Where do our things really come from? China is the most common answer, but Thomas Thwaites decided he wanted to know more. In The Toaster Project, Thwaites asks what lies behind the smooth buttons on …
Shelve The Toaster Project: Or a Heroic Attempt to Build a Simple Electric Appliance from Scratch
Nick and Nora Charles are Hammett's most enchanting creations, a rich, glamorous couple who solve homicides in between wisecracks and martinis. At once knowing and unabashedly romantic, The Thin Man i…
From the development of the U-2 to the Stealth fighter, the never-before-told story behind the high-stakes quest to dominate the skies Skunk Works is the true story of America's most secret & successf…
Shelve Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed
The Tower of Babel is the greatest marvel in the world. Immense as a mountain, the ancient Tower holds unnumbered ringdoms, warring and peaceful, stacked one on the other like the layers of a cake. It…
The computer revolution brought with it new methods of getting work done—just look at today's news for reports of hard-driven, highly-motivated young software and online commerce developers who sacrif…
In this New York Times bestselling “imperative how-to for creativity” (Nick Offerman), Adam Savage—star of Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters—shares his golden rules of creativity, from finding inspirati…
Shelve Every Tool's a Hammer: Life Is What You Make It
Ed MacPherson is your college whiz-kid hyper-scientist: wormholes, time travel, heavy stellar engineering. When the aliens attack and you need a giant robot to fight them, he's your guy. When a galaxy…
A thrilling illustrated guide to Formula 1 racing, from its fascinating origins and inner workings to the top drivers of the twentieth century and today, from celebrated F1 journalist and breakout sta…
Shelve Grand Prix: An Illustrated History of Formula 1
Definitely Maybe is a slightly alcohol tinged story of conflict between a group of Soviet scientists who are all working on pet projects to different ends, and some unknown enemy who wants to stop the…
From a veteran culture writer and modern movie expert, a celebration and analysis of the movies of 1999—arguably the most groundbreaking year in American cinematic history.
In 1999, Hollywood as we kno…
Shelve Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen
An antimeme is an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by its intrinsic nature, discourages or prevents people from spreading it.Antimemes are real. Think of any piece of information wh…
In 1878, two young stage magicians clash in the dark during the course of a fraudulent séance. From this moment on, their lives become webs of deceit and revelation as they vie to outwit and expose on…
Winner of the Pulitzer prize in 1974 and the culmination of a life's work, The Denial of Death is Ernest Becker's brilliant and impassioned answer to the "why" of human existence. In bold contrast to …
Aaron Smith-Teller works in a kabbalistic sweatshop in Silicon Valley, where he and hundreds of other minimum-wage workers try to brute-force the Holy Names of God. All around him, vast forces have be…
In a book that Business Insider noted as one of the "14 Books that inspired Elon Musk," J.E. Gordon strips engineering of its confusing technical terms, communicating its founding principles in access…
Drawing on his own incarceration and exile, as well as on evidence from more than 200 fellow prisoners and Soviet archives, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn reveals the entire apparatus of Soviet repression—…
Hadrian Marlowe, a man revered as a hero and despised as a murderer, chronicles his tale in the galaxy-spanning debut of the Sun Eater series, merging the best of space opera and epic fantasy.
Hazel has just moved into a trailer park of senior citizens, with her father and Diane—his sex doll companion. Life with Hazel's father is strained at best, but it's got to be better than her marriage…
What would you do if a time machine hurled you thousands of years into the past. . . and then broke? How would you survive? Could you improve on humanity's original timeline? And how hard would it be …
Shelve How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler
It’s fall 2007. A well-timed leak has revealed that the US government might have engaged in first contact. Cora Sabino is doing everything she can to avoid the whole mess, since…
Britain has lost the Falklands war, Margaret Thatcher battles Tony Benn for power and Alan Turing achieves a breakthrough in artificial intelligence. In a world not quite like this one, two lovers wil…
In his fifth work of nonfiction, Mark Kurlansky turns his attention to a common household item with a long and intriguing history: salt. The only rock we eat, salt has shaped civilization from the ver…
Set in the months leading up to the 2018 nuclear missile false alarm, a Korean American family living in Hawai'i faces the fallout of their eldest son's attempt to run across the Demilitarized Zone in…
An adventure deep inside the everyday materials that surround us, packed with surprising stories and fascinating science. Why is glass see-through? What makes elastic stretchy? Why does a paper clip b…
Shelve Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World
The story begins in the near future, as burgeoning population pressures force humanity to terraform and colonize Mars. After a brief but violent civil war between the two planets, the genetically engi…
Shelve All Tomorrows: The Myriad Species and Mixed Fortunes of Man
A rollicking history of England's earliest kings and queens, a story of narcissists, excessive beheadings, middle-management insurrection, uncivil wars, and more, from award-winning British actor and …
Shelve Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens
The Appalachian Trail stretches from Georgia to Maine and covers some of the most breathtaking terrain in America—majestic mountains, silent forests, sparking lakes. If you’re going to take a hike, it…
Shelve A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
