**A New Yorker Best Book of the Year"Lively…and thought-provoking.” —Robert W. Howarth, ScienceThe New York Times best-selling author on the source of great bounty—and now great peril—all over the world.**Phosphorus has played a critical role in some of the most lethal substances on earth: firebombs, rat poison, nerve gas. But it’s also the key component of one of the most vital: fertilizer, which has sustained life for billions of people....

**New York Times BestsellerWinner of the Los Angeles Times Book PrizeWinner of the J. Anthony Lukas Award"Nimbly splices together history, science, reporting and personal experiences into a taut and cautiously hopeful narrative.… Egan’s book is bursting with life (and yes, death)." —Robert Moor, New York Times Book Review**The Great Lakes—Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, and Superior—hold 20 percent of the world’s supply of surface fr...

**A Los Angeles Times Book Prize FinalistWinner of the J. Anthony Lukas AwardA landmark work of science, history and reporting on the past, present and imperiled future of the Great Lakes.**The Great Lakes—Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario and Superior—hold 20 percent of the world’s supply of surface fresh water and provide sustenance, work and recreation for tens of millions of Americans. But they are under threat as never before, and their problems are spread...

The New York Times best-selling author on the source of great bounty—and now great peril—all over the world.Phosphorus has played a critical role in some of the most lethal substances on earth: firebombs, rat poison, nerve gas. But it’s also the key component of one of the most vital: fertilizer, which has sustained life for billions of people. In this major work of explanatory science and environmental journalism, Pulitzer Prize finalist Dan Egan investig...

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 rip-roaring tour of the cosmos with the Bad Astronomer, revealing the sky as never seen before―from everywhere but Earth.How would Saturn’s rings look from a spaceship sailing just above them? If you were falling into a black hole, what’s the last thing you’d see before your spaghettification? What would it be like to visit the faraway places we currently experience only through high-powered telescopes and robotic emissaries? Faster-than-light travel may never be invented, but we...

****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...

"[An] intriguing philosophical journey into a critical issue within evolutionary theory that for too long has remained unresolved." —Wall Street JournalMatt Ridley is one of our finest science writers. This book is a treat for bird lovers and evolutionary biologists alike.” —Richard Dawkins, author of The Genetic Book of The Dead and The God DelusionThe New York Times bestselling ...

The untold story of the little-known Manhattan slave rebellion of 1741 and the white hysteria that resulted.

Inspiring lessons learned from a lifetime of honor, service, and leadership from Captain Brett Crozier, the former commanding officer of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and renowned Navy officer.Amid one of the darkest times in American history, it was a moment that captured the attention of the nation. Brett Crozier, captain of the most powerful and prestigious aircraft carrier in the United States Navy, walked off his ship for the last time w...

Bill Bryson’s The Body meets Mary Roach’s Gulp (with a dash of What’s Your Poo Telling You?)in this delightfully weird, richly informative, and unexpectedly lyrical tour of our bodily emissions—revealing that the very parts of us that we seek to hide in embarrassment are actually an essential part of human health, with fascinating social history.In biology class, we learn that the body is a fundamentally cohesive organism, a collection of...

A groundbreaking, breathtaking history of the Chinese workers who built the Transcontinental Railroad, helping to forge modern America only to disappear into the shadows of history until now.From across the sea, they came by the thousands, escaping war and poverty in southern China to seek their fortunes in America. Converging on the enormous western worksite of the Transcontinental Railroad, the migrants spent years dynamiting tunnels through the snow-packed cliff...