NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE • The extraordinary and inspiring true story about the surprising bond between a young teacher and the small penguin he rescued“The Penguin Lessons teaches an important truth: that a single act of compassion can be repaid a thousand-fold.”—Sy Montgomery, author of the National Book Award finalist The Soul of an OctopusIn 1975, twenty-three-year-old Englishman Tom Michell follows his wanderlust to...

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE • The extraordinary and inspiring true story about the surprising bond between a young teacher and the small penguin he rescued“The Penguin Lessons teaches an important truth: that a single act of compassion can be repaid a thousand-fold.”—Sy Montgomery, author of the National Book Award finalist The Soul of an OctopusIn 1975, twenty-three-year-old Englishman Tom Michell follows his wanderlust to...

San Francisco, until the mid-1940s, was a city that lived by its own rules, fast and loose. Formed by the gold rush and destroyed by the 1906 earthquake, it served as a pleasure palace for the legions of men who sought their fortunes in the California foothills. For the women who followed, their only choice was to support, serve, or submit.Inez Burns was different. She put everyone to shame with her dazzling, calculated, stone-cold ambition.Born in the slums of San Francisc...

Existentialism offers enduring lessons and insight on how to understand ourselves and improve our lives.Your existence is not the result of a pre-determined set of events, it’s the direct result of your thinking and your actions, and therefore, according to Soren Kierkegaard, Frederick Nietzsche, Albert Camus, and other Existentialist philosophers, you have the freedom to control the outcome of your existence—sophisticated ""philosophy meets psychology"" self-help for the twenty-fi...

The story of literature in sixteen acts—from Homer to Harry Potter, including The Tale of Genji, Don Quixote, The Communist Manifesto, and how they shaped world historyIn this groundbreaking book, Martin Puchner leads us on a remarkable journey through time and around the globe to reveal the how stories and literature have created the world we have today. Through sixteen foundational texts selected from more than four thousand years of world literature, he...

"[These essays] reflect a lively, unselfconscious, rigorous, erudite, and earnestly open mind that's busy refining its view of life, literature, and a great deal in between." —Los Angeles TimesSplit into five sections--Reading, Being, Seeing, Feeling, and Remembering--Changing My Mind finds Zadie Smith casting an acute eye over material both personal and cultural. This engaging collection of essays, some published here for the first time, reveals ...

We know that each of us is unique, but science has struggled to pinpoint where, precisely, our uniqueness resides. Is it in our genes? The structure of our brains? Our genome may determine our eye color and even aspects of our personality. But our friendships, failures, and passions also shape who we are. The question is: how?Sebastian Seung, a dynamic professor at MIT, is on a quest to discover the biological basis of identity. He believes it lies in the pattern of connections bet...

From the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning history The Dead Hand comes the riveting story of a spy who cracked open the Soviet military research establishment and a penetrating portrait of the CIA’s Moscow station, an outpost of daring espionage in the last years of the Cold WarWhile driving out of the American embassy in Moscow on the evening of February 16, 1978, the chief of the CIA’s Moscow station heard a knock on his car window. A man on the curb ...

In this moving memoir about the power of friendship and the resilience of the human spirit, Amy Silverstein tells the story of the extraordinary group of women who supported her as she waited on the precipice for a life-saving heart transplant.Nearly twenty-six years after receiving her first heart transplant, Amy Silverstein’s donor heart plummeted into failure. If she wanted to live, she had to take on the grueling quest for a new heart—immediately.A shot at survival mean...

From the renowned neuroscientist and New York Times bestselling author of Incognito comes the companion volume to the international PBS series about how your life shapes your brain, and how your brain shapes your life."An ideal introduction to how biology generates the mind.... Clear, engaging and thought-provoking." —NatureLocked in the silence and darkness of your skull, your brain fashions the rich narratives o...

Named by The Washington Post as a Notable Work of Fiction in 2017 and by Entertainment Weekly **as a Best Debut Novel of 2017Named a Best Book of 2017 by NPR, Ann Patchett on PBS NewsHour, Minnesota Public Radio, Maris Kreizman, and The Morning NewsNational Book Foundation “5 Under 35” HonoreeLonglisted for the Aspen Words Literary PrizeA luminous coming-of-age novel about a young female scientist who must r...

**“A charming fish tale and a pretty gift for your favorite seafood cook or fishing monomaniac. But in the last analysis, it’s a bitter ecological fable for our time.”—**Los Angeles TimesAn unexpected, energetic look at world history via the humble cod fish from the bestselling author of Salt and The Basque History of the WorldCod is the ...