W. W. Norton & Company

07/18/2025

Some covers that are as beautiful as the temperature is warm! If you're looking for a book to add to your summer TBR before the season is over, then look no further than these beautiful titles.

ANGELICA by Molly Beer 📖
A women-centric view of revolution through the life of Angelica Schuyler Church, Alexander Hamilton’s influential sister-in-law.

"For far too long the grand tapestry of America’s journey to independence has foregrounded fathers and sons while keeping the women in the shadows. Molly Beer’s book is a vital corrective." — Amanda Foreman, author of The Duchess

THE ORIGINAL by Nell Stevens 📖
In a grand English country house in 1899, an aspiring art forger must unravel whether the man claiming to be her long-lost cousin is an impostor.

"A marvelously inventive and perfectly forged novel that poses a mischievous question: What role does likeness play in love? The ghosts of Oscar Wilde and Wilkie Collins stalk these pages, whether they know it or not." — Eleanor Catton, author of Birnam Wood

FLASHES OF BRILLIANCE by Anika Burgess 📖
The story of the wildest experiments in early photography and the wild people who undertook them.

"Through painstaking research and her obvious love of the medium, Burgess succeeds in reminding us how special this 'small miracle of chemistry, optics, and light' really is." — Michael Patrick Brady, Washington Post

07/17/2025

No animal is so entangled in human history as the horse. The thread starts in prehistory, with a slight, shy animal, hunted for food. Domesticating the horse allowed early humans to settle the vast Eurasian steppe; later, their horses enabled new forms of warfare, encouraged long-distance trade routes, and ended up acquiring deep cultural and religious significance.

Over time, horses came to power mighty empires in Iran, Afghanistan, China, India, and, later, Russia. Genghis Khan and the thirteenth-century Mongols offer the most famous example, but from ancient Assyria and Persia, to the seventeenth-century Mughals, to the high noon of colonialism in the early twentieth century, horse breeding was indispensable to conquest and statecraft.

Scholar of Asian history David Chaffetz tells the story of how the horse made rulers, raiders, and traders interchangeable, providing a novel explanation for the turbulent history of the “Silk Road,” which might be better called the Horse Road. Drawing on recent research in fields including genetics and forensic archeology, Chaffetz presents a lively history of the great horse empires that shaped civilization.

Available now in paperback.
https://wwnorton.com/books/raiders-rulers-and-traders

Jacket design by Sarah Bibel

07/17/2025

How much do you know about emoji, the world's newest language? Whether you think of yourself as a fluent speaker or a casual user, test your knowledge by taking the FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY quiz: https://wwnorton326.outgrow.us/face-with-tears-of-joy-quiz

We are surrounded by emoji. They appear in politics, movies, drug deals, our s*x lives, and more. But emoji’s impact has never been explored in full. In this rollicking tech and pop culture history, Keith Houston follows emoji from its birth in 1990s Japan, traces its Western explosion in the 2000s, and considers emoji’s ever-expanding lexicon. Named for the world’s most popular pictogram, FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY tells the whole story of emoji for the first time.

FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY is available now wherever books are sold.
https://wwnorton.com/books/face-with-tears-of-joy

07/16/2025

In England in the 1700s, a woman who was an intellectual, spoke out, or wrote professionally was considered unnatural. After all, as the wisdom of the era dictated, a clever woman—if there were such a thing—would never make a good wife. But a circle of women called the Bluestockings did something extraordinary: coming together in glittering salons to discuss and debate as intellectual equals with men, they fought for women to be educated and to have a public role in society.

In this intimate and revelatory history, Susannah Gibson delves into the lives of these pioneering women. Elizabeth Montagu established one of the most famous salons of the Bluestocking movement, with everyone from royalty to revolutionaries clamoring for an invitation to attend. Her younger sister, Sarah Scott, imagined a female-run society and created a women’s commune. Meanwhile, Hester Thrale, who also had a salon, saved her husband’s brewery from bankruptcy and, after being widowed, married a man she loved—Italian, Catholic, and not of her social class. Other women made a name for themselves through their publications, including Catharine Macaulay, author of an eight-volume history of England, and Frances Burney, author of the audacious novel Evelina.

In elegant prose, Gibson reveals the close and complicated relationships between these women, how they supported and admired each other, and how they sometimes judged and exploited one another. Some rebelled quietly, while others defied propriety with adventurous and scandalous lives. With moving stories and keen insight, THE BLUESTOCKINGS uncovers how a group of remarkable women slowly built up an eviscerating critique of their male-dominated world that society was not yet ready to hear.

Available now.
https://wwnorton.com/books/the-bluestockings

Jacket design by Jen Heuer

07/15/2025

The epic stories of our planet’s 4.54-billion-year history are written in strata—ages-old remnants of ancient seafloors, desert dunes, and riverbeds striping landscapes around the world. In this brilliantly original debut work, science writer Laura Poppick decodes strata to lead us on a journey through four global transformations that made our lives on Earth possible: the first accumulations of oxygen in the atmosphere; the deep freezes of "Snowball Earth"; the rise of mud on land and accompanying proliferation of plants; and the dinosaurs’ reign on a hothouse planet

Poppick introduces us to the researchers who have devoted their careers to understanding the events of deep time, including the world’s leading stegosaur scientist. She travels to sites as various as a Minnesotan iron mine that runs half a mile deep and a corner of the Australian Outback where glacial deposits date from the coldest times on Earth. Ultimately, she demonstrates that the planet’s oceans, continents, atmosphere, life, and ice have always conspired to bring stability to Earth, even if we are only just beginning to understand how these different facets interact.

A work in the tradition of John McPhee, STRATA allows us to observe how the planet has responded to past periods of environmental upheaval, and shows how Earth’s ancient narratives could hold lessons for our present and future.

Available now.
https://wwnorton.com/books/strata

Jacket design by Steve Attardo

07/15/2025

BALLISTIC author and award-winning journalist Henry Abbott says "Let your kid climb that tree."

Learn more in The Atlantic's article.

It could actually make them safer.

07/15/2025

Don’t miss out! Enter for a chance to win an exclusive WHAT IS Q***R FOOD? merch pack.

Three (3) winners will receive:
One (1) set of three (3) custom stickers
One (1) Baldwin, Toklas, Baker, Olney, and Eng tote bag
One (1) 11 3/4 x 8 1/4 WHAT IS Q***R FOOD? cover poster

No purchase necessary to enter or win. Must be a U.S. resident, 18+ years of age at time of entry. Other restrictions apply, see complete details and official sweepstakes rules at http://bit.ly/40mWzZn (link in bio).

To enter: fill out and submit the form a bit.ly/4nK1RYN (link in bio) before 12:00 AM Eastern Time on August 1, 2025.

07/15/2025

Seabrook Farms once provided a third of the nation’s frozen vegetables. But with its success came scandal. John Seabrook confronts his family’s complex legacy in his new book, THE SPINACH KING. Here is his conversation with NJ Monthly.

Seabrook Farms once provided a third of the nation’s frozen vegetables. But with its success came scandal. In "The Spinach King," John Seabrook confronts his family’s complex legacy.

07/14/2025

"Stevens is showing herself to be that rare thing: a writer who we can think alongside, even while she’s making things up."

Read The Guardian's review of THE ORIGINAL by Nell Stevens.

This flamboyant tale of fakers and forgery, straddling the turn of the 20th century, is a smart and witty investigation into love and authenticity

07/10/2025

Starting with hands, abacus, and slide rule, humans have always reached for tools to simplify math. Pocket-sized calculators ushered in modern mathematics, helped build the atomic bomb, took us to the bottom of the ocean, and accompanied us to the moon. The pocket calculator changed our world, until it was supplanted by more modern devices that, in a cruel twist of irony, it helped to create. The calculator is dead; long live the calculator.

In this witty mathematic and social history, Keith Houston transports readers from the nascent economies of the ancient world to World War II, where a Jewish engineer calculated for his life at Buchenwald, and into the technological arms race that led to the first affordable electronic pocket calculators. At every turn, Houston is a scholarly, affable guide to this global history of invention. EMPIRE OF THE SUM will appeal to math lovers, history buffs, and anyone seeking to understand our trajectory to the computer age.

Available 7/29.
https://wwnorton.com/books/empire-of-the-sum

Jacket Design: Milan Bozic

07/09/2025

Book Marks named THE ORIGINAL as one of the best reviewed books of the week! See the list here:

Featuring Kathy Wang, the CIA, Nell Stevens, and more

07/09/2025

Don't miss out! Preorder CHRONICLES OF ORI now and get a poster of Jakuta and the Nupe Princess! For more information: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/rtkZWhKbbf