| When the Earth Was Green: Plants, Animals, and Evolution's Greatest Romance by Riley BlackScience writer Riley Black stuns with a panoramic natural history that acquaints readers with the interactive nature of life among Earth’s plants, animals, and habitats through the eons. Black’s accessible writing “illuminat[es] natural history into sparkling descriptions of what the Earth was like millions of years ago” (Publishers Weekly). Read-alike: A Brief History of Earth by Andrew H. Knoll. |
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| Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart by Nicholas CarrJournalist Nicholas Carr argues convincingly that social media has taken over our society and brains so rapidly that we haven’t been able to formulate a response, much less calculate the damage it’s wreaking. Carr points to research citing epidemic levels of stress, anxiety, and depression among users, especially teenagers. Other revealing reads on this topic include Alone Together by Sherry Turkle and The End of Absence by Michael Harris. |
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| Out of Your Mind: The Biggest Mysteries of the Human Brain by Jorge Cham & Dwayne GodwinWant a book about the complexities of the human brain that isn’t quite so…well, brainy? Author and cartoonist Jorge Cham teams with neuroscientist Dwayne Godwin to tackle the subject and answer some difficult questions in an amusing, upbeat, and accessible style, complete with illustrations. Other entertaining books about brain function include The Brain by David Eagleman and Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness by Patrick House. |
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The Unaccountability Machine : Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions--and How the World Lost its Mind
by Dan Davies
Passengers get bumped from flights. Phone menus disconnect. Automated financial trades produce market collapse. Of all the challenges in modern life, some of the most vexing come from our relationships with automation: a large system does us wrong, and there's nothing we can do about it. The problem, economist Dan Davies shows, is accountability sinks: systems in which decisions are delegated to a complex rule book or set of standard procedures, making it impossible to identify the source of mistakes when they happen. In our increasingly unhuman world--lives dominated by algorithms, artificial intelligence, and large organizations--these accountability sinks produce more than just aggravation. They make life and economy unknowable--a black box for no reason.
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| Raising Hare by Chloe DaltonDebut memoirist Chloe Dalton, a political consultant, spent much of the COVID-19 pandemic raising a baby hare she rescued near her country home. This fascinating, endearing, and rarely domesticated creature became Dalton’s companion for a time, awakening her senses to the natural world around her. For more moving encounters with wildlife, try The Puma Years by Laura Coleman or Alfie & Me by Carl Safina. |
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Why Animals Talk : the New Science of Animal Communication
by Arik Kershenbaum
Animal communication has forever seemed unintelligible. We are surrounded by animals and the cacophony of sounds that they make-from the chirping of songbirds to the growls of lions on the savanna-but we have yet to fully understand why animals communicate the way they do. What are they saying? This is only part of the mystery. To go deeper, we must also ask, what is motivating them? Why Animals Talk is an exhilarating journey through the untamed world of animal communication.
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| Creature Needs: Writers Respond to the Science of Animal Conservation by Christopher Kondrich, Lucy Spelman, and Susan Tacent (editors)Creature Needs is an unusual collection of essays, stories, and poetry organized around the basic needs of survival: air, water, food, shelter, freedom of movement, and companionship. The writers explore these facets with both intellect and emotion in a way that “bridg[es] the gap between the worlds of science and art” (Library Journal). For more profound musings about the natural world, try Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. |
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The Voices of Nature : How and Why Animals Communicate
by Nicolas Mathevon
What messages do animals send to each other using sound? How can we decipher them? What lessons might these messages offer for understanding the origins and workings of our own communication? Scientists who study bioacoustics try and answer these questions, using physiology, animal behavior, and evolutionary biology to understand how and why animals communicate via sound. In this book, Nicholas Mathevon offers readers an accessible overview of the field of bioacoustics, from the mechanisms of sound to its complex social function. Mathevon explores animal "language" and the various philosophical and biological implications of this topic, both for various wild and domesticated species and for our understanding of how human communication systems developed.
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Latitudes : Encounters With a Changing Planet
by Jean McNeil
An account of thirty years of living in and writing about some of the world's last remaining wild places, Latitudes ranges across across the Antarctic, the Arctic, the savannahs and deserts of Africa, the Southern and Atlantic oceans and the boreal forests of Canada. Jean McNeil is originally from Nova Scotia, Canada. She has published fifteen books, spanning fiction, memoir, poetry, essays and travel. Her work has been shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for Fiction, the Journey Prize for Short Fiction, the Elizabeth Jolley Prize, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation literary awards (twice) and the Pushcart Prize. She has twice won the Prism International Prize, once for short fiction and again for creative non-fiction.
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| How To Feed the World: The History and Future of Food by Vaclav SmilGeography professor Vaclav Smil’s book about the world’s food supply, while sounding some alarms, takes an optimistic view provided we start implementing sustainable agricultural practices and changing food policy immediately, and provides abundant data to back up his arguments. For other practical discussions about world food issues, try The End of Plenty by Joel K. Bourne Jr. or How the World Eats by Julian Baggini. |
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| Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe by Carl ZimmerScience writer Carl Zimmer puts airborne pathogens under the microscope, taking readers on a tour spanning from the 14th century to COVID-19 that exposes how much we have yet to learn about communicable diseases in the Earth’s atmosphere. Other accessible reads about microbes and disease include The Secret Body by Daniel M. Davis and Immune by Catherine Carver. |
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