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The bestselling “quackbuster” and “tireless tub-thumper against pseudoscience” fishes for the facts in a flood of misinformation ( Maclean’s ).   Eat this and live to 100. Don’t, and die. Today, hyperboles dominate the media, which makes parsing science from fiction an arduous task when deciding what to eat, what chemicals to avoid, and what’s best for the environment. In Is That a Fact? , bestselling author Dr. Joe Schwarcz carefully navigates through the storm of misinformation to help us separate fact from folly and shrewdness from foolishness.   Are GMOs really harmful? Or could they help developing countries? Which “miracle weight-loss foods” gained popularity through exuberant data dredging? Is BPA dangerous or just a victim of unforgiving media hype? Is organic better? Schwarcz questions the reliability and motives of “experts” in this “easy-to-understand yet critical look at what’s fact and what’s plain nonsense.   “Takes its readers through the carnival of pseudoscience, the morass of half-truths and, finally, the relatively safe road of reproducible scientific knowledge. This journey is made all the more enjoyable by Dr. Schwarcz’s surgical use of words and his mastery of public writing . . . [He] can always be counted on to write about the chemistry of the world in a way that is both entertaining and educational.” — Cracked Science   “Written with a light touch and refreshing humor, this book provides a solid, authoritative starting point for anyone beginning to look at the world with a skeptical eye and a refresher for those further along that path.” — Library Journal |
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One of the world’s most beloved and bestselling writers takes his ultimate journey—into the most intriguing and intractable questions that science seeks to answer. In A Walk in the Woods , Bill Bryson trekked the Appalachian Trail—well, most of it. In In a Sunburned Country , he confronted some of the most lethal wildlife Australia has to offer. Now, in his biggest book, he confronts his greatest challenge: to understand—and, if possible, answer—the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. To that end, he has attached himself to a host of the world’s most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians, travelling to their offices, laboratories, and field camps. He has read (or tried to read) their books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerful minds. A Short History of Nearly Everything is the record of this quest, and it is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it. Science has never been more involving or entertaining. |
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An Instant New York Times Bestseller From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass , a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world. As Indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from Indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love. Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution ensures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.” As Elizabeth Gilbert writes, Robin Wall Kimmerer is “a great teacher, and her words are a hymn of love to the world.” The Serviceberry is an antidote to the broken relationships and misguided goals of our times, and a reminder that “hoarding won’t save us, all flourishing is mutual.” Robin Wall Kimmerer is donating her advance payments from this book as a reciprocal gift, back to the land, for land protection, restoration, and justice. |
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The New York Times bestseller from the author of The Order of Time and Reality Is Not What It Seems , Helgoland , and Anaximander “One of the year’s most entrancing books about science.” —The Wall Street Journal “Clear, elegant...a whirlwind tour of some of the biggest ideas in physics.” — The New York Times Book Review   This playful, entertaining, and mind-bending introduction to modern physics briskly explains Einstein's general relativity, quantum mechanics, elementary particles, gravity, black holes, the complex architecture of the universe, and the role humans play in this weird and wonderful world. Carlo Rovelli, a renowned theoretical physicist, is a delightfully poetic and philosophical scientific guide. He takes us to the frontiers of our knowledge: to the most minute reaches of the fabric of space, back to the origins of the cosmos, and into the workings of our minds. The book celebrates the joy of discovery.  “Here, on the edge of what we know, in contact with the ocean of the unknown, shines the mystery and the beauty of the world,” Rovelli writes. “And it’s breathtaking.” |
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Наследственность – это не приговор, и человек – не заложник своих генов. Напротив: это наши мысли и образ жизни формируют ДНК. Так утверждает автор этого бестселлера, который стал прорывом в области самопознания. Основываясь на новейших научных исследованиях, профессор медицины и молекулярный биолог Брюс Липтон приводит сенсационные доказательства о взаимосвязи тела, ума и духа. Его открытия стали основой революционной науки эпигенетики – нового понимания биологии человека как основанной на силе сознания. Из книги вы узнаете: – Как изменить биологические процессы при помощи осознанности. – Как работать со стрессом и негативными программами подсознания. – Как жизненный опыт родителей влияет на генетику детей. И многое другое. |
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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A profound meditation on nature, heritage, and belonging, from an accomplished journalist who left New York City for life on a working farm “I needed this book. I think you need it, too.”—Maggie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful In his late thirties, Jeff Chu left his job as a magazine writer and found himself at Princeton Theological Seminary’s “Farminary”—a twenty-one-acre working farm where students learn to cultivate the earth while examining life’s biggest questions. Now, he unpacks what he learned about creating “good soil,” both literally and figuratively, drawing lessons from the rhythms of growth, decay, and regeneration that define life on the land. In gorgeous, transporting reflections, Chu introduces us to the cast of characters, human and not, who became his teachers. While observing the egrets that visit the pond, the worms that turn waste into fertile soil, and the Chinese long beans that get passed over in the farm’s CSA, Chu considers our desire to belong, the story behind the food on our plate, and the significance of his own roots. What is the earth trying to tell us, if we’ll only stop and listen? Good Soil helps readers connect to the land and to one another at a time when we seem drawn most to the phones in our hands. For nature lovers, foodies, and anyone who has daydreamed about a more fulfilling life, this book is a tribute to friendship, to the sacredness of our bond with the natural world, and to how love can grow from the unlikeliest of places. |
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A bold and revolutionary perspective on the science and cultural history of menstruation Menstruation is something half the world does for a week at a time, for months and years on end, yet it remains largely misunderstood. Scientists once thought of an individual’s period as useless, and some doctors still believe it’s unsafe for a menstruating person to swim in the ocean wearing a tampon. Period counters the false theories that have long defined the study of the uterus, exposing the eugenic history of gynecology while providing an intersectional feminist perspective on menstruation science. Blending interviews and personal experience with engaging stories from her own pioneering research, Kate Clancy challenges a host of myths and false assumptions. There is no such a thing as a “normal” menstrual cycle. In fact, menstrual cycles are incredibly variable and highly responsive to environmental and psychological stressors. Clancy takes up a host of timely issues surrounding menstruation, from bodily autonomy, menstrual hygiene, and the COVID-19 vaccine to the ways racism, sexism, and medical betrayal warp public perceptions of menstruation and erase it from public life. Offering a revelatory new perspective on one of the most captivating biological processes in the human body, Period will change the way you think about the past, present, and future of periods. |
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'Science has never had an advocate quite like David Deutsch ... A computational physicist on a par with his touchstones Alan Turing and Richard Feynman, and a philosopher in the line of his greatest hero, Karl Popper. His arguments are so clear that to read him is to experience the thrill of the highest level of discourse available on this planet and to understand it' Peter Forbes, Independent In our search for truth, how far have we advanced? This uniquely human quest for good explanations has driven amazing improvements in everything from scientific understanding and technology to politics, moral values and human welfare. But will progress end, either in catastrophe or completion - or will it continue infinitely? In this profound and seminal book, David Deutsch explores the furthest reaches of our current understanding, taking in the Infinity Hotel, supernovae and the nature of optimism, to instill in all of us a wonder at what we have achieved - and the fact that this is only the beginning of humanity's infinite possibility. 'This is Deutsch at his most ambitious, seeking to understand the implications of our scientific explanations of the world ... I enthusiastically recommend this rich, wide-ranging and elegantly written exposition of the unique insights of one of our most original intellectuals' Michael Berry, Times Higher Education Supplement 'Bold ... profound ... provocative and persuasive' Economist 'David Deutsch may well go down in history as one of the great scientists of our age' Scotsman |
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“I found this book amazing. I read it through quickly because it was so interesting, then turned around and read much of it again.”—Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and bestselling author of Thinking Fast & Slow “I've been recommending A Brief History of Intelligence to everyone I know. A truly novel, beautifully crafted thesis on what intelligence is and how it has developed since the dawn of life itself."—Angela Duckworth, bestselling author of Grit Equal parts Sapiens, Behave, and Superintelligence, but wholly original in scope, A Brief History of Intelligence offers a paradigm shift for how we understand neuroscience and AI. Artificial intelligence entrepreneur Max Bennett chronicles the five “breakthroughs” in the evolution of human intelligence and reveals what brains of the past can tell us about the AI of tomorrow.  In the last decade, capabilities of artificial intelligence that had long been the realm of science fiction have, for the first time, become our reality. AI is now able to produce original art, identify tumors in pictures, and even steer our cars. And yet, large gaps remain in what modern AI systems can achieve—indeed, human brains still easily perform intellectual feats that we can’t replicate in AI systems. How is it possible that AI can beat a grandmaster at chess but can’t effectively load a dishwasher? As AI entrepreneur Max Bennett compellingly argues, finding the answer requires diving into the billion-year history of how the human brain evolved; a history filled with countless half-starts, calamities, and clever innovations. Not only do our brains have a story to tell—the future of AI may depend on it. Now, in A Brief History of Intelligence, Bennett bridges the gap between neuroscience and AI to tell the brain’s evolutionary story, revealing how understanding that story can help shape the next generation of AI breakthroughs. Deploying a fresh perspective and working with the support of many top minds in neuroscience, Bennett consolidates this immense history into an approachable new framework, identifying the “Five Breakthroughs” that mark the brain’s most important evolutionary leaps forward. Each breakthrough brings new insight into the biggest mysteries of human intelligence. Containing fascinating corollaries to developments in AI, A Brief History of Intelligence shows where current AI systems have matched or surpassed our brains, as well as where AI systems still fall short. Simply put, until AI systems successfully replicate each part of our brain’s long journey, AI systems will fail to exhibit human-like intelligence. Endorsed and lauded by many of the top neuroscientists in the field today, Bennett’s work synthesizes the most relevant scientific knowledge and cutting-edge research into an easy-to-understand and riveting evolutionary story. With sweeping scope and stunning insights, A Brief History of Intelligence proves that understanding the arc of our brain’s history can unlock the tools for successfully navigating our technological future.  |
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New York Times-bestselling author of Endure Alex Hutchinson returns with a fresh, provocative investigation into how exploration, uncertainty, and risk shape our behavior and help us find meaning. Off the beaten path, following unmarked trails, we are wired to explore. More than just a need to get outside, the search for the unknown is a primal urge that has shaped the history of our species and continues to mold our behavior in ways we are only beginning to understand. In fact, the latest neuroscience suggests that exploration in any form—whether it’s trying a new restaurant, changing careers, or deciding to run a marathon—is an essential ingredient of human life. Exploration, it turns out, isn’t merely a hobby—it’s our story. In this much-anticipated follow-up to his New York Times bestseller Endure, Alex Hutchinson refutes the myth that, in our fully mapped digital world, the age of exploration is dead. Instead, the itch to discover new things persists in all of us, expressed not just on the slopes of Everest but in the ways we work, play, and live. From paddling the lost rivers of the northern Canadian wilderness to the ocean-spanning voyages of the Polynesians to the search for next-generation quantum computers, The Explorer’s Gene combines riveting stories of exploration with cutting-edge insights from behavioral psychology and neuroscience, making a powerful case that our lives are better—more productive, more meaningful, and more fun—when we break our habits and chart a new path.  |
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Nous sommes en 2122. Durant le voyage-retour du cargo spatial Nostromo après une mission commerciale de routine, l'équipage, cinq hommes et deux femmes plongés en hibernation depuis dix mois, sont tirés de leur léthargie plus tôt que prévu par l'ordinateur de bord du vaisseau. Ce dernier a en effet capté des signaux radio inconnus dans l'espace  : une forme de vie intelligente, un Alien, va bientôt s’infiltrer dans le vaisseau et s’attaquer aux membres de l’équipage.   Le film de Ridley Scott (1979), Alien le huitième passager,   imagine ainsi la possibilité d’une autre forme de vie, intelligente et agressive. Au-delà de son scénario terrifiant, le film pose de réelles questions sur la vie extraterrestre auxquelles la science tente de répondre.   Suivez le guide et embarquez avec Arnaud Cassan à la recherche de la vie ailleurs  ! |
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A New York Times Bestseller A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2020 Named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR   “A fascinating scientific, cultural, spiritual and evolutionary history of the way humans breathe—and how we’ve all been doing it wrong for a long, long time.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Big Magic and Eat Pray Love No matter what you eat, how much you exercise, how skinny or young or wise you are, none of it matters if you’re not breathing properly. There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat twenty-five thousand times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences. Journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren’t found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of São Paulo. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe. Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can jump-start athletic performance; rejuvenate internal organs; halt snoring, asthma, and autoimmune disease; and even straighten scoliotic spines. None of this should be possible, and yet it is. Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will never breathe the same again. |
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"Vaclav Smil is my favorite author." — Bill Gates An indispensable analysis of how the world really produces and consumes its food — and a scientist's exploration of how we can successfully feed a growing population without killing the planet We have never had to feed as many people as we do today. And yet, we misunderstand the essentials of where our food really comes from, how our dietary requirements shape us, and why this impacts our planet in drastic ways. As a result, in our economic, political, and everyday choices, we take for granted and fail to prioritize the thing that makes all our lives possible: food. In this ambitious, myth-busting book, Smil investigates many of the burning questions facing the world today: why are some of the world’s biggest food producers also the countries with the most undernourished populations? Why do we waste so much food and how can we solve that? Could the whole planet go vegan and be healthy? Should it? He explores the global history of food production to understand why we farm some animals and not others, why most of the world’s calories come from just a few foodstuffs, and how this might change in the future. How to Feed the World is the data-based, rigorously researched guide that offers solutions to our broken global food system. |
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As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass , Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise” (Elizabeth Gilbert). Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return. |
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#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Winner of the 2024 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing • Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction • Winner of the 2024 J.W. Dafoe Book Prize • Winner of the 2024 Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize • Winner of the 2024 Lane Anderson Award • Finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction • Finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction • One of the New York Times ’ Top Ten Books of The Year • Finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Non-Fiction  A stunning account of the colossal wildfire at Fort McMurray, and a panoramic exploration of the rapidly changing relationship between fire and humankind from the award-winning, best-selling author of The Tiger and The Golden Spruce . Named a Best Book of the Year by The Guardian • TIME • The Globe and Mail • The New Yorker • Financial Times • CBC • Smithsonian • Air Mail Weekly • Slate • NPR • Toronto Star • The Washington Post • The Times • Orion Magazine In May 2016, Fort McMurray, the hub of Canada's petroleum industry and America's biggest foreign supplier, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster melted vehicles, turned entire neighborhoods into firebombs, and drove 88,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. Through the lens of this apocalyptic conflagration—the wildfire equivalent of Hurricane Katrina—John Vaillant warns that this was not a unique event but a shocking preview of what we must prepare for in a hotter, more flammable world.     For hundreds of millennia, fire has been a partner in our evolution, shaping culture, civilization, and, very likely, our brains. Fire has enabled us to cook our food, defend and heat our homes, and power the machines that drive our titanic economy. Yet this volatile energy source has always threatened to elude our control, and in our new age of intensifying climate change, we are seeing its destructive power unleashed in previously unimaginable ways.     With masterly prose and a cinematic eye, Vaillant takes us on a riveting journey through the intertwined histories of North America's oil industry and the birth of climate science, to the unprecedented devastation wrought by modern forest fires, and into lives forever changed by these disasters. John Vaillant's urgent work is a book for—and from—our new century of fire, which has only just begun. |
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#1  NEW YORK TIMES  BESTSELLER A landmark volume in science writing by one of the great minds of our time, Stephen Hawking’s book explores such profound questions as: How did the universe begin—and what made its start possible? Does time always flow forward? Is the universe unending—or are there boundaries? Are there other dimensions in space? What will happen when it all ends? Told in language we all can understand,  A Brief History of Time  plunges into the exotic realms of black holes and quarks, of antimatter and “arrows of time,” of the big bang and a bigger God—where the possibilities are wondrous and unexpected. With exciting images and profound imagination, Stephen Hawking brings us closer to the ultimate secrets at the very heart of creation. |
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An investigative narrative that dives into the waste embedded in our daily lives—and shows how individuals and communities are making a real difference for health, prosperity, quality of life and the fight against climate change, by a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist What happens to our trash? Why are our oceans filling with plastic? Do we really waste 40 percent of our food 65 percent of our energy? Waste is truly our biggest problem, and solving our inherent trashiness can fix our economy, our energy costs, our traffic jams, and help slow climate change—all while making us healthier, happier and more prosperous.     This story-driven and in-depth exploration of the pervasive yet hard-to-see wastefulness that permeates our daily lives illuminates the ways in which we've been duped into accepting absolutely insane levels of waste as normal . Total Garbage also tells the story of individuals and communities who are finding the way back from waste, and showing us that our choices truly matter and make a difference.     Our big environmental challenges – climate, energy, plastic pollution, deforestation, toxic emissions—are often framed as problems too big for any one person to solve. Too big even for hope. But when viewed as symptoms of a single greater problem—the epic levels of trash and waste we produce daily--the way forward is clear. Waste is the one problem individuals can positively impact—and not just on the planet, but also on our wallets, our health, and national and energy security. The challenge is seeing our epic wastefulness clearly.     Total Garbage will shine a light on the absurdity of the systems that all of us use daily and take for granted--and it will help both individuals and communities make meaningful changes toward better lives and a cleaner, greener world. |
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EYE TO EYE WITH DEATH:  THE WOLF PROJECT Hordes of bloodthirsty wolves are slaughtering the arctic caribou, and the government's Wildlife Service assigns naturalist Farley Mowat to investigate. Mowat is dropped alone onto the frozen tundra, where he begins his mission to live among the howling wolf packs and study their ways. Contact with his quarry comes quickly, and Mowat discovers not a den of marauding killers but a courageous family of skillful providers and devoted protectors of their young. As Mowat comes closer to the wolf world, he comes to fear with them the onslaught of bounty hunters and government exterminators out to erase the noble wolf community from the Arctic.  Never Cry Wolf is one of the brilliant narratives on the myth and magic of wild wolves and man's true place among the creatures of nature. "We have doomed the wolf not for what it is, but for what we deliberately and mistakenly perceive it to be — the mythologized epitome of a savage, ruthless killer — which is, in reality, no more than the reflected image of ourself." — From the new Preface |
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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NAMED A BEST BOOK OF FALL: WASHINGTON POST , CBS, BOSTON GLOBE, CHICAGO TRIBUNE & MORE • From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Katherine Rundell comes a “rare and magical book” (Bill Bryson) reckoning with the vanishing wonders of our natural world "Extraordinary...For anyone whose capacity for wonder could use a jumpstart, Rundell's essays are essential reading."—Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air "In times like these, terror and rage will carry us only so far. We will also need unstinting, unceasing love. For the hard work that lies ahead, Ms. Rundell writes, 'Our competent and furious love will have to be what fuels us.' This is a book to help you fall in love." — Margaret Renkl, The New York Times The world is more astonishing, more miraculous, and more wonderful than our wildest imaginings. In this brilliant and passionately persuasive book, Katherine Rundell takes us on a globe-spanning tour of the world's most awe-inspiring animals currently facing extinction. Consider the seahorse: couples mate for life and meet each morning for a dance, pirouetting and changing colors before going their separate ways, to dance again the next day. The American wood frog survives winter by allowing itself to freeze solid, its heartbeat slowing until it stops altogether. Come spring, the heart kick-starts itself spontaneously back to life. As for the lemur, it lives in matriarchal troops led by an alpha female (it’s not unusual for female ring-tailed lemurs to slap males across the face when they become aggressive). Whenever they are cold or frightened, they group together in what’s known as a lemur ball, paws and tails intertwined, to form a furry mass as big as a bicycle wheel. But each of these extraordinary animals is endangered or holds a sub-species that is endangered. This urgent, inspiring book of essays dedicated to 23 unusual and underappreciated creatures is a clarion call insisting that we look at the world around us with new eyes—to see the magic of the animals we live among, their unknown histories and capabilities, and above all how lucky we are to tread the same ground as such vanishing treasures. Beautifully illustrated, and full of inimitable wit and intellect, Vanishing Treasures is a chance to be awestruck and lovestruck, to reckon with the beauty of the world, its fragility, and its strangeness. |
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The author of the acclaimed Proust and the Squid follows up with a lively, ambitious, and deeply informative book that considers the future of the reading brain and our capacity for critical thinking, empathy, and reflection as we become increasingly dependent on digital technologies. A decade ago, Maryanne Wolf’s Proust and the Squid revealed what we know about how the brain learns to read and how reading changes the way we think and feel. Since then, the ways we process written language have changed dramatically with many concerned about both their own changes and that of children. New research on the reading brain chronicles these changes in the brains of children and adults as they learn to read while immersed in a digitally dominated medium. Drawing deeply on this research, this book comprises a series of letters Wolf writes to us—her beloved readers—to describe her concerns and her hopes about what is happening to the reading brain as it unavoidably changes to adapt to digital mediums. Wolf raises difficult questions, including: Will children learn to incorporate the full range of "deep reading" processes that are at the core of the expert reading brain?Will the mix of a seemingly infinite set of distractions for children’s attention and their quick access to immediate, voluminous information alter their ability to think for themselves?With information at their fingertips, will the next generation learn to build their own storehouse of knowledge, which could impede the ability to make analogies and draw inferences from what they know?Will all these influences change the formation in children and the use in adults of "slower" cognitive processes like critical thinking, personal reflection, imagination, and empathy that comprise deep reading and that influence both how we think and how we live our lives?How can we preserve deep reading processes in future iterations of the reading brain? Concerns about attention span, critical reasoning, and over-reliance on technology are never just about children—Wolf herself has found that, though she is a reading expert, her ability to read deeply has been impacted as she has become increasingly dependent on screens. Wolf draws on neuroscience, literature, education, and philosophy and blends historical, literary, and scientific facts with down-to-earth examples and warm anecdotes to illuminate complex ideas that culminate in a proposal for a biliterate reading brain. Provocative and intriguing, Reader, Come Home is a roadmap that provides a cautionary but hopeful perspective on the impact of technology on our brains and our most essential intellectual capacities—and what this could mean for our future. |
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Silent Spring is an environmental science book. The book documents the adverse environmental effects caused by the indiscriminate use of pesticides. Carson accused the chemical industry of spreading disinformation, and public officials of accepting the industry's marketing claims unquestioningly. The book appeared in September 1962 and the outcry that followed its publication forced the banning of DDT and spurred revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. Carson’s book was instrumental in launching the environmental movement. |
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The 'extended phenotype' is Dawkins' key contribution to the gene's eye view of evolution given in The Selfish Gene. He shows that the influence of genes can extend far beyond the bodies in which they reside, manipulating the environment and the behaviour of other individuals. A worldwide bestseller and a classic work of scientific exposition. |
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An instant New York Times bestseller! A New York Times Notable Book of 2023 Named a Best Book of 2023 by Publishers Weekly From the author of The Genius of Birds and The Bird Way , a brilliant scientific investigation into owls—the most elusive of birds—and why they exert such a hold on human imagination With their forward gaze and quiet flight, owls are often a symbol of wisdom, knowledge, and foresight. But what does an owl really know? And what do we really know about owls? Some two hundred sixty species of owls exist today, and they reside on every continent except Antarctica, but they are far more difficult to find and study than other birds because they are cryptic, camouflaged, and mostly active at night. Though human fascination with owls goes back centuries, scientists have only recently begun to understand the complex nature of these extraordinary birds.   In What an Owl Knows , Jennifer Ackerman joins scientists in the field and explores how researchers are using modern technology and tools to learn how owls communicate, hunt, court, mate, raise their young, and move about from season to season. Ackerman brings this research alive with her own personal field observations; the result is an awe-inspiring exploration of owls across the globe and through human history, and a spellbinding account of the world’s most enigmatic group of birds. |
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From the bestselling author of Gratitude and On the Move , a final volume of essays that showcases Sacks's broad range of interests--from his passions for ferns, swimming, and horsetails, to his final case histories exploring schizophrenia, dementia, and Alzheimer's. Oliver Sacks, renowned scientist and storyteller, is adored by readers for his neurological case histories, his fascination and familiarity with human behaviour at its most unexpected and unfamiliar. Everything in Its Place is a celebration of Sacks's myriad interests, all told with his characteristic compassion, erudition, and luminous prose. From the celebrated case history of Spalding Gray that appeared in The New Yorker four months before his death to reflections on mental asylums; from piercing accounts of Schizophrenia to a reminiscence of Robin Williams; from the riveting tale of a medical colleague falling victim to Alzheimer's to the cinematography of Michael Powell, this volume celebrates and reflects the wondrous curiosity of Oliver Sacks. |
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From one of the world’s most celebrated thinkers on climate change comes a groundbreaking investigation into extreme weather • “I can’t recommend this book highly enough. It will change how you think about the most important story of our time."—JEFF GOODELL, New York Times bestselling author of The Heat Will Kill You First "Searing in her clarity … Fredi Otto demonstrates, irrefutably, how the North's fossil-fuel-powered “extractivist” economic model drives global climate disruption at the expense of the living world. Climate Injustice prosecutes the case; all it needs now is a courtroom, preferably in The Hague."—JOHN VAILLANT, author of Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World Climate change does not affect everyone equally. While many scientists focus on studying climate change as a physics problem, Friederike Otto, one of the world’s most renowned climate scientists, sees it as a symptom of the global crisis of inequality, not its cause. In this ambitious, fast-paced book, she offers concrete examples of how extreme weather events caused by climate change reveal uncomfortable truths about the failures of political and social infrastructures around the world. Comparing eight extreme weather events—including heat waves in North America, floods in Pakistan, droughts in Madagascar, and wildfires in Australia—Otto reveals how climate change is affecting the world’s most vulnerable, whether they are women working on farms in Ghana during heat waves, or elderly people who died during floods in Germany. In particular, Otto examines the Global North’s extractionist view of the Global South, a view that ensures elites are protected while others bear the brunt of the climate disaster. Climate Injustice shares the stories of real people, shining a light on the real damage inflicted on real lives. Above all, it shows how racism, colonialism, sexism, and climate change are interconnected, and how positive changes on one level can lead to positive effects on another. Authored by the co-founder of World Weather Attribution, a cutting-edge scientific method that pinpointed the role of climate change in extreme weather events for the first time, Climate Injustice offers a groundbreaking view on the fires, floods, heatwaves, and storms that are wreaking havoc at an alarming pace. Inequality and injustice are at the core of what makes climate change a problem for humanity. Fairness and global justice must therefore be at the core of the solution. Climate justice concerns everyone. |
