"Today we think of Wikipedia as the source of all information, the ultimate reference. Yet it is just the latest in a long line of aggregated knowledge--reference works that have shaped the way we've seen the world for centuries. You Could Look It Up chronicles the captivating stories behind these great works and their contents, and the way they have influenced each other. From The Code of Hammurabi, the earliest known compendium of laws in ancient...

"How on Earth did we fix upon our twenty-six letters, what do they really mean, and how did we come to write them down in the first place? Michael Rosen takes you on an unforgettable adventure through the history of the alphabet in twenty-six vivid chapters, fizzing with personal anecdotes and fascinating facts. Starting with the mysterious Phoenicians and how sounds first came to be written down, he races on to show how nonsense poems work, pins...

"This takedown of American gun culture argues that the nation's fathers did not intend the Second Amendment to guarantee an individual right to bear arms-and that this intentional distortion of the record is an urgent threat to democracy. Hundreds of lives are lost to firearms every day in America. The cost is more than the numbers-it is also the fear, the anxiety, the dread of public spaces that an armed society has created under the tortured rubric...