A magisterial world history unlike any other that tells the story of humanity through the one thing we all have in common: families • From the author of The Romanovs. “Succession meets Game of Thrones.” —The Spectator • “The author brings his cast of dynastic titans, rogues and psychopaths to life…An epic that both entertains and informs.” —The Economist, Best Books of the Year. Around 950,000 years ago, a family of five walked along the beach and left behind the oldest family footprints ever discovered. For award-winning historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, these poignant, ...

An acclaimed legal scholar’s “essential” (Linda Greenhouse) exposé of the Supreme Court’s increasing use of unsigned, unexplained orders to change the law—all behind closed doors. The Supreme Court has always had the authority to issue emergency rulings in exceptional circumstances. But since 2017, the Court has dramatically expanded its use of the behind-the-scenes “shadow docket,” regularly making decisions that affect millions of Americans without public hearings and without explanation, through cryptic late-night rulings that leave lawyers—and citizens—scrambling. The Court’s conservative majority has used the shadow ...

In this “gripping . . . spectacular piece of reporting” (Ken Burns), a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist examines Senator Frank Church, the man at the center of numerous investigations into the abuses of power within the American government. For decades now, America’s national security state has grown ever bigger, ever more secretive and powerful, and ever more abusive. Only once did someone manage to put a stop to any of it. Senator Frank Church of Idaho was an unlikely hero. He led congressional opposition to the ...