|
|
Nature and Science October 2026 |
|
|
|
|
Calling all Nature and Science Readers!
|
|
|
|
In Search of Now: The Science of the Present Moment by Jo MarchantWhat is Now? It seems simple, yet when we try to grasp it, it vanishes. According to the most trusted models of physics, Now doesn’t even exist. And neuroscience suggests that it’s merely a convincing hallucination. But if there’s no universal frontier at which the open future becomes the solid past, where does our feeling of “nowness” come from? What shapes the flow of events and sensations that we perceive - and is this really just an illusion? Science writer Jo Marchant takes us on a grand tour of the latest thinking in cosmology, quantum mechanics, psychology, and neuroscience to tackle these questions and explore the fundamental essence of time. |
|
|
|
The Book of Birds shows readers not just how to identify birds, but also how to identify with them. Author Robert Macfarlane and illustrator Jackie Morris conjure the unique spirit of nearly fifty once-common species in gorgeous prose and exhilarating artwork painted from life. Macfarlane’s incantatory essays describe each bird’s habits and habitats, their patterns of flight and patterns of song, how they hunt or fish or scavenge or gather, how they nest and raise their chicks, the myths that attend them, the threats that shadow them―and how their lives intersect with our own. |
|
|
|
Organ Speak: What It Really Means to Listen to Our Bodies by Giulia EndersIn a world that is becoming ever louder and more complex, sometimes the best perspective is to look inward--at our own physicality. For thousands of years, our bodies have faced challenges and found their own unique ways to overcome them. What can we learn from these extraordinarily complex beings? In her new book, internationally renowned medical expert and star of Netflix's Hack Your Health Giulia Enders embarks on a journey of discovery into our inner workings, raising fundamental questions about the relationship between our bodies and our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in. |
|
|
|
A Brief History of the Universe (and Our Place in It) by Sarah Alam MalikRenowned particle physicist Dr. Sarah Alam Malik takes us on a journey through the discoveries that have at once propelled and overturned our perception of the cosmos. From Copernicus launching a helio-centric revolution to Ernest Rutherford uncovering the world inside the atom, to Vera Rubin confirming the existence of dark matter, each generation has built upon, and then upended, the knowledge of those who came before. Beautifully written and accessible, Dr. Malik's book is a celebration of discovery and of the endless curiosity that has taken humans far beyond the boundaries of the world we know.
|
|
| The Savage Landscape: How We Made the Wilderness by Cal Flyn Wildernesses make up some of the world's more alluring natural landscapes. But what is a wilderness, really? Journalist Cal Flyn proposes the ironic notion that the very concept of “wilderness” is manufactured by humans, since we tend to define it by the areas where people aren’t. Even so, wilderness is a powerful, ancient concept, lying at the intersection of landscape, philosophy, and ecology. The Savage Landscape takes us into breathtaking wilds—deep into dark forests, to the tops of mountains, and into the hearts of deserts—while contending with the fact that nearly every wilderness, no matter how wild, has been or is actively inhabited by humans. |
|
|
|
Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie by Dave Hage & Josephine MarcottyThe North American prairie is an ecological marvel and home to some of the nation's most iconic creatures and some of the richest ecosystems on Earth, but the constant expansion of agriculture threatens what remains. American farmers transformed the grasslands into a global breadbasket at a terrible cost: the forced dislocation of Indigenous peoples, pollution of great rivers, and catastrophic loss of wildlife. Today, industrial agriculture plows up one million acres of grassland a year. Farmers can protect this extraordinary landscape, but trying new methods would require tremendous support from Washington DC and consumers alike. In Sea of Grass, Hage and Marcotty reveal humanity's relationship with the prairie, offering a deep, compassionate analysis of the difficult decisions as well as opportunities facing agricultural and Indigenous communities.
|
|
|
|
A Natural History of the Future: What the Laws of Biology Tell Us about the Destiny of the Human Species by Rob DunnNature has its own set of rules, and no amount of human tampering can rewrite them. Collectively, these rules shed light on the future of life and our destiny, revealing where our visions for cities, roads, schools, and society at large run afoul of nature's inescapable dictates. Drawing on topics as diverse as how microbes acquired during birth affect our health and what species might inhabit the crust of the Earth, Dunn reveals the surprising complexities of the natural world and the interconnectedness of life itself. At once hopeful and practical, A Natural History of the Future offers a vision of our future in which humans and the natural world coexist symbiotically. |
|
| What kind of fossils will we leave as relics into the far future? A blizzard of new objects has suddenly appeared on Earth: plastic bottles, ballpoint pens, mobile phones, T-shirts. This new-made treasure chest underpins our lives. But it is also giving a completely new style of fossilization to our planet, as hyper-diverse and hyper-rapidly-evolving technofossils spin out of our industrialized economy, and we are only now beginning to understand how these discarded items will age and the impact they will have on the animal and mineral world. In Discarded, paleontologist Sarah Gabbott and geologist Jan Zalasiewicz describe how technofossils transform as they are attacked by bacteria, baked by the Earth's inner heat, squashed by overlying rock, permeated by subterranean fluids, crumpled by mountain-building movements--and what will be left of them. |
|
| Waste Wars is a jaw-dropping exposé of how and why, for the past forty years, our garbage has spawned a massive, globe-spanning, multibillion-dollar economy, one that off-loads our consumption footprints onto distant continents, pristine landscapes, and unsuspecting populations. Journalist Alexander Clapp spent two years roaming five continents to tell readers what he has discovered: While some trash gets tossed onto roadsides or buried underground, much of it actually lives a secret hot-potato second life, getting shipped, sold, resold, or smuggled from one country to another, often with devastating consequences for the poorest nations of the world. |
|
|
|
Some 40 million miles of roadways encircle the earth, but we tend to regard them only as infrastructure for human convenience. In Crossings, Ben Goldfarb delves into the new science of road ecology to explore how roads have transformed our world. Goldfarb meets with conservationists building bridges for mountain lions and tunnels for toads, engineers deconstructing logging roads, and citizens working to undo the havoc highways have wreaked upon cities. A sweeping, spirited and timely investigation into how humans have altered the natural world, Crossings also shows us how to create a better future for all living beings. |
|
|
|
Darwin Comes to Town: How the Urban Jungle Drives Evolution by Menno SchilthuizenFrom crows in Sendai using traffic to crack nuts to lizards in Puerto Rico evolving feet that better grip concrete, the animals that share our urban spaces are rapidly adapting. How is this happening? Menno Schilthuizen is one of a growing number of urban ecologists studying how our manmade environments are accelerating and changing the evolution of the animals and plants around us. Darwin Comes to Town reveals that evolution can happen far more rapidly than Darwin dreamed and provides a glimmer of hope that our race toward over population might not take the rest of nature down with us. |
|
Contact your librarian for more great books!
|
|
|
The Public Library
501 Copper NW
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87102
505-768-5141abqlibrary.org |
|
|
|