Introducing a comprehensive update and complete revision of the authoritative reference work from the award-winning daily paper, this one-volume reference book informs, educates, and clarifies answers to hundreds of topics.

A COMPLETE REVISION AND THOROUGH UPDATING OF THE ULTIMATE REFERENCE FROM THE NEWSPAPER OF RECORD. A comprehensive guide offering insight and clarity on a broad range of even more essential subjects. Whether you are researching the history of Western art, investigating an obscure medical test, following current environmental trends, studying Shakespeare, brushing up on your crossword and Sudoku skills, or simply looking for a deeper understanding of the world, this book is for you. An indispensable resource for every home, office, dorm room, and library, this new edition of The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge offers in-depth explorations of art, astronomy, biology, business, economics, the environment, film, geography, history, the Internet, literature, mathematics, music, mythology, philosophy, photography, sports, theater, film, and many other subjects. This one volume is designed to offer more information than any other book on the most important subjects, as well as provide easy-to-access data critical to everyday life. It is the only universal reference book to include authoritative and engaging essays from New York Times experts in almost every field of endeavor. The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge provides information with matchless accuracy and exceptional clarity. This new revised and expanded third edition covers major categories with an emphasis on depth and historical context, providing easy access to data vital for everyday living. Covering nearly 50 major categories, and providing an immediate grasp of complex topics with charts, sidebars, and maps, the third edition features 50 pages of new material, including new sections on * Atheism * Digital Media * Inventions and Discoveries * Endangered Species * Inflation * Musical Theater * Book Publishing *Wikileaks *The Financial Crisis *Nuclear Weapons *Energy *The Global Food Supply Every section has been thoroughly updated, making this third edition more useful and comprehensive than ever. It informs, educates, answers, illustrates and clarifies---it's the only one-volume reference book you need.

A handy, smaller, and more focused version of our popular New York Times knowledge books—organized by weekends and topic Fell asleep during history class in high school when World War II was covered? Learned the table of elements at one time but have forgotten it since? Always wondered who really invented the World Wide Web? Here is the book for you, with all the answers you've been looking for: The New York Times Presents Smarter by Sunday is based on the premise that there is a recognizable group of topics in history, literature, science, art, religion, philosophy, politics, and music that educated people should be familiar with today. Over 100 of these have been identified and arranged in a way that they can be studied over a year's time by spending two hours on a topic every weekend.

A collection of information on aspects of daily life and a variety of popular topics, such as the home, health, animals, nature, sports, and entertainment.

Presents information on nearly fifty major categories such as architecture, biology, business, history, medicine, sports, and film; a biographical dictionary; a list of the wonders of the world; and a writer's guide to grammar.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER To get ahead today, you have to be a jerk, right? Divisive politicians. Screaming heads on television. Angry campus activists. Twitter trolls. Today in America, there is an “outrage industrial complex” that prospers by setting American against American, creating a “culture of contempt”—the habit of seeing people who disagree with us not as merely incorrect, but as worthless and defective. Maybe, like more than nine out of ten Americans, you dislike it. But hey, either you play along, or you’ll be left behind, right? Wrong. In Love Your Enemies, social scientist and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller From Strength to Strength Arthur C. Brooks shows that abuse and outrage are not the right formula for lasting success. Brooks blends cutting-edge behavioral research, ancient wisdom, and a decade of experience leading one of America’s top policy think tanks in a work that offers a better way to lead based on bridging divides and mending relationships. Brooks’ prescriptions are unconventional. To bring America together, we shouldn’t try to agree more. There is no need for mushy moderation, because disagreement is the secret to excellence. Civility and tolerance shouldn’t be our goals, because they are hopelessly low standards. And our feelings toward our foes are irrelevant; what matters is how we choose to act. Love Your Enemies offers a clear strategy for victory for a new generation of leaders. It is a rallying cry for people hoping for a new era of American progress. Most of all, it is a roadmap to arrive at the happiness that comes when we choose to love one another, despite our differences.

Best Book of the Year NPR • The Washington Post • Boston Globe • TIME • USA Today • Entertainment Weekly • Real Simple • Parade • Buzzfeed • Electric Literature • LitHub • BookRiot • PopSugar • Goop • Library Journal • BookBub • KCRW • Finalist for the National Book Award • One of the New York Times Notable Books of the Year • One of the New York Times Best Historical Fiction of the Year • Instant New York Times Bestseller A singular and stunning debut novel about the forbidden union between two enslaved young men on a Deep South plantation, the refuge they find in each other, and a betrayal that threatens their existence. Isaiah was Samuel's and Samuel was Isaiah's. That was the way it was since the beginning, and the way it was to be until the end. In the barn they tended to the animals, but also to each other, transforming the hollowed-out shed into a place of human refuge, a source of intimacy and hope in a world ruled by vicious masters. But when an older man—a fellow slave—seeks to gain favor by preaching the master's gospel on the plantation, the enslaved begin to turn on their own. Isaiah and Samuel's love, which was once so simple, is seen as sinful and a clear danger to the plantation's harmony. With a lyricism reminiscent of Toni Morrison, Robert Jones, Jr., fiercely summons the voices of slaver and enslaved alike, from Isaiah and Samuel to the calculating slave master to the long line of women that surround them, women who have carried the soul of the plantation on their shoulders. As tensions build and the weight of centuries—of ancestors and future generations to come—culminates in a climactic reckoning, The Prophets fearlessly reveals the pain and suffering of inheritance, but is also shot through with hope, beauty, and truth, portraying the enormous, heroic power of love.

The winner of the Man Booker Prize, this "expertly written, perfectly constructed" bestseller (The Guardian) is now a Starz miniseries. It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to stake his claim in New Zealand's booming gold rush. On the stormy night of his arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of 12 local men who have met in secret to discuss a series of unexplained events: a wealthy man has vanished, a prostitute has tried to end her life, and an enormous cache of gold has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely ornate as the night sky. Richly evoking a mid-nineteenth-century world of shipping, banking, and gold rush boom and bust, The Luminaries is at once a fiendishly clever ghost story, a gripping page-turner, and a thrilling novelistic achievement. It richly confirms that Eleanor Catton is one of the brightest stars in the international literary firmament.

“Genius… It is miraculous to read these pieces… You must read The Best of Me.” —Andrew Sean Greer, New York Times Book Review A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice A CNN and Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the Month For more than twenty-five years, David Sedaris has been carving out a unique literary space, virtually creating his own genre. A Sedaris story may seem confessional, but is also highly attuned to the world outside. It opens our eyes to what is at absurd and moving about our daily existence. And it is almost impossible to read without laughing. Now, for the first time collected in one volume, the author brings us his funniest and most memorable work. In these stories, Sedaris shops for rare taxidermy, hitchhikes with a lady quadriplegic, and spits a lozenge into a fellow traveler’s lap. He drowns a mouse in a bucket, struggles to say “give it to me” in five languages, and hand-feeds a carnivorous bird. But if all you expect to find in Sedaris’s work is the deft and sharply observed comedy for which he became renowned, you may be surprised to discover that his words bring more warmth than mockery, more fellow-feeling than derision. Nowhere is this clearer than in his writing about his loved ones. In these pages, Sedaris explores falling in love and staying together, recognizing his own aging not in the mirror but in the faces of his siblings, losing one parent and coming to terms—at long last—with the other. Taken together, the stories in TheBest of Me reveal the wonder and delight Sedaris takes in the surprises life brings him. No experience, he sees, is quite as he expected—it’s often harder, more fraught, and certainly weirder—but sometimes it is also much richer and more wonderful. Full of joy, generosity, and the incisive humor that has led David Sedaris to be called “the funniest man alive” (Time Out New York), The Best of Me spans a career spent watching and learning and laughing—quite often at himself—and invites readers deep into the world of one of the most brilliant and original writers of our time.

A single-volume reference book of useful basic data covers twenty-six subject categories, including time and dates, symbols and signs, the arts, grammar, etiquette, and personal finance