The popular image of Alexander Graham Bell is that of an elderly American patriarch, memorable only for his paunch, his Santa Claus beard, and the invention of the telephone. In this magisterial reassessment based on thorough new research, acclaimed biographer Charlotte Gray reveals Bell’s wide-ranging passion for invention and delves into the private life that supported his genius. The child of a speech therapist and a deaf mother, and possessed of superbly acute hearing, Bell developed an early interest in sound. His understanding of how sound waves might relate to electrical waves enabled him to invent the “talking telegraph” be- fore his rivals, even as he undertook a tempestuous courtship of the woman who would become his wife and mainstay. In an intensely competitive age, Bell seemed to shun fame and fortune. Yet many of his innovations—electric heating, using light to transmit sound, electronic mail, composting toilets, the artificial lung—were far ahead of their time. His pioneering ideas about sound, flight, genetics, and even the engineering of complex structures such as stadium roofs still resonate today. This is an essential portrait of an American giant whose innovations revolutionized the modern world.

It is said that Life crawled up from the slime of the sea-bottoms and became Man because of inherent greatness bred into him before the dawn of time. But perhaps this urge was not as formless as we think.

ECPA 2014 Christian Book Award Winner (Non-Fiction)! Fifty years after his death, C. S. Lewis continues to inspire and fascinate millions. His legacy remains varied and vast. He was a towering intellectual figure, a popular fiction author who inspired a global movie franchise around the world of Narnia, and an atheist-turned-Christian thinker. In C.S. Lewis—A Life, Alister McGrath, prolific author and respected professor at King’s College of London, paints a definitive portrait of the life of C. S. Lewis. After thoroughly examining recently published Lewis correspondence, Alister challenges some of the previously held beliefs about the exact timing of Lewis’s shift from atheism to theism and then to Christianity. He paints a portrait of an eccentric thinker who became an inspiring, though reluctant, prophet for our times. You won’t want to miss this fascinating portrait of a creative genius who inspired generations.

Impeccably researched, and written with Charlotte Gray’s unerring eye for personal and historical detail, Reluctant Genius tells the story of a man very different from his public image. Most of us think of Alexander Graham Bell as a white-bearded sage, but the young Alec Bell was a passionate and wild-eyed genius, a man given to fits of brilliance and melancholy. His technologies for photophones, tetrahedrals, flying machines and hydrodomes laid the groundwork for future achievement. And he adored his wife, Mabel, a beautiful, deaf young woman from a blueblood Boston family. Gray goes where no other writer has gone, delving deeply into Bell’s personality and into his intense relationship with Mabel, whose background and temperament were a startling contrast to his own. Reluctant Genius takes us on an intimate journey into the golden age of invention and the vibrant life of a man whose work shaped our world.

". . . rarely have inventor and invention been better served than in this book." – New York Times Book Review Here, Edwin Grosvenor, American Heritage's publisher and Bell's great-grandson, tells the dramatic story of the race to invent the telephone and how Bell's patent for it would become the most valuable ever issued. He also writes of Bell's other extraordinary inventions: the first transmission of sound over light waves, metal detector, first practical phonograph, and early airplanes, including the first to fly in Canada. And he examines Bell's humanitarian efforts, including support for women's suffrage, civil rights, and speeches about what he warned would be a "greenhouse effect" of pollution causing global warming.

A book for the Wimpy Kid who has grown into a Wimpy Teen Larkin Pace desperately wants a new camcorder. How else is he going to become the next great filmmaker? But his dad won’t give him any money, his sister is determined to make his life miserable, and his nemesis Dalton Cooke is trying to steal his girlfriend. Now this height-challenged aspiring director must chronicle his wacky life for a freshman English assignment.

"Pure jelly-bean-enhanced entertainment and a perfect escape."—The New York Times The Smartest Kid in the Universe goes to genius camp in book two of this action-packed series from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library! Jake McQuade is the Smartest Kid in the Universe and he's back to defend his title! This time, he is heading off to a camp for geniuses sponsored by billionaire tech mogul and inventor, Zane Zinkle. Genius camp is not like regular camp. There are limo buses, robot polar bears, and high-tech cabins with high-tech toilets! But it isn’t all fun and games at camp, especially when Jake goes up against the artificially intelligent Virtuoso quantum computer—the smartest machine in the universe—which also happens to be Zinkle’s latest genius creation! It's boy versus bot in this epic showdown packed with puzzles, action, adventure, and hilarious, jelly bean-fueled fun! Bonus puzzle included! "Chris Grabenstein just might be the smartest writer for kids in the universe." —James Patterson "Clever, fast-paced and incredibly funny." --Stuart Gibbs, New York Times Bestselling author of Spy School