The Smartest Book in the World is based on Proops’s sensational, iTunes Top 10 podcast that has been downloaded more than nine million times, in which his “bold, never-boring voice takes center stage” (The New York Times). The book is a rollicking reference guide to the most essential areas of knowledge in Proops’s universe, from the noteworthy names of the ancient world and baseball, to the movies you must see and the albums you must hear. Complete with history’s juiciest tales and curious back-stories, Proops expounds on the merits of poetry and proper punctuation, delivering this wealth of information with his signature style and Proopsian panache. An off-beat and exuberant guide to everything, The Smartest Book in the World gives you everything you need to know to always be the smartest person in the room. Well, unless the Proopmaster is there, too.

    Part social commentary, part sitting at-the-feet-of-Socrates, part kick in the ass, COME IN ALONE was the column that would zig when you thought it would zag. This collection of all fifty-two columns includes Ellis' unique take on the comic book industry, features first-class interviews with top-flight comic book professionals, and even includes the legendary Old Bastard's Manifesto. Wrap this all up in an evocative and spooky cover by Brian Wood, and you've got a collection of commentary that midwifed the birth of the comic book industry into the 21st century.

    But inside, she longed for the church's handsome Pastor Gregory Shreaves, a former golf pro who sparked her most sinful thoughts.When Mary Jane let her feelings be known, the Pastor gently pushed her away. But her obsession only grew stronger when she became convinced that he was romantically involved with a younger church member, a woman named Rhonda Smith.Rhonda was doing volunteer work in the church office one day when she was shot to death in cold blood. The trail of evidence led police to Mary Jane, and soon other suspicions were raised: Was she also involved in the mysterious death of her own father fifteen years earlier? This is the shocking true story of love, worship, and murder in one American small town.

    To some, the numbers of Modi's victory came as something of a surprise; for others, the BJP's triumph was a vindication of their belief in the government and its policies. Irrespective of one's political standpoint, one thing was beyond dispute: this was a landmark verdict, one that deserved to be reported and analysed with intelligence - and without bias. Rajdeep Sardesai's new book, 2019: How Modi Won India, does just that. What was it that gave Modi an edge over the opposition for the second time in five years? How was the BJP able to trounce its rivals in states that were once Congress bastions? What was the core issue in the election: a development agenda or national pride? As he relives the excitement of the many twists and turns that took place over the last five years, culminating in the 2019 election results, Rajdeep helps the reader make sense of the contours and characteristics of a rapidly changing India, its politics and its newsmakers. If the 2014 elections changed India, 2019 may well have defined what 'new India' is likely to be all about. 2019: How Modi Won India takes a look at that fascinating story, which is still developing.

    The one problem was the title: couldn’t some prophetic fact-checker have seen that the worst years of our lives—far worse—were still to come? Here they are, the 2000s, and in This Land Is Their Land, Ehrenreich subjects them to the most biting and incisive satire of her career.Taking the measure of what we are left with after the cruelest decade in memory, Ehrenreich finds lurid extremes all around. While members of the moneyed elite can buy congressmen, many in the working class can barely buy lunch. While a wealthy minority obsessively consumes cosmetic surgery, the poor often go without health care for their children. And while the corporate C-suites are now nests of criminality, the less fortunate are fed a diet of morality, marriage, and abstinence. Ehrenreich’s antidotes are as sardonic as they are spot-on: pet insurance for your kids; Salvation Army fashions for those who can no longer afford Wal-Mart; and boundless rage against those who have given us a nation scarred by deepening inequality, corroded by distrust, and shamed by its official cruelty.Full of wit and generosity, these reports from a divided nation show once again that Ehrenreich is, as Molly Ivins said, “good for the soul.”—*The Times (London)

    It certainly drove writers Helen Razer and Bernard Keane to a desperate act: befriending each other for long enough to write a book.Join forces with these uneasy allies to fight against a world that has lost its reason. Explore what's behind the remorseless spread of idiocy, and why there's just so much damn Stupid around you.Stupid isn't just ignorance; it's not just laziness. Worse than the absence of thought, Stupid is a virus that drains our productivity and leaves us sick and diminished. And Stupid has a long, complex and terrible past, one we need to understand in order to defeat it.A Short History of Stupid traces the origins of this maddening ill, examining the different ways in which we've been afflicted over the last three thousand years. It damns those who have spread Stupid and celebrates the brave few who resisted. It shows how Stupid tightens the grubby grip of the foolish around our throats.Hilarious, smart, unpleasant, infuriating and rude, A Short History of Stupid is at once a provocation and a comfort. It will spark debate, soothe the terminally frustrated and outrage the righteously Stupid. It is a book whose Stupid time has come.

    She shows the shocking and hilarious sketches that didn’t make the cut and explains how these are essential stages in the evolution of a cover that stands the test of time but retains its edge. Her book captures contemporary history—from the farce of Monica Lewinsky to the adventures of Michelle and Barack to nuclear meltdown in Japan—in images that are as acute as they are outrageous. More than that, it shows how the magazine that exemplifies journalistic excellence in America also dares to cultivate a sense of humor when grappling with complex moral and political issues.Praise for Blown Covers:“Interesting failures are the driving force behind BLOWN COVERS: New Yorker Covers You Were Never Meant to See (Abrams, $24.95), by Françoise Mouly. Mouly is the art editor of The New Yorker, and paging through this book is like standing in the corner of her office as she pins up rejected covers on the wall. Mouly has dozens of tales about images that failed for one reason or another. Now, presumably with the approval of her bosses at Condé Nast, she has created a tell-all (or tell-most) that even non–illustrators and designers will find enlightening.” —New York Times Book Review “Yes, Blown Covers sometimes offends—and that’s the audacious joy of it.” —NPR.org“[New Yorker] art editor Mouly offers some true delights.” —Sacramento Bee

    “They are often full of tragedy, sometimes laced with wonder, but always deeply aware that science does not exist in a social vacuum. They are beautiful, whether in their clarity of ideas, the elegance of their prose, or often both.” The essays in this year’s Best American Science and Nature Writing brought clarity to the complexity and bewilderment of 2020 and delivered us necessary information during a global pandemic. From an in-depth look at the moment of the virus’s outbreak, to a harrowing personal account of lingering Covid symptoms, to a thoughtful analysis on how the pandemic will impact the environment, these essays, as Yong says, “synthesize, evaluate, dig, unveil, and challenge,” imbuing a pivotal moment in history with lucidity and elegance.

    As The Redneck Manifesto boldly points out and brilliantly demonstrates, America's dirty little secret isn't racism but classism. While pouncing incessantly on racial themes, most major media are silent about America's widening class rifts, a problem that negatively affects more people of all colors than does racism. With an unmatched ability for rubbing salt in cultural wounds, Jim Goad deftly dismantles most popular American notions about race and culture and takes a sledgehammer to our delicate glass-blown popular conceptions of government, religion, media, and history.

    These are the very same behaviors that typify good soldiering and foster a sense of belonging among troops, whether they’re fighting on the front lines or engaged in non-combat activities away from the action. Drawing from history, psychology, and anthropology, bestselling author Sebastian Junger shows us just how at odds the structure of modern society is with our tribal instincts, arguing that the difficulties many veterans face upon returning home from war do not stem entirely from the trauma they’ve suffered, but also from the individualist societies they must reintegrate into.A 2011 study by the Canadian Forces and Statistics Canada reveals that 78 percent of military suicides from 1972 to the end of 2006 involved veterans. Though these numbers present an implicit call to action, the government is only just taking steps now to address the problems veterans face when they return home. But can the government ever truly eliminate the challenges faced by returning veterans? Or is the problem deeper, woven into the very fabric of our modern existence? Perhaps our circumstances are not so bleak, and simply understanding that beneath our modern guises we all belong to one tribe or another would help us face not just the problems of our nation but of our individual lives as well.Well-researched and compellingly written, this timely look at how veterans react to coming home will reconceive our approach to veteran’s affairs and help us to repair our current social dynamic.

    Everywhere you turn, publications seem to follow different rules on everything from possessive apostrophes to hyphens to serial commas. Then there are all the gray areas of punctuation--situations the rule books gloss over or never mention at all. At last, help has arrived.This all-in-one reference from grammar columnist June Casagrande covers the basic rules of punctuation plus the finer points not addressed anywhere else, offering clear answers to perplexing questions about semicolons, quotation marks, periods, apostrophes, and more. Better yet, this is the only guide that uses handy icons to show how punctuation rules differ for book, news, academic, and science styles--so you can boldly switch between essays, online newsletters, reports, fiction, and magazine and news articles.Style guides don't cover everything, but never fear! This handbook features rulings from an expert "Punctuation Panel" so you can see how working pros approach sticky situations. And the second half of the book features an alphabetical master list of commonly punctuated terms worth its weight in gold, combining rulings from the major style guides and showing exactly where they differ. With The Best Punctuation Book, Period, you'll be able to handle any punctuation predicament in a flash--and with aplomb.

    This guidebook includes the island's history, culture and all of its significant archaeological sites. It also contains all of the practical information needed for your visit, including island activities and up-to-date restaurant and shopping recommendations. It will also tell you the best times to visit the sites in order to get the optimal light for photography and to avoid the crowds, as well as many other 'local' tips that no other guidebook will tell you. Contains over 100 color photos of Easter Island, as well as color maps of both the island and the one town, Hanga Roa. New, Updated edition (2014).

    

    The Sociology Book takes on some of humankind's biggest questions: What is society? What makes it tick? Why do we interact in the way that we do with our friends, coworkers, and rivals? The Sociology Book profiles the world's most renowned sociologists and more than 100 of their biggest ideas, including issues of equality, diversity, identity, and human rights; the effects of globalization; the role of institutions; and the rise of urban living in modern societyEasy to navigate and chock-full of key concepts, profiles of major sociological thinkers, and conversation starters galore, this is a must-have, in-a-nutshell guide to some of the most fascinating questions on earth.The Sociology Book is part of the award-winning Big Ideas Simply Explained series, designed to distill big ideas and elusive theories into graspable, memorable concepts, using an approachable graphic treatment and creative typography.

    Detailing the lifestyles of each class, from the way they dress and where they live to their education and hobbies, Class is sure to entertain, enlighten, and occasionally enrage readers as they identify their own place in society and see how the other half lives.