"Here is Willis's fundamental argument: The more we learn about Earth—our one 'pale blue data point' for a planet on which life has definitively arisen—the more qualified we will be to recognize signs of life elsewhere. . . . [A] joyful account."—Steven Poole, The Wall Street JournalA thrilling tour of Earth that shows the search for extraterrestrial life starts in our own backyard.Is there life off Earth? Bound by...

An astronomer explores the science of astrobiology in this " serious but accessible examination of the prospects for finding life elsewhere in the universe" (Sean Carroll, author of The Big Picture ).Describing the most recent discoveries made with space exploration technology, including the Kepler space telescope, the Mars Curiosity rover, and the New Horizons probe, astronomer Jon Willi...

Long before space travel was possible, the idea of life beyond Earth transfixed humans. In this fascinating book, astronomer Jon Willis explores the science of astrobiology and the possibility of locating other life in our own galaxy.Describing the most recent discoveries by space exploration missions, including the Kepler space telescope, the Mars Curiosity rover, and the New Horizons probe, Willis asks listeners to imagine—and choose among—five scenarios for fin...

"The Russia that Satter depicts in this brave, engaging book cannot be ignored . . . Required reading for anyone interested in the post-Soviet state" (Newsweek).Anticipating a new dawn of freedom after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russians could hardly have foreseen the reality of their future a decade later: a country impoverished and controlled at every level by organized crime. This riveting book views the 1990s reform period through the expe...

Part detective story, part personal quest, Michael Good's book is the story of the German commander of a Lithuanian work camp who saved hundreds of Jewish lives in the Vilnius ghetto—including the life of Good's mother, Pearl. Who was this enigmatic officer Pearl Good had spoken of so often?After five years of research—interviewing survivors, assembling a team that could work to open German files untouched for fifty years, following every lead he could, Good was able to uncover the...

Whose Middle Ages? is an interdisciplinary collection of short, accessible essays intended for the nonspecialist reader and ideal for teaching at an undergraduate level. Each of twenty-two essays takes up an area where digging for meaning in the medieval past has brought something distorted back into the present: in our popular entertainment; in our news, our politics, and our propaganda; and in subtler ways that inform how we think about our histories, our countries, and ourselves. Each a...

A group biography of the relationship between FDR and four of his Supreme Court justices, written by legal scholar Noah Feldman.A tiny, ebullient Jew who started as America's leading liberal and ended as its most famous judicial conservative. A Klansman who became an absolutist advocate of free speech and civil rights. A backcountry lawyer who started off trying cases about cows and went on to conduct the most important international trial ever. A self-invented, ta...

On fire for God—a sweeping history of puritanism in England and America.Begun in the mid–sixteenth century by Protestant nonconformists keen to reform England's church and society while saving their own souls, the puritan movement was a major catalyst in the great cultural changes that transformed the early modern world. Providing a uniquely broad transatlantic perspective, this groundbreaking volume traces puritanism's tumultuous history from its initial attempts ...

An account of the dramatic turning point in World War II that marked "the dawn of American might and the struggle for supremacy in Southeast Asia" (Times Higher Education).In far-flung locations around the globe, an unparalleled sequence of international events took place between December 1 and December 12, 1941. In this riveting book, historian Evan Mawdsley explores how the story unfolded . . .On Monday, December 1, 1941, the Japanese government ...

Following the fall of Rome, the sea is increasingly the stage upon which the human struggle of western civilization is played out. In a world of few roads and great disorder, the sea is the medium on which power is projected and wealth sought. Yet this confused period in the history of maritime warfare has rarely been studied; it is little known and even less understood. Charles Stanton uses an innovative and involving approach to describe this fascinating but neglected facet of European m...

For many, the medieval world seems dark and foreign—a miraculous, brutal, and irrational time of superstition and strange relics. The pursuit of heretics, the Inquisition, the Crusades, and the domination of the "Holy Land" come to mind. Yet the medieval world produced much that is part of our world today, including universities, the passion for Roman architecture and the emergence of the Gothic style, pilgrimage, the emergence of capitalism, and female saints.This new narrative hi...

From a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a devastating exploration of the racial disparities in violent death and injury in America and a blueprint for ending this fundamental social injusticeAbout 170,000 black Americans have died in homicides just since the year 2000. Violence takes more years of life from black men than cancer, stroke, and diabetes combined; a young black man in the United States has a fifteen times greater chance of dying from violence than his white co...