Exploring cultural, scientific, sexual, and culinary substructures, this essential read for all foodies, at turns both funny and fascinating, looks at the little-known history surrounding food.

"Nothing short of a masterpiece." —NPR Books
A New York Times Bestseller and a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year

In the most ambitious one-volume American history in decades, award-winning historian Jill Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation.

Widely hailed for its "sweeping, sobering account of the American past" (New York Times Book Review), Jill Lepore's

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"From the masters of storytelling-meets-science and co-authors of Quackery, Patient Zero tells the long and fascinating history of disease outbreaks-how they start, how they spread, the science that lets us understand them, and how we race to destroy them before they destroy us. Written in the authors' lively and accessible style, chapters include page-turning medical stories about a particular disease or virus-smallpox, Bubonic plague, polio, HIV-that...

The epic story of the rise and fall of the empire of cotton, its centrality to the world economy, and its making and remaking of global capitalism.
 

 
Cotton is so ubiquitous as to be almost invisible, yet understanding its history is key to understanding the origins of modern capitalism. Sven Beckert’s rich, fascinating book tells the story of how, in a remarkably brief period, European entrepreneurs and powerful

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Through tracing paper's evolution, Mark Kurlansky challenges common assumptions about technology's influence, affirming that paper is here to stay. Paper is one of the simplest and most essential pieces of human technology. For the past two millennia, the ability to produce it in ever more efficient ways has supported the proliferation of literacy, media, religion, education, commerce, and art; it has formed the foundation of civilizations, promoting...

"A descendant of a slave named Coreen, and-according to oral tradition-her owner, President James Madison, finally shares her family's story."-- Provided by publisher.

What foods did the human body evolve to eat, and why? How does the food we eat affect our genes and our minds? What foods are (and aren't) optimal for our everyday health? How can we use cutting-edge science to end world hunger?In these 36 lectures, get eye-opening answers to these and other perplexing questions about the evolution of the human diet and its relationship to our bodies. Bringing together insights from a range of fields including

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"Part memoir, part history, Burn Book is a necessary chronicle of tech's most powerful players. This is the inside story we've all been waiting for about modern Silicon Valley and the biggest boom in wealth creation in the history of the world."--Amazon.

This New York Times bestseller "elegantly weaves evidence and insights . . . into a single, accessible historical narrative" (Bill Gates) and presents a captivating history of the universe — from the Big Bang to dinosaurs to mass globalization and beyond.
Most historians study the smallest slivers of time, emphasizing specific dates, individuals, and documents. But what would it look like to study the whole of history, from the...

"For fans of Boys in the Boat and In the Garden of Beasts, the ... story of how a Jewish race car driver and an American speed queen triumphed over Hitler's fearsome Silver Arrows on the eve of World War II"-- Provided by publisher.