History & Society

Journalist Andrew Blum journeys inside the Internet's physical infrastructure to uncover the buildings and compounds where our data are stored and transmitted. He explains how the Internet is not a single entity; instead, data centers, Internet exchange points and fiber-optic cables combine to form what most people take for granted as the "cloud." Along the way, Blum documents the spaces most vital to the Internet as we know it — from the room in L.A. where the Internet came to life to the buildings in the Pacific Northwest where Google, Microsoft and Facebook have built huge data centers.

In this sweeping history, Tom Holland reexamines the rise of Islam and places it within the context of the Roman and Persian empires.

Pawan Dhingra explores Indian-Americans' success in the motel industry. According to Dhingra, Indian-Americans own about half of all American motels and many of those owners hail from the same region of India.

Draws on in-depth research to consider how soldiers through the ages have met their deaths in times of war, covering of such subjects as weapons and battlefield strategies while offering insight into cultural differences and the nature of military combat. By the author of Patriot Battles.

Explores the latest beliefs about why people tell stories and what stories reveal about human nature, offering insights into such related topics as universal themes and what it means to have a storytelling brain.

A narrative history of con artistry in America documents the early twentieth-century efforts of J. Frank Norfleet to track down a gang of confidence men who swindled him out of everything he had.

Jeanette Winterson tells the story of how a painful past, which she thought she had overcome, rose to haunt her later in life, sending her on a maddening search for her biological mother. Through her story, Winterson also shows how fiction and poetry can form a string of guiding lights, a life raft that supports us when we are sinking.

The founder of Common Sense Media counsels parents and teachers on how to protect children from vulnerabilities in today's online and social technology outlets, providing coverage of such topics as content filters, unhealthy media messages, ADD and privacy.

More than 30 years ago, Jeffrey MacDonald was convicted of murdering his family, despite his claim that his loved ones were slaughtered by four hippies. In A Wilderness Of Errors, writer, filmmaker and former private detective Errol Morris suggests that the infamous Army doctor might not be guilty after all.

Provided by publisher.

Journalist Jack Hitt examines how the amateur status of everyday Americans is helping to drive the nation's success and sense of identity, documenting his visits to garages throughout the country where he has surveyed promising innovations.

The author of Baseball Abstracts presents a cultural analysis of sensational crime in America that profiles such infamous cases as the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, the Black Dahlia murder and O.J. Simpson's trial to offer insight into topics ranging from crime rats and evidence practices to prison reform and radicalism. 100,000 first printing.

The best-selling author of 1776 tells the story of the generations of American artists, writers and doctors who traveled to Paris — the intellectual, scientific and artistic capital of the Western world — fell in love with the city and its people, and changed America through what they learned there.

Draws from the fields of anthropology, biology, and medicine to describe the life cycle of the human female breast, from puberty to pregnancy to menopause, and discusses the organ's modern susceptibility to toxins and disease.

The linguist and historian Bernard Lewis began his career before World War II, and since then he has both witnessed and participated in many of the tumultuous events in the Middle East. At 96 years old, Lewis looks back on close to a century's worth of work and study, covering issues as wide-ranging and as sensitive as race and slavery in Islam and his role as adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney — not to mention a few indelible moments with Ted Kennedy and Moammar Gadhafi.

Recounts the life of the conservationist, who spent his life protecting wildlife as a taxidermist and museum collector; as the founder and first director of the National Zoo; as director of the Bronx Zoo; and as an author.