Book cover of The Devil's Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance by Dan Egan

The Devil’s Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance

Phosphorus has played a critical role in some of the most lethal substances on earth: firebombs, rat poison, nerve gas. But it’s also the key component of one of the most vital: fertilizer, which has sustained life for billions of people. In this major work of explanatory science and environmental journalism, Pulitzer Prize finalist Dan Egan investigates the past, present, and future of what has been called “the oil of our time.” […Learn More]

Book cover of Trigger Points: Inside the Mission to Stop Mass Shootings in America by Mark Follman
Health and Psychology

Trigger Points: Inside the Mission to Stop Mass Shootings in America

For the first time, a story about the specialized teams of forensic psychologists, FBI agents, and other experts who are successfully stopping mass shootings—a hopeful, myth-busting narrative built on new details of infamous attacks, never-before-told accounts from perpetrators and survivors, and real-time immersion in confidential threat cases, casting a whole new light on how to solve an ongoing national crisis. […Learn More]

Book cover of Streets of Gold: America's Untold Story of Immigrant Success by Ran Ambramitzky and Leah Boustan
Business & Money

Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success

Immigration is one of the most fraught, and possibly most misunderstood, topics in American social discourse—yet, in most cases, the things we believe about immigration are based largely on myth, not facts. Using the tools of modern data analysis and ten years of pioneering research, new evidence is provided about the past and present of the American Dream, debunking myths fostered by political opportunism and sentimentalized in family histories, and draw counterintuitive conclusions […Learn More]

Book cover of The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains by Joseph Ledoux
Biological Sciences

The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains

A leading neuroscientist offers a history of the evolution of the brain from unicellular organisms to the complexity of animals and human beings today

Renowned neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux digs into the natural history of life on earth to provide a new perspective on the similarities between us and our ancestors in deep time. This page-turning survey of the whole of terrestrial evolution sheds new light on how nervous systems evolved in animals, how the brain developed, and what it means to be human. […Learn More]

Book cover of Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist by Frans De Waal
Biological Sciences

Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist

In Different, world-renowned primatologist Frans de Waal draws on decades of observation and studies of both human and animal behavior to argue that despite the linkage between gender and biological sex, biology does not automatically support the traditional gender roles in human societies. While humans and other primates do share some behavioral differences, biology offers no justification for existing gender inequalities. […Learn More]