Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. Chances are, though, he won’t have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old “human error” are much more likely to kill him first. But Mark isn’t ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills — and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit — he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

This jaw-dropping book pulls back the curtain on the alluring yet perilous world of American sports gambling.Everybody Loses is the first major investigation into America’s sports gambling industry. Journalist Danny Funt has obtained wild stories and stunning admissions by interviewing the power players of the betting boom. They reveal the alarming consequences playing out as our nation of sports fans transforms into a nation of sports gamblers. Many people within the business, including high up at the dominant companies FanDuel and DraftKings, are increasingly troubled about the methods they’ve been using to bleed Americans dry. As one former sportsbook executive says, they’re “selling that you can win, but you can’t.” Another confesses “you don’t feel good about it, that’s for sure.” But the money has proven to be irresistible. In Everybody Loses, sportsbook employees divulge the perks they offer their biggest losers to keep them hooked, from courtside seats to tossing the first pitch at an MLB game. Oddsmakers spill their methods of skewing the numbers in their favor. Lobbyists detail how they converted skeptical politicians into gambling industry cheerleaders. Professional gamblers describe the network of “beards” they use to circumvent the industry’s attempts to block them from winning. Insiders recall their secret meetings with NBA, NFL, and MLB executives, where they laid out how much money the leagues stood to make by partnering with sportsbooks. Athletes describe the tireless harassment they get from gamblers. Addicts talk about their attempts to hide their habit. Students who are legally too young to gamble talk about how easy it is to get on the apps. Perfect for sports fans, concerned parents, and anyone intrigued by the intersection of money and morals, this book is crucial to understanding why sports gambling is suddenly everywhere—and why the odds are so great that things will soon spiral out of control.

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. Chances are, though, he won’t have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old “human error” are much more likely to kill him first. But Mark isn’t ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills — and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit — he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

This jaw-dropping book pulls back the curtain on the alluring yet perilous world of American sports gambling.Everybody Loses is the first major investigation into America’s sports gambling industry. Journalist Danny Funt has obtained wild stories and stunning admissions by interviewing the power players of the betting boom. They reveal the alarming consequences playing out as our nation of sports fans transforms into a nation of sports gamblers. Many people within the business, including high up at the dominant companies FanDuel and DraftKings, are increasingly troubled about the methods they’ve been using to bleed Americans dry. As one former sportsbook executive says, they’re “selling that you can win, but you can’t.” Another confesses “you don’t feel good about it, that’s for sure.” But the money has proven to be irresistible. In Everybody Loses, sportsbook employees divulge the perks they offer their biggest losers to keep them hooked, from courtside seats to tossing the first pitch at an MLB game. Oddsmakers spill their methods of skewing the numbers in their favor. Lobbyists detail how they converted skeptical politicians into gambling industry cheerleaders. Professional gamblers describe the network of “beards” they use to circumvent the industry’s attempts to block them from winning. Insiders recall their secret meetings with NBA, NFL, and MLB executives, where they laid out how much money the leagues stood to make by partnering with sportsbooks. Athletes describe the tireless harassment they get from gamblers. Addicts talk about their attempts to hide their habit. Students who are legally too young to gamble talk about how easy it is to get on the apps. Perfect for sports fans, concerned parents, and anyone intrigued by the intersection of money and morals, this book is crucial to understanding why sports gambling is suddenly everywhere—and why the odds are so great that things will soon spiral out of control.

“I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why.” They are an unlikely pair: George is "small and quick and dark of face"; Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a "family," clinging together in the face of loneliness and alienation. Laborers in California's dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. But George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own. While the powerlessness of the laboring class is a recurring theme in Steinbeck's work of the late 1930s, he narrowed his focus when composing Of Mice and Men, creating an intimate portrait of two men facing a world marked by petty tyranny, misunderstanding, jealousy, and callousness. But though the scope is narrow, the theme is universal: a friendship and a shared dream that makes an individual's existence meaningful. A unique perspective on life's hardships, this story has achieved the status of timeless classic due to its remarkable success as a novel, a Broadway play, and three acclaimed films.

First published in 1903, The Call of the Wild is regarded as Jack London's masterpiece. Based on London's experiences as a gold prospector in the Canadian wilderness and his ideas about nature and the struggle for existence, The Call of the Wild is a tale about unbreakable spirit and the fight for survival in the frozen Alaskan Klondike.

A searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece. A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other. The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,” are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, a book that galvanized—and sometimes outraged—millions of readers. First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.

Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, heir to a noble family tasked with ruling an inhospitable world where the only thing of value is the “spice” melange, a drug capable of extending life and enhancing consciousness. Coveted across the known universe, melange is a prize worth killing for... When House Atreides is betrayed, the destruction of Paul’s family will set the boy on a journey toward a destiny greater than he could ever have imagined. And as he evolves into the mysterious man known as Muad’Dib, he will bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald's third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. This exemplary novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when The New York Times noted "gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession," it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s. The Great Gatsby is one of the great classics of twentieth-century literature. (from the back cover)