Quantum theory is so shocking that Einstein could not bring himself to accept it. It is so important that it provides the fundamental underpinning of all modern sciences. Without it, we'd have no computers, no science of molecular biology, no understanding of DNA, no genetic engineering.In Search of Schrodinger's Cat tells the complete story of quantum mechanics, a truth stranger than any fiction. John Gribbin takes us step by step into an even more bizarre and fascinating place, requiring only that we approach it with an open mind. He introduces the scientists who developed quantum theory. He investigates the atom, radiation, time travel, the birth of the universe, super conductors and life itself. And in a world full of its own delights, mysteries and surprises, he searches for Schrodinger's Cat - a search for quantum reality - as he brings every reader to a clear understanding of the most important area of scientific study today - quantum physics.In Search of Schrodinger's Cat is a fascinating and delightful introduction to the strange world of the quantum - an essential element in understanding today's world.

Brought to you by Penguin.A revelatory account of the racist conspiracy theory behind the global rise of authoritarian politics – from the prize-winning historian and number-one-bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi.Throughout the world, authoritarian movements are radically reshaping our politics and our lives. At the heart of them all lies ‘great replacement theory’, which insists that peoples of colour, migrants and minorities are being deliberately empowered to displace white majorities.In Chain of Ideas, Ibram X. Kendi shows how this conspiracy theory has mutated from the extremist fringe into a global ideology, embraced by leaders as varied as Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orbán, Narendra Modi, Jair Bolsonaro, Nigel Farage, Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump. He traces its historic roots in slavery, segregation, colonialism and Nazism, and shows how these age-old prejudices have been dressed in new language for a digital age.But this is not a book about extremists on the margins. From Anders Breivik’s massacre to the chants of the Charlottesville marchers, from Brexit slogans to the Christchurch shooting, Kendi shows how these ideas have crossed borders, inspired terror and are now re-shaping parties of government. Chain of Ideas is a penetrating history of how reactionary ideas have been repackaged as common sense, and how they shape the globe today.© Ibram X. Kendi 2026 (🅿) Penguin Audio 2026

An epic, heartbreaking, and deeply reported history of the disastrous humanitarian crisis at the southern border told through the lives of the migrants forced to risk everything and the policymakers who determine their fate, by New Yorker staff writer Jonathan Blitzer Everyone who makes the journey faces an impossible choice. Hundreds of thousands of people who arrive every year at the US-Mexico border travel far from their homes. An overwhelming share of them come from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, although many migrants come from farther away. Some are fleeing persecution, others crime or hunger. Very often it will not be their first attempt to cross. They may have already been deported from the United States, but it remains their only hope for safety and prosperity. Their homes have become uninhabitable. They will take their chances. This vast and unremitting crisis did not spring up overnight. Indeed, as Blitzer dramatizes with forensic, unprecedented reporting, it is the result of decades of misguided policy and sweeping corruption. Brilliantly weaving the stories of Central Americans whose lives have been devastated by chronic political conflict and violence with those of American activists, government officials, and the politicians responsible for the country’s tragically tangled immigration policy, Blitzer reveals the full, layered picture for the first time. Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here is an odyssey of struggle and resilience. With astonishing nuance and detail, Blitzer tells an epic story about the people whose lives ebb and flow across the border, and in doing so, he delves into the heart of American life itself. This vital and remarkable story has shaped the nation’s turbulent politics and culture in countless ways—and will almost certainly determine its future.

A powerful work of reportage and American history that braids the story of the forced removal of Native Americans onto treaty lands in the nation’s earliest days, and a small-town murder in the 1990s that led to a Supreme Court ruling reaffirming Native rights to that land more than a century later Before 2020, American Indian reservations made up roughly 55 million acres of land in the United States. Nearly 200 million acres are reserved for National Forests—in the emergence of this great nation, our government set aside more land for trees than for Indigenous peoples. In the 1830s, Muscogee people were rounded up by the US military at gunpoint and forced into exile halfway across the continent. At the time, they were promised this new land would be theirs for as long as the grass grew and the waters ran. But that promise was not kept. When Oklahoma was created on top of Muscogee land, the new state claimed their reservation no longer existed. Over a century later, a Muscogee citizen was sentenced to death for murdering another Muscogee citizen on tribal land. His defense attorneys argued the murder occurred on the reservation of his tribe, and therefore Oklahoma didn’t have the jurisdiction to execute him. Oklahoma asserted that the reservation no longer existed. In the summer of 2020, the Supreme Court settled the dispute. Its ruling that would ultimately underpin multiple reservations covering almost half the land in Oklahoma, including Nagle’s own Cherokee Nation. Here Rebecca Nagle recounts the generations-long fight for tribal land and sovereignty in eastern Oklahoma. By chronicling both the contemporary legal battle and historic acts of Indigenous resistance, By the Fire We Carry stands as a landmark work of American history. The story it tells exposes both the wrongs that our nation has committed and the Native-led battle for justice that has shaped our country.

Media pundits, politicians, and the public are often skeptical or ambivalent about granting asylum. They fear that asylum-seekers will impose economic and cultural costs and pose security threats to nationals. Consequently, governments of rich, democratic countries attempt to limit who can approach their borders, which often leads to refugees breaking immigration laws. In Refuge beyond Reach, David Scott FitzGerald traces how rich democracies have deliberately and systematically shut down most legal paths to safety. Drawing on official government documents, information obtained via WikiLeaks, and interviews with asylum seekers, he finds that for ninety-nine percent of refugees, the only way to find safety in one of the prosperous democracies of the Global North is to reach its territory and then ask for asylum. FitzGerald shows how the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia comply with the letter of law while violating the spirit of those laws through a range of deterrence methods -- first designed to keep out Jews fleeing the Nazis -- that have now evolved into a pervasive global system of "remote control." While some of the most draconian remote control practices continue in secret, Fitzgerald identifies some pressure points and finds that a diffuse humanitarian obligation to help those in need is more difficult for governments to evade than the law alone. Refuge beyond Reach addresses one of the world's most pressing challenges -- how to manage flows of refugees and other types of migrants -- and helps to identify the conditions under which individuals can access the protection of their universal rights.

In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America’s cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation—that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation—the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments—that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day. Through extraordinary revelations and extensive research that Ta-Nehisi Coates has lauded as "brilliant" (The Atlantic), Rothstein comes to chronicle nothing less than an untold story that begins in the 1920s, showing how this process of de jure segregation began with explicit racial zoning, as millions of African Americans moved in a great historical migration from the south to the north. As Jane Jacobs established in her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, it was the deeply flawed urban planning of the 1950s that created many of the impoverished neighborhoods we know. Now, Rothstein expands our understanding of this history, showing how government policies led to the creation of officially segregated public housing and the demolition of previously integrated neighborhoods. While urban areas rapidly deteriorated, the great American suburbanization of the post–World War II years was spurred on by federal subsidies for builders on the condition that no homes be sold to African Americans. Finally, Rothstein shows how police and prosecutors brutally upheld these standards by supporting violent resistance to black families in white neighborhoods. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited future discrimination but did nothing to reverse residential patterns that had become deeply embedded. Yet recent outbursts of violence in cities like Baltimore, Ferguson, and Minneapolis show us precisely how the legacy of these earlier eras contributes to persistent racial unrest. “The American landscape will never look the same to readers of this important book” (Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund), as Rothstein’s invaluable examination shows that only by relearning this history can we finally pave the way for the nation to remedy its unconstitutional past.

This is the women’s war, just as much as it is the men’s. They have waited long enough for their turn . . . This was never the story of one woman, or two. It was the story of them all . . . In the middle of the night, a woman wakes to find her beloved city engulfed in flames. Ten seemingly endless years of conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans are over. Troy has fallen. From the Trojan women whose fates now lie in the hands of the Greeks, to the Amazon princess who fought Achilles on their behalf, to Penelope awaiting the return of Odysseus, to the three goddesses whose feud started it all, these are the stories of the women whose lives, loves, and rivalries were forever altered by this long and tragic war. A woman’s epic, powerfully imbued with new life, A Thousand Ships puts the women, girls and goddesses at the center of the Western world’s great tale ever told.

What is a Victorian lady's formula for love? Mix one brilliant noblewoman and her enigmatic protection officer. Add in a measure of danger and attraction. Heat over the warmth of humor and friendship, and the result is more than simple chemistry—it's elemental. Lady Violet Hughes is keeping secrets. First, she founded a clandestine sanctuary for England's most brilliant female scientists. Second, she is using her genius on a confidential mission for the Crown. But the biggest secret of all? Her feelings for protection officer Arthur Kneland. Solitary and reserved, Arthur learned the hard way to put duty first. But the more time he spends in the company of Violet and the eccentric club members, the more his best intentions go up in flames. Literally. When a shadowy threat infiltrates Violet's laboratories, endangering her life and her work, scientist and bodyguard will find all their theories put to the test—and learn that the most important discoveries are those of the heart.

Inspired by true events that rocked the nation, a profoundly moving novel about a Black nurse in post-segregation Alabama who blows the whistle on a terrible wrong done to her patients, from the New York Times bestselling author of Wench. Montgomery, Alabama 1973. Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend has big plans to make a difference, especially in her African American community. At the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, she intends to help women make their own choices for their lives and bodies. But when her first week on the job takes her down a dusty country road to a worn down one-room cabin, she’s shocked to learn that her new patients are children—just 11 and 13 years old. Neither of the Williams sisters has even kissed a boy, but they are poor and Black and for those handling the family’s welfare benefits that’s reason enough to have the girls on birth control. As Civil grapples with her role, she takes India, Erica and their family into her heart. Until one day, she arrives at the door to learn the unthinkable has happened and nothing will ever be the same for any of them. Decades later, with her daughter grown and a long career in her wake, Dr. Civil Townsend is ready to retire, to find her peace and to leave the past behind. But there are people and stories that refuse to be forgotten.That must not be forgotten. Because history repeats what we don’t remember.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Kaikeyi, a galvanizing stand-alone contemporary fantasy following a burnt-out reproductive health care worker as she fights back against escalating attacks on her clinic and the malevolent forces in hot pursuit of her newly acquired power. As a reproductive health care worker in Chicago, Nisha is barely staying afloat in the ocean of abortion bans, screaming protestors, and her own all-consuming depression. When she escapes to the Indian art exhibit at her favorite museum for a brief respite, Nisha suddenly finds herself bleeding, disoriented, and collapsed on the ground. The last thing she remembers is the statue that beckoned her to touch it. In the days that follow, Nisha feels a strange power coursing within her, one that attracts a host of dangerous and enigmatic characters who covet it for themselves. Facing threats both otherworldly and distinctly human, Nisha must navigate uncertain alliances to piece together the centuries-old mystery of her odd and terrifying abilities. And as danger closes in on her loved ones, community, and the clinic she’s determined to protect, Nisha must make a choice about the life she wants—and fight all the demons standing in her way to get it.

A thriller about four strangers, a blizzard, a kidnapped child, and a determined young woman desperate to unmask and outwit a vicious psychopath A kidnapped little girl locked in a stranger’s van. No help for miles. What would you do? On her way to Utah to see her dying mother, college student Darby Thorne gets caught in a fierce blizzard in the mountains of Colorado. With the roads impassable, she’s forced to wait out the storm at a remote highway rest stop. Inside are some vending machines, a coffee maker, and four complete strangers. Desperate to find a signal to call home, Darby goes back out into the storm . . . and makes a horrifying discovery. In the back of the van parked next to her car, a little girl is locked in an animal crate. Who is the child? Why has she been taken? And how can Darby save her? There is no cell phone reception, no telephone, and no way out. One of her fellow travelers is a kidnapper. But which one? Trapped in an increasingly dangerous situation, with a child’s life and her own on the line, Darby must find a way to break the girl out of the van and escape. But who can she trust?