John Bramblitt makes his living as a visual artist. His works have been sold in over twenty different countries, and he’s received three Presidential Service awards for the art workshops he teaches. He’s painted portraits of skateboarder Tony Hawk and blues legend Pops Carter. He’s given talks about his art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and there has even been a documentary made about him. And . . . he’s blind. When Bramblitt was declared legally blind ten years ago due to complications with epilepsy, his hopes of becoming a creative writing teacher were shattered and he sunk into a deep depression. He felt disconnected from family and friends, alienated and alone. But then something amazing happened--he discovered painting. He learned to distinguish between different colored paints by feeling their textures with his fingers. He taught himself how to paint using raised lines to help him find his way around the canvas, and through something called haptic visualization, which enables him to "see" his subjects through touch. He now paints amazingly lifelike portraits of people he's never seen--including his wife and son. Shouting in the Dark is the story of Bramblitt's life, his journey navigating through this new territory of blindness, and how he ultimately rekindles his joy, passion, and relationships through art.

Acclaimed poet George Ella Lyon returns with a brilliant new collection that traces the arc of a woman's life from girlhood to mature womanhood. In answer to the first poem, "Little Girl Who Knows Too Much," Lyon embarks on a journey from a child who was silenced to "Some Big Loud Woman" who claims the right to a voice. Along the way she meets allies and guides including Dickinson, Woolf, Mary Travers, Grace Paley, and the giver of dreams. As sailors once navigated by the stars, so Lyon navigates by these luminaries. They are not distant, though. Their light is always near. Alternately witty, tender, shocking, and visionary, Back to the Light reveals the reunion of body and spirit, truth and story. In the process, it demonstrates the power of poetry to liberate and to heal.

One of the most prolific and highly regarded rock photographers of all time, Neal Preston began working with Queen in the mid 1970s as their official tour photographer. His incredible work during this first tour forged a relationship with the band that has lasted 50 years. Featuring over 300 images and produced in collaboration with the band, this book is an exhilarating ride through their years on the road together, the pages vibrating with a palpable energy.

A Look at a Legacy Faced with potential blindness because of a recurring detached retina, James Moore makes a last attempt to save the sight in his right eye. Hoping for a miracle, he travels from Austin to Memphis to meet with eye specialist, Steve Charles, a physician whose inventions of machines, tools, and techniques have been transformative in the field of retinal surgery, and who has performed more vitreoretinal procedures than anyone in history. As he struggles to see, Moore comes to realize that while no doctor has perhaps had a broader impact on vision and ophthalmological surgery, no one outside the field really knows who Charles is or what he’s accomplished. Moore decides to change that. New York Times best-selling author of Bush’s Brain and Emmy award-winning television news correspondent James Moore documents his own journey in the struggle to save his eyesight, while also weaving in a detailed account of the doctor’s profound accomplishments and their global impact on people. Part biography, part autobiography, Give Back the Light is a dual-track narrative that highlights the challenges and achievements of modern health care. ​This is a book about a physician who has been intimately involved in saving the vision of millions of people through the spread of his technology and surgical techniques. Dr. Charles is an historical and yet mostly unknown figure who has lived a remarkable life of great importance. In the telling, Moore helps readers view the wider world and their contributions to it in different light, and offers a prosaic understanding of the sheer joy of just seeing.

They left in the middle of the night—often carrying little more than the knowledge to follow the North Star. Between 1830 and the end of the Civil War in 1865, an estimated one hundred thousand slaves became passengers on the Underground Railroad, a journey of untold hardship, in search of freedom. In Through Darkness to Light: Photographs Along the Underground Railroad, Jeanine Michna-Bales presents a remarkable series of images following a route from the cotton plantations of central Louisiana, through the cypress swamps of Mississippi and the plains of Indiana, north to the Canadian border— a path of nearly fourteen hundred miles. The culmination of a ten-year research quest, Through Darkness to Light imagines a journey along the Underground Railroad as it might have appeared to any freedom seeker. Framing the powerful visual narrative is an introduction by Michna-Bales; a foreword by noted politician, pastor, and civil rights activist Andrew J. Young; and essays by Fergus M. Bordewich, Robert F. Darden, and Eric R. Jackson.

In the early 1990s, a NASA-led team of scientists changed the way we view the universe. With the COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) project, they showed that the microwave radiation that fills the universe must have come from the Big Bang -- effectively proving the Big Bang theory beyond any doubt. It was one of the greatest scientific findings of our generation, perhaps of all time. In The Very First Light, John Mather, one of COBE's leaders, and science writer John Boslough tell the story of how it was achieved. A gripping tale of big money, bigger egos, tense politics, and cutting-edge engineering, The Very First Light offers a rare insider's account of the world of big science.