**PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • A dramatic story of groundbreaking scientific research of Darwin's discovery of evolution that "spark[s] not just the intellect, but the imagination" (Washington Post Book World) • With a new preface“Admirable and much-needed.... Weiner’s triumph is to reveal how evolution and science work, and to let them speak clearly for themselves.”—The New York Times Book Review**On a desert island in the heart of the Galapagos archipelago, w...

Stephen Heywood was twenty-nine years old when he learned that he was dying of ALS -- Lou Gehrig's disease. Almost overnight his older brother, Jamie, turned himself into a genetic engineer in a quixotic race to cure the incurable. His Brother's Keeper is a powerful account of their story, as they travel together to the edge of medicine.The book brings home for all of us the hopes and fears of the new biology. In this dramatic and suspenseful narrative, Jonathan We...

The story of Nobel Prize–winning discoveries regarding the molecular mechanisms controlling the body’s circadian rhythm.How much of our fate is decided before we are born? Which of our characteristics is inscribed in our DNA? Weiner brings us into Benzer's Fly Rooms at the California Institute of Technology, where Benzer, and his asssociates are in the process of finding answers, often astonishing ones, to these questions. Part biography, part thrilling scientific ...

“[A] searching and surprisingly witty look at the scientific odds against tomorrow.”—Timothy FerrisJonathan Weiner—winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and one of the most distinguished popular science writers in America—examines “the strange science of immortality” in Long for This World. A fast-paced, sure-to-astonish scientific adventure from “one of our finest science journalists” (Jonah Lehrer), Wei...

Saturday is Auntie Laila's wedding day and Nadia has been chosen as flower girl. The morning of the ceremony, Auntie Amina prepares Nadia's hands in the traditional way. Using henna, a natural dye, she creates intricate designs, called mehndi, on Nadia's hands. But Nadia is worried. Mehndi lasts a long time and doesn't wash off right away. When she goes to school on Monday, what will her classmates think of her hands? Will they understand that mehndi is part of her Pakistani heritage? By t...

“[A] searching and surprisingly witty look at the scientific odds against tomorrow.”—Timothy FerrisJonathan Weiner—winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and one of the most distinguished popular science writers in America—examines “the strange science of immortality” in Long for This World. A fast-paced, sure-to-astonish scientific adventure from “one of our finest science journalists” (J...

This riveting, true account of the 1929 race to build New York City's tallest skyscraper evokes the glory of an exciting time long past. In the spirit of the Roaring Twenties, two men competed to erect a structure that would reach to the skies. Behind it all were two brilliant architects-men with a common past, but very different visions for the future. Higher is every bit as fascinating as the best fiction.

Eighty percent of Americans say they believe in heaven, but very few of them are able to articulate anything specific about their belief, leaving only questions. Is heaven a real place? Is it a city or a garden or both? Can you keep your body there? If so, can you eat, drink, make love? Are you recognizable as yourself in heaven? Do your relationships continue there? Or is heaven something else? A radical idea? A disembodied, unconscious existence? A sense of progression toward perfect und...

Henry Stuart’s life is the last great forgotten Jacobean tale. Shadowed by the gravity of the Thirty Years’ War and the huge changes taking place across Europe in seventeenth-century society, economy, politics and empire, his life was visually and verbally gorgeous.NOW THE SUBJECT OF BBC2 DOCUMENTARY The Best King We Never HadHenry Stuart, Prince of Wales was once the hope of Britain. Eldest son to James VI of Scotland, James I of England, Henry was the epi...

Here, for the first time in decades, is a gripping, minute-by-minute account of the day President John F. Kennedy was shot. In End of Days, James Swanson reveals Lee Harvey Oswald's bizarre history of violence and follows John and Jacqueline Kennedy on their fateful Dallas motorcade ride. Swanson takes us to the sixth-floor Texas Book Depository window to look through Oswald's rifle sights, re-creates the last hours of the doomed assassin, and the day of national mourning for the ...

For millennia, humans have tried-and often failed-to master nature and transcend our limits. But this has started to change. The new scientific frontier is the human body: the greatest engineers of our generation have turned their sights inward, and their work is beginning to revolutionize mankind.In The Body Builders, Adam Piore takes us on a fascinating journey into the field of bioengineering-which can be used to reverse engineer, rebuild, and augment human beings-and p...

“Strikingly dramatic, yet simple and unrestrained . . . an unusual and intensely interesting book richly packed with strange information.”—New York Times Book ReviewBased on Zora Neale Hurston’s personal experiences in Haiti and Jamaica, where she participated as an initiate rather than just an observer of voodoo practices during her visits in the 1930s, this travelogue into a dark world paints a vividly authentic picture of the ceremonies,...