The Brilliant Inventor Who Made Two of History's Biggest Mistakes
Thomas Midgley Jr. from Columbus invented both leaded gasoline and Freon. There may be no other single person in history who did as much damage to human health and the planet, all with the best of intentions.
Once upon a time, all the fruits, nuts, and berries our gathering ancestors ate were wild. Someone, at some time, had to come up with the bright idea of crops.
Before it became the New World, the Western Hemisphere was vastly more populous and sophisticated than has been thought—an altogether more salubrious place to live at the time than, say, Europe. New evidence of both the extent of the population and its agricultural advancement leads to a remarkable conjecture: The Amazon rainforest may be largely a human artifact.
From The Souls of Black Folk — the tragic story of John Jones, a Black man whose education creates an unbridgeable distance between him and his Southern home.
Adams proposes that historical change follows an exponential curve — and wonders, with genuine dread, where the acceleration of science and technology must ultimately lead.
A speech delivered to a nearly empty hall on the anniversary of a lynching — Chapman's moral reckoning with collective guilt is among the most extraordinary documents of the American conscience.
The rumor of a devil baby at Hull-House draws hundreds of women seeking to see it. Addams explores what the legend reveals about the inner lives of women living at the margins.
Mencken attends a Holy Roller revival meeting in the hills of Tennessee and renders the scene with his characteristic mix of contempt, humor, and grudging fascination.
Returning to his family's old house in upstate New York, Wilson traces his Talcottville roots through generations of American history — a meditation on inheritance, loss, and regional identity.
