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Nature and Science June 2017
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| Miracle Cure: The Creation of Antibiotics and the Birth of Modern Medicine by William RosenHow would you cure an infection? Bloodletting? Blistering plasters? Mercury? All of these (and more) were standard practice before antibiotics came on the scene. Beginning with the germ theory of Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch, this eye-opening book traces the scientific breakthroughs that contributed to the development of penicillin -- a game-changer that revolutionized medicine (while generating huge profits for pharmaceutical companies.) Miracle Cure also gives us a glimpse into the future: antibiotic-resistant bacteria and few, if any, treatment options. |
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Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong
by Paul A. Offit
Exploring the most fascinating and significant scientific missteps, a pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases; an expert on vaccines, immunology and virology; and the co-inventor of a rotavirus that has saved thousands of lives presents seven cautionary lessons to separate good science from bad. By the author of Bad Faith: When Religious Belief Undermines Modern Medicine.
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Botanicum
by K. J. Willis
Showcases dozens of full-color plants from around the world in a gallery format, complemented by identification information and brief descriptions.
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Wolf Nation: The Life, Death, and Return of Wild American Wolves
by Brenda Peterson
Telling the 300-year history of wild wolves in America, as well as our own history seen through our relationship with wolves, the author of Sightings, an eloquent voice in the battle to bring them back to the wild, makes the powerful case that, without wolves, not only will America's whole ecology unravel, but Americans will lose much of our national soul.
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The Health of Nations: The Campaign to End Polio and Eradicate Epidemic Diseases
by Karen Bartlett
Writing with the pace of a thriller, Karen Bartlett give us a rare inside look at how both global organizations and local campaigns operate on the frontlines in the war against contagious disease. She reveals why politics will prove to be the final enemy in the fight for global health and how victory in this battle will have profound consequences for the balance of world power and will embolden scientists to make other, even more momentous breakthroughs. Thought-provoking and full of reasons to be hopeful for the future, The Health of Nations is essential reading on one of the greatest challenges we face in the 21st century.
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Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life
by David R. Montgomery
A MacArthur Fellow draws on the lessons of the ancient world and the practices of developing regions to present an impassioned argument in favor of no-till planting, covering crops and diversifying crop rotations.
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Florida's Seashells: A Beachcomber's Guide
by Blair Witherington
This book showcases the diversity of Florida's seashells and presents them in the way they come to us on beaches. Knowing the names, stories, and varied appearances of seashells can sharpen a beachcomber's eyes to their beauty and rarity, and offer collectors an outlet for the appreciation of nature's splendor. The book’s elegant organization allows easy identification of seashells common to the southeastern United States and the Caribbean.
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Monarchs and Milkweed: A Migrating Butterfly, a Poisonous Plant, and Their Remarkable Story of Coevolution
by Anurag A. Agrawal
This is a gorgeously written and wonderfully illustrated synthesis of our rich knowledge of the evolutionary battle between the monarch butterfly and the common milkweed. It is also a fascinating account of the cast of biologists--including such pioneers as Lincoln Brower, Miriam Rothschild, and Fred and Nora Urquhart--who have probed the deep mysteries posed by this amazingly mobile insect and its famously poisonous host.
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Eat the Beetles!: An Exploration of Our Conflicted Relationship With Insects
by David Waltner-Toews
Meet the beetles: there are millions and millions of them and many fewer of the rest of us — mammals, birds, and reptiles. Since before recorded history, humans have eaten insects. While many get squeamish at the idea, entomophagy — people eating insects — is a possible way to ensure a sustainable and secure food supply for the eight billion of us on the planet.
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| Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert M. SapolskyAs both a neurobiologist and a primatologist, author Robert Sapolsky can confidently state that human behavior is...complicated. To understand why we do what we do, he asserts, one must take an interdisciplinary approach. In Behave, Sapolsky explores the best and worst of 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. It's an unusual but fascinating approach that will make you reconsider your own behavior. |
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Weird Dinosaurs: The Strange New Fossils Challenging Everything We Thought We Knew
by John Pickrell
Weird Dinosaurs examines the latest breakthroughs and new technologies radically transforming our understanding of the distant past. Pickrell opens a vivid portal to a brand new age of fossil discovery, in which fossil hunters are routinely redefining what we know and how we think about prehistory's most iconic and fascinating creatures.
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Curators: Behind the Scenes of Natural History Museums
by Lance Grande
This beautifully written and richly illustrated book is a clear-eyed but loving account of natural history museums, their curators, and their ever-expanding roles in the twenty-first century. An insider's account of "what a natural history museum curator does."After more than 30 years as a research scientist at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, one of the world's largest natural history museums, Grande (The Lost World of Fossil Lake: Snapshots from Deep Time, 2013, etc.) steps back to describe the inner workings of these institutions devoted to the study of biology, anthropology, geology, and human culture.
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The Science of Science Fiction
by Matthew Brenden Wood
Uncovers the real science behind classic and modern science fiction stories, exploring such topics as time travel, cloning, artificial intelligence, and life on other planets.
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| Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson"America's most approachable astrophysicist" (Kirkus Reviews) offers readers a concise and conversational introduction to cosmology. In 12 engaging chapters, Neil deGrasse Tyson explains, in straightforward and mostly jargon-free prose, the composition of the universe and the laws that govern it. Covering topics ranging from the Big Bang to general relativity to dark matter, he also describes what we don't yet know about the universe. While some science background is always useful when confronting astrophysics, it's not essential to enjoy this book. |
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| Darwin's First Theory: Exploring Darwin's Quest to Find a Theory of the Earth by Rob WessonAlthough today Charles Darwin's name is synonymous with evolution, his first love -- and career -- was geology. In fact, his official role aboard the HMS Beagle was as a geologist. In this richly detailed blend of biography, science writing, and travelogue, geologist Rob Wesson traces Darwin’s footsteps through South America and the British isles, revealing how his fieldwork led to his theory of "uplift," which laid the groundwork for plate tectonics. |
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| Anatomies: A Cultural History of the Human Body by Hugh Aldersey-WilliamsIs the human body a territory to be mapped? A machine to be maintained? A canvas to be decorated? No matter what metaphor one prefers, it's clear that the body is more than the sum of its parts and that anatomy is just one lens through which we view ourselves. As he did in Periodic Tales, science writer Hugh Aldersey-Williams draws as much from art and history as he does from science and medicine in this engaging head-to-toe examination of the human body. |
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| The Wild Life of Our Bodies: Predators, Parasites, and Partners that Shape Who We... by Rob DunnIn this accessible look at evolutionary ecology, biologist Rob Dunn argues that human evolution is intimately connected to that of other species and the environment. Positing that the presence of venomous snakes may have led to enhanced color vision in primates, and that ticks and lice might have played a role in rendering humans nearly hairless, Dunn examines how our species' interactions with the natural world influenced our genetic code. However, there's a downside: as human survival becomes easier, human susceptibility to disease increases. |
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| The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease by Daniel E. LiebermanYou'd think that after six million years of evolution, humans would be less vulnerable to disease. However, as biologist Daniel Lieberman explains, we didn't evolve for optimal health, but rather to produce viable offspring in challenging environments. What's more, cultural evolution creates mismatches between the bodies we inherited from our ancestors and the environments we create and transform for ourselves and our descendants. This thought-provoking book uses our evolutionary history to examine the challenges we currently face in staying alive. |
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| We Have the Technology: How Biohackers, Foodies, Physicians, and Scientists Are... by Kara PlatoniAnnoyed by the limitations of the human body? You're not alone. As science writer Kara Platoni demonstrates, there's a growing community of "citizen scientists" whose members are pushing the boundaries of human perception -- often by experimenting on themselves. Understanding what these "biohackers" are doing requires knowledge of both sensory science and metasensory perception (how we experience time, pain, or memories) and Platoni provides readers with an overview of the science while introducing them to the eccentric individuals bent on upgrading our basic hardware. |
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