"Mesmerizing account of an amateur artist who made millions selling forged paintings to art-obsessed Nazis and business tycoons" ( Kirkus, starred review).**New York Times–BestsellerA New York Times Staff Pick"Dolnick brilliantly re-creates the circumstances that made possible one of the most audacious frauds of the twentieth century. . . . An incomparable page turner." — Boston Globe

New York Times–bestselling Author: An "entertainingly written" account of the scientific revolution that emerged amid the horrors of seventeenth-century London ( Kirkus Reviews).In the late seventeenth century, chaos and disease reigned. Streets overflowed with filth and the murder rate was five times higher than it is today. Sickness was divine punishment, astronomy and astrology were indistinguishable, and the world's most brilliant, ambitious, a...

Drawing on rarely examined diaries and journals, Down the Great Unknown is the first book of narrative nonfiction to tell the full, dramatic story of the Powell expedition.On May 24, 1869, a one-armed Civil War veteran, John Wesley Powell, and a ragtag band of nine mountain men embarked on the last great quest in the American West. Their goal was the Grand Canyon, an area of the United States not explored before, as mysterious as Atlantis—and as perilous. ...

Edgar Award Winner for Best Fact Crime. "An entertaining account of the eternal struggle between high art and low cunning." — TimeIn the predawn hours of a gloomy February day in 1994, two thieves entered the National Gallery in Oslo and made off with one of the world's most famous paintings, Edvard Munch's Scream. It was a brazen crime committed while the whole world was watching the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in L...

Why cracking the code of human conception took centuries of wild theories, misogynist blunders, and ludicrous mistakesThroughout most of human history, babies were surprises. People knew the basics: men and women had sex, and sometimes babies followed. But beyond that the origins of life were a colossal mystery. The Seeds of Life is the remarkable and rollicking story of how a series of blundering geniuses and brilliant amateurs struggled for two centuries...

A riveting portrait of the Gold Rush, by the award-winning author of Down the Great Unknown and The Forger's Spell.In the spring of 1848, rumors began to spread that gold had been discovered in a remote spot in the Sacramento Valley. A year later, newspaper headlines declared "Gold Fever!" as hundreds of thousands of men and women borrowed money, quit their jobs, and allowed themselves- for the first time ever-to imagine a future of ease and splen...

The fast-paced and “engrossing account” (The New York Times Book Review) of “one of the greatest breakthroughs in archaeological history” (The Christian Science Monitor): two rival geniuses in a race to decode the writing on one of the world’s most famous documents—the Rosetta Stone.The Rosetta Stone is one of the most famous objects in the world, attracting millions of visitors to the British museum every year, and yet most peopl...

Drawing on rarely examined diaries and journals, Down the Great Unknown is the first book to tell the full, dramatic story of the Powell expedition.On May 24, 1869 a one-armed Civil War veteran, John Wesley Powell and a ragtag band of nine mountain men embarked on the last great quest in the American West. The Grand Canyon, not explored before, was as mysterious as Atlantis*—*and as perilous. The ten men set out from Green River Station, Wyoming Territory ...

From the bestselling author of The Clockwork Universe and The Writing of the Gods, an “utterly delightful…hugely entertaining” (Air Mail) book about the eccentric Victorians who discovered dinosaur bones, leading to a whole new understanding of human history.In the early 1800s the natural world was a safe and cozy place, or so people believed. But then a twelve-year-old farm boy in Massachusetts stumbled on a row of fossilized three-toed ...

In the predawn hours of a gloomy February day in 1994, two thieves entered the National Gallery in Oslo and made off with one of the world's most famous paintings, Edvard Munch's Scream. It was a brazen crime committed while the whole world was watching the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. Baffled and humiliated, the Norwegian police turned to the one man they believed could help: a half English, half American undercover cop named Charley Hill, the world's...

Why cracking the code of human conception took centuries of wild theories, misogynist blunders, and ludicrous mistakesThroughout most of human history, babies were surprises. People knew the basics: men and women had sex, and sometimes babies followed. But beyond that the origins of life were a colossal mystery. The Seeds of Life is the remarkable and rollicking story of how a series of blundering geniuses and brilliant amateurs struggled for two centuries...

A riveting portrait of the Gold Rush, by the award-winning author of Down the Great Unknown and The Forger's Spell.In the spring of 1848, rumors began to spread that gold had been discovered in a remote spot in the Sacramento Valley. A year later, newspaper headlines declared "Gold Fever!" as hundreds of thousands of men and women borrowed money, quit their jobs, and allowed themselves- for the first time ever-to imagine a future of ease and splen...