“A History of What Comes Next is a riveting blend of historical thriller and scientific speculation, which never loses its core of humanity.”—James Rollins, #1 New York Times bestselling author For generations, Mia’s family has shaped human history to push them to the stars. The year is 1945 and now it is her turn. Her mission: to lure scientist Wernher Von Braun away from the Nazi party and into the American rocket program, securing the future of the space race. But there is a threat. A ruthless enemy lurks behind the scenes. Sylvain Neuvel’s genre-bending sci-fi thriller is a dark and gripping exploration of the amorality of progress and the nature of violence, as seen through the eyes of the women who make that progress possible and the men who are determined to stop them. Always run, never fight. Preserve the knowledge. Survive at all costs. Take them to the stars. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The gripping new speculative fiction as rich as The Man in the High Castle and as packed with thrills as Ready Player One 'Alt-history with a difference' GUARDIAN 'There's real cleverness at work here' THE TIMES Always run, never fight. Preserve the knowledge. Survive at all costs. Take them to the stars. _________ Germany, 1945. Mia, a nineteen-year-old girl, is sent by the OSS to find Wernher von Braun. Her mission: stop the Russians getting hold of Germany's - and the world's - foremost rocket scientist. Von Braun is suspicious. And so he should be. For Mia is no ordinary girl. She only looks human. And helping the Allies win the Second World War is only one part of her plan. Because there's an even darker conflict taking place on Earth. A secret struggle thousands of years old that has engulfed and taken generations of Mia's people. Can the firing of rockets finally bring about its end? Will Mia, as the last of her kind, bring the stars down to Earth? And if she succeeds, what will happen to us? _________ 'Wry narration, wired action . . . Fans of alternate history and intelligent sci-fi will love this' Publishers Weekly 'Clever and compelling, it will keep you enthralled until the end' Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of The Oppenheimer Alternative 'Highly crafted and unique' Library Journal

Among the first anthropologists to work in Eastern Europe, Katherine Verdery had built up a significant base of ethnographic and historical expertise when the major political transformations in the region began to take place. In this collection of essays dealing with the aftermath of Soviet-style socialism and the different forms that may replace it, she explores the nature of socialism in order to understand more fully its consequences. By analyzing her primary data from Romania and Transylvania and synthesizing information from other sources, Verdery lends a distinctive anthropological perspective to a variety of themes common to political and economic studies on the end of socialism: themes such as "civil society," the creation of market economies, privatization, national and ethnic conflict, and changing gender relations. Under Verdery's examination, privatization and civil society appear not only as social processes, for example, but as symbols in political rhetoric. The classic pyramid scheme is not just a means of enrichment but a site for reconceptualizing the meaning of money and an unusual form of post-Marxist millenarianism. Land being redistributed as private property stretches and shrinks, as in the imaginings of the farmers struggling to tame it. Infused by this kind of ethnographic sensibility, the essays reject the assumption of a transition to capitalism in favor of investigating local processes in their own terms.

“[A] riveting blend of historical thriller and scientific speculation, which never loses its core of humanity.”—James Rollins, #1 New York Times bestselling author, on A History of What Comes Next Sylvain Neuvel's Until the Last of Me presents a darkly satirical thriller, as seen through the eyes of the women who sacrifice all to make progress possible and the men who are determined to stop them. The First Rule is the most important: Always run, never fight. For generations, Mia’s family has shaped human history to push them to the stars. The year is 1968 and she is on the cusp of destiny, poised to launch the first humans into space. But she cannot take them to the stars, not quite yet. Her adversary is at her heels, the future of the planet at stake, and obeying the First Rule is no longer an option. For the first time in one-hundred generations, Mia’s family will have to choose to stand their ground, risking not only their bloodline, but the future of the human race. Always run, never fight. Preserve the knowledge. Survive at all cost. Take them to the stars. “An exciting science fiction thriller that will in turn inform and surprise readers.” —Library Journal, starred review Also Available by Sylvain Neuvel: Take Them to the Stars series 1. A History of What Comes Next The Test At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

From one of contemporary literature’s bestselling, critically acclaimed, and beloved authors: a “luminous” novel (Jennifer Egan, The New York Times Book Review) about a fiercely compelling young widow navigating grief, fear, and longing, and finding her own voice—“heartrendingly transcendant” (The New York Times, Janet Maslin). Set in Wexford, Ireland, Colm Tóibín’s magnificent seventh novel introduces the formidable, memorable, and deeply moving Nora Webster. Widowed at forty, with four children and not enough money, Nora has lost the love of her life, Maurice, the man who rescued her from the stifling world to which she was born. And now she fears she may be sucked back into it. Wounded, selfish, strong-willed, clinging to secrecy in a tiny community where everyone knows your business, Nora is drowning in her own sorrow and blind to the suffering of her young sons, who have lost their father. Yet she has moments of stunning insight and empathy, and when she begins to sing again, after decades, she finds solace, engagement, a haven—herself. Nora Webster “may actually be a perfect work of fiction” (Los Angeles Times), by a “beautiful and daring” writer (The New York Times Book Review) at the zenith of his career, able to “sneak up on readers and capture their imaginations” (USA TODAY). “Miraculous...Tóibín portrays Nora with tremendous sympathy and understanding” (Ron Charles, The Washington Post).

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Discover the game-changing theory of the cycles of history and what past generations can teach us about living through times of upheaval—with deep insights into the roles that Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials have to play—now with a new preface by Neil Howe. First comes a High, a period of confident expansion. Next comes an Awakening, a time of spiritual exploration and rebellion. Then comes an Unraveling, in which individualism triumphs over crumbling institutions. Last comes a Crisis—the Fourth Turning—when society passes through a great and perilous gate in history. William Strauss and Neil Howe will change the way you see the world—and your place in it. With blazing originality, The Fourth Turning illuminates the past, explains the present, and reimagines the future. Most remarkably, it offers an utterly persuasive prophecy about how America’s past will predict what comes next. Strauss and Howe base this vision on a provocative theory of American history. The authors look back five hundred years and uncover a distinct pattern: Modern history moves in cycles, each one lasting about the length of a long human life, each composed of four twenty-year eras—or “turnings”—that comprise history’s seasonal rhythm of growth, maturation, entropy, and rebirth. Illustrating this cycle through a brilliant analysis of the post–World War II period, The Fourth Turning offers bold predictions about how all of us can prepare, individually and collectively, for this rendezvous with destiny.

An argument that we have a moral duty to explore other planets and solar systems--because human life on Earth has an expiration date. Inevitably, life on Earth will come to an end, whether by climate disaster, cataclysmic war, or the death of the sun in a few billion years. To avoid extinction, we will have to find a new home planet, perhaps even a new solar system, to inhabit. In this provocative and fascinating book, Christopher Mason argues that we have a moral duty to do just that. As the only species aware that life on Earth has an expiration date, we have a responsibility to act as the shepherd of life-forms--not only for our species but for all species on which we depend and for those still to come (by accidental or designed evolution). Mason argues that the same capacity for ingenuity that has enabled us to build rockets and land on other planets can be applied to redesigning biology so that we can sustainably inhabit those planets. And he lays out a 500-year plan for undertaking the massively ambitious project of reengineering human genetics for life on other worlds. As they are today, our frail human bodies could never survive travel to another habitable planet. Mason describes the toll that long-term space travel took on astronaut Scott Kelly, who returned from a year on the International Space Station with changes to his blood, bones, and genes. Mason proposes a ten-phase, 500-year program that would engineer the genome so that humans can tolerate the extreme environments of outer space--with the ultimate goal of achieving human settlement of new solar systems. He lays out a roadmap of which solar systems to visit first, and merges biotechnology, philosophy, and genetics to offer an unparalleled vision of the universe to come.