Mann shows how a new generation of researchers equipped with novel scientific techniques have come to previously unheard-of conclusions about the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans: In 1491 there were probably more people living in the Americas than in Europe. Certain cities--such as Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital--were greater in population than any European city. Tenochtitlán, unlike any capital in Europe at that time, had running water,...

The first popular book to explain the dramatic theory behind the Moon's genesis. This lively science history relates one of the great recent breakthroughs in planetary astronomy-a successful theory of the birth of the Moon. Science journalist Dana Mackenzie traces the evolution of this theory, one little known outside the scientific community: a Mars-sized object collided with Earth some four billion years ago, and the remains of this colossal explosion-the...

This study of Native American societies is adapted for younger readers from Charles C. Mann's best-selling 1491. Turning conventional wisdom on its head, the book argues that the people of North and South America lived in enormous cities, raised pyramids hundreds of years before the Egyptians did, engineered corn, and farmed the rainforests.

"Sixty-six million years ago, an object the size of a city descended from space to crash into Earth, creating a devastating cataclysm that killed off the dinosaurs, along with three-quarters of the other species on the planet. What was its origin? In Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs, Lisa Randall proposes it was a comet that was dislodged from its orbit as the Solar System passed through a disk of dark matter embedded in the Milky Way. In a sense, it...

If all of Earth's history were compressed into a twenty-four-hour clock, people-like creatures didn't show up until the last minute: 11:59 p.m. Ever wonder what happened before humans got here? Well, almost 14 billion years ago, it all started with a BIG BANG, and what began as a cloud of gas, dust, and rock eventually took shape and bloomed into a molten sphere. Battered by asteroid collisions, ice ages, shifting tectonic plates, massive thaws, and...

Why is the world the way it is? How did we get here? Does everything happen for a reason or are some things left to chance? Philosophers and theologians have pondered these questions for millennia, but startling scientific discoveries over the past half century are revealing that we live in a world driven by chance. A Series of Fortunate Events tells the story of the awesome power of chance and how it is the surprising source of all the beauty and...

Robert Langdon, Harvard professor of symbology and religious iconology, arrives at the ultramodern Guggenheim Museum Bilbao to attend a major announcement-the unveiling of a discovery that “will change the face of science forever.” The evening's host is Edmond Kirsch, a forty-year-old billionaire and futurist whose dazzling high-tech inventions and audacious predictions have made him a renowned global figure. Kirsch, who was one of Langdon's first...

When Arnold wishes he had more information for his family tree, Ms. Frizzle revs up the Magic School Bus and the class zooms back to prehistoric times. First stop: 3.5 billion years ago! There aren't any people around to ask for directions. Luckily Ms. Frizzle has a plan, and the class is right there to watch simple cells become sponges and then fish and dinosaurs, then mammals and early primates and, eventually, modern humans. It's the longest class...

In our unique genomes, every one of us carries the story of our species--births, deaths, disease, war, famine, migration, and a lot of sex. But those stories have always been locked away--until now. Who are our ancestors? Where did they come from? Geneticists have suddenly become historians, and the hard evidence in our DNA has blown the lid off what we thought we knew. Acclaimed science writer Adam Rutherford explains exactly how genomics is completely...

By revealing the fount of all humanity while also exposing one of the most important and bitter debates in contemporary science, AFRICAN EXODUS reaches beyond paleoanthropology to politics and culture to answer definitively THE BELL CURVE.