Summer Reads

'Grayling brings satisfying order to daunting subjects' -- Steven PinkerIn very recent times humanity has learnt a vast amount about the universe, the past, and itself. But through our remarkable successes in acquiring knowledge we have learned how much...

A prize-winning historian reveals how Stalin—not Hitler—was the animating force of World War II in this major new history.World War II endures in the popular imagination as a heroic struggle between good and evil, with villainous Hitler driving its...

Charting the events and psychological effects of witch-hunting in a small community of early settlers in 1650s Massachusetts in gripping and thought-provoking prose, The Ruin of All Witches reads like a haunting real-life folktale.   The dark,...

As richly beautiful as it is informative, Hidden Hands’ skill is in bringing to life not only the works that are so essential to our literary and cultural history but the men and women – their quiet lives often unregarded – who created and preserved...

This immersive dive into the life and work of Salvador Dalí unlocks the secret of this creative genius and reveals for the first time how his erotically charged paintings changed the world of modern art. In turns beloved and reviled, twentieth century...

(Available after 3-20 days)**Also an Academy Award–winning film starring Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly—directed by Ron Howard**The powerful, dramatic biography of math genius John Nash, who overcame serious mental illness and schizophrenia to win...

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERThe official book behind the Academy Award-winning film The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira KnightleyIt is only a slight exaggeration to say that the British mathematician Alan Turing (1912-1954) saved...

(Available after 3-20 days)Already climbing the bestseller lists-and garnering rave reviews—this "little masterpiece" sheds brilliant light on the equation that changed the world. Bodanis begins by devoting chapters to each of the equation's letters and...

From a New York Times bestselling author, a fresh and detail-rich argument that the best way to lead is to be fairCan you succeed without being a terrible person? We often think not: recognizing that, as the old saying has it, “nice guys finish last.”...

The bestselling author of E=mc2 weaves tales of romance, divine inspiration, and fraud through an account of the invisible force that permeates our universe—electricity—and introduces us to the virtuoso scientists who plumbed its secrets.For centuries,...

A landmark work of American photojournalism “renowned for its fusion of social conscience and artistic radicality” (New York Times)     In the summer of 1936, James Agee and Walker Evans set out on assignment for Fortune magazine to explore the daily...

The most authoritative life of Mao ever written, by the bestselling author of Wild Swans, Jung Chang and her husband, historian Jon Halliday.Based on a decade of research, and on interviews with many of Mao's close circle in China who have never talked...

“Fiendishly well-plotted, hugely entertaining.” —Lucy Foley, bestselling author of The Hunting PartyIn this classic whodunit filled with red herrings and double-crosses, the Queen of Crime returns in the role of sleuth as she investigates a mysterious...

From Tracy Kidder, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Truck Full of Money, and adapted by Michael French comes this captivating and critically acclaimed young adult adaptation of the nonfiction edition of Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains, which tells...

(Available after 3-20 days)NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE directed by Marjane Sartrapi, starring Rosamund Pike and Sam Riley.   NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINIALIST. “Vivid and ethereal” –New York Times “Radioactive is quite unlike any book I have ever read—part...

The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, reissued with a new afterword for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.   A young man from a small provincial town moves to London in the late 1580s and, in a remarkably short time, becomes the...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERWinner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for biography and hailed by critics as both “monumental” (The Boston Globe) and “utterly romantic” (New York magazine), Stacy Schiff’s Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) brings to shimmering life one...

(Available after 3-20 days) The revelatory, poignant story of Rosemary Kennedy, the eldest and eventually secreted-away Kennedy daughter, and how her life transformed her family, its women especially, and an entire nation."[Larson] succeeds in providing...

Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and winner of the Royal Society Prize for Science Books, Richard Holmes's dazzling portrait of the age of great scientific discovery is a groundbreaking achievement. The book opens with Joseph Banks, botanist on...

After a terrible car accident destroys her life as she knew it, twenty-year-old Kacey escapes to Florida, where she encounters an irresistible man determined to capture her wounded heart.Just breathe, Kacey. Ten tiny breaths. Seize them. Feel them. Love...