"Over the past four billion years of Earth's history, three organisms-cyanobacteria, plants, and humans--have altered the planet in profound ways by harnessing the availability of five key elements. Hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus are the most common elements in all forms of life on Earth, and all five circulate between the biotic and abiotic world in biogeochemical cycles. When organisms tap into stores of these elements and change...

"In a fable for grown-ups by cartoonist Bill Watterson, a long-ago kingdom is afflicted with unexplainable calamities. Hoping to end the torment, the king dispatches his knights to discover the source of the mysterious events. Years later, a single battered knight returns" -- From Bill Watterson, bestselling creator of the beloved comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, and John Kascht, one of America's most renowned caricaturists, comes a mysterious and...

Meticulously researched, this comprehensive history of the famed liberal attorney Clarence Darrow's defense of John Scopes in a blockbuster legal proceeding that caught the attention of the nation calls upon our past to unite Americans in the defense of the free exchange of ideas.

"Leigh grew up in Rotterdam, drawn to the waterfront as an escape from her unhappy home life and volatile father. Enchanted by the undersea world of her childhood, she excels in marine biology, traveling the globe to study ancient organisms. When a trench is discovered in the Atlantic Ocean, Leigh joins the exploration team, hoping to find evidence of Earth's first life forms -- what she instead finds calls into question everything we know about our...