Stuff matters : exploring the marvelous materials that shape our manmade world

Catastrophe 1914 : Europe goes to war

Catastrophe

The attention merchants : the epic scramble to get inside our heads

Here's the deal -- Masters of blazing modernities : The first attention merchants ; The alchemist ; For king and country ; Demand engineering, scientific advertising, and what women want ; A long lucky run ; Not with a bang but with a whimper -- The conquest of time and space : The invention of prime time ; Total attention control, or the madness of crowds ; Peak attention, American style ; Prelude to an attentional revolt ; The great refusal ; Coda to an attentional revolution -- The third screen : Email and the power of the check-in ; Invaders ; AOL pulls 'em in -- The importance of being famous : Establishment of the celebrity-industrial complex ; The Oprah model ; The panopticon -- Won't be fooled again : The kingdom of content: this is how you do it ; Here comes everyone ; The rise of clickbait ; The place to be ; The importance of being microfamous ; The fourth screen and the mirror of Narcissus ; The web hits bottom ; A retreat and a revolt ; Who's boss here? -- Epilogue: The temenos.

Tesla : inventor of the modern

Humans : a brief history of how we f----d it all up

Humans : a brief history of how we fucked it all up.

The butchering art : Joseph Lister's quest to transform the grisly world of Victorian medicine

No friends but the mountains : dispatches from the world's violent highlands

The war within the Union high command : politics and generalship during the Civil War

Modern war studies

Modern war studies.

Bill O'Reilly's legends & lies : The Civil War

Civil War

Bill O'Reilly's legends & lies

Bill O'Reilly's legends & lies.

Fighting fire! : ten of the deadliest fires in American history and how we fought them

The mosquito : a human history of our deadliest predator

Introduction -- Toxic twins: The mosquito and her diseases -- Survival of the fittest: Fever demons, footballs, and sickle cell safeties -- General Anopheles: From Athens to Alexander -- Mosquito legions: The rise and fall of the Roman Empire -- Unrepentant mosquitoes: A crisis of faiths and the Crusades -- Mosquito hordes: Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire -- The Columbian exchange: Mosquitoes and the global village -- Accidental conquerors: African slavery and the mosquito's annexation of the Americas -- The seasoning: Mosquito landscapes, mythology, and the seeds of America -- Rogues in a nation: The mosquito and the creation of Greater Britain -- The crucible of disease: Colonial wars and a new world order -- Unalienable bites: The American Revolution -- Mercenary mosquitoes: Wars of liberation and the making of the Americas -- Mosquitoes of Manifest Destiny: Cotton, slavery, Mexico, and the American South -- Sinister angels of our nature: The American Civil War -- Unmasking the mosquito: Disease and imperialism -- This is Ann: She's dying to meet you : the Second World War, Dr. Seuss, and DDT -- Silent springs and superbugs: The mosquito renaissance -- The modern mosquito and her diseases: At the gates of extinction? -- Conclusion.

The point of it all : a lifetime of great loves and endeavors

Works. Selections. 2018

Lifetime of great loves and endeavors

What a piece of work is man. Life well lived. Reveries of a newborn father -- Irving Kristol: a great good man -- Ronald Reagan: he could see for miles -- Thomas Jefferson: the sublime oxymoron -- Thank you, Isaiah Berlin -- John Paul II: the power of faith -- George Weidenfeld: Syrian Christians and the English Jew -- Meg Greenfield: my editor, my friend -- Customs and culture. -- Why I love Australia -- Rampway to heaven -- Junk rights -- Genius, insanity, innocence -- Two Cromwells: separate and independent realities -- Parenthesis to history -- The Cold War memorials -- Contests. -- Suffering a relapse, and loving it -- The tyranny of chess -- Revenge, American-style -- Man vs. computer: still a match -- The greatness gap -- Why do they even play the game? -- Jim Dickson's triumph -- Cosmos. -- In sorrow and glory we find our common humanity -- Front-page physics: why the news from beyond is beyond us -- What Sputnik launched -- Pluto and us -- Space: the visionaries take over -- Redeeming Columbia -- The doctor is in. -- A doctor's duty -- Why doctors quit -- Sick, tired and not taking it anymore -- The twilight of psychotherapy -- They die with their rights on -- Matters of life and death. -- Five lives vs. one principle -- Stem cells: mounting the slippery slope -- The abortion debate: just words -- The price of fetal parts -- What to do for little Charlie Gard -- Man and society. Look outward. Three pieces of sage advice -- Against the grain. -- Apocalypse, with and without God -- When modern medicine fails -- The myth of "settled science" -- Thought police on patrol -- The too-examined life. -- Suicide ad absurdum -- Holiday: living on a return ticket -- Shakespeare, ruined -- Illusions of self-love -- Out of many, one. -- Assimilation nation -- The tribalization of America -- Counting by race -- Redskins and reason -- Neither ennobling nor degrading -- On lowering the flag -- Church and state. -- Civil religion- and no religion -- Just leave Christmas alone -- Religion as taste -- Politics, foreign and domestic. -- The two last tribes of Israel. The miracle, at 60 -- The Holocaust and Jewish identity -- Demystifying Judaism -- How to fight academic bigotry -- Do we really mean "Never again"? -- Keeping the world at bay. -- How to deal with countries gone mad -- The Iranian "moderate" -- Middle East peace and the great Muslim civil war -- The Bush legacy -- Iraq, abandoned -- The climate pact swindle -- Russia rising -- To die for Estonia? -- Trump and the "Madman Theory" -- Democracy and its discontents. -- In defense of fanatics -- The death penalty and the Constitution -- Finally getting it right on affirmative action -- The right-to-work dilemma -- Brexit: sovereign kingdom or Little England? -- Trump derangement syndrome: you can't govern by id -- Revolt of the attorneys general -- American democracy: not so decadent after all -- On liberty. -- Constitutions, conservatism and the genius of the Founders -- The meaning of human rights -- Competing visions: America's role and the course of world history. Reluctant colossus. -- When to intervene -- The arrow of history -- Trump's foreign policy revolution -- The end of "the end of history". -- After a mere 25 years, the triumph of the West is over -- The coming disillusionment of liberated Europe -- The authoritarian temptation -- Speaking in the first person. -- A life without regrets. -- An anniversary of sorts -- Choosing a life -- A statement of principle -- Beauty and soul -- A note to readers -- Eulogy