Molly Caldwell Crosby is a science writer and best-selling author of three books that have been featured in the New York Times, NPR, The Travel Channel, Scientific American, among others. After earning a graduate degree in science writing from Johns Hopkins University and spending several years working at National Geographic magazine, she turned her love of science and creative writing into telling larger stories about people and places. Whether an epidemic disease or the natural history of pearls or criminal forensics, science shapes our history.
Over the course of history, yellow fever has paralyzed governments, halted commerce, quarantined cities, moved the U.S. capital, and altered the outcome of wars. During a single summer in Memphis alone, it cost more lives than the Chicago fire, the San Francisco earthquake, and the Johnstown flood combined. In 1900, the U.S. sent three doctors to Cuba to discover how yellow fever was spread.
There, they launched one of history's most controversial human studies. Compelling and terrifying, The American Plague depicts the story of yellow fever and its reign in this country--and in Africa, where even today it strikes thousands every year. With "arresting tales of heroism," (Publishers Weekly) it is a story as much about the nature of human beings as it is about the nature of disease.
Larson is a master at using beautiful prose to tell a historical story. This story of the Galveston hurricane in 1900 delves into science, history, and devastation caused not only by the unprecedented storm but by the hubris of men who believed scientific knowledge could conquer nature itself.
From the bestselling author of The Devil in the White City, here is the true story of the deadliest hurricane in history.
National Bestseller
September 8, 1900, began innocently in the seaside town of Galveston, Texas. Even Isaac Cline, resident meteorologist for the U.S. Weather Bureau failed to grasp the true meaning of the strange deep-sea swells and peculiar winds that greeted the city that morning. Mere hours later, Galveston found itself submerged in a monster hurricane that completely destroyed the town and killed over six thousand people in what remains the greatest natural disaster in American history--and Isaac Cline…
The elements of earth, fire, air, and young men come together in this tragic tale of the Mann Gulch fire of 1949. Told with Maclean’s unflinching and distinctive voice, it is a study in the ways a talented storyteller can completely engross readers.
When Norman Maclean sent the manuscript of A River Runs through It to New York publishers, he received a slew of rejections. One editor, so the story goes, replied, "It has trees in it." Forty years later, the title novella is widely recognized as one of the great American tales of the twentieth century, and Maclean as one of the most beloved writers of our time. Maclean's later triumph, Young Men and Fire, has over the decades also established itself as a classic of the American West. And with this twenty-fifth-anniversary edition, a fresh audience will be introduced to Maclean's…
The story of the 1927 flooding of the Mississippi River was an inspiration for me in the way a natural disaster has such long-lasting effects on the people and the towns affected by it. It is much more than a story about the disaster; it shows the ways politics, culture, and society intersect with historical events.
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award and the Lillian Smith Award.
An American epic of science, politics, race, honor, high society, and the Mississippi River, Rising Tide tells the riveting and nearly forgotten story of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. The river inundated the homes of almost one million people, helped elect Huey Long governor and made Herbert Hoover president, drove hundreds of thousands of African Americans north, and transformed American society and politics forever.
The flood brought with it a human storm: white and black collided, honor…
A highlight of my career was the opportunity to interview Oliver Sacks in researching one of my books. His scientific knowledge and insight have produced so many poignant and touching stories. No writer that I know of has been able to combine medicine with humanity in quite the same way.
'The story of a disease that plunged its victims into a prison of viscous time, and the drug that catapulted them out of it' - Guardian
Hailed as a medical classic, and the subject of a major feature film as well as radio and stage plays and various TV documentaries, Awakenings by Oliver Sacks is the extraordinary account of a group of twenty patients.
Rendered catatonic by the sleeping-sickness epidemic that swept the world just after the First World War, all twenty had spent forty years in hospital: motionless and speechless; aware of the world around them, but exhibiting no…
Part of Hillenbrand's story that is so compelling is the way she does not rely on straight reporting, although her research is extensive, and instead employs fiction writing techniques like strong character development, setting, and themes to weave together three storylines into a much more comprehensive and informative narrative about a moment in American history.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of the runaway phenomenon Unbroken comes a universal underdog story about the horse who came out of nowhere to become a legend.
Seabiscuit was one of the most electrifying and popular attractions in sports history and the single biggest newsmaker in the world in 1938, receiving more coverage than FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. But his success was a surprise to the racing establishment, which had written off the crooked-legged racehorse with the sad tail. Three men changed Seabiscuit’s fortunes:
Charles Howard was a onetime bicycle repairman who introduced the automobile to…
What happens when a novelist with a “razor-sharp wit” (Newsday), a “singular sensibility” (Huff Post), and a lifetime of fear about getting sick finds a lump where no lump should be? Months of medical mishaps, coded language, and Doctors who don't get it.
With wisdom, self-effacing wit, and the story-telling artistry of an acclaimed novelist, Elizabeth Benedict recollects her cancer diagnosis after discovering multiplying lumps in her armpit. In compact, explosive chapters, interspersed with moments of self-mocking levity, she chronicles her illness from muddled diagnosis to “natural remedies,” to debilitating treatments, as she gathers sustenance from family, an assortment of urbane friends, and a fearless “cancer guru.”
Rewriting Illness is suffused with suspense, secrets, and the unexpected solace of silence.
By turns somber and funny but above all provocative, Elizabeth Benedict's Rewriting Illness: A View of My Own is a most unconventional memoir. With wisdom, self-effacing wit, and the story-telling skills of a seasoned novelist, she brings to life her cancer diagnosis and committed hypochondria. As she discovers multiplying lumps in her armpit, she describes her initial terror, interspersed with moments of self-mocking levity as she indulges in "natural remedies," among them chanting Tibetan mantras, drinking shots of wheat grass, and finding medicinal properties in chocolate babka. She tracks the progression of her illness from muddled diagnosis to debilitating treatment…
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