A tale of some of the most amazing creatures ever to grace this tiny planet—unearth how the science fiction of the Jurassic World franchise inspired the evolution of dinosaur science.It all began in 1993. Jurassic Park was a movie landmark in the development of computer-generated imagery and animatronic visual effects. Jurassic Park became the highest-grossing movie of that year, and the highest-grossing film ever at the time, a record held until the 1997 release of Titanic. The fi...

How does magic in J. K. Rowling’s universe work? Finally, the scientific secrets of the Harry Potter universe are revealed!The insanely popular Harry Potter books and movies have brought the idea of magic and sorcery into mainstream. Modern muggle scientists have uncovered explanations to the seemingly impossible, including answers to such questions as:-Will we ever see an invisibility cloak?-How hazardous is a flying broomstick like the Nimbus 2000?-How has medicine made powerful potions ...

In The Secrets of Alchemy, Lawrence M. Principe, one of the world's leading authorities on the subject, brings alchemy out of the shadows and restores it to its important place in human history and culture. By surveying what alchemy was and how it began, developed, and overlapped with a range of ideas and pursuits, Principe illuminates the practice. He vividly depicts the place of alchemy during its heyday in early modern Europe, and then explores how alchemy has fit into wider vi...

Received historical wisdom casts abolitionists as bourgeois, mostly white reformers burdened by racial paternalism and economic conservatism. Manisha Sinha overturns this image, broadening her scope beyond the antebellum period usually associated with abolitionism and recasting it as a radical social movement in which men and women, black and white, free and enslaved found common ground in causes ranging from feminism and utopian socialism to anti-imperialism and efforts to defend the righ...

In the 1980s and 1990s many in the West came to believe in the myth of an East-Asian economic miracle, with countries seen as not just development prodigies but as a unified bloc, culturally and economically similar, and inexorably on the rise. In How Asia Works, Joe Studwell distills extensive research into the economics of nine countries—Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, and China—into an accessible narrative that debunks Wester...

In this Pulitzer Prize–finalist biography, the author of Mad at the World examines the little-known life of the man behind the well-known bird survey.John James Audubon is renowned for his masterpiece of natural history and art, The Birds of America, the first nearly comprehensive survey of the continent's birdlife. And yet few people understand, and many assume incorrectly, what sort of man he was. How did the illegitimate son of a French sea cap...

When Esmae wins a contest of skill, she sets off events that trigger an inevitable and unwinnable war that pits her against the family she’d give anything to return to.In a universe of capricious gods, dark moons, and kingdoms built on the backs of spaceships, a cursed queen sends her infant daughter away, a jealous uncle steals the throne of Kali from his nephew, and an exiled prince vows to take his crown back.Raised alone and far away from her home on Kali, Esmae longs t...

More than 10,000 years ago spectacularly large mammals roamed the pampas and jungles of South America. This book tells the story of these great beasts during and just after the Pleistocene, the geological epoch marked by the great ice ages. Megafauna describes the history and way of life of these animals, their comings and goings, and what befell them at the beginning of the modern era and the arrival of humans. It places these giants within the context of the other mammals then a...

One of Italy’s most revered cultural figures reconstructs the extraordinary life of the legendary Cleopatra at the height of her power in this epic story of passion, intrigue, betrayal, and war.Our world today would not be the same without Cleopatra. While she is one of the most famous figures in history, the legendary Egyptian queen remains, in many ways, an enigma. In this mesmerizing history, Alberto Angela offers a fresh and dynamic portrait of this extraordina...

In the wake of white nationalist attacks, the ongoing debate over reparations, and the controversy surrounding Confederate monuments and the contested memories they evoke, Susan Neiman's Learning from the Germans delivers an urgently needed perspective on how a country can come to terms with its historical wrongdoings. Neiman is a white woman who came of age in the civil rights–era South and a Jewish woman who has spent much of her adult life in Berlin. Working from this unique pe...

When Emperor Meiji began his rule in 1867, Japan was a splintered empire dominated by the shogun and the daimyos, cut off from the outside world, staunchly antiforeign, and committed to the traditions of the past. Before long, the shogun surrendered to the emperor, a new constitution was adopted, and Japan emerged as a modern, industrialized state.Little has been written about the strangely obscured figure of Meiji himself, the first emperor ever to meet a European. But now, Donald...

From one of the finest naturalists and writers of our time, a fascinating investigation of Nature’s inspiring death-to-life cycle.How does the animal world deal with death? And what ecological and spiritual lessons can we learn from examining this? Bernd Heinrich has long been fascinated by these questions, and when a good friend with a terminal illness asked if he might have his “green burial” at Heinrich’s hunting camp in Maine, it inspired the acclaimed biologis...