🧠Because truth is often stranger—and funnier—than fiction.
Memoirs, essays, and deep dives into everything from psychology to platypuses. Smart reads for curious minds.
The English language is a battlefield. Since the age of Shakespeare, arguments over correct usage have been bitter, and have always really been about contesting values-morality, politics, and class. The Language Wars examines the present state of the conflict, its...
The widower of children's book author Amy Krause Rosenthal shares a "gut-wrenching, honest, and uplifting memoir" of love, loss, and new beginnings (Booklist).In 2017, Amy Krouse Rosenthal penned an op-ed piece for the New York Times' "Modern Love" column titled "You...
"Get your head into the clouds with Aerial Geology." —The New York Times Book ReviewAerial Geology is an up-in-the-sky exploration of North America's 100 most spectacular geological formations. Crisscrossing the continent from the Aleutian Islands in Alaska to the...
In this groundbreaking union of art and science, rocker-turned-neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin explores the connection between music—its performance, its composition, how we listen to it, why we enjoy it—and the human brain. Taking on prominent thinkers who argue...
The acclaimed author of Lolita offers unique insight into works by James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Jane Austen, and others—with an introduction by John Updike. In the 1940s, when Vladimir Nabokov first embarked on his academic career in the United States, he brought with...
In this “unmissable book” (The Guardian), an internationally renowned forensic psychiatrist and psychotherapist explores the psychology of violence and demonstrates the remarkable human capacity for radical empathy, change, and redemption.What drives someone to commit...
NEW & NOTEWORTHY ~Â THE NEW YORK TIMESÂ With a Foreword by Susan Orlean, twenty-three of today's living literary legends, including Donna Tartt, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Andrew Sean Greer, Laila Lalami, and Michael Chabon, reveal the books that made them think, brought them...
From Alexander von Humboldt to Charles and Anne Lindbergh, these are stories of people of great vision and daring whose achievements continue to inspire us today, brilliantly told by master historian David McCullough.The bestselling author of Truman and John Adams,...
Hungry for a treasure trove of weird and wonderful facts beyond your wildest imagination? Then keep on reading…Did you know that trees collaborate, communicate, and engage in chemical warfare?Or that humans are better at smelling rain than sharks are at smelling...
This extensive reference volume presents the etymological history of thousands of English words.The story of how words come to be is the story of how humans think, and how we fashion our civilizations. Words can be the product of long and intertwining histories,...