| Down from the Mountain: The Life and Death of a Grizzly Bear by Bryce AndrewsWho is she? Millie, a 500-pound grizzly sow (and mother of two cubs) from Montana's Mission Valley.
What does she want? Corn! Montana's grizzly bear population is addicted to the crop, which lures them from their isolated habitats into more populous areas, resulting in conflicts with local farmers.
You might also like: Nate Blakeslee's American Wolf, which similarly explores tensions between humans and wildlife by recounting the life and death of a charismatic animal. |
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| Why You Like It: The Science and Culture of Musical Taste by Nolan GasserWhat it's about: the science of music (what it is) and the sociology of musical taste (why we like what we like and what it says about us).
About the author: Musicologist Nolan Gasser is the architect of Pandora’s Music Genome Project.
Is it for you? Readers with some background in music theory or practice will get the most out of this eclectic and comprehensive book. |
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| Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour From the Cranium to the Calcaneum by Gavin FrancisWhat it is: a head-to-toe survey of the human body by a physician.
Want a taste? "I was nineteen years old when I first held a human brain. It was heavier than I had anticipated; grey, firm, and laboratory-cold."
For fans of: the blend of medical writing and memoir in Henry Marsh's Do No Harm; the philosophical tone of F. Gonzalez-Crussi's Notes of an Anatomist. |
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| Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah HarariThe big question: So now that we've mitigated the effects of famine, plague, and war, what's next for human beings?
About the author: Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari is the author of the bestselling Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.
Is it for you? Believers in the march of human progress should be aware that Home Deus forecasts several possible futures for our species, most of them downright dystopian. |
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| The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos by Leonard MlodinowWhat it is: a history of scientific discovery that makes a case for human curiosity about the universe as a defining attribute of our species.
Topics covered: the evolution of the human brain, a grand tour of the sciences (featuring greats minds from Aristotle to Heisenberg), and a brief introduction to quantum physics.
For fans of: the accessible presentation of science in Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. |
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| Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert M. SapolskyWhat it is: an interdisciplinary study of human behavior by neurobiologist and primatologist Robert Sapolsky.
What it does: Behave explores human behavior by taking a single (re)action and examining what's going on in the brain and body in the seconds, minutes, hours, days, and even years before it occurs.
Don't miss: the author's top ten strategies for reducing violence in our species. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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