Monitor and "the best science writer of his generation" by the Washington Post—makes a passionate case for science as the inspiration behind the rise of l...

National Public Radio’s Beijing correspondent Rob Gifford recounts his travels along Route 312, the Chinese Mother Road, the longest route in the world’s most populous nation. Based on his successful NPR radio series, China Road draws on Gifford’s twenty years of observing firsthand this rapidly transforming country, as he travels east to west, from Shanghai to China’s border with Kazakhstan. As he takes the reader on this journey, he will also take us through China’s past and pre...

After his daughter was born prematurely in 2010, Matt Burriesci set out to write a book about thirty-two great books, from Plato to Karl Marx, and how their lessons have applied to his life. As someone who has spent a long and successful career advocating for great literature, Burriesci defends the great books in this series of tender and candid letters, rich in personal experience and full of humor.Dead White Guys is a timely defense of the great books, arriving in the mi...

Seth is a surveyor, along with his friend Theo, a leech-like creature running through his skull who tells Seth what lies to his left and right.In the universe containing Seth's world, light cannot travel in all directions: there is a "dark cone" to the north and south. Seth can only face to the east (or the west, if he tips his head backwards). If he starts to turn to the north or south, his body stretches out across the landscape, and to rotate as far as north-north-east is imposs...