A history of American ideas about life and death discusses how the age of discovery, Darwin's theories of evolution, and the space age changed ideas about life on Earth.

The United States is in a fifty-states-wide couples' counseling session, thinking about filing for divorce. Can a nation composed of states that are so different possibly hang together? Quinn calls us out state-by-state, and identifies the hypocrisies inherent in what we claim to believe and what we actually do. Within a framework of big-picture thinking about systems of government he skewers us all: red, blue, and purple-- while maintaining the same...