We see notebooks everywhere we go. But where did these indispensable implements come from? How did they revolutionize our lives? And how can using a notebook help change the way you think? In this wide-ranging history, Roland Allen reveals how the notebook became our most dependable and versatile tool for creative thinking.

Sara Dykman made history when she became the first person to bicycle alongside monarch butterflies on their storied annual migration—a round-trip adventure that included three countries and more than 10,000 miles. Equally remarkable, she did it solo, on a bike cobbled together from used parts. Her panniers were recycled buckets. In Bicycling with Butterflies, Dykman recounts her incredible journey and the dramatic ups and downs of the nearly nine-month odyssey.

The James Webb Space Telescope is transforming the universe right before our eyes—and here, for the first time, is the inside account of how the mission originated, how it performs its miracles of science, and what its revolutionary images are revealing. Pillars of Creation tells the story of one of the greatest scientific achievements in the history of civilization, a $10 billion instrument with a staggeringly ambitious goal: unlocking the secrets of the cosmos.

If breaking free of negative thought patterns could be cured through simply thinking positively or doubling down on our self-care, we wouldn't see such epidemic rates of depression and anxiety disorders worldwide. Bonior deciphers the psychological research to help us disempower our self-sabotaging thoughts, and teaches specific and actionable ways to overcome them in a transformational listen.

In the 1930s, Germany was a hotbed of scientific thought. But after the Nazis took power, Jewish and female citizens were forced out of their academic positions. Hedwig Kohn, Lise Meitner, Hertha Sponer and Hildegard Stücklen were eminent in their fields, but they had no choice but to flee due to their Jewish ancestry or anti-Nazi sentiments. Their harrowing journey out of Germany became a life-and-death situation that required Herculean efforts of friends and other prominent scientists.

Sam Carlson is a projectionist in small-town Minnesota, where fantasies unspool in glorious black and white—for him and for his sweetheart, college-bound math whiz Sarah Haber. When the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, Sam is sent to the Philippines and captured as a POW. Brutalized but unbroken by the Bataan Death March and POW camps, Sam is one of eighteen hundred starved and weakened prisoners herded into the cargo hold of a barbaric hell ship called the Arisan Maru, his survival doubtful.

New Brunswick, 1934. When a cook in a logging camp finds an orphaned baby bear, he brings it home to his wife, who names the cub Bruno and raises him alongside her newborn daughter, Pearly. Growing up, Pearly and Bruno share a special bond and become inseparable. While life in the camp can be perilous—loggers are regularly injured or even killed—the Everlasting family form a close-knit community with the woodsmen, who accept and embrace the tame young bear.

Spring, 1918. The Great War is at a crucial stage, the Germans are making one last push into France, and the Allies are struggling to hold them back. Battle lines are shifting, and men, and their machines, are being sent up and down the front to shore up defenses. Major Heathcliff Lennox, and his batman Greggs, are told to report to their new HQ. They set off on a sunlit day to fly the distance, but the enemy is never far away, and disaster strikes. They're sent crashing to the ground behind enemy lines, where life, death, and love await.

Charlotte, a commercial airline pilot, attends an auction with her boyfriend Henri at Hotel Drouot, now the oldest auction house in Paris. Successfully bidding on a box of wine saved from the German occupation during the Second World War, Henri gives Charlotte a seemingly inferior bottle he finds inside the box. Cleaning the label, Charlotte makes a shocking discovery that sends her on a quest to find the origins of this unusual—and very valuable—bottle of wine, a quest that will take her back fifty years into the past.

In the small college town of Troy, Alabama, amidst the backdrop of 1967, Katia Daniels lives a life steeped in responsibility. At the Pike County Group Home for Negro Boys, she pours her heart into nurturing the young lives under her care, harboring a longing for children of her own. Katia's romantic entanglement with an older man brings comfort but also stirs questions about the path she's chosen.

Somewhere in the Pacific, 1943. Kate Campbell is a nurse who bravely flies back and forth from the front to rescue wounded soldiers, amid long days, harsh conditions and often dangerous weather. Driven by a deep personal need to help in the war effort, she is conflicted when an injury results in her reassignment to the relative comfort of the English countryside. Love has never been part of her plan, but despite herself, she falls for an officer with three bullet wounds, startling blue eyes and a wicked sense of humor.

Leovander Loveage is a master of small magics. He can summon butterflies with a song or turn someone’s hair pink by snapping his fingers. Though such minor charms don’t earn him much respect, anything more elaborate always blows up in his face, and so Leo vowed long ago never to use powerful magic again. That is, until a mishap with a forbidden spell binds Leo to obey the commands of his longtime rival, Sebastian Grimm. Grimm is Leo’s complete opposite—respected, exceptionally talented, and absolutely insufferable.

As the hurricane batters the house and the waters rise, Callum is found hanging from an ancient oak, murdered in the same way as the notorious villain in his most popular book. Cut off from the outside world, the guests soon realize that the murderer might strike again, and everyone at the plantation could either be the next victim or the killer.

In 1625, the Franconian village of Eisbach has been plagued by disease, famine, heinous crimes, and a merciless winter. Katarin Jaspers is the maidservant to the enigmatic Reverend Zacharias Engel, appointed by Rome to cure the village of suspected diabolism and save every God-fearing soul.

Card shark Hailey Gordon and ex-con Nick Patterson—fresh off of uncovering one of the biggest secrets of the Revolutionary War alongside American history professor Adrian Jensen—now find themselves in Philadelphia, immersed in the history of Benjamin Franklin and Paul Revere. The Liberty Bell, Charles Willson Peale's Museum, and the Tomb of The Unknown Revolutionary Soldier are connected to Franklin in amazing ways. The more they discover, the more shocking the implications become.

In 1625, the Franconian village of Eisbach has been plagued by disease, famine, heinous crimes, and a merciless winter. Katarin Jaspers is the maidservant to the enigmatic Reverend Zacharias Engel, appointed by Rome to cure the village of suspected diabolism and save every God-fearing soul.

Spring, 1918. The Great War is at a crucial stage, the Germans are making one last push into France, and the Allies are struggling to hold them back. Battle lines are shifting, and men, and their machines, are being sent up and down the front to shore up defenses. Major Heathcliff Lennox, and his batman Greggs, are told to report to their new HQ. They set off on a sunlit day to fly the distance, but the enemy is never far away, and disaster strikes. They're sent crashing to the ground behind enemy lines, where life, death, and love await.

The James Webb Space Telescope is transforming the universe right before our eyes—and here, for the first time, is the inside account of how the mission originated, how it performs its miracles of science, and what its revolutionary images are revealing. Pillars of Creation tells the story of one of the greatest scientific achievements in the history of civilization, a $10 billion instrument with a staggeringly ambitious goal: unlocking the secrets of the cosmos.

Sara Dykman made history when she became the first person to bicycle alongside monarch butterflies on their storied annual migration—a round-trip adventure that included three countries and more than 10,000 miles. Equally remarkable, she did it solo, on a bike cobbled together from used parts. Her panniers were recycled buckets. In Bicycling with Butterflies, Dykman recounts her incredible journey and the dramatic ups and downs of the nearly nine-month odyssey.

Leovander Loveage is a master of small magics. He can summon butterflies with a song or turn someone’s hair pink by snapping his fingers. Though such minor charms don’t earn him much respect, anything more elaborate always blows up in his face, and so Leo vowed long ago never to use powerful magic again. That is, until a mishap with a forbidden spell binds Leo to obey the commands of his longtime rival, Sebastian Grimm. Grimm is Leo’s complete opposite—respected, exceptionally talented, and absolutely insufferable.

Heavy is the crown James has been born to wear, especially as the first Black heir to the British throne. But with his father’s recent passing, and with a new boyfriend to hide, James is woefully unprepared for the sudden shine of public scrutiny. When his secrets come spilling forth across tabloid pages and the man he thought he loved has suddenly disappeared, James finds himself on the precipice of ruin. As every detail of his life becomes public knowledge, his sense of safety is shattered and the people he trusts the most become the likeliest suspects.

The Holy Thief is the remarkable memoir of an amazing man. It is a true-life gangster story, a passionate love story, and a case of study in redemption. Regardless of your faith, you will find his story tragic, funny, uplifting, and inspirational.

A Concise History of the Middle East provides a comprehensive introduction to the history of this region. Spanning from the pre-Islamic era to the present, it explores the evolution of Middle Eastern institutions and culture, the influence of European colonialism and Western imperialism, regional modernization efforts, the struggle of various peoples for political independence, the Arab–Israel conflict, the reassertion of Islamist values and power, the issues surrounding the Palestinian Question, and more.

Over the past few decades, a handful of scientists have been racing to explain a disturbing aspect of our universe: only four percent of it consists of the matter that makes up you, me, our books, and every star and planet. The rest is completely unknown. Richard Panek tells the dramatic story of the quest to find this “dark” matter and an even more bizarre substance called “dark energy”. This is perhaps the greatest mystery in all of science, and solving it will bring fame, funding, and certainly a Nobel Prize.

One of the great insights of science is that the universe has an underlying order. The supreme goal of physicists is to understand this order through laws that describe the behavior of the most basic particles and the forces between them. For centuries, we have searched for these laws by studying the results of experiments. Since the 1970s, however, experiments at the world's most powerful atom-smashers have offered few new clues. So some of the world's leading physicists have looked to a different source of insight: modern mathematics.

We see notebooks everywhere we go. But where did these indispensable implements come from? How did they revolutionize our lives? And how can using a notebook help change the way you think? In this wide-ranging history, Roland Allen reveals how the notebook became our most dependable and versatile tool for creative thinking.

"A brilliant and brilliantly different" (Kiese Laymon), wrenching and redemptive coming-of-age memoir about the difficulty of growing up in a hazardous home and the glory of finding salvation in geek culture.

The Achaemenid Persian kings ruled over the largest empire of antiquity, stretching from Libya to the steppes of Asia and from Ethiopia to Pakistan. In Persians, historian Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones tells the epic story of this dynasty and the world it ruled. Drawing on Iranian inscriptions, cuneiform tablets, art, and archaeology, he shows how the Achaemenid Persian Empire was the world’s first superpower—one built, despite its imperial ambition, on cooperation and tolerance. This is the definitive history of the Achaemenid dynasty and its legacies in modern-day Iran.

Connie can't deny she's nervous about meeting her boyfriend's family. Spending the weekend at their ritzy woodland summer home, Evan's already given her fair warning that his parents are cold, snobbish, and especially unpleasant toward those outside their usual social circles. So when Evan's mother warmly greets them with open arms, Connie is as confused as he is. They're so friendly, in fact, Evan himself can hardly believe they're real. Then, while helping Evan's mother with dinner, Connie overhears strange noises coming from the basement—what almost sounds like voices calling out for help.

Karan Johar, one of Bollywood's iconic directors and producers, is on a mission to live his best life and help listeners do the same. As the listener experiences a revealing, intimate year in his life, they hear him call his inner circle of Bollywood celebrities who are his closest friends and most trusted experts, to discuss the most important bedrocks of living your best life.