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Books published by publisher W. W. Norton and Company, Inc.

  • Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World

    Bruce Schneier

    Paperback (W. W. Norton & Company, Feb. 8, 2016)
    “Bruce Schneier’s amazing book is the best overview of privacy and security ever written.”―Clay ShirkyYour cell phone provider tracks your location and knows who’s with you. Your online and in-store purchasing patterns are recorded, and reveal if you're unemployed, sick, or pregnant. Your e-mails and texts expose your intimate and casual friends. Google knows what you’re thinking because it saves your private searches. Facebook can determine your sexual orientation without you ever mentioning it.The powers that surveil us do more than simply store this information. Corporations use surveillance to manipulate not only the news articles and advertisements we each see, but also the prices we’re offered. Governments use surveillance to discriminate, censor, chill free speech, and put people in danger worldwide. And both sides share this information with each other or, even worse, lose it to cybercriminals in huge data breaches.Much of this is voluntary: we cooperate with corporate surveillance because it promises us convenience, and we submit to government surveillance because it promises us protection. The result is a mass surveillance society of our own making. But have we given up more than we’ve gained? In Data and Goliath, security expert Bruce Schneier offers another path, one that values both security and privacy. He brings his bestseller up-to-date with a new preface covering the latest developments, and then shows us exactly what we can do to reform government surveillance programs, shake up surveillance-based business models, and protect our individual privacy. You'll never look at your phone, your computer, your credit cards, or even your car in the same way again.
  • Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942

    Ian W. Toll

    Paperback (W. W. Norton & Company, Nov. 26, 2012)
    Winner of the Northern California Book Award for Nonfiction "Both a serious work of history…and a marvelously readable dramatic narrative." ―San Francisco ChronicleOn the first Sunday in December 1941, an armada of Japanese warplanes appeared suddenly over Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and devastated the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Six months later, in a sea fight north of the tiny atoll of Midway, four Japanese aircraft carriers were sent into the abyss, a blow that destroyed the offensive power of their fleet. Pacific Crucible―through a dramatic narrative relying predominantly on primary sources and eyewitness accounts of heroism and sacrifice from both navies―tells the epic tale of these first searing months of the Pacific war, when the U.S. Navy shook off the worst defeat in American military history to seize the strategic initiative. 24 pages of illustrations; 12 maps
  • Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

    Laurence Gonzales

    eBook (W. W. Norton & Company, Jan. 10, 2017)
    "Unique among survival books…stunning…enthralling. Deep Survival makes compelling, and chilling, reading." —Denver PostLaurence Gonzales’s bestselling Deep Survival has helped save lives from the deepest wildernesses, just as it has improved readers’ everyday lives. Its mix of adventure narrative, survival science, and practical advice has inspired everyone from business leaders to military officers, educators, and psychiatric professionals on how to take control of stress, learn to assess risk, and make better decisions under pressure.
  • Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974

    Kevin M. Kruse, Julian E. Zelizer

    Hardcover (W. W. Norton & Company, Jan. 8, 2019)
    Two award-winning historians explore the origins of a divided America.If you were asked when America became polarized, your answer would likely depend on your age: you might say during Barack Obama’s presidency, or with the post-9/11 war on terror, or the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, or the “Reagan Revolution” and the the rise of the New Right.For leading historians Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer, it all starts in 1974. In that one year, the nation was rocked by one major event after another: The Watergate crisis and the departure of President Richard Nixon, the first and only U.S. President to resign; the winding down of the Vietnam War and rising doubts about America’s military might; the fallout from the OPEC oil embargo that paralyzed America with the greatest energy crisis in its history; and the desegregation busing riots in South Boston that showed a horrified nation that our efforts to end institutional racism were failing.In the years that followed, the story of our own lifetimes would be written. Longstanding historical fault lines over income inequality, racial division, and a revolution in gender roles and sexual norms would deepen and fuel a polarized political landscape. In Fault Lines, Kruse and Zelizer reveal how the divisions of the present day began almost five decades ago, and how they were widened thanks to profound changes in our political system as well as a fracturing media landscape that was repeatedly transformed with the rise of cable TV, the internet, and social media.How did the United States become so divided? Fault Lines offers a richly told, wide-angle history view toward an answer. 16 pages of black and white illustrations
  • The Shadow King: A Novel

    Maaza Mengiste

    eBook (W. W. Norton & Company, Sept. 24, 2019)
    A gripping novel set during Mussolini’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, The Shadow King takes us back to the first real conflict of World War II, casting light on the women soldiers who were left out of the historical record.With the threat of Mussolini’s army looming, recently orphaned Hirut struggles to adapt to her new life as a maid in Kidane and his wife Aster’s household. Kidane, an officer in Emperor Haile Selassie’s army, rushes to mobilize his strongest men before the Italians invade. His initial kindness to Hirut shifts into a flinty cruelty when she resists his advances, and Hirut finds herself tumbling into a new world of thefts and violations, of betrayals and overwhelming rage. Meanwhile, Mussolini’s technologically advanced army prepares for an easy victory. Hundreds of thousands of Italians—Jewish photographer Ettore among them—march on Ethiopia seeking adventure.As the war begins in earnest, Hirut, Aster, and the other women long to do more than care for the wounded and bury the dead. When Emperor Haile Selassie goes into exile and Ethiopia quickly loses hope, it is Hirut who offers a plan to maintain morale. She helps disguise a gentle peasant as the emperor and soon becomes his guard, inspiring other women to take up arms against the Italians. But how could she have predicted her own personal war as a prisoner of one of Italy’s most vicious officers, who will force her to pose before Ettore’s camera?What follows is a gorgeously crafted and unputdownable exploration of female power, with Hirut as the fierce, original, and brilliant voice at its heart. In incandescent, lyrical prose, Maaza Mengiste breathes life into complicated characters on both sides of the battle line, shaping a heartrending, indelible exploration of what it means to be a woman at war.
  • Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War

    Paul Scharre

    Paperback (W. W. Norton & Company, March 12, 2019)
    Winner of the 2019 William E. Colby Award "The book I had been waiting for. I can't recommend it highly enough." ―Bill GatesThe era of autonomous weapons has arrived. Today around the globe, at least thirty nations have weapons that can search for and destroy enemy targets all on their own. Paul Scharre, a leading expert in next-generation warfare, describes these and other high tech weapons systems―from Israel’s Harpy drone to the American submarine-hunting robot ship Sea Hunter―and examines the legal and ethical issues surrounding their use. “A smart primer to what’s to come in warfare” (Bruce Schneier), Army of None engages military history, global policy, and cutting-edge science to explore the implications of giving weapons the freedom to make life and death decisions. A former soldier himself, Scharre argues that we must embrace technology where it can make war more precise and humane, but when the choice is life or death, there is no replacement for the human heart.
  • The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story

    Diane Ackerman

    eBook (W. W. Norton & Company, Sept. 17, 2008)
    The New York Times bestseller now a major motion picture starring Jessica Chastain.A true story in which the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo saved hundreds of people from Nazi hands.After their zoo was bombed, Polish zookeepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski managed to save over three hundred people from the Nazis by hiding refugees in the empty animal cages. With animal names for these "guests," and human names for the animals, it's no wonder that the zoo's code name became "The House Under a Crazy Star." Best-selling naturalist and acclaimed storyteller Diane Ackerman combines extensive research and an exuberant writing style to re-create this fascinating, true-life story—sharing Antonina's life as "the zookeeper's wife," while examining the disturbing obsessions at the core of Nazism. Winner of the 2008 Orion Award.
  • The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome

    Susan Wise Bauer

    eBook (W. W. Norton & Company, March 17, 2007)
    A lively and engaging narrative history showing the common threads in the cultures that gave birth to our own.This is the first volume in a bold new series that tells the stories of all peoples, connecting historical events from Europe to the Middle East to the far coast of China, while still giving weight to the characteristics of each country. Susan Wise Bauer provides both sweeping scope and vivid attention to the individual lives that give flesh to abstract assertions about human history.Dozens of maps provide a clear geography of great events, while timelines give the reader an ongoing sense of the passage of years and cultural interconnection. This old-fashioned narrative history employs the methods of “history from beneath”—literature, epic traditions, private letters and accounts—to connect kings and leaders with the lives of those they ruled. The result is an engrossing tapestry of human behavior from which we may draw conclusions about the direction of world events and the causes behind them.
  • The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race Against an Epidemic

    Gay Salisbury, Laney Salisbury

    eBook (W. W. Norton & Company, Feb. 17, 2005)
    "A stirring tale of survival, thanks to man's best friend." —Seattle TimesWhen a deadly diphtheria epidemic swept through Nome, Alaska, in 1925, the local doctor knew that without a fresh batch of antitoxin, his patients would die. The lifesaving serum was a thousand miles away, the port was icebound, and planes couldn't fly in blizzard conditions—only the dogs could make it. The heroic dash of dog teams across the Alaskan wilderness to Nome inspired the annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and immortalized Balto, the lead dog of the last team whose bronze statue still stands in New York City's Central Park. This is the greatest dog story, never fully told until now.
  • Greek to Me: Adventures of the Comma Queen

    Mary Norris

    Hardcover (W. W. Norton & Company, April 2, 2019)
    The Comma Queen returns with a buoyant book about language, love, and the wine-dark sea.In her New York Times bestseller Between You & Me, Mary Norris delighted readers with her irreverent tales of pencils and punctuation in The New Yorker’s celebrated copy department. In Greek to Me, she delivers another wise and funny paean to the art of self-expression, this time filtered through her greatest passion: all things Greek.Greek to Me is a charming account of Norris’s lifelong love affair with words and her solo adventures in the land of olive trees and ouzo. Along the way, Norris explains how the alphabet originated in Greece, makes the case for Athena as a feminist icon, goes searching for the fabled Baths of Aphrodite, and reveals the surprising ways Greek helped form English. Filled with Norris’s memorable encounters with Greek words, Greek gods, Greek wine―and more than a few Greek men―Greek to Me is the Comma Queen’s fresh take on Greece and the exotic yet strangely familiar language that so deeply influences our own.
  • The Norton Anthology of English Literature

    M. H. Abrams, Stephen Greenblatt, Carol T. Christ, Alfred David Ph.D., Barbara K. Lewalski Ph.D., Lawrence Lipking Ph.D., George M. Logan Ph.D., Deidre Shauna Lynch, Katharine Eisaman Maus, James Noggle Ph.D., Jahan Ramazani Ph.D., Catherine Robson Ph.D., James Simpson Ph.D., Jon Stallworthy, Jack Stillinger Ph.D.

    Paperback (W. W. Norton & Company, Feb. 8, 2012)
    The most-trusted literature anthology of all time, now in its 50th year.The Ninth Edition offers more complete works and more teachable groupings than ever before, the apparatus you trust, and a new, free Supplemental Ebook with more than 1,000 additional texts. Read by more than 8 million students, The Norton Anthology of English Literature sets the standard and remains an unmatched value.The Norton Anthology of English Literature is now available as an interactive ebook, at just a fraction of the print price.
  • The Art of War: A New Translation by Michael Nylan

    Sun Tzu, Michael Nylan

    Hardcover (W. W. Norton & Company, Jan. 7, 2020)
    For the first time in any modern language, a female scholar and translator reimagines The Art of War.Sun Tzu’s ancient book of strategy and psychology has as much to tell us today as when it was first written 2,500 years ago. In a world forever at odds, his rules for anticipating the motivations and strategies of our competitors never cease to inspire leaders of all kinds.Michael Nylan, in her provocative introduction, sees new and unexpected lessons to be learned from The Art of War―in business ventures, relationships, games of skill, academic careers, and medical practices. Strategy, like conflict, is woven into society’s very roots.Nylan’s crisp translation “offers a masterly new evaluation of this classic work, which balances the overtly military content with a profound and thought-provoking analysis” (Olivia Milburn). Readers newly engaging with ancient Chinese culture will be inspired by Nylan’s authoritative voice. Informed by years of scholarly study, Nylan is uniquely placed to introduce readers to Sun Tzu’s classic work through her detailed annotations on culture and the intricacies of translating ancient Chinese into modern English. She proves that Sun Tzu is more relevant than ever, helping us navigate the conflicts we know and those we have yet to endure. 1 map