Social science

Unto This Last

by John Ruskin

Unto This Last is an essay on economy by John Ruskin, critical of the 18th and 19th century capitalist economists. When first published as four magazine articles in 1860 they were, in the words of Ruskin himself,...

McQueen's Machines: The Cars and Bikes of a Hollywood Icon

by Matt Stone & Chad McQueen

No other Hollywood star has been so closely linked with cars and bikes, from the 1968 Ford Mustang GT Fastback he drove in Bullitt (in the greatest car chase of all time) to the Triumph motorcycle of The Great...

The Led Zeppelin Essays: Essays from Chuck Klosterman IV

by Chuck Klosterman

Originally collected in Chuck Klosterman IV and now available both as a stand-alone essay and in the ebook collection Chuck Klosterman on Rock, this essay is about Led Zeppelin.

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction 2011

by Siddhartha Mukherjee

The Emperor of All Maladies is a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer—from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure,...

The Serpent and the Rainbow

by Wade Davis

In April 1982, ethnobotanist Wade Davis arrived in Haiti to investigate two documented cases of zombis -- people who had reappeared in Haitian society years after they had been officially declared dead and had...

Manchild in the Promised Land

by Claude Brown

Manchild in the Promised Land is indeed one of the most remarkable autobiographies of our time. This thinly fictionalized account of Claude Brown's childhood as a hardened, streetwise criminal trying to survive...

The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World

by David Kirkpatrick

IN LITTLE MORE THAN HALF A DECADE, Facebook has gone from a dorm-room novelty to a company with 500 million users. It is one of the fastest growing companies in history, an essential part of the social life...

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Revised Edition

by Jared Diamond

In Jared Diamond’s follow-up to the Pulitzer-Prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel, the author explores how climate change, the population explosion and political discord create the conditions for the collapse...

Biker: Inside the Notorious World of an Outlaw Motorcycle Gang

by Jerry Langton

You'll never meet the bikers in this book or visit the mythical rust belt city of Springfield. But through the eyes of Ned "Crash" Aiken, you will experience the real world of the outlaw biker gang-a world shaped...

Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality

by Christopher Ryan & Cacilda Jetha

Since Darwin's day, we've been told that sexual monogamy comes naturally to our species. Mainstream science—as well as religious and cultural institutions—has maintained that men and women evolved in families...

River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze

Kiriyama Prize for Non-Fiction 2001

by Peter Hessler

A New York Times Notable Book

Winner of the Kiriyama Book Prize

In the heart of China's Sichuan province, amid the terraced hills of the Yangtze River valley, lies the remote town of Fuling. Like many other small...

Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime

by John Heilemann & Mark Halperin

"This shit would be really interesting if we weren't in the middle of it."—Barack Obama, September 2008

In 2008, the presidential election became blockbuster entertainment. Everyone was watching as the race...

The Trillion-Dollar Conspiracy

by JIM MARRS

America's economy is in shambles. . . .

Its citizens are terrified and dissatisfied. . . .

Could it all have been planned by a secret elite one hundred years ago?

The New World Order. Hitler referred to it in...

Prayers for Bobby

by Leroy Aarons

Bobby Griffith was an all-American boy ...and he was gay. Faced with an irresolvable conflict-for both his family and his religion taught him that being gay was "wrong"-Bobby chose to take his own life.

Prayers...

Half the Sky

by Nicholas D. Kristof & Sheryl Wudunn

From two of our most fiercely moral voices, a passionate call to arms against our era’s most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world.

With Pulitzer Prize...

Detroit: An American Autopsy

by Charlie LeDuff

New York Times Bestseller

"A book full of both literary grace and hard-won world-weariness... Iggy Pop meets Jim Carroll and Charles Bukowski" -Kirkus, STARRED REVIEW

Back in his broken hometown, Pulitzer Prize-winning...

In the President's Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect

by Ronald Kessler

Never before has a journalist penetrated the wall of secrecy that surrounds the U.S. Secret Service, that elite corps of agents who pledge to take a bullet to protect the president and his family. After conducting...

The Hunt for Zero Point: Inside the Classified World of Antigravity Technology

by Nick Cook

This riveting work of investigative reporting and history exposes classified government projects to build gravity-defying aircraft--which have an uncanny resemblance to flying saucers.

The atomic bomb was not...

Last Man Out: The Story of the Springhill Mine Disaster

by Melissa Fay Greene

The deepest coal mine in North America was notoriously unpredictable. One late October evening in 1958, it "bumped" - its rock floors heaving up and smashing into rock ceilings. A few miners staggered out, most...

Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

by Jennifer Worth

The highest-rated drama in BBC history returns to PBS Presents in March 2013   Less than a year after the first season finale, PBS’s hit series Call the Midwife returns to Sunday nights this spring with...