"This combination of history, mythology, lore, science and sheer entertainment takes us on a tour of the world's most unusual plants." — Sacramento BeeThe Big, Bad Book of Botany introduces a world of wild, wonderful, and weird plants. Some are so rare, they were once more valuable than gold. Some found in ancient mythology hold magical abilities, including the power to turn a person to stone. Others have been used by assassins to...

The world's wildest collection of animal knowledge and lore!Lions, and tigers, and bears . . . and dinosaurs, dragons, and monsters. Oh my!For hundreds of years, the most popular books in the Western world next to the Bible were "bestiaries," fanciful encyclopedias collecting all of human knowledge and mythology about the animal kingdom. In these pages, eagles and elephants lived next to griffins and sea monsters. Now, in The Big, Bad Book of Beasts, award...

What is the price of brilliance?Why are so many creative geniuses also ruinously self-destructive? From Caravaggio to Jackson Pollack, from Arthur Rimbaud to Jack Kerouac, from Charlie Parker to Janis Joplin, to Kurt Cobain, and on and on, authors and artists throughout history have binged, pill-popped, injected, or poisoned themselves for their art. Fully illustrated and addictively readable, Genius and Heroin is the indispensable reference to the untidy lives of our grea...

God's Lunatics is an eyebrow-raising encyclopedia of the strange and shocking side of history's religions, cults, and spiritual movements, by Michael Largo, the bestselling author of the Bram Stoker Award-winning Final Exits. A fascinating compendium of "Lost Souls, False Prophets, Martyred Saints, Murderous Cults, Demonic Nuns, and Other Victims of Man's Eternal Search for the Divine," God's Lunatics contains a wealth of valuable extreme spiritual information—in...

The candid, hilarious, and inspiring memoir of the iconic star of Beauty and the Beast, the Hellboymovies, and Sons of AnarchyA classically trained actor who cut his teeth in the East Village's off-Broadway scene, Ron Perlman—a Golden Globe winner with starring roles in the Hellboymovies, Drive, Pacific Rim, and Sons of Anarchy—has traveled an offbeat path to showbiz success. His story involves rising from New York's tough Washington Hei...

**Finalist for 2021 Audie Award in History/BiographyThe book that inspired the documentary A Crime on the Bayou2021 Chautauqua Prize Finalist**The "arresting, astonishing history" of one lawyer and his defendant who together achieved a "civil rights milestone" (Justin Driver).In 1966 in a small town in Louisiana, a 19-year-old black man named Gary Duncan pulled his car off the road to stop a fight. Duncan was arrested a few minutes ...

Hungry for a treasure trove of weird and wonderful facts beyond your wildest imagination? Then keep on reading...Did you know that trees collaborate, communicate, and engage in chemical warfare?Or that humans are better at smelling rain than sharks are at smelling blood?Or that Napoleon once fought a pack of tame rabbits... and lost?Sometimes, life gets boring. Your sense of wonder often gets lost in a pile of chores, paperwork, and ...

Are you nostalgic for simpler times? Do you miss your favorite history teacher, the one that gave you perspective and kept you laughing? Come back to class. Buy Props and let Norm Coady take you on a trip from Caesar to Kennedy, from Wittenberg to St. Petersburg.Learn how seashells led to the first global conflict. Discover how a piece of chalk laid the groundwork for totalitarianism. Follow an umbrella's strange journey from sunny Munich to rainy Dallas.No...

A deeply reported book that brings alive the quest for justice in the deaths of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Freddie Gray, offering both unparalleled insight into the reality of police violence in America and an intimate, moving portrait of those working to end it.Conducting hundreds of interviews during the course of over one year reporting on the ground, Washington Post writer Wesley Lowery traveled from Ferguson, Missouri, to Cleveland, Ohio; Charlest...

Discover hundreds of intriguing, entertaining & often hilarious origins to the English language's most curious phrases in this trivia book from a bestselling author.English is filled with interesting phrases. This book reveals the surprising, captivating and even hilarious origins behind 400 of them, including:• Read between the Lines• Cat Got Your Tongue?• Put a Sock in It• Close, but No Cigar• Bring Home the Bacon• Caught Red-Handed• Under the Wea...

**The gripping tale of three Sudanese boys who were driven from their homes by civil war and began an epic odyssey of survival, ultimately finding their way to a new life in America.“A moving, beautifully written account, by turns raw and tender.” —Los Angeles Times**1987 and 1989, Alepho, Benjamin, and Benson, like tens of thousands of other young boys known as the Lost Boys, took flight from the massacres of Sudan’s civil war. They set out in search of refuge wit...

“Little and Often is a beautiful memoir of grief, love, the shattered bond between a father and son, and the resurrection of a broken heart. Trent Preszler tells his story with the same level of art and craftsmanship that he brings to his boat making, and he reminds us of creativity’s power to transform and heal our lives. This is a powerful and deeply moving book. I won’t soon forget it.” —Elizabeth GilbertTrent Preszler thought he was living the life he ...