In 2017, artist and musician, Dean Manning, returned from his new home in Greece to visit family in Sydney. While on a morning walk in the rain, he noticed a green suitcase abandoned in a council clean-up. Full of newspaper clippings, photos and letters, it was a paper trail into the life of Mr David Blank, bon vivant, convicted criminal, heavy punter, hotel owner, theatre impresario, and rock’n’roll promoter. Investigating the contents became an obsession that kept Manning company through...

While visiting his ailing father in Sydney, the author discovers an old suitcase thrown out on the street. Curiosity gets the better of him and he opens it. Inside are hundreds of photographs, newspaper clippings and letters, all addressed to Mr Blank. And so the process of discovery begins: Who is Mr Blank? A maverick entrepreneur with the Midas touch, a convicted criminal with impeccable tastes, a publican and theatre impresario, a gap-toothed lover of beautiful women from all over the w...

**From the author of 1491—the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas—a deeply engaging new history of the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs.More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed radically different suites of plants and animals. When Christopher Columbus set foot in the Americas, he ended that separation at a stroke. Driv...

Stars and Stripes, two young falcons, are introduced to the life of a bird of prey in a big city. With their parents' guidance, the young birds learn to catch pigeons (and not the "fowl" balls that come from the nearby baseball stadium); how to interact with humans (who are kind enough to feed the local pigeon "livestock"); and finally, how to fly, the final skill that will allow them to leave their concrete home to hunt for food and start their own homes and families. Told with tongue in ...

A sweeping historical novel set in nineteenth-century New Zealand from the New York Times bestselling author.The only son of a poor British coal miner, Robert Coffin sets sail for the far ends of the Earth in search of his fortune, leaving his young bride and infant child behind in England. In the sordid and dangerous South Pacific port of Kororareka, on the sprawling island the native Maori call "the Land of the Long White Cloud," Coffin builds a successf...

From their birth in World War II as combat swimmers clearing the beaches of Normandy to their evolution into fighting men who could operate anywhere in the world by sea, air, or land, the intrepid story of the United States Navy SEALs is one of courage, sacrifice, and world-renowned toughness that echoes of other great military units of history—the Spartans, the Roman legions, or the samurai. Take a look inside to find out what makes the SEALs America's deadliest warriors.Mann and ...

A groundbreaking study that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans in 1492.Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus’s landing had crossed the Bering Strait twelve thousand years ago; existed mainly in small, nomadic bands; and lived so lightly on the land that the Americas was, for all practical purposes, still a vast wilderness. But as Cha...

Most of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air travel and telecommunications to literacy and obesity. Yet for nearly all of its six million years of existence, human society had none of these things. While the gulf that divides us from our primitive ancestors may seem unbridgeably wide, we can glimpse much of our former lifestyle in those largely traditional societies still or recently in existence. Societies like those of the New Guinea Highlanders remind us that...

""Variably genial, cautionary, lyrical, admonitory, terrifying, horrifying and inspiring…A lifetime of thought, travel, reading, imagination and memory inform this affecting account."" —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)Blending history and anecdote, geography and reminiscence, science and exposition, New York Times bestselling author Simon Winchester tells the breathtaking saga of the Atlantic Ocean. A gifted storyteller and consummate historian, Winchester sets the...

Renowned historian Stephen Greenblatt's works shoot to the top of the New York Times best-seller list. With The Swerve, Greenblatt transports listeners to the dawn of the Renaissance and chronicles the life of an intrepid book lover who rescued the Roman philosophical text On the Nature of Things from certain oblivion. "More wonderfully illuminating Renaissance history from a master scholar and historian."-Kirkus Reviews, starred review

In Jared Diamond’s follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize–winning Guns, Germs and Steel, the author explores how climate change, the population explosion, and political discord create the conditions for the collapse of civilization.Environmental damage, climate change, globalization, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of societies around the world, but some found solutions and persisted. As in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diam...

In the early nineteenth century, Britons and Americans renewed their struggle over the legacy of the American Revolution, leading to a second confrontation that redefined North America. Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Alan Taylor’s vivid narrative tells the riveting story of the soldiers, immigrants, settlers, and Indians who fought to determine the fate of a continent. Would revolutionary republicanism sweep the British from Canada? Or would the British contain, divide, and ruin the shak...