“Even now, nearly a century after her death, Marie Curie remains the only female scientist most people can name,” writes Dava Sobel at the opening of her shining portrait of the sole Nobel laureate decorated in two separate fields of science—Physics in 1903 with her husband Pierre and Chemistry by herself in 1911. And yet, Sobel makes clear, as brilliant and creative as she was in the laboratory, Marie Curie was equally passionate outside it.

We see notebooks everywhere we go. But where did these indispensable implements come from? How did they revolutionize our lives? And how can using a notebook help change the way you think? In this wide-ranging history, Roland Allen reveals how the notebook became our most dependable and versatile tool for creative thinking.

The history of Egyptology is often told as yet one more grand narrative of powerful men striving to seize the day and the precious artifacts for their competing homelands. But that is only half of the story. During the Golden Age of Exploration, there were women working and exploring before Howard Carter discovered the tomb of King Tut. Before men even conceived of claiming the story for themselves, women were working in Egypt to lay the groundwork for all future exploration.

In the summer of 1925, Katharine Sergeant Angell White walked into The New Yorker’s midtown office and left with a job as an editor. The magazine was only a few months old. Over the next thirty-six years, White would transform the publication into a literary powerhouse. This exquisite biography brings to life the remarkable relationships White fostered with her writers and how these relationships nurtured an astonishing array of literary talent.

One of the things small town librarian Amanda Jones values most about books is how they can affirm a young person’s sense of self. So in 2022, when she heard of a local public hearing that would discuss “book content,” she knew what was at stake. Schools and libraries nationwide have been bombarded by demands for books with LGTBQ+ references, discussions of racism, and more to be purged from the shelves. Amanda would be damned if her community were to ban stories representing minority groups. She spoke out that night at the meeting. Days later, she woke up to a nightmare that still persists.

From the summer of 1870 to the spring of 1871, famously dubbed the "Terrible Year" by Victor Hugo, Paris and its people were besieged, starved, and forced into surrender by Germans-then imperiled again as radical republicans established a breakaway Commune, ultimately crushed by the French Army after bloody street battles and the burning of central Paris.

Empresses of Seventh Avenue will tell the story of how these extraordinary women put American fashion on the world stage and created the template for modern style—and how the nearly $500 billion American fashion industry, the largest in the world, could not have accrued its power and wealth without their farsightedness and determination.

In The Genius of Judy, her remarkable story is revealed as never before, beginning with her as a mother of two searching for purpose outside of her home in 1960s suburban New Jersey. The books she wrote starred regular children with genuine thoughts and problems. But behind those deceptively simple tales, Blume explored the pillars of the growing women’s rights movement, in which girls and women were entitled to careers, bodily autonomy, fulfilling relationships, and even sexual pleasure.

Maddie Sanderson would be proud to honor her older brother’s dying wish, that she scatters his ashes over eight destinations that the adventurous 29-year-old never got to visit before he died from cancer. But in his will, Josh assigned her an impossible partner to help complete the mission—Dominic Perry. Seriously, if Maddie weren’t already at her brother's funeral, she would have killed him for this.

All Things Are Too Small is brilliant cultural and literary critic Becca Rothfeld’s plea for derangement: imbalance, obsession, gluttony, and ravishment in all domains of life, from literature to romance. In a healthy culture, Rothfeld argues, economic security allows for wild aesthetic experimentation and excess, yet in our contemporary world, we’ve got it flipped. The gap between rich and poor yawns hideously wide, while we compensate with misguided attempts to effect equality in love and art, where it does not belong.

In Roman Year, André Aciman captures the period of his adolescence that began when he and his family first set foot in Rome, after being expelled from Egypt. Though Aciman’s family had been well-off in Alexandria, all vestiges of their status vanished when they fled, and the author, his younger brother, and his deaf mother moved into a rented apartment in Rome’s Via Clelia. Though dejected, Aciman’s mother and brother found their way into life in Rome, while Aciman, still unmoored, burrowed into his bedroom to read one book after the other.

Kelly Bishop’s long, storied career has been defined by landmark achievements, from winning a Tony Award for her turn in the original Broadway cast of A Chorus Line to her memorable performance as Jennifer Grey’s mother in Dirty Dancing. But it is probably her iconic role as matriarch Emily in the modern classic Gilmore Girls that cemented her legacy. Now, Bishop reflects on her remarkable life and looks towards the future with The Third Gilmore Girl. She shares some of her greatest stories and the life lessons she’s learned on her journey.

From private feuds and on-set disasters to fanfare that swept the nation and the realities of child stardom, culture journalist Ashley Spencer offers the first unauthorized look at the heyday of TV’s House of Mouse, featuring hundreds of exclusive new interviews with former Disney executives, creatives, and talent to explore the highs, lows, and everything in between.

From the porch of his home, Charles Lamosway has watched the life he might have had unfold across the river on Maine’s Penobscot Reservation. On the far bank, he caught brief moments of Roger and Mary raising their only child, Elizabeth from the day she came home from the hospital to her early twenties. But there’s always been something deeper and more dangerous than the river that divides him from this family and the rest of the tribal community. It’s the secret that Elizabeth is his daughter, a secret Charles is no longer willing to keep.

The Coin’s narrator is a wealthy Palestinian woman with impeccable style and meticulous hygiene. And yet the ideal self, the ideal life, remains just out of reach: her inheritance is inaccessible, her homeland exists only in her memory, and her attempt to thrive in America seems doomed from the start. In New York, she strives to put down roots. She teaches at a school for underprivileged boys, where her eccentric methods cross boundaries. She befriends a homeless swindler, and the two participate in an intercontinental scheme reselling Birkin bags.

The 13 chapters of The Art of War, each devoted to one aspect of warfare, were compiled by the high-ranking Chinese military general, strategist, and philosopher Sun-Tzu. In spite of its battlefield specificity, The Art of War has found new life in the modern age, with leaders in fields as wide and far-reaching as world politics, human psychology, and corporate strategy finding valuable insight in its timeworn words.

The Roman gladiator has long been a figure of fascination. Portrayed frequently in fine art and popular culture alike, the gladiator is both a real part of history and a legend of a romanticized past. We know that these men entertained Roman audiences by fighting in dangerous and often deadly games. But who were the gladiators? What were their lives like? And why do they continue to have such a strong hold on our imagination, centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire?

Christmas is the single biggest annual event on the planet, a time for merry-making, over-indulgence, peace, goodwill, and the occasional family row. It’s as comfortable and familiar as a pair of old shoes and yet still glittery and exciting. But what do you really know about it? It’s stuffed full of traditions and rituals that most of us have been observing all our lives without having the slightest idea of where they come from.

The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in 25 years than the Romans did in 400. In nearly every country the Mongols conquered, they brought an unprecedented rise in cultural communication, expanded trade, and a blossoming of civilization.

In 1992, the deadliest year in Chicago’s history, seven-year-old Dantrell Davis was shot and killed in front of his elementary school inside the public housing complex Cabrini-Green. What happened to Dantrell led to a truce among Chicago’s gangs, but it also ignited a national panic about poverty and violence in America’s cities. Dantrell’s name would soon be used to demolish all of Chicago’s high-rise public housing, displacing tens of thousands of low-income families.

Across six revealing lectures, Professor Jessica Hooten Wilson will introduce you to one of the 20th century’s most fascinating and divisive writers in Flannery O’Connor and the Scandal of Faith. Beginning with an overview of her brief but remarkable life, Professor Wilson will then take you through an exploration of themes in O’Connor’s work and the hallmarks of her literary style. You’ll get a clearer picture of O’Connor’s historical and geographical context while digging into how her stories can transcend time and place.

Toys and games have long been a part of childhood, but the 20th century saw the rise of an entire industry devoted to the business of play, one that would constantly evolve over the years. In the six lectures of The History of Toys, 1900 to the Present, consultant and toy industry expert Chris Byrne—also known as The Toy Guy®—will take you on a journey through the world of toys from the Edwardian era to our current moment. Beginning with the birth of the mass-market toy industry, you’ll trace the many transformations of toys and our shifting theories of play and childhood development.

Do you know how many wives Zeus had? Or how the famous Trojan War was caused by one beautiful lady? Or how Thor got his hammer? Give your imagination a real treat. This Mega Mythology Collection of eight audiobooks is for you....

The Roman Empire: From Augustus to the Fall of Rome traces the breathtaking history from the empire’s foundation by Augustus to its Golden Age in the 2nd century CE through a series of ever-worsening crises until its ultimate disintegration. Taught by acclaimed Professor Gregory S. Aldrete of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, these 24 captivating lectures offer you the chance to experience this story like never before, incorporating the latest historical insights that challenge our previous notions of Rome’s decline.

In The Pagan World: Ancient Religions Before Christianity, you will meet the fascinating, ancient polytheistic peoples of the Mediterranean and beyond, their many gods and goddesses, and their public and private worship practices, as you come to appreciate the foundational role religion played in their lives. Professor Hans-Friedrich Mueller, of Union College in Schenectady, New York, makes this ancient world come alive in 24 lectures with captivating stories of intrigue, artifacts, illustrations, and detailed descriptions from primary sources of intriguing personalities.

Books tell all kinds of stories—romances, tragedies, comedies—but if we learn to read the signs correctly, they can tell us the story of their own making too. The Book-Makers offers a new way into the story of Western culture’s most important object, the book, through dynamic portraits of eighteen individuals who helped to define it.

U.S. soldiers who served in overseas conflicts—from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan—share true stories of the actions that earned them some of America’s most distinguished military medals, up to and including the Medal of Honor. They never acted alone, but always in the spirit of camaraderie, patriotism, and for the good of our beloved country. There has never been a better time for all of us to think about duty, sacrifice, and what it means to be an American hero.

Helen Zhang hasn’t seen Grant Shepard once in the thirteen years since the tragic accident that bound their lives together forever. Now a bestselling author, Helen pours everything into her career. She’s even scored a coveted spot in the writers’ room of the TV adaptation of her popular young adult novels, and if she can hide her imposter syndrome and overcome her writer’s block, surely the rest of her life will fall into place too. LA is the fresh start she needs. After all, no one knows her there. Except…

After centuries of sleep, the gods are warring again. But eighteen-year-old Iris Winnow just wants to hold her family together. Her mother is suffering from addiction and her brother is missing from the front lines. Her best bet is to win the columnist promotion at the Oath Gazette. To combat her worries, Iris writes letters to her brother and slips them beneath her wardrobe door, where they vanish—into the hands of Roman Kitt, her cold and handsome rival at the paper.

Famed across the known world, jealously guarded by private collectors, built up over centuries, destroyed in a single day, ornamented with gold leaf and frescoes, or filled with bean bags and children’s drawings - the history of the library is rich, varied, and stuffed full of incident.

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

“Even now, nearly a century after her death, Marie Curie remains the only female scientist most people can name,” writes Dava Sobel at the opening of her shining portrait of the sole Nobel laureate decorated in two separate fields of science—Physics in 1903 with her husband Pierre and Chemistry by herself in 1911. And yet, Sobel makes clear, as brilliant and creative as she was in the laboratory, Marie Curie was equally passionate outside it.

In a tradition that runs from R. M. Williamson’s Bits from an Old Bookshop in 1904 to Jen Campbell’s Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops in 2012 (with George Orwell’s 1936 Bookshop Memories in between), here is the latest and perhaps most complete attempt to classify people who shop in bookstores. It does take all kinds. Employing something like Linnaean taxonomic groups, there’s the Expert (divided into subspecies from the Bore to the Helpful Person), the Young Family (ranging from the Exhausted to the Aspirational), and more.

In 1959, Florence Green, a kindhearted widow with a small inheritance, risks everything to open a bookshop - the only bookshop - in the seaside town of Hardborough. By making a success of a business so impractical, she invites the hostility of the town's less prosperous shopkeepers. By daring to enlarge her neighbors' lives, she crosses Mrs. Gamart, the local arts doyenne. Florence's warehouse leaks, her cellar seeps, and the shop is apparently haunted. Only too late does she begin to suspect the truth: a town that lacks a bookshop isn't always a town that wants one.

Christmas is the single biggest annual event on the planet, a time for merry-making, over-indulgence, peace, goodwill, and the occasional family row. It’s as comfortable and familiar as a pair of old shoes and yet still glittery and exciting. But what do you really know about it? It’s stuffed full of traditions and rituals that most of us have been observing all our lives without having the slightest idea of where they come from.

Kelly Bishop’s long, storied career has been defined by landmark achievements, from winning a Tony Award for her turn in the original Broadway cast of A Chorus Line to her memorable performance as Jennifer Grey’s mother in Dirty Dancing. But it is probably her iconic role as matriarch Emily in the modern classic Gilmore Girls that cemented her legacy. Now, Bishop reflects on her remarkable life and looks towards the future with The Third Gilmore Girl. She shares some of her greatest stories and the life lessons she’s learned on her journey.

It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself.

In these wry and hilarious diaries, Shaun provides an inside look at the trials and tribulations of life in the book trade, from struggles with eccentric customers to wrangles with his own staff, who include the ski-suit-wearing, bin-foraging Nicky. He takes us with him on buying trips to old estates and auction houses, recommends books - both lost classics and new discoveries - introduces us to the thrill of the unexpected find, and evokes the rhythms and charms of small-town life, always with a sharp and sympathetic eye.

At the start of WWII, the U.S. found itself in desperate need of an intelligence agency. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a precursor to today’s CIA, was quickly formed—and, in an effort to fill its ranks with experts, the OSS turned to academia for recruits. Suddenly, literature professors, librarians, and historians were training to perform undercover operations and investigative work—and these surprising spies would go on to profoundly shape both the course of the war and our cultural institutions with their efforts.

The history of Egyptology is often told as yet one more grand narrative of powerful men striving to seize the day and the precious artifacts for their competing homelands. But that is only half of the story. During the Golden Age of Exploration, there were women working and exploring before Howard Carter discovered the tomb of King Tut. Before men even conceived of claiming the story for themselves, women were working in Egypt to lay the groundwork for all future exploration.