Social Science

Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner offer the long-awaited paperback edition of Freakonomics, the runaway bestseller, including six Freakonomics columns from the New York Times Magazine and a Q & A with the authors.

Even as the Vance family manages to achieve some semblance of ‘The American Dream,’ J.D. Vance shows how deeply the scars of poverty—and the familial and societal ills that it engendered—have compromised the health and happiness of each generation. A must-read for those interested in the ramifications of American social, economic, and political policy.

This is a stunning take on the topic of race and police brutality that has quickly climbed the ranks to take its place as one of the greatest YA novels of our time. Starr Carter will not stay silent in the face of injustice, and her message has been amplified thanks to the movie adaptation starring Amandla Stenberg.

Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is sensational — the rare book that takes a well-worn subject and adds an unforgettable spin. It follows the twin narratives of Marie-Laure, a blind French girl, and Werner, a German orphan recruited to the military, at the height of WWII. The story is haunting, the imagery of war-torn France beautiful, and the characters so rich in depth that devouring the entire book feels inevitable.

A simple premise belies the provocative racial themes that unfold in this slow burn thriller nominated for the National Book Award in Fiction. A white Brooklyn family rents a luxurious house in the Hamptons for a weeklong getaway, but they’re barely settled in when there’s a late night knock at the door. It’s an older Black couple claiming to be the owners who rented the house out, but they’re back due to a severe power outage in the city. With no internet or cell phone access in this remote area, it’s difficult to verify what’s really going on. The tension keeps ratcheting up until the pulse-pounding end. Netflix has already scooped up the movie rights with Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali to star.

This is the first authoritative edition of one of the most significant children’s books of the twentieth century. Winner of the 1961 Newbery Medal, Island of the Blue Dolphins tells the story of a girl left alone for eighteen years in the aftermath of violent encounters with Europeans on her home island off the coast of Southern California. This special edition incl

Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards A groundbreaking work of science fiction, The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of a lone human emissary to Winter, an alien world whose inhabitants can change their gender. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of th

“Braiding Sweetgrass” has been a mainstay on the New York Times bestseller list since its release, so we’re not surprised this one’s a community favorite. Author Kimmerer has built several bridges with this book — between modern science and Potawatomi traditions, and between humankind and the natural world.

In 1993 Greg Mortenson was the exhausted survivor of a failed attempt to ascend K2, an American climbing bum wandering emaciated and lost through Pakistan's Karakoram Himalaya. After he was taken in and nursed back to health by the people of an impoverished Pakistani village, Mortenson promised to return one day and build them a school. From that rash, earnest promise grew

A New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Amazon Charts Bestseller! "The glowing ghosts of the radium girls haunt us still." —NPR Books  Discover the gripping and inspiring true story of The Radium Girls, a groundbreaking work by acclaimed author Kate Moore. Immerse yourself in this co

Thanks to Margot Lee Shetterly’s blockbuster book, the black female mathematicians whose calculations were critical to winning the space race in a still-segregated America are a hidden history no more. A crucial story that challenges our conceptions around race and gender.

Few authors have the power to truly expand or alter your worldview, but Yuval Noah Harari is certainly among those few. Where Harari’s “Sapiens” gave a unique look at humanity’s evolutionary past, “Homo Deus” postulates on our possible futures.

A critically acclaimed #1 New York Times bestseller with more than one million copies in print and a major motion picture! Gritty with pain, betrayal, and brutality, this incredible true story also shines with an unexpected, life-changing love. Meet Denver, raised under plantation-style slavery in Louisiana until he escaped the “Man” in t

The first science fiction written by a Black woman, Kindred has become a cornerstone of Black American literature. This combination of slave memoir, fantasy, and historical fiction is a novel of rich literary complexity. Having just celebrated her 26th birthday in 1976 California, Dana, an African-American woman, is suddenly and inexplicably wrenched through time into ante

Narrated by the award-winning Bahni Turpin and covering topics from Scrabble to Lena Dunham, Gay’s essays prove she’s both a funny & insightful cultural critic & a compassionate observer of human nature.

Richard Wright's powerful and unforgettable memoir of his journey from innocence to experience in the Jim Crow South. At once an unashamed confession and a profound indictment, Black Boy is a poignant record of struggle and endurance—a seminal literary work that illuminates our own time. When it exploded onto the literary scene in 1945, <

As the most influential anthropologist of his generation, Claude Lévi-Strauss left a profound mark on the development of twentieth-century thought. Through a mixture of insights gleaned from linguistics, sociology, and ethnology, Lévi-Strauss elaborated his theory of structural unity in culture and became the preeminent representative of structural anthropology. La Pens

"EITHER AMERICA WILL DESTROY IGNORANCE OR IGNORANCE WILL DESTROY THE UNITED STATES." -W.E.B. Du Bois This classic groundbreaking work of American literature first published in 1903 is a cornerstone of African-American literary history and a seminal work in the field of sociology. W.E.B. Du Bois, who drew from his own experiences as an African-Ameri