Books like Guns, germs, and steel by Jared Diamond

A compelling overview of American history through the eyes and experiences of its women, workers, African Americans, Native Americans, immigrants, and the working poor.

Patterns of World History offers a comprehensive examination of global civilizations, tracing essential developments and interconnections across cultures and epochs. A fundamental textbook for students of world history.

Presents brief profiles of one hundred inventors, philosophers, economists, politicians, explorers, and other individuals who have made an impact on history, discussing the achievements of Aristotle, Mark Zuckerberg, Marie Curie, Pele, and others from various industries.

David McCullough chronicles the daring brothers who, in 1903, achieved the first human‑powered flight on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, revealing their ingenuity, determination, and the family support that drove their success.

For the better part of twenty years Lewis H. Lapham has sketched the American social and political landscape with a fine sense of history and a sharp and caustic wit. In The Wish for Kings, his most provocative book to date, Lapham obliges us to take a long hard look at what has become of our hallowed democratic tradition. Although we like to believe that we live by Lincoln's famous words - "government of the people, by the people, for the people"--We have become accustomed to a government by and for the friends of privilege. The promise of democracy is synonymous with the idea of the citizen, but to people who have grown tired of self-government the belief in kings and queens and fairy tales replaces the will to engage in the rude and often uncomfortable arts of politics. Lapham notes the effects of our distaste for objection and dissent - an apathetic public debate, 90 percent of the wealth in the hands of 5 percent of the population, the media and the universities united in their defense of oligarchy - and discusses at length the ways in which a courtier spirit (the obverse of the democratic spirit) subverts and weakens the hopes of a free republic. It is a discussion that has particular relevance to the present moment. If the wish for kings is as old as Babylon and as modern as the worship of Hollywood celebrity, our 1992 presidential election translated the wish into nineteen million votes for H. Ross Perot. Frightened by the weakness in the economy and dissatisfied with the wisdom in office in Washington, a sizable percentage of the electorate embraced in the figure of a Texas millionaire what it imagined to be the comforts of autocracy. The question remains as to whether the enthusiasm for Perot was merely an angry protest against a government that had arrogantly distanced itself from the American people, or whether it expressed a more general longing for a magical figure capable of quieting all our fears and answering all our prayers. The question is an urgent one, and it defines the task of the Clinton administration. Unless President Clinton can sustain the public faith in the practice as well as the theory of Democracy, it is possible that the idea of democratic self-government will come to be seen as a once noble experiment no longer adequate to the specifications of the twenty-first century. The several facets of this question come into brilliant focus in this important book by one of our most incisive social critics. No one who cares about the future of our nation should miss reading The Wish for Kings.

A critical exploration of the evidence and authority underpinning the Biblical text, discussing its religious significance and the controversies surrounding its interpretation.

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Explains the science of survival under extreme conditions, including mountains, oceans, and extreme temperatures.

Have you ever thought up a question so completely off-the-wall, so seemingly ridiculous, that you couldn't even find the courage to ask it? Maybe at the sports bar you were transported by the beauty of your beer to wonder, "How long could I live on beer alone?" Or, cycling through the park, you mused, "Did nature invent any wheels?" Or looking up at the night sky, you had a moment of angst, "What would happen if the moon suddenly disappeared -- if it were vaporized or stolen by aliens?" Full of fun factlets, *Does Anything Eat Wasps?* is a runaway bestseller around the world. It celebrates the weird and wacky questions -- some trivial, some baffling, all unique -- and their multiple answers culled from "The Last Word," a long-running column in the internationally popular science magazine, *New Scientist*. Tackling the imponderables of everyday life, sparkling with humor, and bursting with delightful erudition, *Does Anything Eat Wasps?* is irresistibly entertaining and utterly engrossing. So, go on. Put away your lab coat and your pencil -- science is fun again.

The book is a collection of witty, sarcastic, and facetious remarks on American city life and customs.

A biographical portrait of Harry Middleton’s life, including his experiences as a child of military parents, fishing and hunting adventures, and reflections on social customs.

We fail to mandate economic sanity," writes Garrett Hardin, "because our brains are addled by ... compassion." With such startling assertions, Hardin has cut a swathe through the field of ecology for decades, winning a reputation as a fearless and original thinker. A prominent biologist, ecological philosopher, and keen student of human population control, Hardin now offers the finest summation of his work to date, with an eloquent argument for accepting the limits of the earth's resources - and the hard choices we must make to live within them. In Living Within Limits, Hardin focuses on the neglected problem of overpopulation, making a forceful case for dramatically changing the way we live in and manage our world. Our world itself, he writes, is in the dilemma of the lifeboat: it can only hold a certain number of people before it sinks - not everyone can be saved. The old idea of progress and limitless growth misses the point that the earth (and each part of it) has a limited carrying capacity; sentimentality should not cloud our ability to take necessary steps to limit population. But Hardin refutes the notion that goodwill and voluntary restraints will be enough. Instead, nations where population is growing must suffer the consequences alone. Too often, he writes, we operate on the faulty principle of shared costs matched with private profits. In Hardin's famous essay, "The Tragedy of the Commons," he showed how a village common pasture suffers from overgrazing because each villager puts as many cattle on it as possible - since the costs of grazing are shared by everyone, but the profits go to the individual. The metaphor applies to global ecology, he argues, making a powerful case for closed borders and an end to immigration from poor nations to rich ones. "The production of human beings is the result of very localized human actions; corrective action must be local ... Globalizing the 'population problem' would only ensure that it would never be solved." Hardin does not shrink from the startling implications of his argument, as he criticizes the shipment of food to overpopulated regions and asserts that coercion in population control is inevitable. But he also proposes a free flow of information across boundaries, to allow each state to help itself. "The time-honored practice of pollute and move on is no longer acceptable," Hardin tells us. We now fill the globe, and we have nowhere else to go. In this powerful book, one of our leading ecological philosophers points out the hard choices we must make - and the solutions we have been afraid to consider.

A middle-aged wife searches for her missing husband in Florida, leading her to investigate a law firm and uncovering a dark past.

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A role-playing fantasy game where you face the Black Baron in combat in Maze-Master Xenda’s maze.