avatar

totalwhiner

1673 points

0% overlap
Classics Starter Pack Vol I
Made for the Movies
Level 5
My Taste
Shatter Me
Of Monsters and Mainframes
The Foxhole Court (All for the Game, #1)
The Hunger Games
The God of the Woods
Reading...
Disney High: The Untold Story of the Rise and Fall of Disney Channel's Tween Empire
54%
avatar

totalwhiner TBR'd a book

1h

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World

Steve Brusatte

The dinosaurs. Sixty-six million years ago, the Earth’s most fearsome creatures vanished. Today they remain one of our planet’s great mysteries. Now The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs reveals their extraordinary, 200-million-year-long story as never before. In this captivating narrative (enlivened with more than seventy original illustrations and photographs), Steve Brusatte, a young American paleontologist who has emerged as one of the foremost stars of the field—naming fifteen new species and leading groundbreaking scientific studies and fieldwork—masterfully tells the complete, surprising, and new history of the dinosaurs, drawing on cutting-edge science to dramatically bring to life their lost world and illuminate their enigmatic origins, spectacular flourishing, astonishing diversity, cataclysmic extinction, and startling living legacy. Captivating and revelatory, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs is a book for the ages. Brusatte traces the evolution of dinosaurs from their inauspicious start as small shadow dwellers—themselves the beneficiaries of a mass extinction caused by volcanic eruptions at the beginning of the Triassic period—into the dominant array of species every wide-eyed child memorizes today, T. rex, Triceratops, Brontosaurus, and more. This gifted scientist and writer re-creates the dinosaurs’ peak during the Jurassic and Cretaceous, when thousands of species thrived, and winged and feathered dinosaurs, the prehistoric ancestors of modern birds, emerged. The story continues to the end of the Cretaceous period, when a giant asteroid or comet struck the planet and nearly every dinosaur species (but not all) died out, in the most extraordinary extinction event in earth’s history, one full of lessons for today as we confront a “sixth extinction.” Brusatte also recalls compelling stories from his globe-trotting expeditions during one of the most exciting eras in dinosaur research—which he calls “a new golden age of discovery”—and offers thrilling accounts of some of the remarkable findings he and his colleagues have made, including primitive human-sized tyrannosaurs; monstrous carnivores even larger than T. rex; and paradigm-shifting feathered raptors from China. An electrifying scientific history that unearths the dinosaurs’ epic saga, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs will be a definitive and treasured account for decades to come.

0
  • Battle of the Round House
    Sep 11, 2026
    Battle of the Round HouseTananarive Due
    3.0
    Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

    It was fine. That is what I am finding with this collection so far. I am planning to read more of her work which I am looking forward to.

    0
  • I Don't Wish You Well
    avatar
    totalwhiner reviewed...
    Sep 11, 2026
    I Don't Wish You WellJumata Emill
    3.5
    Enjoyment: 4.0Quality: 4.0Characters: 3.0Plot: 2.0Audiobook: 3.5
    🏳️‍🌈
    🔪
    🏈
    0
  • The Everlasting
    Sep 08, 2026
    The EverlastingAlix E. Harrow
    4.5
    Enjoyment: 4.0Quality: 5.0Characters: 4.5Plot: 4.0Audiobook: 5.0
    0
  • The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore
    Sep 06, 2026
    The Bookshop: A History of the American BookstoreEvan Friss
    4.0
    Enjoyment: Quality: 5.0Characters: Plot:
    📚️
    📖
    🧾

    A very in depth look at this history of bookstores. The amount of reference notes is astounding (~80 pages for notes and indexes). I definitely enjoyed reading more about the latter portion, but obviously to share the history, you need the history. This book not only goes over the origins of the bookstore, but many specialized types of bookstores and their impact.

    0
  • avatar

    totalwhiner finished a book

    1w

    The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore

    The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore

    Evan Friss

    An affectionate and engaging history of the American bookstore and its central place in American cultural life, from department stores to indies, from highbrow dealers trading in first editions to sidewalk vendors, and from chains to special-interest community destinations Bookstores have always been unlike any other kind of store, shaping readers and writers, and influencing our tastes, thoughts, and politics. They nurture local communities while creating new ones of their own. Bookshops are powerful spaces, but they are also endangered ones. In The Bookshop, we see those stakes: what has been, and what might be lost. Evan Friss’s history of the bookshop draws on oral histories, archival collections, municipal records, diaries, letters, and interviews with leading booksellers to offer a fascinating look at this institution beloved by so many. The story begins with Benjamin Franklin’s first bookstore in Philadelphia and takes us to a range of booksellers including The Strand, Chicago’s Marshall Field & Company, Gotham Book Mart, specialty stores like Oscar Wilde and Drum and Spear, sidewalk sellers of used books, Barnes & Noble, Amazon Books, and Parnassus. The Bookshop is also a history of the leading figures in American bookselling, often impassioned eccentrics, and a history of how books have been marketed and sold over more than two centuries—including, for example, a 3,000-pound elephant who appeared to sign books at Marshall Field’s in 1944. The Bookshop is a love letter to bookstores, a charming chronicle for anyone who cherishes these sanctuaries of literature, and essential reading to understand how these vital institutions have shaped American life—and why we still need them.

    0