Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize ** A Wall Street Journal Best Book of the YearRust has been called “the great destroyer,” the “pervasive menace,” and “the evil.” “This look at corrosion—its causes, its consequences, and especially the people devoted to combating it—is wide-ranging and consistently engrossing” (The New York Times).It is the hidden enemy, the one that challenges the very basis of civil...

A true story of innovation that “reads like a movie” (Seth Godin), centered on a scrappy team of engineers—far from the Silicon Valley limelight—and their quest to revolutionize the traditional trade of masonry by building a robot that can lay bricks.Humans have landed men on the moon, programmed cars to drive themselves, and put the knowledge of our entire civilization in your back pocket. But no one—from MIT nerds to Army Corps engineers—has ever built a robot th...

A true story of innovation that “reads like a movie” (Seth Godin), centered on a scrappy team of engineers—far from the Silicon Valley limelight—and their quest to revolutionize the traditional trade of masonry by building a robot that can lay bricks.Humans have landed men on the moon, programmed cars to drive themselves, and put the knowledge of our entire civilization in your back pocket. But no one—from MIT nerds to Army Corps engineers—has ever built a robot th...

For readers of Bill Bryson, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Siddhartha Mukherjee, a wondrous, wildly ambitious, and vastly entertaining work of popular science that tells the awe-inspiring story of the elements that make up the human body, and how these building blocks of life travelled billions of miles and across billions of years to make us who we are.Every one of us contains a billion times more atoms than all the grains of sand in the earth’s deserts. If you weigh 150...

Your heart is a miracle in motion, a marvel of construction unsurpassed by any human-made creation. It beats 100,000 times every day—if you were to live to 100, that would be more than 3 billion beats across your lifespan. Despite decadesof effort in labs all over the world, we have not yet been able to replicate the heart’s perfect engineering. But, as Sian Harding shows us in The Exquisite Machine, new scientific developments are opening up the mysteries of the heart.And th...

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERAfter a decade abroad, the National Book Award*–* and Pulitzer Prize*–*winning writer Evan Osnos returns to three places he has lived in the United States—Greenwich, CT; Clarksburg, WV; and Chicago, IL—to illuminate the origins of America’s political fury.Evan Osnos moved to Washington, D.C., in 2013 after a decade away from the United States, first...

“Lakes is my favorite kind of natural history: meticulously researched, timely, comprehensive, and written with imagination and verve.”—Jerry Dennis, author of The Living Great LakesLakes might be the most misunderstood bodies of water on earth. And while they may seem commonplace, without lakes our world would never be the same. In this revealing look at these lifegiving treasures, John Richard Saylor shows us just how deep our connection to stil...

A “timely, informative, and fascinating” study of 8 inventions—and how they shaped our world—with “totally compelling” insights on little-known inventors throughout history (Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction)In The Alchemy of Us, scientist and science writer Ainissa Ramirez examines 8 inventions and reveals how they shaped the human experience:• Clocks• Steel rails• Copper communication ...

In this brilliant account of the literary war within the Cold War, novelists and poets become embroiled in a dangerous game of betrayal, espionage, and conspiracy at the heart of the vicious conflict fought between the Soviet Union and the WestDuring the Cold War, literature was both sword and noose. Novels, essays, and poems could win the hearts and minds of those caught between the competing creeds of capitalism and communism. They could also lead to blacklisting...

Now updated with the latest research, this pioneering, accessible study argues for a more complex view of evolution—proposing there is more to heredity than just genes.In this revised edition the widely read Evolution in Four Dimensions, Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb propose that there are four “dimensions” in heredity. These four inheritance systems play a role in evolution which, they argue, can all provide variations upon which natural selection can act:...

Brought to light from the depths of libraries, museums, dealers, and galleries around the world, these forgotten artistic treasures include portraits of oddballs such as the British explorer with a penchant for riding crocodiles, and the Italian monk who levitated so often he's recognized as the patron saint of airplane passengers. Discover impossible medieval land yachts, floating churches, and eagle-powered airships. Encounter dog-headed holy men, armies of German giants, 18th-century st...

In this revealing memoir, celebrated journalist Margaret Sullivan takes readers behind the scenes of the nation's most influential news outlets, chronicling her trailblazing career and the fight for trust in American journalism.Sullivan began her career at the Buffalo News, where she rose from summer intern to editor in chief. In Newsroom Confidential she recounts her years in the trenches battling sexism and throwing elbows in a highly competitive newsroo...