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Size: How it Explains the World
by Vaclav Smil
Grounded in history and drawing on the latest science, the New York Times bestselling author explores the concept of size and how it determines the world around us, explaining the regularities and peculiarities of the key processes of shaping life, the Earth, technical advances and societies and economies.
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The Devil's Element: Phosphorus and a World out of Balance
by Dan Egan
In this major work of explanatory science and environmental journalism, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and New York Times best-selling author investigates the past, present and future of phosphorus, exploring the alarming reality that diminishing access to phosphorus poses a threat to the food system worldwide, risking conflict and even war.
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The Possibility of Life
by Jaime Green
One of the most powerful questions humans ask about the cosmos is: Are we alone? While the science behind this inquiry is fascinating, it doesn't exist in a vacuum. It is a reflection of our values, our fears, and most importantly, our enduring sense of hope. In The Possibility of Life, acclaimed science journalist Jaime Green traces the history of our understanding, from the days of Galileo and Copernicus to our contemporary quest for exoplanets.
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On the Origin of Time
by Thomas Hertog
Stephen Hawking's closest collaborator, who worked shoulder to shoulder for 20 years, presents a new vision of the universe's birth that will profoundly transform the way we think about our place in the order of the cosmos and may ultimately prove to be Hawking's greatest scientific legacy.
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Under Alien Skies
by Philip C. Plait
Drawing on the latest scientific research and his prodigious imagination, a renowned astronomer and science communicator takes us on an immersive tour of the universe to view ten of the most spectacular sights outer space has to offer, including the strange, beautiful shadows cast by a hundred thousand stars. Illustrations.
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Flight Paths
by Rebecca Heisman
Details the true story of how a group of scientists obsessed with bird migration developed and built upon existing techniques to determine how to track migratory birds and unlock a better understanding of nature.
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Planta Sapiens
by Paco Calvo
Decades of research document plants' impressive abilities: they communicate with one another, manipulate other species, and move in sophisticated ways. Lesser known, however, is the new evidence that plants may actually be sentient. Although plants may not have brains, their microscopic commerce exposes a system not unlike the neuronal networks running through our own bodies. They can learn and remember, possessing an intelligence that allows them to behave in adaptive, flexible, anticipatory, and goal-directed ways.
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Slime: A Natural History
by Susanne Wedlich
Takes us on a sticky scientific adventure through the 3-billion-year history of slime, exploring its part in the evolution of life and its cultural and emotional significance, from its starring role in the horror genre to its subtle influence on Art Nouveau.
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Reading the Glass: A Captain's View of Weather, Water, and Life on Ships
by Elliot Rappaport
A professional captain of traditional sailing ships who has spent 30 years at sea offers a sailor's-eye-view of the moving parts of our atmosphere, unveiling the larger patterns it holds: global winds, storms, air masses, jet streams and the longer arc of our climate.
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What's Gotten Into You
by Dan Levitt
In this enlightening, entertaining and eminently readable book, a science and history documentarian brings to life the story of our atoms, long strange journey from the Big Bang to the creation of stars, through the assembly of our world and the formation of life as we know it.
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The Wise Hours: A Journey into the Wild and Secret World of Owls
by Miriam Darlington
Owls have existed for over sixty million years, and in the relatively short time we have shared the planet with these majestic birds they have ignited the human imagination. But even as owls continue to captivate our collective consciousness, celebrated British nature writer Miriam Darlington finds herself struck by all she doesn't know about the true nature of these enigmatic creatures.
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Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains
by Bethany Brookshire
A squirrel in the garden. A rat in the wall. A pigeon on the street. Humans have spent so much of our history drawing a hard line between human spaces and wild places. When animals pop up where we don’t expect or want them, we respond with fear, rage, or simple annoyance. It’s no longer an animal. It’s a pest. At the intersection of science, history, and narrative journalism, Pests is not a simple call to look closer at our urban ecosystem. It’s not a natural history of the animals we hate. Instead, this book is about us. It’s about what calling an animal a pest says about people, how we live, and what we want. It’s a story about human nature, and how we categorize the animals in our midst, including bears and coyotes, sparrows and snakes. Pet or pest? In many cases, it’s entirely a question of perspective. Bethany Brookshire’s deeply researched and entirely entertaining book will show readers what there is to venerate in vermin, and help them appreciate how these animals have clawed their way to success as we did everything we could to ensure their failure. In the process, we will learn how the pests that annoy us tell us far more about humanity than they do about the animals themselves.
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The Song of the Cell : An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human
by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Presenting revelatory and exhilarating stories of scientists, doctors and the patients whose lives may be saved by their work, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, drawing on his own experience as a researcher, doctor and prolific reader, explores medicine and our radical new ability to manipulate cells.
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Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories that Make Us
by Rachel Aviv
Raising fundamental questions about how we understand ourselves in periods of crisis and distress, the author draws on deep, original reporting as well as unpublished journals and memoirs to write about people who have come up against the limits of psychiatric explanations for who they are.
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Fossil Future
by Alex Epstein
A philosopher and energy expert presents a case that any negative impacts of fossil fuel use on our climate will be outweighed by the unique benefits of fossil fuels to human flourishing.
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The Last Days of the Dinosaurs
by Riley Black
Walks readers through what happened in the days, years, centuries and million years after an asteroid led to the mass extinction of the dinosaurs and half of known species, and how this worst single day in the history of life on Earth allowed for evolutionary opportunities.
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First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human
by Jeremy. DeSilva
A Dartmouth anthropologist whose team discovered two ancient human species explores how our evolution toward bipedalism rendered us dominant, innovative, more compassionate and more susceptible to health problems.
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Sounds Wild and Broken
by David George Haskell
Starting with the origins of animal song and traversing the whole arc of Earth history, this lyrical celebration of the emergence of the varied sounds of our world also looks how we are now silencing and smothering many of the sounds of our living planet.
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The Mission
by David W. Brown
A narrative chronicle of NASA’s deep-space mission to Jupiter’s ocean moon, Europa, discusses the remarkable work of scientists who overcame formidable hurdles in their effort to determine if organic life exists elsewhere in our solar system.
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Sentient: How Animals Illuminate the Wonder of Our Human Senses
by Jackie Higgins
This extraordinary book analyzes the incredible sensory capabilities of 13 animals, including the cheetah, orb-weaving spider and harlequin mantis shrimp, that hold the key to better understanding how we make sense of the world around us.
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Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas
by Jennifer Raff
In this study of both past and present, a celebrated anthropologist tells the story of who the first peoples in America were based on their complete genomes, providing a glimpse into how the tools of genetics reveal details about human history and evolution.
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The Anthropocene Reviewed
by John Green
The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his groundbreaking podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet-from the QWERTY keyboard and Staphylococcus aureus to the Taco Bell breakfast menu-on a five-star scale. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection that includes both beloved essays and all-new pieces exclusive to the book.
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Unsettled
by Steven E. Koonin
One of America’s most distinguished scientists offers non-political insights and perspectives on the Earth’s changing climate, dispelling common myths and revealing little-known truths that include a decrease in global temperatures from 1940 to 1970.
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Dopamine Nation
by Anna Lembke
This book is about pleasure. It’s also about pain. Most important, it’s about how to find the delicate balance between the two, and why now more than ever finding balance is essential. We’re living in a time of unprecedented access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli: drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, sexting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubing, tweeting… The increased numbers, variety, and potency is staggering. The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation. As such we’ve all become vulnerable to compulsive overconsumption.
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Frequently Asked Questions about the Universe
by Jorge Cham
A physics professor and a popular online cartoonist use their signature brand of humor honed on their podcast “Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe” to provide short, accessible and lighthearted answers to questions about time, space, gravity, and wormholes.
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Snow: A Scientific and Cultural Exploration
by Giles Whittell
Brimming with interesting facts and surprising anecdotes, this scientific and cultural history opens our eyes to the wonders of one of natures most delicate, delightful, and deadly phenomena: SNOW! Perfect for fans of The Hidden Life of Trees and Rain. Go on an extraordinary journey across centuries and continents to experience the wonders of snow; from the prehistoric humans that trekked and even skied across it tens of thousands of years ago to the multi-billion-dollar industry behind our moving, making, and playing with snow. Blending accessible writing with fascinating science, Giles Whittell explores how snow dictates where we live, provides us with drinking water, and has influenced countless works of art and more. Whittell also uncovers compelling mysteries of this miraculous substance, such as why avalanches happen, how snow saved a British prime ministers life, where the legend of the yeti comes from, and the terrifying truth behind the opening ceremony of the 1960 winter Olympics. Filled with in-depth research and whip-smart prose, Snow is an eye-opening and charming book that illuminates one of the most magnificent wonders of nature.
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On Animals
by Susan Orlean
Examining animal-human relationships through captivating stories she has written over the course of her career, the author, in this book that is equal parts wonderful and profound, celebrates the cross-species connections that grace our collective existence.
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Islands of Abandonment
by Cal Flyn
An investigative journalist looks at places where nature is flourishing in the absence of humans, such as the irradiated grounds of Chernobyl and a vast forest of extinct and endangered species in the DMZ between North and South Korea.
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The Science of Can and Can't
by Chiara Marletto
A young British physicist presents a groundbreaking exploration of a radically different approach to physics, pondering how what is possible can give is a more complete and helpful picture of the physical world.
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Projections: A Story of Human Emotions
by Karl Deisseroth
An internationally acclaimed professor of bioengineering and psychiatry at Stanford, through case studies, tells the larger story of how we can understand the physical and biological origins of human emotion in the brain.
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It's Elemental: The Hidden Chemistry in Everything
by Kate Biberdorf
In this practical pop science book, a scientist dubbed “the Cooler Bill Nye” looks at how we experience chemistry every day, answering questions such as what makes dough rise and how coffee gives us an energy boost.
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Unsolaced: Along the Way to All That Is
by Gretel Ehrlich
The author of The Solace of Open Spaces present a meditative account of how the planet’s animals, elements and natural landforms have shaped her life and understanding of a world besieged by climate change.
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Life's Edge: Searching for What it Means to be Alive
by Carl Zimmer
The New York Times “Matter” columnist investigates the science community’s conflicting views on what it actually means to be alive as demonstrated by laboratory attempts to recreate life and the examples of particularly remarkable life forms.
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Gory Details: Adventures from the Dark Side of Science
by Erika Engelhaupt
Blending humor and journalism, and featuring interviews with leading researchers, the author of National Geographic’s popular Gory Details blog investigates the gross, strange and morbid absurdities of our bodies and our universe.
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Under A White Sky
by Elizabeth Kolbert
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction returns to humanity's transformative impact on the environment, now asking: After doing so much damage, can we change nature, this time to save it? That man should have dominion "over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth" is a prophecy that has hardened into fact. So pervasive are human impacts on the planet that it's said we live in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. In Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. She meets scientists who are trying to preserve the world's rarest fish, which lives in a single, tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave. She visits a lava field in Iceland, where engineers are turning carbon emissions to stone; an aquarium in Australia, where researchers are trying to develop "super coral" that can survive on a hotter globe; and a lab at Harvard, where physicists are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere in order to reflect sunlight back to space and cool the earth. One way to look at human civilization, says Kolbert, is as a ten-thousand-year exercise in defying nature. In The Sixth Extinction, she explored the ways in which our capacity for destruction has reshaped the natural world. Now she examines how the very sorts of interventions that have imperiled our planet are increasingly seen as the only hope for its salvation. By turns inspiring, terrifying, and darkly comic, Under a White Sky is an utterly original examination of the challenges we face.
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Metazoa
by Peter Godfrey-Smith
The scuba-diver author of Other Minds blends philosophical reflections with the latest biological research in an investigation into the evolution of subjective awareness in animals that describes his remarkable encounters with undersea life.
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Molly
by Colin Butcher
A veteran of the Royal Navy and former police officer describes how he rescued a willful but unusually intelligent dog who became his partner in the United Kingdom Pet Detective Agency, which helps owners track down their lost pets.
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Cosmic Queries
by Neil deGrasse Tyson
A legendary astrophysicist offers a unique spin on the mysteries and curiosities of the cosmos, building on rich material from his beloved StarTalk podcast, while a renowned physicist takes on a big questions that humanity has been posing for millennia.
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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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Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality
by Frank Wilczek
The winner of the Nobel Prize for physics and author of The Lightness of Being explains 10 fundamental ideas that form humanity’s understand of the universe, from time and space to matter and energy.
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Buzz, Sting, Bite: Why We Need Insects
by Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson
An enthusiastic, witty, and informative introduction to the world of insects explains why we—and the planet we inhabit—could not survive without them.
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Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
by Neil deGrasse Tyson
The notable host of StarTalk reveals just what people need to be fluent and ready for the next cosmic headlines: from the Big Bang to black holes, from quarks to quantum mechanics, and from the search for planets to the search for life in the universe.
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The First Cell: And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last
by Azra Raza
A world-class oncologist and coeditor of the 3QuarksDaily website explores the medical, scientific, cultural and personal impact of cancer while outlining more beneficial alternatives to today’s high-cost, largely ineffective treatments. 50,000 first printing.
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The Nature of Life and Death: Every Body Leaves a Trace
by Patricia E. J Wiltshire
A leading forensic ecologist blends science writing with true-crime narrative in a tour of the lesser-known interface between crime and nature, drawing on her decades as a college professor and expert consultant for the UK police.
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Archaeology from Space: How the Future Shapes our Past
by Sarah H Parcak
The National Geographic Fellow and TED Prize winner tours the modern world of satellite-driven "space archaeology" and its role in significantly advancing human discoveries and understandings about the ancient world.
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The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women
by Kate Moore
Recounts the struggles of hundreds of women who were exposed to radium while working factory jobs during World War I, describing how they were mislead by their employers and became embroiled in a battle for workers' rights.
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The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs
by Stephen Brusatte
The "resident paleontologist" for BBC's Walking with Dinosaurs presents a narrative scientific history of the dinosaur eras that examines their origins, habitats, extinction and living legacy, chronicling nearly 200 million years of their evolution from small shadow dwellers through the emergences of prehistoric ancestors that became more than 10,000 modern bird species.
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