Most Popular Books by Andrew Smith

"Serious scholarly study traces biological origins of the tomato and evolution of human attitude toward its use from preconquest western South America, the Central America isthmus, and Mexico to 16thcentury Europe. Then follows path of the tomato back across the Atlantic to 19thcentury US. Also identifies another possible route for the tomato from the Caribbean to southeastern US. Drawn from scientific, medical, and historical works as well as traditional cookbooks"Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58

A portrait of the twelve men who journeyed to the moon draws on interviews with the nine surviving astronauts who walked on the moon to determine how their lives were transformed by the experience and its aftermath.

The story of the dotcom bubble, its tumultuous crash, and the visionary pioneer at its epicentre... ''The Social Network meets Hammer of the Gods via Warhol''s Factory'' Independent ''Effervescent...vivid...this is a book whose time has come'' Sunday Times One morning in February 2001, Josh Harris woke to the certain knowledge that he was about to lose everything. The man Time magazine called ''The Warhol of the Web'' was now reduced to the role of helpless spectator as his personal fortune dwindled from 85 million dollars…to 50 million…to nothing. In the space of a week. If the mania attending those events is hard to recall, it''s because when the crash came, the dreams and expectations of those surreal few years were swept away with near Biblical inclemency. More than a decade later, they seem shrouded in a kind of pre-Millennial mist; might never have happened. How easy to forget that at the end of 1999, the world seemed to be spinning off its axis as a new one evolved before our eyes, with anything imaginable seeming to be possible, in real time... In his bestselling book Moondust, Andrew Smith looked at the lives of the nine remaining Moonwalkers, how their exploits helped shape an era and how that era left its mark on them. In Totally Wired, he goes in search of the truth about one of the most extraordinary and mysterious events of the 20th century, the dotcom bubble of the 1990s, and draws a direct line from there to where we are now. ''A brilliant exploration of madness and genius in the early days of the web'' Guardian

Includes an excerpt from the Andrew Smith novel, The Alex crow.

Finn Easton, sixteen and epileptic, struggles to feel like more than just a character in his father''s cult-classic novels with the help of his best friend, Cade Hernandez, and first love, Julia, until Julia moves away.

The summer before Troy Stotts turns seventeen, his mother dies. Troy and his father barely speak, communicating instead by writing notes on a legal pad by the phone. Troy spends most of his time with his closest friends: Tom Buller, brash and fearless, the son of a drunk; Gabe Benavidez, smart enough to know he''ll never take over the family ranch; and Gabe''s sister, Luz, whose family overprotects her, and who Troy has loved since they were children. Troy and his friends don''t want trouble. They want this to be the summer of what Troy calls "ghost medicine," when time seems to stop, so they won''t have to face the past or the future. But before the summer is over, their paths will cross in dangerous and fateful ways with people who will change their lives: Rose, a damaged derelict who lives with a flock of wild horses and goats; and Chase Rutledge, the arrogant sheriff''s son. Troy and his friends want to disappear. Instead, they will become what they least expect —brothers, lovers, heroes, and ghosts.

“This provocative jaunt…dissects society, technology, othering, and what makes humanity human.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “An unpredictable, gross, and prescient rumination on modernity, media consumption, and machine-aided communication.” —Booklist (starred review) Told with Andrew Smith’s signature dark humor, Rabbit & Robot tells the story of Cager Messer, a boy who’s stranded on the Tennessee—his father’s lunar-cruise utopia—with insane robots. To help him shake his Woz addiction, Billy and Rowan transport Cager Messer up to the Tennessee, a giant lunar-cruise ship orbiting the moon. Meanwhile, Earth, in the midst of thirty simultaneous wars, burns to ash beneath them. And as the robots on board become increasingly insane and cannibalistic, and the Earth becomes a toxic wasteland, the boys have to wonder if they’ll be stranded alone in space forever. In Rabbit & Robot, Andrew Smith, Printz Honor author of Grasshopper Jungle, makes you laugh, cry, and consider what it really means to be human.

Codex Alexandrinus is one of the three earliest surviving entire Greek Bibles and is an important fifth-century witness to the Christian Scriptures, yet no major analysis of the codex has been performed in over a century. In A Study of the Gospels in Codex Alexandrinus W. Andrew Smith delivers a fresh and highly-detailed examination of the codex and its rich variety of features using codicology, palaeography, and statistical analysis. Among the highlights of this study, W. Andrew Smith’s work overturns the view that a single scribe was responsible for copying the canonical books of the New Testament and demonstrates that the orthographic patterns in the Gospels can no longer be used to argue for Egyptian provenance of the codex.

A boy who spent three days trapped in a well tries to overcome his PTSD and claustrophobia so he can fulfill his dream of becoming a famous chef in Andrew Smith’s first middle grade novel. When he was four years old, Sam Abernathy was trapped at the bottom of a well for three days, where he was teased by a smart-aleck armadillo named Bartleby. Since then, his parents plan every move he makes. But Sam doesn’t like their plans. He doesn’t want to go to MIT. And he doesn’t want to skip two grades, being stuck in the eighth grade as an eleven-year-old with James Jenkins, the boy he’s sure pushed him into the well in the first place. He wants to be a chef. And he’s going to start by entering the first annual Blue Creek Days Colonel Jenkins Macaroni and Cheese Cook-Off. That is, if he can survive eighth grade, and figure out the size of the truth that has slipped Sam’s memory for seven years.

Fourteen-year-old Stark McClellan (nicknamed Stick because he''s tall and thin) is bullied for being "deformed" – he was born with only one ear. His older brother Bosten is always there to defend Stick. But the boys can''t defend one another from their abusive parents. When Stick realizes Bosten is gay, he knows that to survive his father''s anger, Bosten must leave home. Stick has to find his brother, or he will never feel whole again. In his search, he will encounter good people, bad people, and people who are simply indifferent to kids from the wrong side of the tracks. But he never loses hope of finding love – and his brother.

Two brothers leave home looking for their father, and find themselves hitching a ride with a violent killer – here is a road trip from hell. Jonah and his younger brother, Simon, are on their own. They set out to find what''s left of their family, carrying between them ten dollars, a backpack full of dirty clothes, a notebook, and a stack of letters from their brother, who is serving a tour in Vietnam. And soon into their journey, they have a ride. With a man and a beautiful girl who may be in love with Jonah. Or Simon. Or both of them. The man is crazy. The girl is desperate. This violent ride is only just beginning. And it will leave the brothers taking cover from hard truths about loyalty, love, and survival that crash into their lives. One more thing: The brothers have a gun. They''re going to need it.