SpaceMan

In this delightful, acclaimed bestseller, one of the world’s leading cognitive scientists tackles the workings of the human mind. What makes us rational—and why are we so often irrational? How do we see in three dimensions? What makes us happy, afraid, angry, disgusted, or sexually aroused? Why do we fall in love? And how do we grapple with the imponderables of morality, religion, and consciousness?

Would you like to know how the universe works? Scientists have been asking that question for a long time and have found that many of the answers can be found in the study of particle physics, the field that focuses on those impossibly tiny particles with unbelievably strange names - the hadrons and leptons, baryons and mesons, muons and gluons - so mystifying to the rest of us.

In Baku, Azerbaijan, CIA operations officer Daria Buckingham is arrested for a heinous crime. Her former boss, retired CIA station chief Mark Sava, is sure she’s innocent and tries to help her out - landing him in the middle of the new Great Game, an espionage war over oil that has China, Iran, and the United States clawing at each other’s throats. Back in Washington, DC, Colonel Henry Amato, assistant to the US national security advisor, is keeping a close watch on the situation.

Of all Charles Dickens' novels, this is perhaps the most revealing, both of Dickens himself and of the society of his time. It is little wonder that Dickens said of it, "of all my books I like this the best; like many fond parents I have in my heart of hearts a favorite child. And his name is David Copperfield."