The Ape that Understood the Universe is the story of the strangest animal in the world: the human animal. It opens with a question: How would an alien scientist view our species? What would it make of our sex differences, our sexual behavior, our child-rearing patterns, our moral codes, our religions, languages, and science? The book tackles these issues by...

Nobel Prize recipient Eric R. Kandel investigates The Disordered Mind to uncover what brain disorders reveal about human nature. This challenging study will not only help transform medical care but also encourage a new humanism based in part on the biological confirmation of individuality.
Eric R. Kandel, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...

Having spent over 150 days on his first tour of the International Space Station, it’s safe to say that Clayton C. Anderson knows a thing or two about space travel. Now retired and affectionately known as “Astro Clay” by his many admirers on social media and the Internet, Anderson has fielded thousands of questions over the years about spaceflight, living in...

The inside story of the fight for and against genetic modification in food, from someone who's been on the front line of both sides of the argument.

Mark Lynas was one of the original GM field wreckers. Back in the 1990s—working undercover with his colleagues in the environmental movement—he would descend on trial sites of genetically modified crops at night...

An up-close and personal look at comets and how we can use these ancient voyagers to understand our place in the solar system.

Icy, rocky, sometimes dusty, always mysterious—comets and asteroids are among the Solar System's very oldest inhabitants, formed within a swirling cloud of gas and dust in the area of space that eventually hosted the Sun and its...

The Adventures and Discoveries of a Feminist Bride invites readers to join author Katrina Majkut on a personal and powerful prenuptial journey. With fearless curiosity and fun feminism, the book asks such questions as: Why do brides need their parents’ permission to marry? Why don’t men wear engagement rings? And why do women change their surname?

With...

For ages: 5-8

For Ages: 8 - 10
Learn to create your own games, animation, presentations, and musical projects in no time at all with Coding from Scratch. Whether you're just learning to code or need a refresher, this visual guide to coding will cover all the basics - coding tools, where to find them, and how to use them - with hands-on, step-by-step...

For all the love and attention we give dogs, much of what they do remains mysterious. Just think about different behaviors you see at a dog park: We have a good understanding of what it means when dogs wag their tails—but what about when they sniff and roll on a stinky spot? Why do they play tug-of-war with one dog, while showing their bellies to another?...

It is well established that all human beings today, wherever they live, belong to one single species. Yet even many people who claim to abhor racism take for granted that human “races” have a biological reality. From pharmacological researchers to the U.S. government, the dubious tradition of classifying people by race lives on. In Troublesome Science, Rob...

In Eager, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb reveals that our modern idea of what a healthy landscape looks like and how it functions is wrong, distorted by the fur trade that once trapped out millions of beavers from North America’s lakes and rivers. The consequences of losing beavers were profound: streams eroded, wetlands dried up, and species from...

Do you know who invented the light bulb? Most Americans will tell you it was Thomas Edison. But what if they're wrong? What if a British scientist named Joseph Swan was filing for the rights to this invention around the same time as Edison? You'll be on the edge of your seat as Edison and Swan go head-to-head to create the first usable light bulb. Patent...

Vaccines are biological substances that cause the human immune system to build up its defenses against specific diseases. Public health officials recommend a series of vaccines for all children, as well as some vaccines for teenagers and adults. But not everyone gets the vaccines they need. Many poor nations don't have the resources to deliver vaccines to...

Are We an Accident...or Not?

The question of cosmic origins and our place in the grand scheme of things has been debated for millennia. Why do we exist? Why does anything exist at all?

Today's popular narrative, based on advancements in science, is that it all happened by natural, random processes. Melissa Cain Travis points to powerful evidence that the...

One Nurse. Trillions of microbes. A deadly WWI battle ...

France, 1916. While treating a patient with dysentery, Sister Annie Barnaby encounters a strain of lethal bacteria. As the invaders journey deep into her gut, the resident microbes must fight to survive. Annie’s life hangs in the balance.

Enter the phage, deadly predators, ready to wage war to protect...

**The New York Times Bestseller** 'Space elevators, gold asteroids, and fusion-powered toasters - who knew science could be so much fun? Soonish is hilarious, provocative, and shamelessly informative' Tim Harford, author of Messy and The Undercover Economist From a top scientist and the creator of the hugely popular web comic Saturday Morning Breakfast...

THE TOP TEN SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

TLS, OBSERVER, SUNDAY TIMES, FT, GUARDIAN, DAILY MAIL AND EVENING STANDARD BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017

'Vital ... a life-raft' Guardian '

A top sleep scientist argues that sleep is more important for our health than diet or exercise' The Times

'It had a powerful effect on me' Observer

'I urge you all to read this book'...

Murder by poison alarmed, enthralled, and in many ways encapsulated the Victorian age. Linda Stratmann's dark and splendid social history reveals the nineteenth century as a gruesome battleground where poisoners went head-to-head with authorities who strove to detect poisons, control their availability, and bring the guilty to justice. She corrects many...

Science fact, not science fiction, features in this wide-ranging update from leading experts on the cutting-edge developments that are already defining our...

A brilliant lyrical exploration of how modern science illuminates what it means to be human, from the award-winning author of The Price of Altruism

We no longer think, like the ancient Chinese did, that the world was hatched from an egg, or, like the Maori, that it came from the tearing-apart of a love embrace. The Greeks told of a tempestuous Hera and a...

A bold and playful approach to science with more than 40 fun questions, experiments, games, and real-life scenarios that encourage kids to discover the amazing science all around them.

Why does mold grow? Why is the sea salty? What makes day and night? Kids can have these questions—and more—answered in How to be a Scientist, as they learn how to think like a...

Called "spellbinding" (Scientific American) and "thrilling...a future classic of popular science" (PW), the up close, inside story of the greatest space exploration project of our time, New Horizons’ mission to Pluto, as shared with David Grinspoon by mission leader Alan Stern and other key players.

On July 14, 2015, something amazing happened. More than 3...

The future of food depends on tiny seeds in orchards and fields the world over. In 1943, one of the first to recognize this fact, the great botanist Nikolay Vavilov, lay dying of starvation in a Soviet prison. In the years before Stalin jailed him as a scapegoat for the country's famines, Vavilov had traveled across five continents, collecting hundreds of...

"If you care about science-or a scientist- this will be the most important book you'll ever read," says Randy Olson of his Don't Be Such a Scientist. He's only half joking.

In the United States we have a clear communication gap between the world of science and the general public. For starters, the vast majority of scientists say evolution is a...

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Conventional management approaches cannot meet the challenges faced by ocean and coastal ecosystems today. Consequently, national and international bodies have called for a shift toward more comprehensive ecosystem-based marine management. Synthesizing a vast amount of current knowledge, Ecosystem-Based Management for the Oceans is a...

“The Web’s most influential climate-change blogger” and “Hero of the Environment 2009” --Time Magazine

“I trust Joe Romm on climate.” -- Paul Krugman, New York Times

“America’s fiercest climate-change activist-blogger” and one of “The 100 People Who Are Changing America” -- Rolling Stone

“One of the most influential energy and environmental policy...

The central concept guiding the management of parks and wilderness has been "naturalness" - to a large extent the explicit purpose in establishing these special areas was to keep them in their "natural" state. But what does that mean, particularly as the effects of stressors such as habitat fragmentation, altered disturbance regimes, invasive species, and...

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Most scientists and researchers aren’t prepared to talk to the press or to policymakers—or deal with backlash. Many have the horror stories to prove it. What’s clear, according to Nancy Baron, is that scientists, journalists and public policymakers come from different cultures. They follow different sets of rules, pursue different goals...

For more than three decades, David Orr has been one of the leading voices of the environmental movement, championing the cause of ecological literacy in higher education, helping to establish and shape the field of ecological design, and working tirelessly to raise awareness of the threats to future generations posed by humanity's current unsustainable...

First developed in the 1880s as a way to monitor glaciers in Europe, repeat photography -the practice of taking photographs at different points in times from the same physical vantage point-remains an essential and cost-effective technique for scientists and researchers working to track and study landscape change.

This volume explores the technical...

Seasonally Dry Tropical Forests brings together a range of experts in diverse fields including biology, ecology, biogeography, and biogeochemistry, to review, synthesize, and explain the current state of our collective knowledge on the ecology and conservation of this endangered ecosystem.

The book offers a synthetic and cross-disciplinary review of...

Robert J. Cabin uses the restoration of tropical dry forestland in Hawaii as an in-depth case study to investigate the scientific, practical, and philosophical issues associated with performing ecological restoration in the messy real world.
Interweaving entertaining narratives of his own on-the-ground experiences as a practicing restorationist with...

Restoration ecology is a young field that integrates theory and knowledge from a range of disciplines, including the biological, physical, and social sciences as well as the humanities. This new textbook, written for upper-division undergraduates and first-year graduate students, offers a real-life introduction to the field and an interdisciplinary...

It's a tough time to be a scientist: universities are shuttering science departments, federal funding agencies are facing flat budgets, and many newspapers have dropped their science sections altogether. But according to Marc Kuchner, this antiscience climate doesn't have to equal a career death knell-it just means scientists have to be savvier about...

Just as people schedule regular check-ups with physicians, our planet needs regular check-ups to catch issues as early as possible, before they become more serious and harder to heal. That is the much-needed service provided on a global scale by the Worldwatch Institute in this new book, Vital Signs 2012.
By taking stock of global consumption, Vital...

In 2006, Resilience Thinking addressed an essential question: As the natural systems that sustain us are subjected to shock after shock, how much can they take and still deliver the services we need from them? This idea caught the attention of both the scientific community and the general public.
In Resilience Practice, authors Brian Walker and David...

Climate and Conservation presents case studies from around the world of leading-edge projects focused on climate change adaptation-regional-scale endeavors where scientists, managers, and practitioners are working to protect biodiversity by protecting landscapes and seascapes in response to threats posed by climate change.

The book begins with...