Given his lifetime assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas becomes the receiver of memories shared by only one other in his community and discovers the terrible truth about the society in which he lives. At the age of twelve, Jonas, a young boy from a seemingly utopian, futuristic world, is singled out to receive special training from The Giver, who alone holds the memories of the true joys and pain of life.

For the past three years, Jon Ronson has traveled the world meeting recipients of famous public shamings, often while their shamings are in full force. These are people like us--people who, say, made a joke on social media that came out badly, or made a mistake at work. Once a transgression is revealed, collective outrage circles with the force of a hurricane, and the next thing they know, they're being torn apart, jeered at, demonized, sometimes...

A decade ago (see "Darwin's Radio", 1999), human evolution took a leap when children genetically different from the rest of humanity were born around the world, thanks to the actions of retrovirus fragments in the human genome. "Darwin's Children" begins as the virus children are sent away to schools, often situated in old prisons, to keep them segregated from the rest of the world, which largely fears them. A new disease has emerged among the children,...

In this brilliant new work, Amanda Vickery unlocks the homes of Georgian England to examine the lives of the people who lived there. Writing with her customary wit and verve, she introduces us to men and women from all walks of life: gentlewoman Anne Dormer in her stately Oxfordshire mansion; bachelor clerk and future novelist Anthony Trollope in his dreary London lodgings; genteel spinsters keeping up appearances in two rooms with yellow wallpaper;...