Books like Dark Sun by Richard Rhodes

Pride and Prejudice is a classic novel by Jane Austen.

The Crucible is a play by Arthur Miller that dramatizes the Salem witch trials of 1692-1693, reflecting on McCarthyism and American history through allegory.

In William R. Forstchen’s tense thriller, a North Carolina town faces the sudden collapse of the United States after an EMP strike renders the nation nearly powerless, forcing one man to protect his family and community.

Craig of the Mohicans, a frontier scout turns away from civilization, forming a bond with a Mohican warrior as they escort two sisters across the perilous wilderness of America's frontier.

Eric Schlosser investigates how the United States manages its nuclear arsenal, detailing accidents, near‑misses, safety measures, and the technological and human challenges of controlling weapons of mass destruction.

An exhaustive account of the discovery, design, and deployment of the atomic bomb, tracing its rapid development from early nuclear science to the Manhattan Project and the first bombings of Japan.

The year is 1962, but a future where computers empower individuals instead of being intimidating machines already exists in the mind of a fifty-seven-year-old psychologist named J. C. R. Licklider.

A historical romance set in 16th century England, featuring Lorna Doone, a young woman who is kidnapped and becomes a fugitive during the Monmouth Rebellion.

In "Dark Sun And Other Stories," a covert agent infiltrates an activist’s family, while a school adventure unfolds with training, hacking, and a daring showdown that leads to justice and a new campus library.

Writing is perhaps humanity's greatest invention. Without it there would be no history and no civilization as we know it. The Story of Writing is the first book to demystify writing for the general reader. In a succinct and absorbing text, Andrew Robinson explains the interconnection between sound, symbol and script, and goes on to discuss each of the major writing systems in turn, from cuneiform and Egyptian and Mayan hieroglyphs to alphabets and the scripts of China and Japan today. He explores "proto-writing," including Ice Age symbols, tallies and Amerindian pictograms, and surveys the astonishing multiplicity of alphabets - not only Greek, Roman, Hebrew, Arabic and Indian scripts, but also the Cherokee "alphabet" and the writing of runes. Full coverage is given to the story of decipherment, and how the words of past ages have been brought back to life through the efforts of Champollion, Ventris and others. And in a provocative chapter devoted to as yet undeciphered scripts, Andrew Robinson challenges the reader: can the code of the Indus script, Cretan Linear A, the Phaistos Disc or Easter Island ever be broken? Armchair decipherers who read this book will be well placed to make discoveries that herald the next breakthrough.

A speculative history that explores alternative futures based on omitting nine significant events in modern history, including the American Revolution and JFK's presidency.

A sweeping social history of religion that explores the influence of the great monotheisms on the past and the modern world.

Enormous skyscrapers will house residents and workers who happily go "for weeks" without setting foot on the ground. Streamlined, "hurricane-proof" houses will pivot on their foundations like weather vanes. The family car will turn into an airplane so easily that "a woman can do it in five minutes." Our wars will be fought by robots. And our living room furniture - waterproof, of course - will clean up with a squirt from the garden hose. In Yesterday's Tomorrows Joseph J. Corn and Brian Horrigan explore the future as Americans earlier in this century expected it to happen. Filled with vivid color images and lively text, the book is an eloquent testimony to the confidence - and, at times, the naive faith - Americans have had in science and technology. The future that emerges here, the authors conclude, is one in which technology changes, but society and politics usually do not. The authors draw on a wide variety of sources - popular-science magazines, science fiction, world fair exhibits, films, advertisements, and plans for things only dreamed of. From Jules Verne to the Jetsons, from a 500-passenger flying wing to an anti-aircraft flying buzz-saw, the vision of the future as seen through the eyes of the past demonstrates the play of the American imagination on the canvas of the future.