LIST OF “SPECIALTY” BOOKS

General Topics

• The Battery: How Portable Power Sparked a Technological Revolution by Henry Schlesinger
• Cattle: An Informal Social History by Laurie Winn Carlson
• Circles: A Mathematical View by Daniel Pedoe
• Circumference by Nicholas Nicastro
• Coal: A Human History by Barbara Freese
• Cod by Mark Kurlansky
• Cotton: The Biography of a Revolutionary Fiber by Stephen Yafa
• Crude: The Story of Oil by Sonia Shah
• Hydrogen by John S. Rigden
• Ice by Mariana Gosnell
• Latitude by Bill Carter and Merri Sue Carter
• The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession by Virginia Scott Jenkins
• Longitude by Dana Sobel
• One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and Screw by Witold Rybczynski
• Oxygen: The Molecule that Made the World by Nick Lane
• Parallax by Alan W. Hirshfeld
• The Pencil by Henry Petroski
• Plutonium: A History of the World's Most Dangerous Element by Jeremy Bernstein
• Riddle of the Compass: The Invention that Changed the World by Amir D. Aczel
• Salt by Mark Kurlansky
• Sand: The Never-Ending Story by Michael Welland
• The Secret Life of Dust by Hannah Holmes
• Steam by Andrea Sutcliffe
• The Toothpick by Henry Petroski
• Universal Foam by Sidney Perkowitz
• Uranium: War, Energy and the Rock That Shaped the World by Tom Zoellner
• Zipper: An Exploration in Novelty by Robert D. Friedel

Colors

• Black: The History of a Color by Michel Pastoureau
• Blue: The History of a Color by Michel Pastoureau
• Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay
• Indigo by Catherine E. McKinley
• Mauve by Simon Garfield
• A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire by Amy Butler Greenfield

Food

• Bacon: A Love Story by Heather Lauer
• The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread by Maria Balinka
• Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World by Dan Koeppel
• Bananas: An American History by Virginia Scott Jenkins
• Beans: A History by Ken Albala
• Beef: The Untold Story of How Milk, Meat, and Muscle Shaped the World by Andrew Rimas
• Bittersweet: The Story of Sugar by Peter Macinnis
• Citrus: A History by Pierre Laszlo
• Coffee: A Dark History by Antony Wild
• Crunch! A History of the Great American Potato Chip by Dirk Burhans
• Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages by Anne Mendelson
• Pancake: A Global History by Ken Albala
• Popped Culture: A Social History of Popcorn in America by Andrew F. Smith
• Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent by John Reader
• The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World by Larry Zuckerman
• The Root Beer Book: A Celebration of America's Best-Loved Soft Drink by Laura E. Quarantiello
• Spice by Jack Turner
• Steak: One Man's Search for the World's Tastiest Piece of Beef by Mark Schatzker
• The Story of Corn by Betty Fussell
• The Story of Sushi: An Unlikely Saga of Raw Fish and Rice by Trevor Corson
• Sweets: A History of Candy by Tim Richardson
• The True History of Chocolate by Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe
• Uncommon Grounds: The History Of Coffee And How It Transformed Our World by Mark Pendergrast
• Vanilla: The Cultural History of the World's Favorite Flavor and Fragrance by Patricia Rain
• Vanilla: Travels in Search of the Ice Cream Orchid by Tim Ecott

Numbers

• The Nothing that Is: A Natural History of Zero by Robert Kaplan
• Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife
• Gamma by Julian Havil
• The Square Root of 2 by David Flannery
• The Divine Proportion by H.E. Huntley
• The Golden Ratio by Mario Livio
• e: The Story of a Number by Eli Maor
• A History of π by Petr Beckmann
• The Joy of π by David Blatner
• The Number π by Pierre Eymard and Jean-Pierre Lafon
• π: A Biography of the World's Most Mysterious Number by Alfred S. Posamentier and Ingmar Lehmann
• π Unleashed by Jörg Arndt and Christoph Haenel
• An Imaginary Tale: The Story of √-1 by Paul J. Nahin
• Keys to Infinity by Clifford Pickover

Years

• AD 381 by Charles Freeman
• 428 AD: An Ordinary Year at the End of the Roman Empire by Giusto Traina
• The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium by Robert Lacey
• 1066: The Year of Conquest by David Armine Howarth
• 1215: The Year of Magna Carta by Danny Danziger
• 1421: The Year China Discovered America by Gavin Menzies
• 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance by Gavin Menzies
• 1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West by Roger Crowley
• 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
• America in 1492: The World of the Indian Peoples Before the Arrival of Columbus by Alvin M. Josephy Jr.
• 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann
• 1688: The First Modern Revolution by Steve Pincus
• The Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North America by Colin G. Calloway
• 1776 by David McCullough
• The Summer of 1787 by David O. Stewart
• 1789 by David Andress
• 1812: The War That Forged a Nation by Walter R. Borneman
• 1831: Year of Eclipse by Louis P. Masur
• 1848: Year of Revolution by Mike Rapport
• 1858: Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant and the War They Failed to See by Bruce Chadwick
• 1861: The Civil War Awakening by Adam Goodheart
• 1864: Lincoln at the Gates of History by Charles Bracelen Flood
• 1877: America's Year of Living Violently by Michael A. Bellesiles
• America, 1908: The Dawn of Flight, the Race to the Pole, the Invention of the Model T and the Making of a Modern Nation by Jim Rasenberger
• 1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft and Debs—The Election that Changed the Country by James Chace
• 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents by David Pietrusza
• 1938: Hitler's Gamble by Giles MacDonogh
• 1948: Harry Truman's Improbable Victory and the Year that Transformed America by David Pietrusza
• 1959: The Year Everything Changed by Fred Kaplan
• 1968: The Year That Rocked the World by Mark Kurlansky

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