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Nature and Science October 2020
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| Fathoms: The World in the Whale by Rebecca GiggsWhat it's about: whales and their watery world, both of which humans are destroying.
Is it for you? Although filled with evocative facts about cetaceans (their milk is pink, their demise is called "whalefall"), Rebecca Giggs' lyrical yet sobering narrative is book-ended by heartbreaking accounts of beached whales.
Further reading: Nick Pyenson's Spying on Whales, Philip Hoare's The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea, or Micheline Jenner's The Secret Life of Whales. |
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| The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy's Vanishing Explorers by Emily LevesqueWhat it's about: an astronomer recounts her career in science while contemplating the past, present, and future of her field.
Don't miss: visits to Hawaii's Mauna Kea Observatories, Chile's Paranal Observatory, and the airborne Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA).
Did you know? Professional astronomers spend relatively little time looking through giant telescopes (and a lot of time on laptops). |
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| The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) by Katie MackWhat it is: theoretical cosmologist Katie Mack's engaging survey of five potential ways in which the universe could end: the Big Crunch, Heat Death, the Big Rip, Vacuum Decay, and the Bounce.
Reviewers say: a "rollicking tour through the nooks and crannies of physics" (New Scientist).
Further reading: Bob Berman's Earth-Shattering (for those interested in cosmic cataclysms); Brian Greene's Until the End of Time (for a more philosophical take on cosmology). |
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Desert Notebooks : A Road Map for the End of Time
by Ben Ehrenreich
A National Magazine Award winner and The Nation columnist weaves together climate science, mythologies, nature writer and personal experiences to examine how the unprecedented pace of destruction to our environment has led us to the brink of calamity.
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Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars : Space, Exploration, and Life on Earth
by Kate Greene
An essay collection inspired by the author’s four-month stay inside NASA’s simulated Martian habitat explores such subjects as humanity’s drive to explore, a sibling’s disability, the lag time of interplanetary correspondence and the challenges of long-distance marriage. 50,000 first printing. Illustrations.
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| Tales from the Ant World by Edward O. WilsonWhat it is: a memoir by acclaimed biologist Edward O. Wilson, in which he shares his passion for myrmecology (the study of ants) while reflecting on a lifetime of studying the natural world.
Lessons learned? "There is nothing I can even imagine in the lives of ants that we can or should emulate for our own moral betterment."
Reviewers say: a "rapturously unapologetic hymn of praise to the roughly one quadrillion ants on the planet" (The Boston Globe). |
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Focus on: The Lighter Side of Science
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| Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big Questions from Tiny Mortals about Death by Caitlin Doughty; illustrated by Dianne RuzThe premise: a mortician answers children's questions about death in an engaging and matter-of-fact style.
About the author: Funeral director Caitlin Doughty is the creator of the web series "Ask a Mortician" and the author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and From Here to Eternity.
So...will your cat eat your eyeballs? Not immediately. (Not when there are tastier tidbits like eyelids.) |
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| Liquid Rules: The Delightful and Dangerous Substances that Flow Through Our Lives by Mark MiodownikWhat it's about: Having tackled solids in Stuff Matters, materials scientist Mark Miodownik introduces readers to the unique properties of liquids from the confines of an airplane cabin during a transatlantic flight.
Why you might like it: Filled with fascinating facts (airplanes are essentially glued together), this accessible book pairs scientific principles (viscosity, vaporization) and their real-life applications (how ballpoint pens work, brewing the perfect cup of tea). |
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| Imagined Life: A Speculative Scientific Journey Among the Exoplanets in Search of.... by James Trefil and Michael SummersWhat it's about: a physicist and a planetary scientist draw on current scientific knowledge to speculate about exoplanets and their potential to support "life like us, like not like us, or life really not like us."
Includes: discussions of tidally locked planets, subsurface ocean worlds, super-Earths, and rogue planets (which do not orbit stars).
You might also like: Alan Boss' Universal Life, about the Kepler Space Telescope. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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Rochester Hills Public Library 500 Olde Towne Rd Rochester, Michigan 48307 (248) 656-2900www.rhpl.org/ |
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