In The Meaning of Your Life, social scientist and happiness expert Arthur Brooks examines why modern life can feel empty despite material progress and argues that cultural and technological shifts have made meaning harder to access. Drawing on science, philosophy, and faith traditions, Brooks outlines practical ways to cultivate purpose, deepen relationships, and orient one’s

America’s Founding Son is an accessible and entertaining biography of our nation’s greatest public servant and original political maverick John Quincy Adams, from the bassist of the Grammy-nominated band the Avett Brothers.   AUTHOR’S NOTE Sitting at his desk, the aged congressman was caged in by his colleagues’ sneers and stares. Enough with his moralizing

The author of The Soul of America unites centuries of essential American voices to understand our national debates and divisions from 1619 to the present, with his signature commentary on the consequential speeches, letters, and essays that led us to this moment.   It was the boldest of claims. “The cause of America,” Thomas Paine would write in

El Paso is an extraordinary, can’t-look-away reported history; it uses deep research and dozens of new interviews to blow away the myth of this place, where Mexico’s Juarez and America’s El Paso intertwine. It charts the history of El Paso through five families. From the Mexican Revolution and the Mexican Repatriation, to the shifting immigration

From award-winning and bestselling author David Nasaw, a brilliant re-examination of post-World War II America that looks beyond the victory parades and into the veterans’—and nation’s—unhealed traumas.   Chapter 1. The Return of the Wounded During the first two years of the war, close to one million American service members were returned to civilian life,

The first-ever Black history to center queer voices, this landmark study traces the lives of LGBTQ+ Black Americans from slavery to present day. Black gay filmmaker, cultural critic, and university professor Marlon Riggs was born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1954. He received his bachelor of arts degree in history from Harvard University and his

Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario explores this ticking-clock scenario, based on dozens of exclusive new interviews with military and civilian experts who have built the weapons, have been privy to the response plans, and have been responsible for those decisions should they have needed to be made. Nuclear War: A Scenario examines the handful

Attensity! is a rallying cry to fight the commodification of human attention, with the tools we need to reclaim our humanity, by a group of writers, artists, and activists in the vanguard of the movement.   Chapter 1 Something is seriously wrong. It has to do with our ATTENTION, our essential ability to give our

Through magnetic storytelling and pop-culture deep dives, Lachi challenges mainstream views on disability and neurodivergence with humor and heart. Because visionaries with disabilities have always driven progress. The book features trailblazing figures like Senator Tammy Duckworth, Breaking Bad star RJ Mitte, Microsoft executive Jenny Lay-Flurrie, and so many more. Lachi even takes readers behind the

From the Pulitzer-prize winning author, an alarming account of how autocracies work together to undermine the democratic world, and how we should organize to defeat them.   i The Greed That Binds In the summer of 1967, Austrian and West German capitalists from the gas and steel industries met a group of Soviet communists in

“To be a well-informed citizen of Planet Earth,” Rolling Stone has advised, “you need to read Elizabeth Kolbert.” From her National Magazine Award-winning series The Climate of Man to her Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Sixth Extinction, Kolbert’s work has shaped the way we think about the environment in the twenty-first century. Collected in Life on a Little-Known Planet are her most

A Harvard student from China discovers the fraught, hidden history of the Tiananmen Square massacre in this powerful novel of protest and suppression from the National Book Award–winning author.   1 In the fall of 2008, my sophomore year at Harvard, China’s premier came to visit and gave a speech. Urged by the officials of