Features

Simon Winchester, author of Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World's Superpowers

As the Mediterranean shaped the classical world, and the Atlantic connected Europe to the New World, the Pacific Ocean defines our tomorrow. With China on the rise, so, too, are the American cities of the West coast. Today, the Pacific is ascendant. Its geological history has long transformed us --- tremendous earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis --- but its human history, from a Western perspective, is quite young, beginning with Magellan’s 16th-century circumnavigation. It is a natural wonder whose most fascinating history is currently being made.

Week of October 24, 2016

Paperback releases for the week of October 24th include THE GUEST ROOM by Chris Bohjalian, the spellbinding tale of a party gone horribly wrong --- two men lie dead in a suburban living room, two women are on the run from police, and a marriage is ripping apart at the seams; THE SWANS OF FIFTH AVENUE, Melanie Benjamin's novel about New York’s “Swans” of the 1950s --- and the scandalous, headline-making and enthralling friendship between literary legend Truman Capote and peerless socialite Babe Paley; THE ROAD TO LITTLE DRIBBLING, the much-anticipated follow-up to NOTES FROM A SMALL ISLAND, in which Iowa native Bill Bryson --- now a British citizen --- sets out again to rediscover his adopted country; and PACIFIC, Simon Winchester's biography of the Pacific Ocean and its role in the modern world.

October 2016

October's roundup of History titles includes Beth Macy's TRUEVINE, the true story of two African-American brothers who were kidnapped and displayed as circus freaks, and whose mother endured a 28-year struggle to get them back; INDESTRUCTIBLE by John R. Bruning, the remarkable World World II story of a renegade American pilot who fights against all odds to rescue his family --- imprisoned by the Japanese --- and revolutionizes modern warfare along the way; BEATLES '66, Steve Turner's riveting look at the transformative year in the lives and careers of the legendary group whose groundbreaking legacy would forever change music and popular culture; and EINSTEIN'S GREATEST MISTAKE, an intimate biography from David Bodanis that touches on the romances and rivalries of the celebrated physicist, as much as on his scientific goals.

October 2015

October's roundup of History titles includes PACIFIC, an enthralling biography of the Pacific Ocean and its role in the modern world from Simon Winchester, who explores our relationship with this imposing force of nature; DRINKING IN AMERICA, in which Susan Cheever chronicles our national love affair with liquor, taking a long, thoughtful look at the way alcohol has changed our nation's history; LADY BIRD AND LYNDON by Betty Boyd Caroli, a fresh look at Lady Bird Johnson that upends her image as a plain Jane who was married for her money and mistreated by Lyndon; and Michael Broers' NAPOLEON: SOLDIER OF DESTINY, the first volume of a majestic two-part biography of the great French emperor and conqueror that makes full use of his newly released personal correspondence compiled by the Napoléon Foundation in Paris.

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Simon Winchester

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