"The story of the Astors is an extraordinary but true tale of ambition, invention, destruction, and reinvention--and of cunning, determination, hard work, hubris, infighting, and greed. One of the wealthiest men to have ever lived, John Jacob Astor first arrived in New York in 1783 and built a fortune through a ruthless expansion of his beaver trapping business, which he grew into an empire through real estate that enriched him at the expense of Manhattan's...

When the production of a Hollywood film in Baltimore brings mayhem and murder to the area, private investigator Tess Monaghan finds her job complicated by the acting skills of her numerous suspects.

"A new novel about an underground food community by the author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore"--‡cProvided by publisher. A software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions, Lois Clary codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. When the brothers have Visa issues,...

In Border and Rule, one of North America's foremost thinkers and immigrant rights organizers delivers an unflinching examination of migration as a pillar of global governance and gendered racial class formation. Harsha Walia disrupts easy explanations for the migrant and refugee crises, instead showing them to be the inevitable outcomes of the conquest, capitalist globalization, and climate change that are generating mass dispossession worldwide....

"A groundbreaking and definitive account of the widespread misdiagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder--and its serious effects on children, adults, and society. More than 1 in 7 American children are getting diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)--three times what experts have said is appropriate--making it one of the most mishandled and debated conditions in medicine. The numbers are rising every year. Now doctors...

A sharp examination of the troubled state of retirement in America shares sobering insights into how the real estate crash and limited social security are preventing retirement and inducing widespread poverty in aging Baby Boomers. "As millions of baby boomers reach their golden years, the state of retirement in America is little short of a disaster. A third of Americans have no retirement savings at all. The real estate crash wiped out much of the...

"In the early years of the twentieth-century, the use of airships known as dirigibles - some as large as one thousand feet long - was being promulgated in Southern California by a semi-clandestine lighter-than-air movement. Groups like the East LA Balloon Club and the Bessie Coleman Aero Club were hard at work to revolutionize travel in the pre-apocalyptic Southwest, with an aim to literally lift oppressed people out of racism and poverty. ELADATL...

Published in 1951, The Sea Around Us is one of the most remarkably successful books ever written about the natural world. Rachel Carson's rare ability to combine scientific insight with moving, poetic prose catapulted her book to first place on The New York Times best-seller list, where it enjoyed wide attention for thirty-one consecutive weeks. It remained on the list for more than a year and a half and ultimately sold well over a million copies,...

Both humans and wildlife depend on water for survival. This episode explores how a misuse of water can lead to unparalleled destruction; however, sharing our water with wildlife does not only benefit the wild, it may also be a crucial step in our own survival. In Africa, big wildlife including elephants only survive because of the wells that humans dig to bring water to the surface in a parched land. And the Samburu who dig the wells need the wildlife-especially...

"Anne McCaffrey's beloved science fantasy epic becomes a fully-painted graphic novel"--Book 1 cover