"When the Soviet Union chucked Sputnik into space in 1957, it galvanized America to come from behind and win the space race. The federal government opened its checkbook to finance an array of projects. Students shifted to new subjects like astronautical engineering and Russian studies to help the United States understand and eclipse the Soviet Union. The moon shot inspired a patriotic nation and produced useful commercial technologies along the way. The space race was expensive, but it worked. Thomas L. Friedman’s latest book is a plea for a new Sputnik moment. His breezy tour of America’s energy policy documents a nation that has become dangerously dependent on fossil fuels . . . Mr. Friedman’s voice is compelling and will be widely heard . . . Mr. Friedman’s strength is his diagnosis of our energy and environmental nightmares . . . The most intriguing chapter in Mr. Friedman’s book is his last, which poses the toughest challenge. Can America be like China, where a visionary government can impose a new direction on the country in the face of national emergency? Or will America devolve into a country that is so mired in red tape and local opposition that it builds absolutely nothing anywhere, near anything? Societies like that get stuck because they can’t embrace new technologies, like the cherished wind turbines and the power lines needed to carry their current . . . Heads will be nodding across airport lounges, as readers absorb Mr. Friedman’s common sense about how America and the world are dangerously addicted to cheap fossil fuels while we recklessly use the atmosphere as a dumping ground for carbon dioxide. The Sputnik is heading into orbit, thanks to high energy prices, growing fear of the changing climate and pleas like Mr. Friedman’s. But whether we as a nation—and with us, the world—are really prepared to do anything to solve the problem is still in doubt."—David Victor, The New York Times

"'What does it take to be good at something, when failure is so easy?' asks writer/physician Gawande . . . Diligence, ingenuity and 'doing right' . . . Gawande illustrates each of these qualities with stories from his own experience, [and] his observations of and conversations with other physicians . . . For young doctors . . . Gawande suggests five strategies: Ask unscripted questions, don't complain, 'count something' (be a scientist as well as a doctor), write something (to make yourself part of a larger world) and change in response to new ideas. A must-read for medical professionals-and a discerning, humanizing portrait of doctors at work for the rest of us."—Kirkus Reviews

“Few medical writers working today can transmit the gore-drenched terror of an operation that suddenly goes wrong—a terror that has a special resonance when it is Dr. Gawande himself who makes the initial horrifying mistake. And few can make it as clear as he can what exactly is at stake in the effort to minimize calamities.”—The New York Times

"As a user-friendly introduction to global warming and a succinct summary of many of the central arguments laid out in those other volumes, An Inconvenient Truth is lucid, harrowing and bluntly effective . . . Like Mr. Gore's 1992 book Earth in the Balance, this volume displays an earnest, teacherly tone, but it's largely free of the New Age psychobabble and A-student grandiosity that rumbled through that earlier book. The author's wonky fascination with policy minutiae has been tamed in these pages, and his love of charts and graphs has been put to good use . . . In this multimedia day of shorter attention spans and high-profile authors, An Inconvenient Truth could play a similar role in galvanizing public opinion about a real and present danger. It could goad the public into reading more scholarly books on the subject, and it might even push awareness of global warming to a real tipping point—and beyond."—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"It’s the grand compendium of all that we know about how to undertake this most difficult of transitions. Gore’s new volume is the indispensable one-stop shop for the cutting edge thinking about how we’re going to solve this problem."—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

"Greene ably dons the mantle of historian, recounting Ethiopian history; and that of the science writer, exploring the origins of the AIDS virus; and of the social commentator, taking to task the drug companies and Western politicians who should have done more much sooner to help avert disaster. She writes simply and declaratively but also cleverly."—Bill Eichenberger, The Columbus Dispatch

"It is impossible to know war if you do not stand with the mass of the powerless caught in its maw. All narratives of war told through the lens of the combatants carry with them the seduction of violence. But once you cross to the other side, to stand in fear with the helpless and the weak, you confront the moral depravity of industrial slaughter and the scourge that is war itself. Few books achieve this clarity. The Photographer is one. A strange book, part photojournalism and part graphic memoir, The Photographer tells the story of a small mission of mostly French doctors and nurses who traveled into northern Afghanistan by horse and donkey train in 1986, at the height of the Soviet occupation. The book shows the damage done to bodies and souls by shells, bullets and iron fragments, and the frantic struggle to mend the broken."—Chris Hedges, The New York Times

“It takes equal parts audacity, creativity, and vision to build an organization as successful as KaBOOM!—and Darell Hammond has that special blend. I’m proud to have partnered with the organization as First Lady of California to bring 31 new playgrounds to the state’s neediest communities, including the first volunteer-built intergenerational playground in California. It’s a partnership that continues to change lives and transform these communities.”—Maria Shriver, award-winning journalist, bestselling author and activist

"Informative . . . A thought-provoking book. [Holt's] writing is interesting and pleasant to read. He has boiled the issues down and makes the overall issue easy to understand and the events themselves clear and concise . . . [This study] quickly defines how politics impacted the national attitude."—John Benson, Civil War Book Review

"The 130-page 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation . . . arguably places the attacks in context better than any nonpictorial book could, or any film or television show has done so far. And in the simple visual retelling of the written report's results, it carries a profound emotional impact that is disarming . . . Perhaps most important, the 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation takes a document that is more than 500 pages long and often difficult to penetrate and makes it accessible to a much wider audience—tightening the narrative and increasing the spectacle without the fictionalization . . . The finished product is so solid that Sept. 11 commission Chairman Thomas Kean went from skepticism about a Sept. 11 report comic book to writing the foreword."—Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle

"Remember, this is a little kid, not even 10 years old, all alone. Hatred, by now, is the only thing that sustains him, hatred for his father, who so brutally double-crossed him, hatred for the Arabs, who he presumes are responsible for this war. There's no glamour here, no pitched battles, only unimaginable misery. Finally, after about two years in the camp, he's recruited into the SPLA, and his real troubles begin. He's beaten and tortured in every possible fashion . . . When he finally does get to kill a few Arabs, he feels no sense of triumph, just sadness. They're human, too, it seems. A couple of miracles happen . . . we know there is a happy ending; otherwise, there wouldn't be this book. Jal becomes a believing Christian and gospel singer. He sets up an organization to help lost boys, but he's  . . . often tired and sad and lonely, but in War Child he succeeds in making this crazy war and all its ramifications utterly grounded, specific and real . . . You'll come away from this book loving Emmanuel Jal."—Carolyn See, The Washington Post Book World

“Intern succeeds as an unusually transparent portrait of an imperfect human being trying to do his best at a tough job . . . In addition to telling Jauhar’s own story, Intern delivers a vivid portrait of the culture of a New York City hospital, with its demanding hierarchy and sometimes indifferent cruelty . . . The medical system ultimately wore down Jauhar’s most idealistic impulses, and yet allowed him to find a certain peace.”—Vincent Lam, The New York Times Book Review

"Kiernan's book and speaking appearances are certain to change lives and make a significant difference for those fortunate enough to read his book or cross his path. I have been witnessing these kinds of appearances for decades and I could not recommend any writer or speaker with more enthusiasm. Stephen Kiernan will change your life."—David Wolk, president, Castleton State College

“Animal Factory, by David Kirby, documents the scandal of today’s industrial food animal production system in the same compelling way Upton Sinclair alerted Americans to the abuses of the meat packing industry in his 1906 The Jungle. The well being of animals produced for human consumption, the fate of rural communities, the health of farm workers, and the protection of the environment are daily compromised for the sake of profit.”—Robert S. Lawrence, M.D., Director, of the Center for a Livable Future, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health