Sean Runnette
Author
Language
English
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Description
The periodic table of the elements is a crowning scientific achievement, but it's also a treasure trove of passion, adventure, obsession, and betrayal. These tales follow carbon, neon, silicon, gold, and all the elements in the table as they play out their parts in human history. The usual suspects are here, like Marie Curie (and her radioactive journey to the discovery of polonium and radium) and William Shockley (who is credited, not exactly justly,...
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
Once considered a respectable antiquarian map dealer, E. Forbes Smiley spent years doubling as a map thief -until he was finally arrested slipping maps out of books in the Yale University library. The Map Thief delves into the untold history of this fascinating high-stakes criminal and the inside story of the industry that consumed him. Acclaimed reporter Michael Blanding has interviewed all the key players in this stranger-than-fiction story, and...
Author
Series
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
When a young graduate returns home he is accompanied, much to his father and uncle's discomfort, by a strange friend "who doesn't acknowledge any authorities, who doesn't accept a single principle on faith." Turgenev's masterpiece of generational conflict shocked Russian society when it was published in 1862 and continues today to seem as fresh and outspoken as it did to those who first encountered its nihilistic hero.
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Series
Language
English
Description
"The first fifty or so years of Otto's journey were pretty good. He felt he had it all until one day he didn't. Looking for answers, he calls on his enlightened brother-in-law, Volya Rinpoche, a wise man with Russian roots, a Tibetan heritage, and an international reputation as a spiritual teacher ... Otto needs his brother-in-law's wisdom, ... and ... it turns out that Rinpoche himself is also looking for guidance. They embark on a road trip over...
Author
Language
English
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Description
In this book the author, a Harvard evolutionary biologist presents an account of how the human body has evolved over millions of years, examining how an increasing disparity between the needs of Stone Age bodies and the realities of the modern world are fueling a paradox of greater longevity and chronic disease. It illuminates the major transformations that contributed key adaptations to the body: the rise of bipedalism; the shift to a non-fruit-based...
10) The paperboy
Author
Language
English
Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
“An eerie and beautiful novel . . . Its secrets continue to reveal themselves long after the book has been finished.”—The New York Times Book Review
The sun is rising over Moat County, Florida, when Sheriff Thurmond Call is found on the highway, gutted like an alligator. A local redneck is tried, sentenced, and set to fry....
“An eerie and beautiful novel . . . Its secrets continue to reveal themselves long after the book has been finished.”—The New York Times Book Review
The sun is rising over Moat County, Florida, when Sheriff Thurmond Call is found on the highway, gutted like an alligator. A local redneck is tried, sentenced, and set to fry....
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"This highly engaging landmark work, a natural history of exercise--by the author of the best seller The Story of the Human Body--seeks to answer a fundamental question: were you born to run or rest? The first three parts of Exercised roughly follow the evolutionary story of human physical activity and inactivity, even as each chapter shatters a particular myth about exercise. Because we cannot understand physical activity without understanding its...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
A trio of intertwined novellas from the 2014 Nobel laureate for literature
In this essential trilogy of novellas by the winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature, French author Patrick Modiano reaches back in time, opening the corridors of memory and exploring the mysteries to be encountered there. Each novella in the volume—Afterimage, Suspended Sentences, and Flowers of Ruin—represents a sterling
Author
Language
English
Description
New York Times Bestseller * Soon to be a TV series starring Dan Aykroyd
"There aren't many books this entertaining that also provide a cogent crash course in ancient, classical and modern history." -Los Angeles Times
Beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola: In Tom Standage's deft, innovative account of world history, these six beverages turn out to be much more than just...
"There aren't many books this entertaining that also provide a cogent crash course in ancient, classical and modern history." -Los Angeles Times
Beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola: In Tom Standage's deft, innovative account of world history, these six beverages turn out to be much more than just...
Author
Language
English
Description
"National Book Award winner Jonathan Kozol...tells the story of his father's life and work as a nationally noted specialist in disorders of the brain and his astonishing ability, at the onset of Alzheimer's disease, to explain the causes of his sickness and then to narrate, step-by-step, his slow descent into dementia."--
Author
Language
English
Description
Sean has spent twenty years in third World war zones and natural disaster areas... but when burnout sets in, he is reluctantly drawn home to Belham, Massachusetts. There, he discovers that his steely aunt, overly dramatic sister, and quirky nephew are having a little natural disaster of their own.--P. [4] of cover.
Author
Pub. Date
2016.
Language
English
Formats
Description
"People often assume a cognitive ladder, from lower to higher forms, with our own intelligence at the top. But what if it is more like a bush, with cognition taking different forms that are often incomparable to ours? Would you presume yourself dumber than a squirrel because you're less adept at recalling the locations of hundreds of buried acorns? Or would you judge your perception of your surroundings as more sophisticated than that of a echolocating...
Author
Language
English
Description
"Unlike World War I, when the horrors of battle were largely confined to the front, World War II reached into the lives of ordinary people in an unprecedented way. Entire countries were occupied, millions were mobilized for the war effort, and in the end, the vast majority of the war's dead were non-combatant men, women, and children. Inhabitants of German-occupied Europe--the war's deadliest killing ground--experienced forced labor, deportation,...
20) The map thief
Author
Publisher
Tantor Audio
Pub. Date
2014
Edition
Unabridged.
Physical Desc
7 sound discs (9 hr.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in.
Language
English
Description
Once considered a respectable antique map dealer, E. Forbes Smiley spent years doubling as a map thief, until he was finally arrested. Blanding interviewed all the key players in this stranger-than-fiction story, and shares the histories of maps that charted the New World, and how they went from being practical instruments to highly coveted objects.