In this narrative science book about trash, the author, a journalist takes readers on a surprising tour of the world of garbage. Trash is America's largest export. Individually, we make more than four pounds a day, sixty-four tons across a lifetime. We make so much of it that trash dominates America's place in the global economy, now the most prized product made in the United States. In 2010, China's number one export to the U.S. was computer equipment....

Pulitzer Prize-winner Edward Humes offers readers an eye-opening look at the remarkable philanthropists and visionaries who are devoting their lives to saving the earth from overdevelopment and destruction. In Eco Barons, Humes, the bestselling author of Mississippi Mud and Monkey Girl, gives us fascinating portraits of extraordinary men and women who are dedicated to humankind's survival-as important a contribution to the environmental cause as Al...

Examines the case of Jo Ann Parks, the sole survivor and eyewitness of a Los Angeles apartment fire in which her three young children perished. Parks was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole based on forensic fire science that is now being challenged by the California Innocence Project, which contends tunnel vision and outright bias not only led to life in prison for an innocent mother, but convicted her of a crime that never actually...

"After 30 years, Detective Jim Scharf arrested a teenage couple's murderer--and exposed a looming battle between the pursuit of justice and the right to privacy. When Tanya Van Cuylenborg and Jay Cook were murdered during a trip to Seattle in the 1980s, detectives had few leads. The murder weapon was missing. No one witnessed any suspicious activity. And there was only a single handprint on the outside of the young couple's van. The detectives assumed...