Book cover of Killing the Witches: The Horror of Salem, Massachusetts by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard
Colonial Period

Killing the Witches: The Horror of Salem, Massachusetts

Killing the Witches revisits one of the most frightening and inexplicable episodes in American history: the events of 1692 and 1693 in Salem Village, Massachusetts. What began as a mysterious affliction of two young girls who suffered violent fits and exhibited strange behavior soon spread to other young women. Rumors of demonic possession and witchcraft consumed Salem. […Learn More]

Book cover of Fool Me Once: Scams, Stories, and Secrets from the Trillion-Dollar Fraud Industry by Kelly RIchmond Pope
Business & Money

Fool Me Once: Scams, Stories, and Secrets from the Trillion-Dollar Fraud Industry

A riveting look at the perpetrators, victims, and whistleblowers behind financial crimes, from forensic accounting expert and documentarian Kelly Richmond Pope.

Have you ever wondered why Bernie Madoff thought he could brazenly steal his clients’ money? Or why investors were so easily duped by Elizabeth Holmes? Or how courageous people like Jeffrey Wigand are willing to become whistleblowers and put their careers on the line? […Learn More]

Book cover of Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires by Douglas Rushkoff
Business & Money

Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires

Five mysterious billionaires summoned theorist Douglas Rushkoff to a desert resort for a private talk. The topic? How to survive the “Event”: the societal catastrophe they know is coming. Rushkoff came to understand that these men were under the influence of The Mindset, a Silicon Valley–style certainty that they and their cohort can break the laws of physics, economics, and morality to escape a disaster of their own making—as long as they have enough money and the right technology. […Learn More]

Book cover of The Genesis Machine: Our Quest to Rewrite Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology by Amy Webb
Biological Sciences

The Genesis Machine: Our Quest to Rewrite Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology

The next frontier in technology is inside our own bodies.

Synthetic biology will revolutionize how we define family, how we identify disease and treat aging, where we make our homes, and how we nourish ourselves. This fast-growing field—which uses computers to modify or rewrite genetic code—has created revolutionary, groundbreaking solutions such as the mRNA COVID vaccines, IVF, and lab-grown hamburger that tastes like the real thing. […Learn More]

Book cover of Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic by Scott Gottlieb
Health and Psychology

Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic 

In Uncontrolled Spread, he shows how the coronavirus and its variants were able to trounce America’s pandemic preparations, and he outlines the steps that must be taken to protect against the next outbreak. As the pandemic unfolded, Gottlieb was in regular contact with all the key players in Congress, the Trump administration, and the drug and diagnostic industries. He provides an inside account of how level after level of American government crumbled as the COVID-19 crisis advanced. […Learn More]

Book cover of Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19 by Matt Ridley and Aliana Chan
Biological Sciences

Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19

Understanding how Covid-19 started is crucial for the future of humankind. Viral is the most incisive and authoritative book about the search for the source of the virus.

A new virus descended on the human species in 2019 wreaking unprecedented havoc. Finding out where it came from and how it first jumped into people is an urgent priority, but early expectations that this would prove an easy question to answer have been dashed. Nearly two years into the pandemic, the crucial mystery of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is not only unresolved but has deepened. […Learn More]

Book cover of A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload by Cal Newport
Business & Money

A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload

From New York Times bestselling author Cal Newport comes a bold vision for liberating workers from the tyranny of the inbox—and unleashing a new era of productivity.

Modern knowledge workers communicate constantly. Their days are defined by a relentless barrage of incoming messages and back-and-forth digital conversations—a state of constant, anxious chatter in which nobody can disconnect, and so nobody has the cognitive bandwidth to perform substantive work. […Learn More]

Artificial Intelligence & Robotics

AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, And The New World Order

Dr. Kai-Fu Lee—one of the world’s most respected experts on AI and China—reveals that China has suddenly caught up to the US at an astonishingly rapid and unexpected pace.  

In AI Superpowers, Kai-fu Lee argues powerfully that because of these unprecedented developments in AI, dramatic changes will be happening much sooner than many of us expected. Indeed, as the US-Sino AI competition begins to heat up, Lee urges the US and China to both accept and to embrace the great responsibilities that come with significant technological power. […Learn More]

Biological Sciences

Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain

From the author of How Emotions Are Made, a captivating collection of short essays about your brain, in the tradition of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry and Seven Brief Lessons on Physics.

 Have you ever wondered why you have a brain? Let renowned neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett demystify that big gray blob between your ears. In seven short essays (plus a bite-sized story about how brains evolved), this slim, entertaining, and accessible collection reveals mind-expanding lessons from the front lines of neuroscience research. […Learn More]

Book cover of Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert
Earth Sciences

Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future

In Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. Along the way, she meets biologists who are trying to preserve the world’s rarest fish, which lives in a single tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave; engineers who are turning carbon emissions to stone in Iceland; Australian researchers who are trying to develop a “super coral” that can survive on a hotter globe; and physicists who are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere to cool the earth.  […Learn More]