Chess is the most enduring and universal game in history. Here, bestselling author David Shenk chronicles its intriguing saga, from ancient Persia to medieval Europe to the dens of Benjamin Franklin a
From Harold S. Kushner, author of the inspirational #1 bestseller When Bad Things Happen to Good People, comes a book that shows us how to be our best selves even when things don’t turn out as we had
I Wish I’d Been There brings together twenty of our most distinguished historians’ responses to the question “What scene or incident in American history would you most liked to have witnessed—and why?
In the fifth century B.C., a global superpower was determined to bring truth and order to what it regarded as two terrorist states. The superpower was Persia, incomparably rich in ambition, gold, and
The hilarious sequel to Rick Reilly’s beloved bestselling golf novel Missing LinksLife is going pretty well for Raymond “Stick” Hart. He’s happily married to the former Ponkaquogue Municipal Golf Club
In Victorian England there was only one fail-safe authority on matters ranging from fashion to puddings to scullery maids: Beeton’s Book of Household Management. In this delightful, superbly researche
In this dynamic account, award-winning science writer Ann Gibbons chronicles an extraordinary quest to answer the most primal of questions: When and where was the dawn of humankind?Following four int
In this important and revelatory book, Jonathan Tucker, a leading expert on chemical and biological weapons, chronicles the lethal history of chemical warfare from World War I to the present.At the tu
The town of Winthrop has decided it needs a new name. The resident software millionaire wants to call it New Prospera; the mayor wants to return to the original choice of the founding black settlers;
The Appalachian Trail 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 hi
This dazzling anthology features the work of seventy-nine outstanding writers from all over the Arab-speaking world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, Syria in the north to Sudan in the so
Mason LaVerle is a young man on a mission–a mission to save his people’s way of life. Mason was raised in a tiny, isolated Montanan sect, the church of the Aboriginal Fulfilled Apostles. But the Apost
In 1966, an English teacher and students in Northeast Georgia founded a quarterly magazine, not only as a vehicle to learn the required English curriculum, but also to teach others about the customs,
In this riveting new novel, best-selling author John Darnton transports us to Victorian England and around the world to reveal the secrets of a legendary nineteenth-century figure. Darnton elegantly
A partner at a prominent law firm is forced to choose between his enviable lifestyle and doing the right thing. Former college football star Scott Fenney has worked his way to the top of the heap at t
It was 1994 when Xinran, a journalist and the internationally acclaimed author of The Good Women of China, received a telephone call asking her to travel four hours to meet a woman who had just crosse
When Jennie Erdal was hired to edit a flamboyant London publisher’s Russian books in translation, she was happy to be able to commute from her home in Scotland. Soon, however, she was also secretly wr
In February of 1945, 350 American POWs, selected because they were Jews, thought to resemble Jews or simply by malicious caprice, were transported by cattle car to Berga, a concentration camp in easte
Red Azalea is Anchee Min's memoir of growing up in the last years of Mao's China. As a child, she was asked to publicly humiliate a teacher; at seventeen, she was sent to work at a labor collective.
On Christmas night of 1998, Maria Meyers learns that her twenty-year-old daughter, Pearl, has chained herself outside the American embassy in Dublin, where she intends to starve herself to death. Alth
When Deborah Rudacille learned that a close friend had decided to transition from female to male, she felt compelled to understand why. Coming at the controversial subject of transsexualism from sever
From the most exciting individual in American theater” (Newsweek), here is Anna Deavere Smith’s brass tacks advice to aspiring artists of all stripes. In vividly anecdotal letters to the young BZ, she
This beautifully packed box set will be an attractive gift for fans and those wishing to spread the McCall Smith gospel. "There is no end to the pleasure that may be extracted from these [five] books.
From the bestselling author of Sister of My Heart comes a spellbinding tale of mothers and daughters, love and cultural identity. Rakhi, a young painter and single mother, is struggling to come to ter
In this extraordinary journey, Alan Tennant recounts his attempt to track the transcontinental migration of the majestic peregrine falcon — an investigation no one before him had ever taken to such le
“Every horse story is a love story,” writes Jane Smiley, who has loved horses for most of her life and owned and bred them for a good part of it. To love something is to observe it with more than usua
In 1962, at age seventeen, Karen Armstrong entered a convent, eager to meet God. After seven brutally unhappy years as a nun, she left her order to pursue English literature at Oxford. But convent lif
In Lone Star Nation, Pulitzer Prize finalist H. W. Brands demythologizes Texas’s journey to statehood and restores the genuinely heroic spirit to a pivotal chapter in American history.From Stephen Aus
Debra Dickerson pulls no punches in this electrifying manifesto. Outspoken journalist and author of the critically acclaimed memoir An American Story, she challenges black Americans to stop obsessing
“Don’t play in the sun. You’re going to have to get a light-skinned husband for the sake of your children as it is.”In these words from her mother, novelist and memoirist Marita Golden learned as a g
From King Lear to the Tragedy of Carmen, from Marat/Sade to the epic Mahabharata, Peter Brook has reinvented modern theatre, not once but again and again. In The Open Door the visionary director and t
An updated history of the experts, largely men, who have given professional advice to women makes the point that this advice has been unscientific, arrogant, biased, and generally self-serving and exp
A galvanizing narrative of the wartime role played by U.S. Army nurses from the invasion of North Africa to the bloody Italian campaign to the decisive battles in France and the Rhineland. More than 5
For more than a half-century, Israel has been forced to defend its existence against international political disapproval, racist calumny, and violence visited upon its citizens by terrorists of many s
Raised a Christian Scientist, Charlotte McGuffey has always been taught to solve her problems by denying their existence. But now, suffering from crippling insomnia, living with a husband she no longe
Steven Frank has a new approach to writing: fun first, rules to follow, success for all. In The Pen Commandments, his offbeat and entertaining guide, he's given us a book that all writers can turn to
? These days fact-checking can seem like a lost art.? The Fact Checker's Bible arrives not a moment too soon: it is the first—and essential—guide to the important but increasingly neglected task of ch
Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz reaches back millennia to his homeland’s majestic past in this enchanting collection of early tales that brings the world of ancient Egypt face to face with our own times
Nepotism is one of those social habits we all claim to deplore in America; it offends our sense of fair play and our pride in living in a meritocracy. But somehow nepotism prevails; we all want to hel
“In many ways writing saved my life. It’s my hope that sharing my experience will give hope to others who are learning to deal with their “difference.” I want them to know they don’t have to live thei
