January 2021 list by Dan Berube
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The 99% Invisible City
by Roman Mars
The creators of the record-setting 99% Invisible podcast celebrate the achievements of modern urban design and architecture, sharing the origin stories behind fundamental innovations, from power grids and fire escapes to drinking fountains and street signs.
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Angry Weather: Heat Waves, Floods, Storms, and the New Science of Climate Change
by Friederike Otto
Massive fires, widespread floods, Category 4 hurricanes—shocking weather disasters dominate news headlines every year, but not everyone agrees on what causes them. Renowned scientist Friederike Otto provides an answer with attribution science, a revolutionary method for pinpointing the role of climate change in extreme weather events.
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Dragons in the Snow
by Edward Power
Power sets the reader down in the midst of a February 2017 blizzard that raked the Uinta Range as nine snowboarders made their way into the backcountry for a day of intense adventure. Meanwhile, Craig Gordon, one of the lead avalanche forecasters at the Utah Avalanche Center in Salt Lake City, was tracking the storm and its impact, and found himself posting one of the most dire avalanche forecasts and warnings in his seventeen years of forecasting.
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Fathoms: The World in the Whale
by Rebecca Giggs
Blending together natural history, philosophy and science, this stunning meditation on the extraordinary lives of whales takes readers on an exploration of the natural world to reveal what whales can teach us about ourselves, our planet and our relationship to other species.
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Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History
by Paul Farmer
The Harvard University global-health authority documents the 2014 Ebola crisis and the stories of victims and first responders while revealing the centuries of exploitation, injustice, and state failures that rendered it history’s worst outbreak.
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The Human Cosmos: Civilization and the Stars
by Jo Marchant
Revealing how early cultures celebrated the mysteries of a night sky now hidden by today’s pollution and tech, the best-selling author of Cure invites readers to reconnect the human experience to the remarkable cosmic cycles that shaped it.
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Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art
by Rebecca Wragg Sykes
Casting aside the cliché of the shivering ragged figure in an icy wasteland, this fascinating volume sheds new light on the Neanderthal and where they lived, what they ate and the increasingly complex Neanderthal culture that researchers have discovered.
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The Reign of Wolf 21: The Saga of Yellowstone's Legendary Druid Pack
by Rick McIntyre
In this compelling follow-up to The Rise of Wolf 8, Rick McIntyre profiles one of Yellowstone's most revered alpha males, Wolf 21. Leader of the Druid Peak Pack, Wolf 21 was known for his unwavering bravery, his unusual benevolence (unlike other alphas, he never killed defeated rival males), and his fierce commitment to his mate, the formidable Wolf 42.
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Tales From the Ant World
by Edward O. Wilson
The Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard professor emeritus and author of Anthill shares eloquent descriptions of his natural-world encounters with ants, from his boyhood explorations in the Alabama woods to his perilous journeys into the Brazilian rainforest.
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World Wild Vet: Encounters in the Animal Kingdom
by Evan Antin
World renowned animal expert and host of Animal Planet’s Evan Goes Wild offers humorous stories and descriptions of dangerous encounters with some of the most exotic species on earth, including sharks, venomous snakes and crocodiles.
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