David Drummond

"Edward Curtis was dashing, charismatic, a passionate mountaineer, a famous photographer -- the Annie Liebowitz of his time. And he was thirty-two years old in 1900 when he gave it all up to pursue his great idea: He would try to capture on film the Native American nation before it disappeared. At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait, Egan's book tells the remarkable untold story behind Curtis's iconic photographs,...

For more than three centuries, slave ships carried millions of people from the coasts of Africa across the Atlantic to the New World. Much is known of the slave trade and the American plantation complex, but little of the ships that made it all possible. In The Slave Ship, award-winning historian Marcus Rediker draws on thirty years of research in maritime archives to create an unprecedented history of these vessels and the human drama acted out on...

In early May 2006, a young British climber named David Sharp lay dying near the top of Mount Everest while forty other climbers walked past him on their way to the summit. A week later, Lincoln Hall, a seasoned Australian climber, was left for dead near the same spot. Hall's death was reported around the world, but the next day he was found alive after spending the night on the upper mountain with no food and no shelter. If David Sharp's death was...

In God's Battalions, award-winning author Rodney Stark takes on the long-held view that the Crusades were the first round of European colonialism, conducted for land, loot, and converts by barbarian Christians who victimized the cultivated Muslims. Instead, Stark argues that the Crusades were the first military response to Muslim terrorist aggession.

In Fly by Wire, one of America's greatest journalists takes us on a strange and unexpected journey into the fascinating world of advanced aviation. From the testing laboratories where engineers struggle to build a jet engine that can systematically resist bird attacks, through the creation of the A320 in France, to the political and social forces that have sought to minimize the impact of the revolutionary fly-by-wire technology, William Langewiesche...

A poet's memoir of taking an unplanned trip to the Bahamas and meeting a fishing guide who changed his life: "A splendid book."-Jim Harrison in The New York Times Book Review Chris Dombrowski, a poet and passionate fly-fisher, had a second child on the way and an income hovering perilously close to zero when he received a miraculous email: can't go, it's all paid for, just book a flight to Miami. Thus began a journey that would eventually...

TheTriumph of Faith explodes the myth that people around the world are abandoning religion. Stark marshals an incredible amount of data-surveys of more than a million people in 163 nations-to paint the full picture that both scholars and popular commentators have missed. He explains why the astonishing growth of religion is happening, and what it means for our future.   Stark's lively, eye-opening book is full of insights that defy the conventional...

On a quest for what matters most, Timothy Shriver discovers a radically different, inspiring way of life. At a time when we are all more rudderless than ever, we look for the very best teachers and mentors to guide us. In Fully Alive, an unusual and gripping memoir, Timothy Shriver shows how his teachers have been the world's most forgotten minority: people with intellectual disabilities. In these pages we meet the individuals who helped him come...

The art of the argument. It's mysterious and powerful. It's the art of having things go your way. But it's also the art of getting out of your own way. It's having the Moves. But it's also about having the Touch. Welcome to the "new normal." It's a time and place where conversations are tougher, disagreements more frequent, consensus more difficult to find than ever before. This new world demands three new "right for our times" chapters:"Heavy Metal...

Are history books giving us the whole story? Or is civilization far more complex and for older than we have been taught?Our school textbooks barely mention the 6,000-year-old Sumerian civilization, yet the latest archaeological findings at sites such as Jericho and, most recently, Gobekli Tepe in Turkey have been dated to 10,000 BC.Civilization goes back at least another 10,000 years, if we are willing to believe what our ancestors themselves claimed.The...