The Norwegian explorer, philosopher and acclaimed writer tells of his historic 58-day journey to the North Pole on skis in this provocative memoir that is a profound meditation on nature and the history of explorers' obsession.The North Pole looms large in our collective psyche—the ultimate Otherland in a world mapped and traversed. It is the center of our planet’s rotation, one of the places that is most vulnerable in an epoch of global climate change. Its sub-zer...

A lyrical account of an activity that is essential for our sanity, equilibrium, and well-being, from the author of Silence ("A book to be handled and savored." —The Wall Street Journal)Placing one foot in front of the other, embarking on the journey of discovery, and experiencing the joy of exploration—these activities are intrinsic to our nature. Our ancestors traveled long distances on foot, gaining new experiences and learning from them. But as...

What is silence?Where can it be found?Why is it now more important than ever?In 1993, Norwegian explorer Erling Kagge spent fifty days walking solo across Antarctica, becoming the first person to reach the South Pole alone, accompanied only by a radio whose batteries he had removed before setting out. In this book. an astonishing and transformative meditation, Kagge explores the silence around us, the silence within...

****Shortlisted for the 2025 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize**The bestselling author of Your Inner Fish takes readers on an epic adventure to the North and South Poles to reveal the secrets locked in the ice about life, the cosmos, and our planet’s future.“Urgent [and] prescient…The book captures Shubin’s reverence for both the beauty and the mysteries hidden in the cold, barren tundra.”—The New Yorker**Renowned scientist Neil Shubin has m...

A deeply personal nine-year account of the lives of the “anchor-outs”—an unhoused community living off the California coast on abandoned boats—that explores the struggles and resilience of those surviving on the fringes of society.In the wake of the financial crisis, the number of anchor-outs living in Richardson Bay more than doubles as their long-simmering feud with the wealthy residents of Marin County—one of the richest counties in the country—finally boils ove...

ONE OF THE NEW REPUBLIC'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR “Nothing I’ve read has cut to the heart of the ’00s like Y2K.” — BustlePerfect for fans of Jia Tolentino and Chuck Klosterman, Y2K is a delightfully nostalgic and bitingly told exploration about how the early 2000s forever changed us and the world we live in.THE EARLY 2000s conjures images of inflatable furniture, flip phones, and low-rise jeans. It...

From Time 100 honoree Saad Mohseni, the deeply moving and surprising story of the attempt to build a truly independent media company in contemporary Afghanistan.Saad Mohseni, chairman and CEO of Moby Group, Afghanistan’s largest media company, charts a twenty-year effort to bring a free press to his country after years of Taliban rule, and how that effort persists even after the Taliban’s return to power in 2021.In the heady early days of the Ameri...

For fans of The Boys in the Boat, and marking the 100th anniversary of the Paris Olympics, the never-before-told story of three athletes who defied the odds to usher in a golden age of sportsEven today, it’s considered one of the most thrilling races in Olympic history. The hundred-meter sprint final at the 1924 Paris Games, featuring three of the world’s fastest swimmers—American legends Duke Kahanamoku and Johnny Weissmuller, and Japanese upstart Katsuo Takaishi—had the cultural ...

This program is read by the author.“This is a great audiobook for nature lovers, carpenters, and people who dream of their hobby becoming their day job.”—AudioFileA memoir of the author's journey from an office job to restoring a cabin in the Pacific Northwest, based on his wildly popular Outside Magazine piece.Wit’s End isn’t just a state of mind. It’s the name of a gravel road, the address of a rundown, o...

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...

**NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE ECONOMIST AND THE GUARDIAN“Absorbing. . . . A revealing look at the hidden role that games have played in human development for centuries.” —Kirkus“By turns philosophical and polemical, this is a provocative and fascinating book.” —The EconomistA wide-ranging intellectual history that reveals how important games have been to human progress, and what’s at stake when we forget what games we’re ...

**From renowned foreign policy expert Angela Stent comes a dissection of how Putin created a paranoid and polarized world—and increased Russia's status on the global stage."Putin's World is the definitive guide to understanding the tangled history of post-Cold War Russia and its place in the world. Angela Stent offers a thoughtful, sober, and elegantly-written perspective that could not be more timely." —US Ambassador William J. Burns**How did Russia manage to emer...