After a bout with the measles that left his vision impaired, Harvard undergrad Richard Henry Dana signed up for a two-year engagement as a sailor, thinking that the fresh sea air might improve his vision. The diary that Dana kept during his stint on the open sea formed the basis for this wildly popular memoir, which was later made into a movie. A must-read for fans of rip-roaring nautical tales or social history buffs.

A professor follows a colleague's wife to India after falling in love with her at first sight.

From the bestselling author of the acclaimed Chaos and Genius comes a thoughtful and provocative exploration of the big ideas of the modern era: Information, communication, and information theory. 
 
Acclaimed science writer James Gleick presents an eye-opening vision of how our relationship to information has transformed the very nature of human consciousness. A fascinating intellectual journey through the

...

The adventures of a three-legged snapping turtle as she travels from the headwaters to the mouth of the Mississippi River illustrate the life cycle of the turtle and the geography, history, geology, and climate of the river.

A remarkably imagined tale of four generations, centered on a land- owning tyrant, and his wife, daughter and grandchild. As a girl, Clara del Valle can read fortunes, make objects move as if they had lives of their own, and predict the future. Following the mysterious death of her sister, Rosa the Beautiful, Clara is mute for nine years. When she breaks her silence, it is to announce that she will be married soon to the stern and volatile landowner...

"Based on more than two hundred personal interviews with both current and former Scientologists--both famous and less well known--and years of archival research, Lawrence Wright uses his extraordinary investigative skills to uncover for us the inner workings of the Church of Scientology: its origins in the imagination of science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard; its struggles to find acceptance as a legitimate (and legally acknowledged) religion; its...

Story of adolescence, of love, and of a boy who emerged from the tumult as a man and composer.

"Exodus is an international publishing phenomenon--the towering novel of the twentieth century's most dramatic geopolitical event. Leon Uris magnificently portrays the birth of a new nation in the midst of enemies--the beginning of an earthshaking struggle for power. Here is the tale that swept the world with its the story of an American nurse, an Israeli freedom fighter caught up in a glorious, heartbreaking, triumphant era."--