Traces the efforts of an elite scientific team who tested Einstein's theory of relativity during a historic mission to photograph a black hole, addressing key questions about time, space, and the nature of the universe. "[This book] follows a team of elite scientists on their historic mission to take the first picture of a black hole, putting Einstein's theory of relativity to its ultimate test and helping to answer our deepest questions about space,...

In the late 1940s. Kurt Vonnegut is home after surviving the firebombing of Dresden. He has ambitions to be a novelist but dares to share them only with his new wife. Kurt struggles to complete college and write while working nights at a newspaper. Soon there's a child on the way. Anxious about supporting his family, Kurt quits school and takes a job in the PR department of General Electric, where his older brother, Bernard, is a leading scientist...

“[A] winningly obsessive history of our relationship with underground places” (The Guardian), from sacred caves and derelict subway stations to nuclear bunkers and ancient underground cities—an exploration of the history, science, architecture, and mythology of the worlds beneath our feet

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR
When Will Hunt was sixteen years old, he discovered...

Barbara Butcher was early in her recovery from alcoholism when she found an unexpected lifeline: a job at the Medical Examiner’s Office in New York City. The second woman ever hired for the role of Death Investigator in Manhattan, she was the first to last more than three months. The work was gritty, demanding, morbid, and sometimes dangerous – she loved it. Butcher (yes, that is her real name, and she has heard all the jokes) spent day in and...