"Delightful, enlightening . . . The twisty history of the hybrid divider perfectly embodies the transience of language." — VultureThe semicolon. Stephen King, Hemingway, Vonnegut, and Orwell detest it. Herman Melville, Henry James, and Rebecca Solnit love it. But why? When is it effective? Have we been misusing it? Should we even care?In Semicolon, Cecelia Watson charts the rise and fall of this infamous punctuation mark, which for years was...

A page-turning, existential romp through the life and times of the world’s most polarizing punctuation markThe semicolon. Stephen King, Hemingway, Vonnegut, and Orwell detest it. Herman Melville, Henry James, and Rebecca Solnit love it. But why? When is it effective? Have we been misusing it? Should we even care?In Semicolon, Cecelia Watson charts the rise and fall of this infamous punctuation mark, which for years was the trendiest one in the worl...

From the author of Proust and the Squid, a lively, ambitious, and deeply informative epistolary book that considers the future of the reading brain and our capacity for critical thinking, empathy, and reflection as we become increasingly dependent on digital technologies.A decade ago, Maryanne Wolf’s Proust and the Squid revealed what we know about how the brain learns to read and how reading changes the way we think and feel. Since then, the ways we process writt...

Don't Know Much About Anything: Everything You Need to Know But Never Learned About Famous People, Exceptional Places, Historical Happenings, Holidays and Traditions, Everyday Objects, Remarkable Inventions, Space, Sports, Food, Entertainment and More! is a compendium of around 275 columns, sorted into the subject categories listed in the subtitle. Quizzes on the atomic bomb, hamburgers, football, and The Wizard of Oz are included, along with the Emancipation Proclamation...

Find creative inspiration in this fascinating rummage through the wastebaskets, secret diaries, and abandoned files of twenty literary superstars.If you like to write—whether it's a pastime, a passion, or a profession—you've probably found yourself reading something brilliant and thinking, "I could never do this! I might as well give up." But if there's one thing every great author has in common, it's this: they've all written some hot garbage.Revisiona...

Why aren't left-handers extinct? What makes a rainbow round? How is a pancreas . . . like a pendulum?These may not look like math questions, but they are—because they all have to do with patterns. And mathematics, atheart, is the study of patterns.That realization changed Eddie Woo's life—by turning the "dry" subject he dreaded in high school into a boundless quest for discovery. Now an award-winning math teacher, Woo sees patterns ...

A new look at Thomas Morton, his controversial colonial philosophy, and his lengthy feud with the Puritans.Adding new depth to our understanding of early New England society, this riveting account of Thomas Morton explores the tensions that arose from competing colonial visions. A lawyer and fur trader, Thomas Morton dreamed of a society where Algonquian peoples and English colonists could coexist. Infamous for dancing around a maypole in defiance of his Pilgrim ne...

A gold mine. A millionaire. An island paradise. An unsolved murder. A missing fortune. The story of the infamous Sir Harry Oakes as only Charlotte Gray can tell itOn an island paradise in 1943, Sir Harry Oakes, gold mining tycoon, philanthropist and ""richest man in the Empire,"" was murdered. The news of his death surged across the English-speaking world, from London, the Imperial centre, to the remote Canadian mining town of Kirkland Lake, in the Northern Ontario...

Rather than celebrating warfare, 50 Battles That Changed The World looks at the clashes the author believes have had the most profound impact on world history. Listed in order of their relevance to the modern world, they range from the ancient past to the present day and span the globe many times over. This book is not so much about military strategy as the implications of the battles that were vital in shaping civilization as we know it. Some of the battles in this book are familiar to us...

"Narrator Andrea Burns is amazing! Her performance of NEW YORK TIMES editor Jacobs's charming, well-researched look at the life of actor Elaine Stritch (19252014) is at once intelligent, amusing, and illuminating...Wonderfully entertaining listening." — AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award winnerThe ebullient, troubled life of a Broadway legend who became a heroine to a younger generationStill Here is the first full telling...

**“Aspiring novelists will be heartened.”—**Publishers WeeklyIn Revisionaries, a writing expert takes you on an engrossing tour through the discarded drafts, false starts, and abandoned projects of influential writers. In the process, he dismantles some of our most deeply held—and most suffocating—ideas about what it takes to produce great creative work. You’ll learn that:Franz Kafka lacked confidenceOctavi...

The timeless stories of Greek mythology come to life in these reimagined tales written in the voices of Zeus, Oedipus, Odysseus, and many others.Though the gods are featured prominently in Greek mythology, there is nothing sacred about it. Anyone is free to bring their own interpretation to these stories, just as Homer, Sophocles, and Euripides did centuries ago. In this volume, classicist and author Robert Garland presents nearly forty Greek legends as told by the ...