author

ASIN or ISBN-10: B000HC2LI0 binding: DVD list price: $299.98 USD amazon price: $189.99 USD

The West Wing ventured where no other TV series had gone before: an extraordinarily intimate look at an American President and the inner workings of the White House. Experience all the crises, triumphs, lofty idealism and hard realities of the acclaimed series in this complete seven-season DVD set. Here, on 45 discs, are all 154 episodes of the series that won 26 Emmys, including 4 for Outstanding Drama Series. Hail to chief - and to the creators and stars of this ground-breaking series.

author: Neil Shubin ASIN or ISBN-10: 0307277453 binding: Paperback list price: $14.95 USD amazon price: $10.02 USD

Details on a Major New Discovery included in a New AfterwordWhy do we look the way we do? Neil Shubin, the paleontologist and professor of anatomy who co-discovered Tiktaalik, the “fish with hands,” tells the story of our bodies as you've never heard it before. By examining fossils and DNA, he shows us that our hands actually resemble fish fins, our heads are organized like long-extinct jawless fish, and major parts of our genomes look and function like those of worms and bacteria. Your Inner Fish makes us look at ourselves and our world in an illuminating new light. This is science writing at its finest—enlightening, accessible and told with irresistible enthusiasm.

ASIN or ISBN-10: B003HIXOOQ binding: Electronics list price: $205.99 USD amazon price: $240.95 USD

The Iomega eGo Desktop Hard Drive, Mac Edition is a sleek silver drive which includes two fast FireWire 800 interfaces, a USB 2.0 interface, plus a FireWire 400 to 800 cable. So whatever connection you choose, there's one perfect for you and with up to 2TB, you can easily save all your files. It includes a three year limited warrany when you register your product. The drive comes HFS+ formatted. Iomega Protection Suite, Mac Edition, is included - Trend Micro Smart Surfing software for Mac, Iomega QuikProtect, and MozyHome Online Backup service (2GB free). Software available via easy download.

ASIN or ISBN-10: B001AMLRU4 binding: CD-ROM list price: $99.99 USD amazon price: $82.48 USD

MobileMe is the service from Apple that automatically pushes new email, contacts, and calendar events over the air to your iPhone and keeps everything in sync across your Mac, PC, and the web. So your important information is up to date everywhere you go—no docking required. MobileMe also gives you an elegant online Gallery for sharing your photos with friends and family, and iDisk for accessing and sharing files via your computer, the web, and your iPhone. And if you ever lose your iPhone, MobileMe can help you find it or remotely wipe your data to protect your privacy. Note that the Find My iPhone feature is not available in all areas.

author: Michael J. Trinklein ASIN or ISBN-10: 1594744106 binding: Hardcover list price: $24.95 USD amazon price: $17.41 USD

Everyone knows the fifty winners but what about the hundreds of other statehood proposals that never worked out? Lost States is a tribute to such great unrealized states as West Florida, South California, Half-Breed Tracts, Rough and Ready, and others. History buffs will be entertained and enlightened by these bizarre-but-true stories: Frontier legend Daniel Boone once proposed a state of Transylvania on the borders of Indiana and Illinois. (His plan was resurrected a few years later with the new name of Kentucky.) Residents of bucolic South Jersey wanted to secede from their 'filthy' north Jersey neighbors and form their own union. The Gold Rush territory of Nataqua could have made a fine state but since no women were willing to live there, they had to settle for being part of California. Accompanying the stories are beautiful full-color original maps detailing how these states' boundaries might have looked, along with images of real-life artifacts and ephemera. Lost States is a quirky reference book for history buffs, geography geeks, and anyone who enjoys lush, fascinating cartography.

author: John Heilemann Mark Halperin ASIN or ISBN-10: 0061733636 binding: Hardcover list price: $27.99 USD amazon price: $15.46 USD

In Game Change, John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, two of the country’s leading political reporters, use their unrivaled access to pull back the curtain on the Obama, Clinton, McCain, and Palin campaigns.

Based on hundreds of interviews with the people who lived the story, Game Change is a reportorial tour de force that reads like a fast-paced novel. Character-driven and dialogue-rich, replete with extravagantly detailed scenes, it’s an intimate portrait of some of the most powerful and fascinating figures in American life—the occasionally shocking, often hilarious, ultimately definitive account of the campaign of a lifetime.

author: Neil Gaiman ASIN or ISBN-10: 0060515236 binding: Mass Market Paperback list price: $7.99 USD amazon price: $7.00 USD

A mysterious circus terrifies an audience for one extraordinary performance before disappearing into the night . . .

Two teenage boys crash a party and meet the girls of their dreams—and nightmares . . .

In a Hugo Award–winning story, a great detective must solve a most unsettling royal murder in a strangely altered Victorian England . . .

These marvelous creations and more showcase the unparalleled invention and storytelling brilliance—and the terrifyingly dark and entertaining wit—of the incomparable Neil Gaiman. By turns delightful, disturbing, and diverting, Fragile Things is a gift of literary enchantment from one of the most original writers of our time.

ASIN or ISBN-10: B002XV95CS binding: Wireless Phone Accessory list price: $79.95 USD amazon price: $79.00 USD

The Juice Pack Air is a rechargeable external battery that is concealed inside of a protective form-fitting case for the iPhone 3G. It offers the protection of a hard-shell case while providing more than twice the battery of the iPhone alone; all in an ultra-thin, light-weight and low-profile design.

ASIN or ISBN-10: B001RCT6J6 binding: Electronics list price: $89.95 USD amazon price: $89.95

The unique design of the SlingShot 100 AW and 200 AW provides quick and easy access to camera equipment while it's still being worn. Perfect for photojournalists, sports photographers or anyone in need of quick access to their equipment, the Slingshot 100 AW allows you to focus on your shooting and not finding your equipment.

author: Stephen Nissenbaum ASIN or ISBN-10: 0679740384 binding: Paperback list price: $17.95 USD amazon price: $13.77 USD

"Fascinating." --The New York Times Book Review Anyone who laments the excesses of Christmas might consider the Puritans of colonial Massachusetts: they simply outlawed the holiday. The Puritans had their reasons, since Christmas was once an occasion for drunkenness and riot, when poor "wassailers extorted food and drink from the well-to-do. In this intriguing and innovative work of social history, Stephen Nissenbaum rediscovers Christmas's carnival origins and shows how it was transformed, during the nineteenth century, into a festival of domesticity and consumerism. Drawing on a wealth of period documents and illustrations, Nissenbaum charts the invention of our current Yuletide traditions, from St. Nicholas to the Christmas tree and, perhaps most radically, the practice of giving gifts to children. Bursting with detail, filled with subversive readings of such seasonal classics as "A Visit from St. Nicholas and A Christmas Carol, The Battle for Christmas captures the glorious strangeness of the past even as it helps us better understand our present. "Christmas . . . too often fails to wholly satisfy the spirit or the senses. How and why the yuletide came to this is the subject of historian Stephen Nissenbaum's fascinating new study. " --Newsweek

author: John Ferling ASIN or ISBN-10: 0195150848 binding: Paperback list price: $24.99 USD amazon price: $20.24 USD

Setting the World Ablaze is the story of the American Revolution and of the three Founders who played crucial roles in winning the War of Independence and creating a new nation: George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. Braiding three strands into one rich narrative, John Ferling brings these American icons down from their pedestals to show them as men of flesh and blood, and in doing so gives us a new understanding of the passion and uncertainty of the struggle to form a new nation. A leading historian of the Revolutionary era, Ferling draws upon an unsurpassed command of the primary sources and a talent for swiftly moving narrative to give us intimate views of each of these men. He shows us both the overarching historical picture of the era and a gripping sense of how these men encountered the challenges that faced them. We see Washington, containing a profound anger at British injustice within an austere demeanor; Adams, far from home, struggling with severe illness and French duplicity in his crucial negotiations in Paris; and Jefferson, distracted and indecisive, confronting uncertainties about his future in politics. John Adams, in particular, emerges from the narrative as the most under-appreciated hero of the Revolution, while Jefferson is revealed as the most overrated, yet most eloquent, of the Founders. Setting the World Ablaze shows in dramatic detail how these conservative men--successful members of the colonial elite--were transformed into radical revolutionaries.

author: Michael Weinreb ASIN or ISBN-10: B000VSC8FG binding: Hardcover list price: $26.00 USD amazon price: $38.16 USD

An award-winning sportswriter takes you inside a year with the nation’s top high school chess team.

With strict admission standards and a progressive curriculum, Brooklyn’s Edward R. Murrow High School has long been one of New York’s public-education success stories, serving a diverse neighborhood of immigrants and minorities and ranking among the nation’s best high schools. At Murrow, there are no sports teams, and the closest thing to jocks are found on the school’s powerhouse chess team, which annually competes for the national championship.

In The Kings of New York sportswriter Michael Weinreb follows the members of the Murrow chess team through an entire season, from cash games in Washington Square Park to city and state tournaments to the SuperNationals in Nashville, where this eclectic bunch competes against private schoolers and suburbanites. Along the way, Weinreb brings to life a number of colorful characters: the Yale-educated calculus teacher (and former semipro hockey player) who guides the savants while struggling to find funding for his team; an aspiring rapper and tournament hustler who plays with cutthroat instinct; the team’s lone girl, a shy Ukrainian immigrant; the Puerto Rican teen from the rough neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant who plays an ingenious opening gambit named the Orangutan; and the Lithuanian immigrant and team star whose chess rating is climbing toward grandmaster status.

In the bestselling tradition of such books as Word Freak and Friday Night Lights, The Kings of New York is a riveting look inside the world of competitive chess and an inspiring profile of young genius.

author: Lars Anderson ASIN or ISBN-10: 0812977319 binding: Paperback list price: $16.00 USD amazon price: $11.20 USD

In this stunning work of narrative nonfiction, Lars Anderson recounts one of college football’s greatest contests: Carlisle vs. Army, the fateful 1912 gridiron clash that had far-reaching implications both real and symbolic.The story centers on three men: Glenn “Pop” Warner, who came to the Carlisle Indian School in 1903 and saw beyond its assimilationist agenda, molding the Carlisle Indians into a football juggernaut and smashing prejudices along the way; Jim Thorpe, who arrived at Carlisle as a troubled teenager–only to become one of America’s finest athletes, dazzling his opponents and gaining fans across the nation; and a hardnosed Kansan back named Dwight Eisenhower, who knew that by stopping Carlisle’s amazing winning streak, he could lead the Cadets of Army to glory. But beyond recounting the tale of this momentous match, Lars Anderson reveals its broader social and historical context, offering unique perspectives on sports and culture at the dawn of the twentieth century.Filled with colorful period detail, Carlisle vs. Army gives a thrilling, authoritative account of the events of an epic afternoon whose reverberations would be felt for generations.Praise for Carslisle vs. Army:“Richly detailed and gracefully written . . . In an often overlooked football era, Anderson found a true Game of the Century.”–Sports Illustrated“[A] remarkable story . . . Carlisle vs. Army is about football the way that The Natural is about baseball.”–Jeremy Schaap, author of Cinderella Man “A great sports story, told with propulsive narrative drive . . . Anderson allows himself to get inside the heads of his characters, but as in the best sports-centered nonfiction (Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit and Frost’s Greatest Game Ever Played, for example), the technique is based on solid research.”–Booklist (starred review)

author: Bill Bryson ASIN or ISBN-10: 076790818X binding: Paperback list price: $16.99 USD amazon price: $12.18 USD

One of the world’s most beloved and bestselling writers takes his ultimate journey -- into the most intriguing and intractable questions that science seeks to answer.In A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson trekked the Appalachian Trail -- well, most of it. In In A Sunburned Country, he confronted some of the most lethal wildlife Australia has to offer. Now, in his biggest book, he confronts his greatest challenge: to understand -- and, if possible, answer -- the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. To that end, he has attached himself to a host of the world’s most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians, travelling to their offices, laboratories, and field camps. He has read (or tried to read) their books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerful minds. A Short History of Nearly Everything is the record of this quest, and it is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it. Science has never been more involving or entertaining.From the Hardcover edition.

author: John Graham-Cumming ASIN or ISBN-10: 0596523203 binding: Paperback list price: $29.99 USD amazon price: $22.27 USD

The history of science is all around us, if you know where to look. With this unique traveler's guide, you'll learn about 128 destinations around the world where discoveries in science, mathematics, or technology occurred or is happening now. Travel to Munich to see the world's largest science museum, watch Foucault's pendulum swinging in Paris, ponder a descendant of Newton's apple tree at Trinity College, Cambridge, and more. Each site in The Geek Atlas focuses on discoveries or inventions, and includes information about the people and the science behind them. Full of interesting photos and illustrations, the book is organized geographically by country (by state within the U.S.), complete with latitudes and longitudes for GPS devices. Destinations include:

• Bletchley Park in the UK, where the Enigma code was broken
• The Alan Turing Memorial in Manchester, England
• The Horn Antenna in New Jersey, where the Big Bang theory was confirmed
• The National Cryptologic Museum in Fort Meade, Maryland
• The Trinity Test Site in New Mexico, where the first atomic bomb was exploded
• The Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, California

You won't find tedious, third-rate museums, or a tacky plaque stuck to a wall stating that "Professor X slept here." Every site in this book has real scientific, mathematical, or technological interest -- places guaranteed to make every geek's heart pound a little faster. Plan a trip with The Geek Atlas and make your own discoveries along the way.