A nail-biting, captivating look at tornados, from personal stories of those impacted by the natural disasters to the history of the struggle to understand this bewildering force of Mother Nature.May 3, 1999, is a day that Oklahomans will never forget. By the time the sun set over a ravaged plain, some 71 tornadoes had claimed around 11,000 homes and businesses and caused $1 billion in damage. One of them was a mile-wide monster of incredible power, the fiercest F5 ...

New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • The remarkable story of the intrepid French archaeologist who led the international effort to save ancient Egyptian temples from the floodwaters of the Aswan Dam, by the New York Times bestselling author of Madame Fourcade’s Secret War“A female version of the Indiana Jones story . . . [Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt] was a daredevil whose real-life antics put Hollywood fiction to shame...

Enter the eye of the storm in this gripping real-life thriller—A Perfect Storm on land—that chronicles “the sum and substance of the most catastrophic mass-tornado attack in recorded American history” (Ron Rowers, Pultizer Prize winner): a horrific three-day superstorm with 358 separate tornadoes touching down in twenty-one states and destroying entire towns.April 27, 2011 was the climax of a three-day superstorm that unle...

“David Laskin deploys historical fact of the finest grain to tell the story of a monstrous blizzard that caught the settlers of the Great Plains utterly by surprise. . . . This is a book best read with a fire roaring in the hearth and a blanket and box of tissues near at hand.” — Erik Larson, author of The Devil in the White City“Heartbreaking. . . . This account of the 1888 blizzard reads like a thriller.” — Entertainment WeeklyThe gripping true story of an epic prairie sn...

An irresistible and enchanting journey through human history—from mankind’s earliest fires to the latest smart phones—that tells the surprising and untold story of storytelling.Joan Didion told us, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” And yet, the story of stories has never been told until now. MIT technology pioneer Kevin Ashton was at the forefront of the digital revolution that led to the invention of the smartphone, the ultimate storytelling device. Th...

“As our climate changes, the force of the wind is set to grow. By looking to the past and the future, Winchester examines the twinned possibilities alive in this bluster: the power of the wind to tear our world apart and its ability to help us travel farther and do more.” — The Washington Post"Epic . . . . A splendidly written account of an unseeable force." — Kirkus Reviews

An “adventure tale for puzzle lovers and Indiana Jones fans alike” (The Washington Post) following three free-spirited Victorians on their twenty-year quest to decipher cuneiform, the oldest writing in the world—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu.It was one of history’s great vanishing acts. Around 3,400 BCE, a scribe in the mud-walled city-state of Uruk picked up a reed stylus to press tiny s...

Lisbon, 25 April 1974. Over the course of a single day, Europe’s oldest fascist regime falls. On its fiftieth anniversary, this is the story of the revolution that changed Portugal’s fate.25 April 1974, Lisbon. Over the course of a single day, Europe’s oldest fascist regime falls. On its 50th anniversary, this is the story of the revolution that changed Portugal forever.'The Carnation Revolution reads like a political thril...

“An elegant, wide-ranging history” (The New York Review of Books) of the centuries-long quest to discover the critical role of germs in disease thatreveals as much about human reasoning—and the pitfalls of ego—as it does about microbes.“Levenson takes readers through an entertaining . . . journey of missed opportunities in microbiology and the eventual advances that arose in this field.”—ScienceScientists and enthusiastic ...

This is the incredible untold story of four women who helped win World War II by generating a wave of black propaganda.Betty MacDonald was a 28-year-old reporter from Hawaii. Zuzka Lauwers grew up in a tiny Czechoslovakian village and knew five languages by the time she was 21. Jane Smith-Hutton was the wife of a naval attaché living in Tokyo. Marlene Dietrich, the German-American actress and singer, was one of the biggest stars of the 20th century. These four women, each fascinati...

A New Yorker Best Book of the Year * A Southwest Book of the Year “Top Pick”“American history did not begin in the Northeast. It began in the Southwest,’ Parker asserts, in this sweeping history.” —The New YorkerA revelatory work of Southwest history that recenters the American origin story two-thousand miles west of Plymouth Rock, in El Paso, Texas—heart of Indigenous power and resistance, locus of Spanish coloniz...

A captivating exploration of how underwater animals tap into sound to survive, and a clarion call for humans to address the ways we invade these critical soundscapes—from an award-winning science writer“Sing Like Fish is that rare book that makes you see the world differently.”—Mark Kurlansky, New York Times bestselling author of Salt and CodLONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE ...