What's the key to success? The New York Times columnist—using a fictional couple to illustrate reams of research on that provocative question—argues that it's the unconscious mind.

In this charming piece of participatory journalism, Foer—the younger brother of novelist Jonathan Safran Foer—explores the role of memory in both public and private life, while also telling the story of his efforts to compete in the U.S. Memory Championship.

From Borneo to sub-Saharan Africa, globalism is dramatically affecting people and cultures—as shown in these firsthand accounts by a veteran environmental journalist.

Here are some things we know peer pressure can cause: smoking, driving drunk, buying stuff we don't need. Here are some things Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tina Rosenberg has seen peer pressure do: increase math performance among minority students, help prevent the spread of HIV, contribute to the demise of Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic's repressive regime. In her smart and earnest book, Join the Club (Norton), Rosenberg, a MacArthur "genius" grant recipient, debunks the popular notion that peer pressure is always bad and argues that by helping people find positively persuasive cohorts, we can change the world. One unforgettable example: a stop-smoking campaign in Florida that convinced teenagers it was more rebellious and cool to confront the tobacco companies than to use their products. "Peer pressure is a mighty and terrible force—so powerful that, for the vast majority of people, the best antidote to it is more peer pressure."' '

The cultural critic looks at how beauty pageants, Disney princesses, and Miley Cyrus are shaping young minds. Hint: It isn't pretty.

Burns' account (including archival photos) of the immediate aftermath of Martin Luther King Jr.'s death explores how the assassination brought out the best and worst in a city and a nation.

In Annie Proulx's Bird Cloud, the beloved author couples masterly prose with her obsessive research on history, ecology and genealogy in a memoir of how she ended up building a ranch in Wyoming.

Life lessons from a dynamo born with a rare genetic disease that once threatened to confine her to a wheelchair—or even worse, flats.

This biography, written by the author of Seabiscuit, follows the remarkable life story of Louis Zamperini, a juvenile delinquent turned Olympic runner turned World War II POW.