Robert Provine boldly goes where other scientists seldom tread—in search of hiccups, coughs, yawns, sneezes, and other lowly, undignified human behaviors in Curious Behavior.

Prominent linguist, Geoffrey Nunberg talks about his new book, Ascent of the A-Word, which implicitly expresses our deepest values about class, relationships, authenticity, and fairness.

Jim Croce‘s memoir, I Got A Name, reveals the man behind the denim jackets and signature mustache, a hard-working, wry charmer who was also beset with exhaustion at the sheer magnitude of his own success.

Election year politics have heated up with dueling singing ads; what’s going to be important in the campaign for the presidency? Dr. Charles Dunn with Regent University offers some insight. Then, Harvard scholar , Jill Lepore who  has composed a strikingly original, ingeniously conceived, and beautifully crafted history of American ideas about life and death from before the cradle to beyond the grave in The Mansion of Happiness.

Following her husband’s death on 9/11, Nikki Stern challenged herself to find and define a version of hope that might provide her life with purpose and meaning. In Hope in Small Doses, she  comes to embrace a version of hope that thrives not on certainty but on possibility.

Life After Murder is Nancy Mullane‘s compelling story of five convicted murderers sentenced to life with the possibility of parole, who discover after decades in prison that their second chance, is also the challenge of a lifetime.

Deanne Stillman’s Desert Reckoning is set against the backdrop of two competing visions of land and space, and explores what happened when a desert hermit who loved animals and hated civilization took his last stand, gunning down a beloved deputy sheriff when he approached his trailer at high noon on a scorching day.

In The Obamians, James Mann tells the compelling story of the administration’s struggle to enact a coherent and effective set of policies in a time of global turmoil. Then Frederick Harris
puts Obama’s career in the context of decades of black activism, showing how his election undermined the very movement that made it possible in The Price of the Ticket.

TimothyNoah explains in The Great Divergence not only how a fundamental shift in the character of American society has come about, but why it threatens American democracy—and most important, how we can begin to reverse it.

Dr. John Oldale, a scientist  has visited more than ninety nations. Now, he celebrates our weird and wonderful world in a cornucopia of fascinating facts brought vividly to life through the unexpected stories behind them in A World of Curiosities.