A panoramic social history that chronicles the quest for beauty in all its contradictions—and how it affects the female body."Women have been fat or slim, hyperthyroid or splenetic, sallow or pink-cheeked, slouched or erect, according to the prevalent...

A vivid, captivating account of the Beatles’s musical transformation throughout the pivotal year of 1963, as the world became caught up in the maelstrom of Beatlemania and its far-reaching cultural impact. The Beatles broke up more than half a century...

From the Big Bang and the evolution of the genetic code to the birth of consciousness, this is the extraordinary story of the chain of events that led to human life on earth.Have you ever wondered why you exist? What had to happen for you to be alive and...

A masterful narrative history of the dangerous lives of pirates during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, revealing their unique impact on colonialism and empire.The pirates that exist in our imagination are not just any pirates. Violent...

An epic work of art history that will transform our understanding of the world by unlocking the human stories behind millennia of art. Taking readers from ancient Babylon to contemporary Pyongyang, the eminent curator Caroline Campbell explains art's...

An in-depth and unified exploration of genius in the arts and sciences through the life and works of five seminal intellectual and cultural figures: Leonardo da Vinci, William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, Ludwig von Beethoven, and Albert Einstein.Who among...

The must-read music book of the year—and the first such history bringing together all musical genres to tell the definitive narrative of the birth of Pop from 1900 to the mid-1950s.Pop music didn't begin with the Beatles in 1963, or with Elvis in 1956,...

*A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITOR'S CHOICE* A revealing and unique portrait of Victorian life as told through the discovery of one woman's textile scrapbook.In 1838, a young woman was given a diary on her wedding day. Collecting snippets of fabric...

*A Telegraph and Spectator Best Book of the Year* The fascinating story of how an eccentric group of intelligence agents used amateur diplomacy to penetrate the Nazi high command in an effort to prevent the start of World War II."How might the British...

What began in spring 2020 as local protests in response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police quickly exploded into a massive nationwide movement. Millions of mostly young people defiantly flooded into the nation’s streets, demanding an...

An urgent examination of the world barreling toward a new Cold War.With a historian’s eye and a theorist’s ingenuity, Michael Doyle, whose writings on liberal peace have revolutionized modern statesmanship, cogently assesses the tectonic shifts...

“Paris is a moveable feast,” Ernest Hemingway famously wrote, and in this captivating anthology, American writers share their pleasures, obsessions, and quibbles with the great city and its denizens. Mark Twain celebrates the unbridled energy of the...

A fascinating look at why human beings have a powerful mental, spiritual, and physical need for the natural world—and the cutting-edge scientific evidence that proves nature is nurture.“A powerful and beautifully written survey of the latest scientific...

From the famed publisher and poet, author of the million-copy-selling collection A Coney Island of the Mind, his literary last will and testament -- part autobiography, part summing up, part Beat-inflected torrent of language and feeling, and all magical...