Non-Fiction

From a preeminent presidential historian comes a groundbreaking and often surprising saga of America’s wartime chief executives Ten years in the research and writing, Presidents of War is a fresh, magisterial, intimate look at a procession of American leaders as they took the nation into conflict and mobilized their country for victory. It brings us into the room as they make the most difficult decisions that face any President, at times sending hundreds of thousands of American men and women to their deaths. From James Madison and ...

The world-famous cosmologist and #1 bestselling author of A Brief History of Time leaves us with his final thoughts on the biggest questions facing humankind. Stephen Hawking was the most renowned scientist since Einstein, known both for his groundbreaking work in physics and cosmology and for his mischievous sense of humor. He educated millions of readers about the origins of the universe and the nature of black holes, and inspired millions more by defying a terrifying early prognosis of ALS, which originally gave him only two years ...

Ambitious and hard-working, but wrapped in the cocoon of parental love and easy success, I followed my husband from Moscow to New York City determined to pursue my budding academic career. Instead, I fell in love with the challenges and creative opportunities of motherhood and became a stay-at-home mother. Upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, my child-rearing travails acquired a well-defined practical goal: I wanted our two daughters to graduate from a top American college. It has been said that nothing is certain in ...

The book examines identity and its nature through analyzing different theories which help to define in which theories European identity can be ascribed to. The chapter also offers scholars’ reflection over European identity and makes a definition of European identity. In the second chapter, it explains the role of European identity on the constitutional ratification (2004) as well as demonstrates the contribution of the Constitutional Treaty (2004) on the consolidation of European identity. The relationship between the Constitution, representing a higher stage of EU integration, ...

Early school-age English children acquire over 3000 words a year. The main factors which account for such rapid vocabulary growth are context and word-formation knowledge. Such vocabulary growth is also of great interest in the L2 acquisition. Using empirical tests, the book puts side by side L1 and L2 acquisition of word-formation devices. The first chapter explores the early acquisition of word-formation devices by English children and presents the principles through which cross-linguistic influence diverts L2 learners from the natural way of acquiring word-formation devices ...

Fifty Scams and Hoaxes is a light-hearted investigation into some of the worst examples of financial skulduggery, medical quackery and ingenious hoaxing from history. Along the way we will come across a Pope advocating a drink based on cocaine, a pill to avoid hangovers, a woman who gave birth to rabbits, the man who broke the bank twice, the first examples of insurance fraud and scam emails and much more. Author Martin Fone explores the psychology and methodology deployed by the scammers and shows what ...

An exploration of the age-old complicity between skywatchers and warfighters, from the best-selling author of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. In this fascinating foray into the centuries-old relationship between science and military power, acclaimed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and writer-researcher Avis Lang examine how the methods and tools of astrophysics have been enlisted in the service of war. “The overlap is strong, and the knowledge flows in both directions,” say the authors, because astrophysicists and military planners care about many of the same things: multi-spectral ...

From Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times-bestselling author Deborah Blum, the dramatic true story of how food was made safe in the United States and the heroes, led by the inimitable Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, who fought for change By the end of nineteenth century, food was dangerous. Lethal, even. “Milk” might contain formaldehyde, most often used to embalm corpses. Decaying meat was preserved with both salicylic acid, a pharmaceutical chemical, and borax, a compound first identified as a cleaning product. This was not by ...