Science

From finding a spouse to finding a parking spot, from organizing one's inbox to understanding the workings of human memory, Algorithms to Live By transforms the wisdom of computer science into strategies for human living....

Why is addiction “perfectly logical” to an addict? The answer is found in a single chemical in your brain: dopamine. Dopamine ensured the survival of early man. Thousands of years later, it is the source of our most basic behaviors and cultural ideas - and progress itself....

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Guns, Germs and Steel examines the rise of civilization and the issues its development has raised throughout history....

Thinking in Systems is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem-solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. This essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world....

How do we fit within the universe? How does the universe fit within us? There's no better guide through these questions than astrophysicist and best-selling author Neil deGrasse Tyson....

A bold and all-embracing exploration of the nature and progress of knowledge from one of today's great thinkers....

Dawkins' brilliant reformulation of the theory of natural selection has the distinction of having provoked as much excitement and interest outside the scientific community as within it....

The authors of the best-selling Bold and The Rise of Superman explore altered states of consciousness and how they can ignite passion, fuel creativity, and accelerate problem solving....

University of London physicist David Bohm, one of the world's most respected quantum physicists, and Stanford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram, an architect of our modern understanding of the brain, have developed a remarkable new way of looking at the universe....

Few places have been as influential as the Indian subcontinent in shaping the course of life on Earth. Yet its evolution has remained largely unchronicled. Indica: A Deep Natural History of the Indian Subcontinent fills this gap....

The world has finally awoken to the reality of climate breakdown and ecological collapse. Now we must face up to its primary cause....

Acclaimed writer and scientist Leonard Mlodinow shows us how randomness, chance, and probability reveal a tremendous amount about our daily lives....

An exhilarating manifesto for the future, this audiobook convinces listeners to make the shift from reactive leapfrogging to proactive pole-vaulting through radical transformation....

A lifetime of reading and writing, observation and contemplation is distilled in this comprehensive volume of the best essays, profiles and sketches by Ruskin Bond, the masterly and compassionate chronicler of the small details and lambent moments that capture the essence of a meaningful life....

In Mitochondria and the Future of Medicine, naturopathic doctor Lee Know tells the epic story of mitochondria - the widely misunderstood and often-overlooked powerhouses of our cells....

Designed for non-scientists, Six Easy Pieces is an unparalleled introduction to the world of physics by one of the greatest teachers of all time....

From a renowned historian comes a ground-breaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution, a number one international best seller that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human”....

The world's leading investigator of consciousness argues that by understanding what consciousness does—cause change in the world—we can understand its origins and its future

In Dirt to Soil, Gabe Brown tells the story of his ranch's amazing journey and offers a wealth of innovative solutions to our most pressing and complex contemporary agricultural challenge - restoring the soil....

This is the book that will forever change the way we understand and treat mental health. If you or someone you love is affected by mental illness, it might change your life....

The science of emotion is in the midst of a revolution on par with the discovery of relativity in physics and natural selection in biology....

Renowned psychologist Walter Mischel, designer of the famous Marshmallow Test, explains what self-control is and how to master it....

Teaming with Nutrients explains how nutrients move into plants and what both macro-nutrients and micro-nutrients do once inside. It shows organic gardeners how to provide these essentials....

No 20th-century American scientist is better known to a wider spectrum of people than Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988), physicist, teacher, author, and cultural icon....

While cells are commonly considered the building block of living things, it is actually the communication between cells that brings us to life, controlling our bodies and brains, determining whether we are healthy or sick, and directly influencing how we think, feel, and behave....

Right this minute, your body is carrying roughly 38 trillion microbial cells along with it—and in the vast majority of cases, you couldn’t live without them. On top of that, you harbor around 380 trillion viruses, most of which are either beneficial or benign. The Hidden Power of Microbes draws back the curtain on this vast microworld in 24 half-hour lectures delivered by acclaimed science communicator Dr. Melissa Booth, research scientist, professor, and Founder and Principal of The Science Communicator, devoted to training scientists to tell accurate, compelling stories about their fields.

In this groundbreaking union of art and science, soprano, musicologist, and physician Patricia Caicedo explores the connection between music-its performance, how we listen to it, why we enjoy it-and health.

The James Webb Space Telescope is transforming the universe right before our eyes—and here, for the first time, is the inside account of how the mission originated, how it performs its miracles of science, and what its revolutionary images are revealing. Pillars of Creation tells the story of one of the greatest scientific achievements in the history of civilization, a $10 billion instrument with a staggeringly ambitious goal: unlocking the secrets of the cosmos.

Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson, narrated by Richard Stibbard, is a foundational work of transcendentalist philosophy that explores the profound connection between humanity and the natural world. In this timeless essay, Emerson encourages readers to look beyond the superficial and appreciate the deeper spiritual and philosophical lessons that nature offers. By finding unity and harmony with nature, Emerson suggests, individuals can achieve greater self-awareness, insight, and enlightenment.

Human life, and how we came to be, is one of the greatest scientific and philosophical questions of our time. This compact and accessible book presents a modern view of human evolution. Written by a leading authority, it lucidly and engagingly explains not only the evolutionary process, but the technologies currently used to unravel the evolutionary past and emergence of Homo sapiens.

Are we alone in the universe? It's a fundamental question for Earth-dwelling humankind. Are there other worlds like ours, out there somewhere? In Hidden in the Heavens, Jason Steffen, a former scientist on NASA's Kepler mission, describes how that mission searched for planets orbiting Sun-like stars—especially Earth-like planets circulating in Earth-like orbits.

David J. Helfand reconstructs the history of the universe—back to its first microsecond 13.8 billion years ago—with the help of atoms. He shows how, by using detectors and reactors, microscopes and telescopes, we can decode the tales these infinitesimal particles tell.

In Then I Am Myself the World, Christof Koch explores the only thing we directly experience: consciousness. At the book's heart is integrated-information theory, the idea that the essence of consciousness is the ability to exert causal power over itself, to be an agent of change. Koch investigates the physical origins of consciousness in the brain and how this knowledge can be used to measure consciousness in natural and artificial systems.

"Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable." So begins Thomas Nagel's classic 1974 essay "What is it Like to be a Bat?" Nagel's essay initiated the now widespread attention to consciousness as a central problem for philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience; it also influenced the recognition of the consciousness of nonhuman creatures as an important subject of study.

What are the politics of nature? Who owns it, where is it, what role does it play in our lives? Does it need to be tamed? Are we ourselves natural? In A Darker Wilderness, a constellation of luminary writers reflect on the significance of nature in their lived experience and on the role of nature in the lives of Black folks in the United States. Each of these essays engages with a single archival object, whether directly or obliquely, exploring stories spanning hundreds of years and thousands of miles, traveling from roots to space and finding rich Blackness everywhere.

The revised and expanded third edition of Hot Talk, Cold Science forms the capstone of the distinguished astrophysicist Dr. S. Fred Singer’s lucid, yet hard scientific look at climate change. And the book is no less explosive than its predecessors—and certainly never more timely. Singer explores the inaccuracies in historical climate data and the failures of climate models, as well as the impact of solar variability, clouds, ocean currents, and sea levels on global climate—plus factors that could mitigate any human impact on world climate.

In Charged, James Morton Turner unpacks the history of batteries to explore why solving "the battery problem" is critical to a clean energy transition. As climate activists focus on what a clean energy future will create the history of batteries offers a sharp reminder of what building that future will consume. With new insight on the consequences for people and communities on the front lines, Turner draws on the past for crucial lessons that will help us build a just and clean energy future, from the ground up.

The Monarch Butterfly Migration focuses a wider lens on the effects of climate change and the tensions between advocacy and scientific accuracy. This book reminds us to notice the natural wonders in our own backyards.

The Tensaw River introduces one of the American South's richest and most fertile natural features. Author Mike Bunn is director of Historic Blakeley State Park, which is nestled in a prominent bend of the majestic Tensaw River.

How many times have we looked for something and found something else? A partner, a job, an object? The same thing often happens to scientists: they design an experiment and discover the unexpected, which usually turns out to be very important. This fascinating phenomenon is called serendipity, which takes its name from the mythical Serendip, a place from which, according to a Persian fable, three princes set off to explore the world, making chance discoveries along the way.

Written by one of the world's leading dinosaur experts, Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior is a foundational work on the subject and an invaluable reference for anyone interested in these amazing creatures.

In The Courage of Birds, Pete Dunne—winner of the American Birding Association’s Roger Tory Peterson Award for lifetime achievement in promoting the cause of birding—chronicles the behavior of the birds of North America.

Over the last decade, scientists have discovered the importance and widespread presence in the body of a remarkable family of proteins known as prion proteins. Research links various types of prion proteins to neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's—and this has fueled the search for new drugs that could halt the progression of these terrible disorders. Other discoveries have revealed the essential roles prion proteins play in memory and immunity, and the part they may have played in the beginnings of life on our planet.

Superhero fiction has been with us for almost a century; high-octane tales crammed with concepts and contrasting themes, from superpowers and the post-human, to masked vigilantes and immortality. In that time, superwomen have evolved from comic book caricatures (created by men, for men) to stronger representations of female power. The Science of Superwomen looks at this evolution, from its hypersexualized origins to today’s more nuanced diversity.

Interest in psychedelic mushrooms has never been greater–or the science less definitive. Popular science writer and amateur mycologist Eugenia Bone reports on the state of psychedelics today, from microdosing to heroic trips, illustrating how “citizen science” and anecdotal accounts of the mushrooms’ benefits are leading the new wave of scientific inquiry into psilocybin. With her signature blend of first-person narrative and scientific rigor, Bone breaks down just how the complicated cocktail of psychoactive compounds is thought to interact with our brain chemistry.

Walter Russell's A New Concept of the Universe offers a revolutionary perspective on the nature of reality, blending science, philosophy, and metaphysics to present a unified model of the cosmos. In this groundbreaking work, Russell challenges conventional scientific theories about atomic structure, energy, and matter, proposing instead a dynamic, rhythmic universe governed by principles of balance and unity. He emphasizes the interconnectedness of all things, where opposites such as light and darkness, motion and stillness, continually interplay to sustain the cosmic order.

Across the world, an increasing number of people are turning to veganism, changing not just their diets, but completely removing animal products from their lives. For some, this is prompted by concerns over animal ethics; for others, it’s a response to the part played by animal agriculture in the climate crisis or an attempt to improve their own health. Catherine Oliver shows why the veganism movement has become a powerful social, political and environmental force, taking an honest look at how we live and eat

The field of animal rights raises big questions about how humans treat the other animals with which we share the planet. These questions are becoming more pressing as livestock farming exerts an ever-greater toll on the planet and the animals themselves, and we learn more about their capacity to think and experience pain. This book shows why animals ought to have greater rights and what the world might look like if they did.

Offering innovative ideas for protecting coastlines and cleaning the toxic seas, Scales insists we need more ethical and sustainable fisheries and must prevent the other existential threat of deep-sea mining, which could significantly alter life on earth. Inspiring us all to maintain a sense of awe and wonder at the majesty beneath the waves, she urges us to fight for the better future that still exists for the Anthropocene ocean.

Forty years ago, the park ranger Jon Waterman took his first journey into the Alaskan Arctic, to the Noatak headwaters. He was astonished by the abundant wildlife, the strange landscape, and its otherworldly light—how the “frequent rain showers glow like lemonade poured out of the sky.” Taken with a new sense of wonder, he began to explore the North on several trips in the 1980s.