When Elon Musk was a kid in South Africa, he was regularly beaten by bullies. One day a group pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him until his face was a swollen ball of flesh. He was in the hospital for a week. But the physical scars were minor compared to the emotional ones inflicted by his father, an engineer, rogue, and charismatic fantasist. His father’s impact on his psyche would linger. He developed into a tough yet vulnerable...

Chronicles the founding father's life and his multiple careers as a shopkeeper, writer, inventor, media baron, scientist, diplomat, business strategist, and political leader, while showing how his faith in the wisdom of the common citizen helped forge an American national identity based on the virtues of its middle class.

"The bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns with a gripping account of how the pioneering scientist Jennifer Doudna, along with her colleagues and rivals, launched a revolution that will allow us to cure diseases, fend off viruses,and enhance our children"--

A revelatory history of the people who created the computer and the Internet discusses the process through which innovation happens in the modern world, citing the pivotal contributions of such figures as Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing, Bill Gates, and Tim Berners-Lee.

In this collection of essays, Walter Isaacson reflects on the lessons to be learned from Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, and various other interesting characters he has chronicled as a biographer and journalist. Isaacson also describes the joys of the "so-called writing life" and the challenges he sees for journalism in the digital age.

"Walter Isaacson's #1 New York Times bestselling history of our third scientific revolution: CRISPR, gene editing, and the quest to understand the code of life itself, is now adapted for young readers"--

This book is a collective biography of the best and brightest men in government and their foreign policies which dominate our actions to this day: Averell Harriman, the freewheeling diplomat and Roosevelt's special envoy to Churchill and Stalin; Dean Acheson, the secretary of state who was more responsible for the Truman Doctrine than Truman and for the Marshall Plan than General Marshall; George Kennan, self-cast outsider and intellectual darling...

"A firsthand account of how a handful of revolutionaries overcame the political patronage and bureaucracy that threatened the space agency. The success of Elon Musk's SpaceX, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, and countless other commercial space efforts were preceded by decades of work by a group of people Garver calls "space pirates." Their quest to transform NASA put Garver in the crosshairs of Congress, the aerospace industry,...

Examines the intellectual deterioration of American politics, from Ronald Reagan to Dan Quayle, from George W. Bush to Sarah Palin, to its apotheosis in Donald J. Trump.

This "smart and fun read, and a valuable way to revitalize your life" (Walter Isaacson) deftly explains how disrupting our well-worn routines, both good and bad, can rejuvenate and reset our brains for the better.
Have you ever noticed that what is exciting on Monday tends to become boring on Friday? Even passionate relationships, stimulating jobs, and breathtaking works of art lose their sparkle after a while. As easy as it...