“People stop thinking when they cease to read.” When a young boy enters a library wearing an explosive vest hidden underneath his lovely new red jacket, he only has one plan on his mind. But as he observes those around him becoming completely captivated by all of the wonderful books they are reading—books he has no ability to read—the boy can’t help but...

Early morning on Monday, October 9, 2017, wildfires burned through Northern California, resulting in 44 fatalities. In addition, 6,200 homes and 8,900 structures and were destroyed. Author Brian Fies’s firsthand account of this tragic event is an honest, unflinching depiction of his personal experiences, including losing his house and every possession he...

On January 10, 1999, a mobster walked into a psychiatrist’s office and changed TV history. By shattering preconceptions about the kinds of stories the medium should tell, The Sopranos launched our current age of prestige television, paving the way for such giants as Mad Men, The Wire, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones. As TV critics for Tony Soprano’s...

Have you ever wondered if there are seasons on the moon or if space tourism will ever become commonplace? So has Dr. Maggie Aderin-Pocock. In fact, she earned her nickname “Lunatic” because of her deep fascination for all things lunar. In her lucidly written, comprehensive guide to the moon, Aderin-Pocock takes readers on a journey to our closest celestial...

Behind every landmark drug is a story. It could be an oddball researcher’s genius insight, a catalyzing moment in geopolitical history, a new breakthrough technology, or an unexpected but welcome side effect discovered during clinical trials. Piece together these stories, as Thomas Hager does in this remarkable, century-spanning history, and you can trace...

Hot Cold Heavy Light collects 100 writings—some long, some short—that taken together forma group portrait of many of the world’s most significant and interesting artists. From Pablo Picasso to Cindy Sherman, Old Masters to contemporary masters, paintings to comix, and saints to charlatans, Schjeldahl ranges widely through the diverse and confusing art...

Writer Ted Fox and artist James Otis Smith bring to life Harlem’s legendary theater in this graphic novel adaptation of Fox’s definitive, critically acclaimed history of the Apollo.
 
Since its inception as an African-American theater in 1934, the Apollo, and the thousands of entertainers who performed there, have led the way in the presentation of swing...

What is it about evil that we find so compelling? From our obsession with serial killers to violence in pop culture, we seem inescapably drawn to the stories of monstrous acts and the aberrant people who commit them.
 
But evil, Dr. Julia Shaw argues, is all relative, rooted in our minds and our unique cultures. What one may consider normal, like sex before...

The 1960s to early ’70s was a pivotal time for American culture, and New York City was ground zero for seismic shifts in music, theater, art, and filmmaking. The Downtown Pop Underground takes a kaleidoscopic tour of Manhattan during this era and shows how deeply interconnected all the alternative worlds and personalities were that flourished in the...

As Viv Groskop knows from personal experience, everything that has ever happened to a person has already happened in the Russian classics: from not being sure what to do with your life (Anna Karenina), to being hopelessly in love with someone who doesn’t love you back (Turgenev’s A Month in the Country), or being socially anxious about your appearance (all...

In 1993, Fox debuted a strange new television show called The X-Files. Little did anyone suspect that the series would become one of the network’s biggest hits—and change the landscape of television in the process. Now, on the occasion of the show’s 25th anniversary, TV critics Zack Handlen and Todd VanDerWerff unpack exactly what made this haunting show so...

For years, Yvette van Boven has been writing Christmas recipes for newspapers and magazines. As someone who loves the holidays, she’s never short of ideas for celebrations and finally decided that now is the perfect time to publish them in a cookbook: Home Made Christmas. The holidays can be overwhelming, but Yvette shows you how to make them easier with...

PRAISE FOR QUEER CITY
“Always entertaining . . . much to be recommended.”—The Spectator
“A nimble, uproarious pocket history of sex in his beloved metropolis.”—Independent
“Ackroyd has an encyclopedic knowledge of London, and a poet’s instinct for its strange, mesmerizing drives and urges . . . Queer City contains something to alarm or fascinate on every...

In What’s Gaby Cooking Everyday California, Gaby Dalkin shares more than 125 of her favorite simple and fresh recipes and offers a glimpse into what it’s like to “go coastal.” It’s about always having something tasty to eat, thanks to handy and delicious pantry staples (avocado oil! quinoa! limes! dark chocolate!), as well as an arsenal of easy and healthy...

There are nearly 1,400 known varieties of wine grapes in the world—from auxerrois to zierfandler—but 80% of the wine we drink is made from only 20 grapes. In Godforsaken Grapes,Jason Wilson looks at how that came to be and takes the reader on a journey into what else is out there.

From Switzerland, Austria, and Portugal through France and Italy, and back to...

The first collection of Timothy Leary’s (1920–1996) selected papers and correspondence opens a window on the ideas that inspired the counterculture of the 1960s and the fascination with LSD that continues to the present. The man who coined the phrase “turn on, tune in, drop out,” Leary cultivated interests that ranged across experimentation with...

More than 130 years after its completion, the Brooklyn Bridge remains one of the most extraordinary landmarks and symbols of Brooklyn and New York City—and the story behind this architectural marvel is just as extraordinary.

The Brooklyn Bridge was originally designed by John Augustus Roebling, but it was his son, Washington, and his daughter-in-law, Emily...

In January 2017, Donald Trump signed an executive order stopping entry to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim countries and dramatically cutting the number of refugees allowed to resettle in the United States each year. The American people spoke up, with protests, marches, donations, and lawsuits that quickly overturned the order. But the...

Walk down any street, stroll through any park, step into a bar or restaurant, and everyone is glued to their mobile devices. Many of us struggle with the near-constant urge to check our phones—the average person interacts with their device more than 2,600 times a day—and this dependence is affecting our relationships, our work, and our quality of life. It...

ADVANCE PRAISE
“A must-read story told with honesty, humor, and humility by a passionate farmer who reminds us what our food system can and should be about.”—Daniel Boulud
 
“Preston uses brilliant storytelling and brutal honesty to describe what it takes to create both a viable organic farm and a more meaningful life for himself and his family. The New...