Birth Science

Over eight years of war, ordinary Americans accomplished something extraordinary. Far from the actions of the Continental Congress and the Continental Army, they took responsibility for the course of the revolution. They policed their neighbors, sent troops and weapons to distant strangers committed to the same cause, and identified friends and traitors. By taking up the reins of power but also setting its limits, they ensured America's success. Without their participation there would have been no victory over Great Britain, no independence.

For many Americans, the birth certificate is a mundane piece of paper, unearthed from deep storage when applying for a driver's license, verifying information for employers, or claiming state and federal benefits. Yet as Donald Trump and his fellow "birthers" reminded us when they claimed that Barack Obama wasn't an American citizen, it plays a central role in determining identity and citizenship. The Birth Certificate: An American History traces the document's two-hundred-year history to explain when, how, and why birth certificates came to matter so much in the United States.

On December 16, 1947, two physicists at Bell Laboratories, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, jabbed two electrodes into a sliver of germanium half an inch long. The electrical power coming out of that piece of germanium was 100 times stronger than what went in. In that moment, the transistor was invented and the information age began. Crystal Fire recounts the story of the transistor team at Bell Labs, led by William Shockley, who shared the Nobel Prize with Bardeen and Brattain.

It's Hiccup's birthday, but that's not going to keep him from getting into trouble. To save his dragon, Toothless, from being banished, Hiccup must sneak into the Meathead Public Library and steal the Viking's most sacred book. But the Vikings see books as a dangerous influence, and keep them locked up and under heavy guard. To save his friend, Hiccup must brave the Hairy Scary Librarian and his dreadful army of Meathead Warriors and face off against the formidable Driller-Dragons.

Amid rising gang violence, the crack epidemic, and police brutality, a group of unlikely voices cut through the chaos of late 1980s Los Angeles: N.W.A. Led by a drug dealer, a glammed-up producer, and a high school kid, N.W.A. gave voice to disenfranchised African Americans across the country. And they quickly redefined pop culture across the world. Their names remain as popular as ever: Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, and Ice Cube. Dre soon joined forces with Suge Knight to create the combustible Death Row Records.

Enrico Fermi is unquestionably among the greats of the world's physicists, the most famous Italian scientist since Galileo. Called "the Pope" by his peers, he was regarded as infallible in his instincts and research. His discoveries changed our world; they led to weapons of mass destruction and conversely to life-saving medical interventions. This unassuming man struggled with issues relevant today, such as the threat of nuclear annihilation and the relationship of science to politics.

One hundred years in Minecraft’s past, foiled by a time-traveling Gameknight999, the evil virus Herobrine has gone mad with rage. Now determined to wipe every NPC alive off the server as punishment for meddling with his plans, he crafts a new monster king to lead a devastating aerial assault.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is the most popular personality test in the world. It is used regularly by Fortune 500 companies, universities, hospitals, churches, and the military. Its language of personality types - extraversion and introversion, sensing and intuiting, thinking and feeling, judging and perceiving - has inspired television shows, Online dating platforms, and Buzzfeed quizzes. Yet despite the test's widespread adoption, experts in the field of psychometric testing, a $2 billion industry, have struggled to validate its results - no less account for its success.

Between February 24, 1912, when TR came out of political retirement to challenge William Howard Taft for the Republican Party's nomination for president, and June 23 of that year, Roosevelt and his supporters created and benefited from 13 new presidential primaries, the first in the nation's history. Stressing the importance of primaries, TR's campaign theme became "the right of the people to rule".

On November 20, 1979, worldwide attention was focused on Tehran, where the Iranian hostage crisis was entering its third week. The same morning, the first of a new Muslim century, hundreds of gunmen stunned the world by seizing Islam's holiest shrine, the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Armed with rifles that they had smuggled inside coffins, these men came from more than a dozen countries, launching the first operation of global jihad in modern times.

In a story that is both of its time and timeless, Evan I. Schwartz tells a tale of genius versus greed, innocence versus deceit, and independent brilliance versus corporate arrogance. Many men have laid claim to the title "father of television," but Philo T. Farnsworth is the true genius behind what may be the most influential invention of our time. Driven by his obsession to demonstrate his idea, by the age of 20 Farnsworth was operating his own laboratory above a garage in San Francisco and filing for patents. The resulting publicity caught the attention of RCA tycoon David Sarnoff, who became determined to control television in the same way he monopolized radio.

There's nothing scarier than a birthday party in the third book in a hilarious book series that tackles anxiety in a fun, kid-friendly way. Perfect for both beginning and reluctant listeners, and fans of Diary of a Wimpy Kid! Alvin Ho, an Asian American second grader, is afraid of everything. For example, what could possibly be so scary about a birthday party? So when Alvin receives an invitation to a party—a girl’s party—how will he ever survive? A humorous and touching series about facing your fears and embracing new experiences—with a truly unforgettable character.

The Messiah of the New Age. His coming is prophesied by more than a dozen major religions. Cloned from live cells of Jesus Christ found on the Shroud of Turin, Christopher Goodman was born into the most turbulent time in human history. Already two nuclear holocausts have shaken the planet - the first destroying much of the Russian Republic, and the second killing nearly a billion people in China, India, and Pakistan. Unknown to the world's inhabitants, an even greater threat is waiting just beyond Earth's horizon - that may annihilate the entire human race.

Although we have long intellectual traditions of wrestling with mortality, few have ever heard of natality, the term political theorist Hannah Arendt used to describe birth's active role in our lives. In this ambitious, revelatory book, Jennifer Banks begins with Arendt's definition of natality as the "miracle that saves the world" to develop an expansive framework for birth's philosophical, political, spiritual, and aesthetic significance. Banks focuses on seven renowned Western thinkers to reveal a provocative countertradition of birth.

Mankind can rule itself without the force of top-down authority, and freedom is more than just choosing how to meet the needs and demands of capital. Inequality is structural and intentional, not inevitable and necessary. It does not have to be this way. In solidarity, we are better. Think for yourself, and question authority. This is the essence of anarchism, which has a bad name and reputation because it attacks the necessity of centralised power and authority.

Fleeing assailants through alleyways in Denver late one night, Thomas Hunter narrowly escapes to the roof of an industrial building. Then a silent bullet from the night clips his head and his world goes black. When he awakes, he finds himself in an entirely different reality, a green forest that seems more real than where he was. Every time he tries to sleep, he wakes up in the other world, and soon he truly no longer knows which reality is real.

From early childhood, Dr. Hannah Mumby has loved wildlife, especially elephants. Her first wild elephant sighting at 24 changed the course of her life. Since then, she has devoted herself to studying these incredible animals and educating humanity about them. Hannah's field work has taken her around the world, where she has studied many elephant groups, including both orphaned elephants and the solitary elephant males. These remarkable animals have so much to teach us, Mumby argues, and Elephants takes listeners into their world as never before.

In this, his first book, Nietzsche developed a way of thinking about the arts that unites the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus as the central symbol of human existence. Although tragedy serves as the focus of this work, music, visual art, dance, and the other arts can also be viewed using Nietzsche's analysis and integration of the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The Birth of Tragedy stands alongside Aristotle's Poetics as an essential work for all who seek to understand poetry and its relationship to human life.

Freshly sprung from witch jail, Winnie Foster just has to fulfill the conditions of her parole and she's home free. Too bad that parole takes place in Paris. (Texas!) Where she'll work at a school for the magically inclined. (KIDS!) And be forced to endure the ex who's one of the very reasons she landed in the pokey to begin with. (GAH!)

The Actual Star takes listeners on a journey over thousands of years and six continents—collapsing three separate timelines into one cave in the Belizean jungle. An epic saga of three reincarnated souls, this novel demonstrates the entanglements of tradition and progress, sister and stranger, love and hate. The book jumps forward and backward in time among a pair of twins who ruled a Maya kingdom, a young American on a trip of self-discovery, and two dangerous charismatics in a conflict that will determine the fate of the few humans left on Earth after massive climate change.