“Robert Wilson’s Barnum, the first full-dress biography in twenty years, eschews clichés for a more nuanced story…It is a life for our times, and the biography Barnum deserves.” —The Wall Street Journal P.T. Barnum is the greatest showman the world has ever seen. As a creator of the Barnum & Baily Circus and a champion of wonder, joy, trickery, and “humbug,” he was the founding father of American entertainment—and as Robert Wilson argues, one of the most important figures in American history. Nearly 125 years after his death, the name P.T. Barnum still inspires wonder. Robert Wilson’s vivid new biography captures the full genius, infamy, and allure of the ebullient showman, who, from birth to death, repeatedly reinvented himself. He learned as a young man how to wow crowds, and built a fortune that placed him among the first millionaires in the United States. He also suffered tragedy, bankruptcy, and fires that destroyed his life’s work, yet willed himself to recover and succeed again. As an entertainer, Barnum courted controversy throughout his life—yet he was also a man of strong convictions, guided in his work not by a desire to deceive, but an eagerness to thrill and bring joy to his audiences. He almost certainly never uttered the infamous line, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” instead taking pride in giving crowds their money’s worth and more. Robert Wilson, editor of The American Scholar, tells a gripping story in Barnum, one that’s imbued with the same buoyant spirit as the man himself. In this “engaging, insightful, and richly researched new biography” (New York Journal of Books), Wilson adeptly makes the case for P.T. Barnum’s place among the icons of American history, as a figure who represented, and indeed created, a distinctly American sense of optimism, industriousness, humor, and relentless energy.

A Spanish detective investigates a series of grisly killings in a crime thriller that maintains “an almost unbearable pitch of excitement” (Booklist). Called to a gruesome crime scene, Inspector Javier Falcón is shocked and sickened by what he finds there. Strewn like flower petals on the victim’s shirt are the man’s own eyelids, evidence of a heinous crime with no obvious motive. When the investigation leads Falcón to read his late father’s journals, he discovers a disturbing and sordid past. Meanwhile, more victims are falling. While he struggles to solve the case, he comes across a missing section of his father’s journal—and becomes the murderer’s next intended victim. Combining suspenseful storytelling with a thoughtful exploration of the human psyche, The Blind Man of Seville is a terrifying and “consistently stunning” police procedural from the Gold Dagger Award–winning author of A Small Death in Lisbon (St. Louis Post-Dispatch).

As Inspector Jefe Javier Falcón investigates a faceless, mutilated corpse, the beautiful city of Seville is rocked by a massive explosion. The discovery of a mosque in the basement of a devastated apartment building confirms everybody's terrorist fears. Panic sweeps the city and the region goes on red alert. As more bodies are dragged from the rubble, the media interest and political pressure inten­sify and Falcón suspects that all is not what it appears to be. Just as he comes close to cracking the conspiracy, he makes the most terrifying discovery of all and the race is on to prevent a catastrophe far beyond Spain's borders. A masterful thriller, The Hidden Assassins is fiction of the highest order.

From an historical perspective, this text presents an entirely non- mathematical introduction to astronomy from the first endeavours of the ancients to the current developments in research enabled by cutting edge technological advances. Free of mathematics and complex graphs, the book nevertheless explains deep concepts of space and time, of relativity and quantum mechanics, and of origin and nature of the universe. It conveys not only the intrinsic fascination of the subject, but also the human side and the scientific method as practised by Kepler, defined and elucidated by Galileo, and then demonstrated by Newton.

The bestselling author of "A Small Death in Lisbon" tells a gripping tale of a grisly murder that leads a police detective to the seamy side of his famous father's life.

The styles of high and pop culture come together with classical and new media in Robert Wilson's video portraits. The personalities they present refer in part to their own biographical details, but also to sources in cultural history. For example, Robert Downey Jr. plays the part of the corpse in Rembrandt's painting the Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (1632), while Brad Pitt demonstrates the expressive power of his acting with pistol and boxer shorts. Published to accompany the exhibition at ZKM, Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, May – August 2010.English and German text.

A poignant, “top rank” espionage thriller spanning from WWII to the Cold War from the award-winning author of A Small Death in Lisbon (The Guardian). Portugal, 1944. Recruited by British intelligence to help uncover Nazi secrets of atomic warfare, math prodigy Andrea Aspinall soon disappears into the crowds of Lisbon, hiding behind a new identity. Karl Voss, an attaché for German intelligence, arrives in the city under the purported agenda of helping the Reich, all the while secretly working to save his beloved home country from annihilation under their reign. Two lost souls meet in a city filled with haunting secrets and deadly lies, desperately trying to find love amid assassination attempts, shifting loyalties, and heartbreaking betrayals. And when tragedy strikes, the repercussions last for decades, leading one of them on a quest, twenty-four years later, back into a sinister world of espionage long thought left behind. Hailed as both “a heartrending tale, unfolded with loving patience and rising tension” (Kirkus Reviews) and “an evocative and compelling thriller” (Publishers Weekly), The Company of Strangers is a provocative and moving take on the classic espionage narrative, exploring what happens when the allegiances of heart and head oppose each other.