James Johnson

What is electricity? Not just in theory, but really. What is it? Where did it come from? Who figured it out? How does it move, store, think, and shape the entire world?

Leonardo takes you inside the brain of a man who painted the most famous face on Earth, sketched helicopters in the 1400s, dissected corpses to understand beauty, and wrote in mirrored code while inventing robots no one would build for centuries.

The Mirage: How Saudi Arabia Built a Gas Station Empire is a sharp, unsettling deep-dive into how one royal family turned a desert into a kingdom, an oil company into a superpower, and a religious movement into a global firewall. This is not ancient history — it all started in the 20th century.

Biology 101: A History of Life is the story of how humans discovered life from the outside in. Poking, slicing, sketching, sequencing, and arguing our way toward understanding what it means to be alive.

Andrew Jackson: The Republic’s Iron Fist traces the full arc of one of the most polarizing figures in U.S. history. From his muddy birth on the Carolina frontier to the battlefield at New Orleans, from the dueling grounds of Tennessee to the Oval Office, Jackson’s life was war—and he never stopped swinging.

He never stopped drawing. Not even when the world told him to grow up. Tim Burton didn’t try to fit in — he turned his alienation into art. From the suburban shadows of Burbank to the soundstages of Hollywood, he built an empire of monsters, misfits, and melancholy hearts.

What is color? Not just pigment. Not just light. Not even just perception. Color is a system. A language written in wavelengths, built by biology, shaped by culture, and weaponized by power.

From pulp magazines to religious empires, The Church That Sued the World traces the astonishing rise of Scientology and the system that turned narrative into dogma. With clarity and insight, JJ unpacks the architecture of a belief system built on checklists, control, and commercial precision.

He ruled for sixty-seven years. Built temples that dwarfed time. Fought the greatest chariot battle in history. Buried sons. Married goddesses. Made peace with empires. Rewrote the past. Refused to die. And three thousand years later, we’re still saying his name.

What if reality doesn’t exist until you look at it? Quantum physics started as a fix for a math problem. Then it spiraled into the most accurate and most unsettling theory in science. This is the story of how we figured it out.

From sacred ceremony to cigarette ads, from opioid pills to infinite scroll, Addiction: The Habit That Runs the World traces the full timeline of how craving became a system and how that system became modern life.

This is the story of the philosopher who left no writings behind but changed the trajectory of human thought forever. From his youth in Agora to his final moments with the hemlock cup in hand, this book follows the man, the method, and the madness of Socratic philosophy.

What do shamans, Freud, rats, TikTok, and your mother all have in common? They’ve all shaped how we try to make sense of the human mind. Psychology 101 is the crash course you never got. A sharp, irreverent walk through the strange saga of how humans have studied humans.

You’ve seen the red string. You’ve heard the word. But you’ve never seen Kabbalah like this. KABBALAH: The Code Behind Creation isn’t a self-help book or a watered-down celebrity guide.

The Talmud isn’t a book. It’s 2,711 pages of arguments, laws, loopholes, and questions — with no final answers. This is what it actually says — not filtered, not explained, just the rules, the stories, and the rabbis who debated every word.

From fire to fallout, potions to polymers — this is the story of how we figured out what everything is made of. Chemistry 101 isn’t your high school textbook. It’s a walkthrough of how humans turned mystery into mastery.

In Crust We Trust is the untold story of how pizza became more than a meal—it became a movement. From the flatbreads of ancient empires to the chaotic rise of the Noid, from mafia-laced slices to origins of the biggest franchises, this book dives headfirst into the world of pizza.

This is the story of the NSA — the agency you weren’t supposed to know existed, quietly building the largest surveillance machine in human history, run by math nerds, funded by fear, and powered by your private life.

Pip may be small, but his journey is anything but! Pip the Pebble and the Mountain of Change is a heartwarming adventure perfect for young readers, bedtime, or story time.

TAYLOR SWIFT: The Making of a Pop Machine is the real story of how a Pennsylvania girl with a dream became a billion-dollar brand, a streaming superpower, and the most influential artist of her generation. From country roots to stadium dominance.