Tragic Science

When author Jeff Hobbs arrived at Yale University, he became fast friends with the man who would be his college roommate for four years, Robert Peace. Robert's life was rough from the beginning in the crime-ridden streets of Newark in the 1980s, with his father in jail and his mother earning less than $15,000 a year. But Robert was a brilliant student, and it was supposed to get easier when he was accepted to Yale, where he studied molecular biochemistry and biophysics.

Some books emerge from a lifetime of hard-won knowledge. Robert D. Kaplan has learned, from a career spent reporting on wars, revolutions, and international politics in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia, that the essence of geopolitics is tragedy. In The Tragic Mind, he employs the works of ancient Greek dramatists, Shakespeare, German philosophers, and the modern classics to explore the central subjects of international politics: order, disorder, rebellion, ambition, loyalty to family and state, violence, and the mistakes of power.

In this unprecedented deep dive into inner-city gang life, Mark Bowden takes listeners inside a Baltimore gang, offers an in-depth portrait of its notorious leader, and chronicles the 2016 FBI investigation that landed eight gang members in prison.

The tragic fate of the British airship R101—which went down in a spectacular fireball in 1930, killing more people than died in the Hindenburg disaster seven years later—has been largely forgotten. In His Majesty’s Airship, S.C. Gwynne resurrects it in vivid detail, telling the epic story of great ambition gone terribly wrong.

The Academy of Chaenbalu has stood against magic for centuries. Hidden from the world, acting from the shadows, it trains its students to detect and retrieve magic artifacts, which it jealously guards from the misuse of others. Because magic is dangerous: Something that heals can also harm, and a power that aids one person may destroy another. Of the academy’s many students, only the most skilled can become Avatars - warrior thieves, capable of infiltrating the most heavily guarded vaults - and only the most determined can be trusted to resist the lure of magic.

Chris Harris has driven more cars than most people could ever dream of. His vast knowledge is legendary. He calls it 'unhinged geekery'. But we call it infectious enthusiasm, adrenaline-fueled escapism and peerless journalistic rigour and integrity. And then there are his famous skills at the wheel, from city cars to rally cars, F1 to vintage, not forgetting the Guinness World Record 3.4km sideways in an electric car. And now for the first time, Harris is going all out with that unhinged geekery, and takes us down the road of his life-long adventure with the automobile

Remembering Satan is a lucid, measured, yet absolutely riveting inquest into a case that destroyed a family, engulfed a small town, and captivated an America obsessed by rumors of a satanic underground. It follows the increasingly bizarre accusations and confessions, as well as the claims and counterclaims of police, FBI investigators, and mental-health professionals.

Hundreds of years after the end of the world, the Appalachian community of Iron Hollow finds itself beset by demons. Such horrors are common these days in the outlands, where most folks die young—if they don’t turn into monsters first. When a legendary knight is summoned to hunt down the latest unearthly beast to haunt their woods, the town’s new oral historian, Shrike, has more reason than most to be concerned. Because that demon was her wife. And while Shrike is certain that May still recognizes her—that May is still herself, somewhere beneath it all—she can’t prove it.

Beginning with his final departure from Neverland, Untouchable takes listeners through Jackson's final four years, as he shuttled from California to the Middle East, Ireland, Asia, the East Coast, and Las Vegas, planning to recapture his wealth and reputation with a comeback album and a series of 50 mega-concerts, for which he was rehearsing until the day before his death. Sullivan has never-before-reported information about Jackson's business dealings and the pedophilia allegations that irreparably marked his reputation, and he had exclusive access to inner-circle figures.

The true story behind the events that inspired the major motion picture Only the Brave. A "unique and bracing" (Booklist) first-person account by the sole survivor of Arizona's disastrous 2013 Yarnell Hill Fire, which took the lives of 19 "hotshots" - firefighters trained specifically to battle wildfires. Brendan McDonough was on the verge of becoming a hopeless, inveterate heroin addict when he, for the sake of his young daughter, decided to turn his life around. He enlisted in the Granite Mountain Hotshots, a team of elite firefighters based in Prescott, Arizona.

The Lobotomist explores one of the darkest chapters of American medicine: the desperate attempt to treat the hundreds of thousands of psychiatric patients in need of help during the middle decades of the 20th century. Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, MD, who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms. Drawing on Freeman's documents and interviews with Freeman's family, Jack El-Hai takes a penetrating look at the life and work of this complex scientific genius.

Nearly everything people know about airships is wrong. Few realize that prior to the Hindenburg disaster airships transported passengers without a single casualty for more than twenty years, a record unmatched by any other form of transportation. When Giants Ruled the Sky tells the true but little-known story of the USS Macon (ZRS-5), the world's largest, most expensive, and most technologically advanced airship of her day, and the four men responsible for conceiving, designing, building, and flying her.

At the turn of the 20th century, American women began to reject Victorian propriety in favor of passion and livelihood outside the home. This alarmed authorities, who feared certain "over-sexed" women could destroy civilization if allowed to reproduce and pass on their defects. Set against this backdrop, The Unfit Heiress chronicles the fight for inheritance, both genetic and monetary, between Ann Cooper Hewitt and her mother, Maryon.

Many Americans have no idea how badly our largest Democrat-run cities have deteriorated. We've been complacent for far too long, assuming that the craziest elements of the radical Left would stay confined to the East and West coasts. But crime, drug addiction, homelessness, left-wing school indoctrination, so-called inclusive housing policies, and outrageous taxes don’t stay within the big city limits of places like Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, New York, Seattle, and San Francisco.

Some prisons are built to keep secrets in. Black Hollow Asylum is one of them. When idealistic young nurse Eleanor Cross arrives at the remote, crumbling institution, she expects to care for the sick. Instead, she finds a world of unimaginable cruelty, ruled by the cold-blooded Nurse Ratcliff and the arrogant Dr. Finch. The terrified patients are covered in bruises, their minds and bodies broken by the very people meant to heal them. Whispers haunt the corridors, telling of a vengeful phantom—a shadow that moves through the walls and protects the most helpless inmates from the staff's ...

Four decades after And the Band Played On created an image of the AIDS epidemic that has survived in the public consciousness to this very day, mathematician Rebecca Culshaw is sounding the alarm that everything that iconic book told us about AIDS is demonstrably wrong. And that mistaken understanding of AIDS and its cause has the potential to affect all of us, not just certain so-called risk groups. Rebecca Culshaw describes her slow uncovering of these reasons over her years researching HIV for her work constructing mathematical models of its interaction with the immune system.

“In Fernanda Santos’ expert hands, the story of 19 men and a raging wildfire unfolds as a riveting, pulse-pounding account of an American tragedy; and also as a meditation on manhood, brotherhood and family love. The Fire Line is a great and deeply moving book about courageous men and women...

While Jodey Whiting was stuck in hospital battling pneumonia over Christmas, a letter dropped on her doormat from the Department of Work and Pensions, asking her to attend an assessment. Despite her health problems, the powers-that-be callously halted benefit payments for the mum-of-nine. With no money coming in, Jodey killed herself, aged just 42. Another DWP letter pronouncing her "fit to work" was sent to her home three days after her tragic death. A Mother's Job is the story of how Jodey's mum Joy Dove, 67, took on the system—and won justice for her daughter.

Thirty-four tragic tales of science fiction, speculative fiction, and dark satire. The characters within suffer unspeakable losses triggered by Human incompetence, alien visitations (both malicious and benign), Apocalyptic annoyances, corrupted faith, unscrupulous corporate overlords, dismal first contact blunders, our uncertain future, and other uplifting terrors. Featuring: CARE PACKAGE HELP IS ON THE WAY THERE’S NO HELL LIKE HEAVEN EMBERS OF LIFE A BASILEUS CHRISTMAS OLIVER MOORE IS IN OUR FAMILY ROOM I AM WORRIED ABOUT MY ANXIETY THE KING’S DINNER MERCY MISSION THE FOURTEEN ...

What if the price of love was forgetting it ever existed? In a future where relationships are government-regulated and romantic memories are erased after five years, Mira and Jace have only hours left before they lose everything they've built together. But Mira isn’t ready to let go, and she’s willing to risk everything to remember their love. With the help of a rogue memory hacker, Mira devises a way to preserve their love illegally. But when the system catches up with her, she’s forced into an impossible choice: let Jace forget her forever, or sacrifice herself to carry their love ...