Its mysterious symbols and rituals had been used in secret for centuries before Freemasonry revealed itself in London in 1717. Once known, Freemasonry spread throughout the world and attracted kings, emperors, and statesmen to take its sacred oaths. But where had this powerful organization come from? Why was Freemasonry attacked with such intense hatred by the Roman Catholic church? Based on years of meticulous research, this detective story answers...

Set against the backdrop of the Age of Exploration, Black Flags, Blue Waters reveals the dramatic and surprising history of American piracy's "Golden Age"-spanning the late 1600s through the early 1700s-when lawless pirates plied the coastal waters of North America and beyond. Bestselling author Eric Jay Dolin illustrates how American colonists at first supported these outrageous pirates in an early display of solidarity against the Crown, and then...

The author of The Happiness Trap offers a self-help guide full of creative tools for managing triggers and trauma responses—so you can find peace in painful moments and lasting emotional well-being.

Psychotherapist David Richo examines the science of triggers and our reactions of fear, anger, and sadness. He helps us understand why our bodies respond before our minds have a chance to make sense of a situation. By looking...

The Transcendentalists and Their World offers a fresh view of the thinkers whose outsize impact on philosophy and literature would spread from tiny Concord to all corners of the earth. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the Alcotts called this New England town home, and Thoreau drew on its life extensively in his classic Walden. But Concord from the 1820s through the 1840s was no pastoral place fit for poets and philosophers. The...