They’ve tested France’s first guillotines, ridden the NASA Space Shuttle, been crucified in a Parisian laboratory to test the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, and helped solve the mystery of TWA Flight 800. For every new surgical procedure, from heart transplants to gender confirmation surgery, cadavers have helped make history in their quiet way. “Delightful—though never disrespectful” (Les Simpson, Time Out New York), Stiff investigates the strange lives of our bodies postmortem and answers the question: What should we do after we die?“This quirky, funny read offers perspective and insight about life, death and the medical profession. . . . You can close this book with an appreciation of the miracle that the human body really is.” —Tara Parker-Pope, Wall Street Journal“Gross, educational, and unexpectedly sidesplitting.” —Entertainment Weekly

    “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.

    A right wing survivalist amasses a cache of weapons and resists calls to surrender. A drug trafficker barricades himself and his family in a railroad car, and begins shooting. A cult leader in Waco, Texas faces the FBI in an armed stand-off that leaves many dead in a fiery blaze. A sniper, claiming to be God, terrorizes the DC metropolitan area. For most of us, these are events we hear about on the news. For Gary Noesner, head of the FBI’s groundbreaking Crisis Negotiation Unit, it was just another day on the job. In Stalling for Time, Noesner takes readers on a heart-pounding tour through many of the most famous hostage crises of the past thirty years. Specially trained in non-violent confrontation and communication techniques, Noesner’s unit successfully defused many potentially volatile standoffs, but perhaps their most hard-won victory was earning the recognition and respect of their law enforcement peers.Noesner pursued his dream of joining the FBI all the way to Quantico, where he not only became a Special Agent, but also—in the course of a distinguished thirty-year career—the FBI’s Chief Negotiator. Gaining respect for the fledgling art of crisis negotiation in the hard-boiled culture of The Bureau, where the shadow of J. Edgar Hoover still loomed large, was an uphill battle, educating FBI and law enforcement leaders on the job at an incident, and advocating the use of psychology rather than force whenever possible. Noesner’s many bloodless victories rarely garnered as much media attention as the notorious incident management blunders like the Branch Davidian disaster in Waco and the Ruby Ridge tragedy.Noesner offers a candid as well as fascinating look back at his years as a rebel in the ranks and a pioneer on the front lines. Whether vividly recounting showdowns with the radical Republic of Texas militia, the terrorist hijackers of the cruise ship Achille Lauro, and self-styled messiah David Koresh, or clashes with colleagues and superiors that expose the internal politics and power-plays of America’s premier law enforcement agency, Stalling for Time crackles with breathtaking suspense and insight in equal measure. Case by case, minute by minute, it’s a behind the scenes view of a visionary crime-fighter in action.

    Teenage girls are taking courses of testosterone and disfiguring their bodies. Parents are undermined; experts are over-relied upon; dissenters in science and medicine are intimidated; free speech truckles under renewed attack; socialized medicine bears hidden consequences; and an intersectional era has arisen in which the desire to escape a dominant identity encourages individuals to take cover in victim groups. Every person who has ever had a skeptical thought about the sudden rush toward a non-binary future but been afraid to express it—this book is for you.

    A page-turning true story of international scandal and corruption at the very highest levels of corporate America, this thriller unveils botched crimes, courtroom drama, suicide attempts, and an immense tangle of lies and deception.

    11, 2001 continue to spread. Now, in a meticulous, scientific and groundbreaking new book, Popular Mechanics puts these rumors to rest. The magazine’s editors analyze the 20 most persistent claims underlying 9/11 conspiracy theories—and conclusively disprove each one. The result is a triumph of hard fact over conspiratorial fantasy.

    America faced a troubling question: What happened? How was this epidemic allowed to spread so far before it was taken seriously? In answering these questions, Shilts weaves the disparate threads into a coherent story, pinning down every evasion and contradiction at the highest levels of the medical, political, and media establishments. Shilts shows that the epidemic spread wildly because the federal government put budget ahead of the nation's welfare; health authorities placed political expediency before the public health; and scientists were often more concerned with international prestige than saving lives. Against this backdrop, Shilts tells the heroic stories of individuals in science and politics, public health and the gay community, who struggled to alert the nation to the enormity of the danger it faced. And the Band Played On is both a tribute to these heroic people and a stinging indictment of the institutions that failed the nation so badly.

    Now the director of the Heart Failure Program at a Long Island hospital, Jauhar uses his own story as a scalpel to lay open the American health-care system.The patient is ill indeed. A perverse system forces doctors to prescribe unnecessary tests and participate in an elaborate system of cronyism just to cover costs and protect themselves from malpractice suits. Jauhar reports cases where a single patient might see fifteen specialists in one hospital stay, fail to receive a full picture of his actual condition, and leave with a bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Jauhar himself wrestles with his conscience as, struggling to make ends meet, he moonlights for a practitioner who charges exorbitant fees for tests of questionable value.Doctored is a cry for reform; a fascinating look at what really goes on in examining rooms, ORs, and your own doctor’s mind; and, most of all, a deeply personal and unsparing act of introspection by a physician who wants to return meaning and moral grounding to a noble profession that has lost its way. It is certain to kick off controversy and heated debate at a time when the dysfunctionalities of our health-care system remain at the top of the nation’s agenda.

     Hickman’s memoir chronicles his life as a significant member of the church and his position as Brigham Young’s underling. Hickman does not shy away from sharing the plethora of crimes he committed but he controversially claims that they were ordered by Young. J. H. Beadle, the editor of this account, examines the history of the Mormon church and the reasons behind the church’s lack of action over Hickman’s brutal crimes. He also questions how Hickman remained in positions of power despite knowledge of his murderous ways being publicly known. Hickman’s account sheds light on these issues as well as providing a unique insight into the mind of an infamous murderer and is an important addition to the history of the nineteenth century Mormon church. William Adams "Wild Bill" Hickman was an American frontiersman. He also served as a representative to the Utah Territorial Legislature. Hickman was baptized into Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in 1839 by John D. Lee. He later served as a personal bodyguard for Joseph Smith, Jr. and Brigham Young. Hickman was reputedly a member of the Danites. He died in Wyoming in 1883.

    National bestseller "Medicine Men" follows the beloved #1 bestselling "Heart in the Right Place". This is a collection of the most memorable moments from more than a dozen rural physicians who each practiced medicine for more than 50 years in the Southern Appalachian Mountains from 1930-2012. Hilarious, heroic, true stories of miracle cures, ghost dogs, and much madcap medical mayhem. Unimaginably funny and touching situations where men with nerves of steel and hearts of gold get stuck between a rock and a hard place in the Smoky Mountains. These men are saints who walk among us and Jourdan's father is one of them. Jourdan's work is often compared to James Herriot and Bill Bryson. This story collection is like "All Creatures Great and Small" but with people instead of animals or vingnettes from country doctors who took "A Walk in the Woods".Jourdan's first book is on hundreds of lists of best books of the year, best book club books, and funniest books. "Heart in the Right Place" was chosen as Family Circle magazine's first ever Book of the Month, won the Elle magazine Reader's Prize, named a Wall Street Journal Nonfiction Bestseller and ranked #1 on Amazon in Biography, Memoir, Science, and Medicine.

    These three Great Untruths are part of a larger philosophy that sees young people as fragile creatures who must be protected and supervised by adults. But despite the good intentions of the adults who impart them, the Great Untruths are harming kids by teaching them the opposite of ancient wisdom and the opposite of modern psychological findings on grit, growth, and antifragility. The result is rising rates of depression and anxiety, along with endless stories of college campuses torn apart by moralistic divisions and mutual recriminations. This is a book about how we got here. First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt take us on a tour of the social trends stretching back to the 1980s that have produced the confusion and conflict on campus today, including the loss of unsupervised play time and the birth of social media, all during a time of rising political polarization. This is a book about how to fix the mess. The culture of “safety” and its intolerance of opposing viewpoints has left many young people anxious and unprepared for adult life, with devastating consequences for them, for their parents, for the companies that will soon hire them, and for a democracy that is already pushed to the brink of violence over its growing political divisions. Lukianoff and Haidt offer a comprehensive set of reforms that will strengthen young people and institutions, allowing us all to reap the benefits of diversity, including viewpoint diversity. This is a book for anyone who is confused by what’s happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live and work and cooperate across party lines.

    With this exposé, the Boston Globe presents the single most comprehensive account of the cover-ups, hush money and manipulation used by the Catholic Church to keep its history of sexual abuse secret.

    In this captivating fusion of science, history and personal memoir, writer David Adam explores the weird thoughts that exist within every mind, and how they drive millions of us towards obsessions and compulsions.David has suffered from OCD for twenty years, and The Man Who Couldn’t Stop is his unflinchingly honest attempt to understand the condition and his experiences. What might lead an Ethiopian schoolgirl to eat a wall of her house, piece by piece; or a pair of brothers to die beneath an avalanche of household junk that they had compulsively hoarded? At what point does a harmless idea, a snowflake in a clear summer sky, become a blinding blizzard of unwanted thoughts? Drawing on the latest research on the brain, as well as historical accounts of patients and their treatments, this is a book that will challenge the way you think about what is normal, and what is mental illness.Told with fierce clarity, humour and urgent lyricism, this extraordinary book is both the haunting story of a personal nightmare, and a fascinating doorway into the darkest corners of our minds.

    Making use of remarkable scientific discoveries that transform our understanding of how natural systems work, George Monbiot explores a new, positive environmentalism that shows how damaged ecosystems on land and at sea can be restored, and how this restoration can revitalize and enrich our lives. Challenging what he calls his “ecological boredom,” Monbiot weaves together a beautiful and riveting tale of wild places, wildlife, and wild people. Roaming the hills of Britain and the forests of Europe, kayaking off the coast of Wales with dolphins and seabirds, he seeks out the places that still possess something of the untamed spirit he would like to resurrect.He meets people trying to restore lost forests and bring back missing species—such as wolves, lynx, wolverines, wild boar, and gray whales—and explores astonishing evidence that certain species, not just humans, have the power to shape the physical landscape. This process of rewilding, Monbiot argues, offers an alternative to a silent spring: the chance of a raucous summer in which ecological processes resume and humans draw closer to the natural world.

    When Dr. Judy Mikovits finished her presentation the room was silent for a moment, then one of the scientists said, �Oh my God!” The resulting investigation would be like no other in science.For Dr. Mikovits, a twenty-year veteran of the National Cancer Institute, this was the midpoint of a five-year journey that would start with the founding of the Whittemore-Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease at the University of Nevada, Reno, and end with her as a witness for the federal government against her former employer, Harvey Whittemore, for illegal campaign contributions to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.On this journey Dr. Mikovits would face the scientific prejudices against CFS, wander into the minefield that is autism, and through it all struggle to maintain her faith in God and the profession to which she had dedicated her life. This is a story for anybody interested in the peril and promise of science at the very highest levels in our country.