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Nature and Science June 2025 |
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| The Age of Diagnosis: How Our Obsession with Medical Labels Is Making Us Sicker by Suzanne O'SullivanAccording to neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan, a combination of expanding disease definitions and advances in medical screening is causing diagnoses to increase drastically, which taxes healthcare systems, feeds health anxiety in patients, and gives rise to the “nocebo effect,” where giving a patient a disease label can actually produce symptoms. Readers looking for other interesting books about physician-patient communication should try How Medicine Works and When It Doesn’t by F. Perry Wilson. |
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| Inside the Stargazer's Palace: The Transformation of Science in 16th-Century... by Violet MollerHistorian Violet Moller’s tour of scientific innovation in the 1500s focuses on astronomy. Early stargazers Tycho Brahe and Nicolaus Copernicus laid the groundwork using curious new instruments of observation during a fascinating period when scientific inquiry still mingled with religion, mythology, and alchemy. It’s an atmospheric “run-up to the Scientific Revolution in expert hands” (Kirkus Reviews). |
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| The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue: A Story of Climate and Hope on One American Street by Mike TidwellTravel writer Mike Tidwell examines the impacts of climate change in his own Maryland suburb. Telling the story through interactions with his neighbors, all of whom had a stake in the die-off of their street’s stately old oaks, Tidwell inspires while sharing various neighborhood responses to problems both local and global. Other accessible reads about climate threats and activism include Adventures in the Anthropocene by Gaia Vince and California Against the Sea by Rosanna Xia. |
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| The Ocean's Menagerie: How Earth's Strangest Creatures Reshape the Rules of Life by Drew HarvellMarine biologist Drew Harvell amazes with a rich and descriptive catalog of ocean invertebrates, a group that outnumbers backboned species 30 to one and includes octopuses, jellies, crustaceans, and sea stars. Harvell details these creatures' superpowers, hardly an exaggeration given their potential benefits to the environment and human life. Those curious about exotic marine life should also check out The World Beneath by Richard Smith. |
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| Valley of Forgetting: Alzheimer's Families and the Search for a Cure by Jennie Erin SmithWhile researchers had long been aware of the alarmingly high rates of early-onset Alzheimer’s in one remote region of Colombia, the discovery that many of the patients were related sparked the search for a genetic cause. Journalist Jennie Erin Smith tells the moving story of how an inherited gene was eventually isolated, igniting hope for a cure. For other emotional narratives about genetics and disease, try My Father’s Brain by Sandeep Jauhar or A Fatal Inheritance by Lawrence Ingrassia. |
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| White Light: The Elemental Role of Phosphorus -- in Our Cells, in Our Food, and in Our World by Jack LohmannIn this debut scientific history, Jack Lohmann explores civilization’s interaction with phosphorus, from before humans were even aware of the element. Once people understood its use as a fertilizer, we unfortunately began to mine and then overuse it, leading to pollution, reduced biodiversity, and less nutritive crops, errors we are only now beginning to correct. Try this next: Carbon: The Book of Life by Paul Hawken. |
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How to speak whale : a voyage into the future of animal communication
by Tom Mustill
Drawing from his experience as a naturalist and wildlife filmmaker, the author, who survived a whale encounter, examines how scientists and start-ups around the world are decoding animal communications and what the consequences of such human interaction could be.
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What do animals think and feel? : an investigation into emotional behavior
by Karsten Brensing
"A fascinating study of animal behavior that reveals them to be as sentient and self-aware as we humans are. In What Do Animals Think and Feel? biologist Karsten Brensing has something astonishing to tell us about the animal kingdom: namely that animals,by any reasonable assessment, have developed the sophisticated systems of social organization and behaviour that human beings call 'culture.' Brensing draws on the latest scientific findings as well as his own experience working with animals, to reveal aworld of behavioral and cognitive sophistication that is remarkably similar to our own"
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| Why Animals Talk: The New Science of Animal Communication by Arik KershenbaumUniversity of Cambridge zoologist Arik Kershenbaum has been in the field of animal communication for decades. His study of the speech-like sounds and songs emitted by creatures including wolves, parrots, dolphins, and chimpanzees runs afoul of the idea that humans are Earth’s sole language users, and posits that “animals have much to say to each other -- but also to us” (Kirkus Reviews). |
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Contact the Reference Dept. at 847-720-3230 for more great books! |
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