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Nature and Science October 2025 |
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Good soil : the education of an accidental farmhand
by Jeff Chu
A reflective journey exploring nature, belonging and spirituality, weaving lessons from farm life, relationships and personal heritage into a meditation on growth, connection and the transformative power of listening to the earth and each other.
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| Submersed: Wonder, Obsession, and Murder in the World of Amateur Submarines by Matthew Gavin FrankFolded into author Matthew Gavin Frank’s thought-provoking survey of humankind’s urge to explore the ocean depths from deep-water submersibles lies a much darker obsession -- the “strong undercurrent of violence and misogyny” (Kirkus Reviews) running through the amateur sub community that arguably led to the 2017 murder of journalist Kim Wall. Readers who want more adventures beneath the waves can try The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean by Susan Casey. |
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The AI con : how to fight big tech's hype and create the future we want
by Emily M. Bender
"Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to put authors, artists, and others out of business? Are we about to enter an age where computers arebetter than humans at everything? The answer to these questions, linguist Emily M. Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna make clear, is "no," "they wish," "LOL," and "definitely not." This kind of thinking is a symptom of a phenomenon known as "AI hype." Hype looks and smells fishy: It twists words and helps the rich get richer by justifying data theft, motivating surveillance capitalism, and devaluing human creativity in order to replace meaningful work with jobs that treat people like machines. In The AI Con, Bender and Hanna offer a sharp, witty, and wide-ranging take-down of AI hype across its many forms. Bender and Hanna show you how to spot AI hype, how to deconstruct it, and how to expose the power grabs it aims to hide. Armed with these tools, you will be prepared to push back against AI hype at work, as a consumer in the marketplace, as a skeptical newsreader, and as a citizen holding policymakers to account. Together, Bender and Hanna expose AI hype for what it is: a mask for Big Tech's drive for profit, with little concern for who it affects"
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Nexus : a brief history of information networks from the Stone Age to AI
by Yuval N. Harari
From the Stone Age through the canonization of the Bible, Stalinism, Nazism and the resurgence of populism today, a historian and philosopher explores human history to consider how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world, addressing the urgent choices we face as nonhuman intelligence threatens our very existence. Illustrations.
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No more tears : the dark secrets of Johnson & Johnson
by Gardiner Harris
In this blistering exposé, an award-winning investigative journalist uncovers reams of evidence showing decades of Johnson & Johnson's deceitful and dangerous corporate practices that have threatened the lives of millions.
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A history of the world in six plagues : how contagion, class, and captivity shaped us, from Cholera to COVID-19
by Edna Bonhomme
"Epidemic diseases enter the world by chance, but they become catastrophic by human design. With clear-eyed research and lush prose, A History of the World in Six Plagues shows that throughout history, outbreaks of disease have been exacerbated by and gone on to further expand the racial, economic, and sociopolitical divides we allow to fester in times of good health. Princeton-trained historian Edna Bonhomme's examination of humanity's disastrous treatment of pandemic disease takes us across place and time from Port-au-Prince to Tanzania, and from plantation-era America to our modern COVID-19-scarred world to unravel shocking truths about the patterns of discrimination in the face of disease. Based on in-depth research and cultural analysis, Bonhomme explores Cholera, HIV/AIDS, the Spanish Flu, Sleeping Sickness, Ebola, and COVID-19 amidst the backdrop of unequal public policy. But much more than a remarkable history, A History of the World in Six Plagues is also a rising call for change"
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The Ellesmere wolves : behavior and ecology in the high Arctic
by L. David Mech
"In a fascinating story of discovery and science, we meet a remote population of wolves unafraid of humans. For parts of twenty-four summers, wolf biologist L. David Mech lived with a group of wolves on Ellesmere Island, some six hundred miles from the North Pole. Elsewhere, most wolves flee from even the scent of humans, but these animals, evolving relatively free from human persecution, are unafraid. Having already spent twenty-eight years studying other populations of wolves more remotely by aircraft,snow-tracking, live-trapping, and radio-tracking, Mech was primed to join their activities up close and record their interactions with each other. This book tells the remarkable story of what Mech-and the researchers who followed him-have learned while living among the wolves. The Ellesmere wolves were so unconcerned with Mech's presence that they allowed him to camp near their den and to sit on his all-terrain vehicle as he observed them, watching packs as large as seven adults and six pups go about their normal activities. In these extraordinarily close quarters, a pup untying his bootlace or an adult sniffing his gloved hand was just part of daily life. Mech accompanied the wolves on their travels and watched as they hunted muskoxen and arctic hares. By achieving the same kind of intimacy with his wild hosts' every action that we might experience living with domesticated dogs, Mech gained new insights into common but rarely studied behaviors like pup feeding, food caching, howling, and scent-marking. After Mech's time at Ellesmere ended, his coauthors and fellow wolf researchers Morgan Anderson and H. Dean Cluff spent parts of four summers studying the wolves via radio collars, further illuminating the creatures' movements and ecology. This book synthesizes their findings, offering both a compelling scientific overview of the animals' behavior-from hunting to living in packs to rearing pups-and a tale of adventure and survival in the Arctic"
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The Backyard Bird Chronicles
by Amy Tan; foreword by David Allen Sibley
Acclaimed author Amy Tan presents her lovingly illustrated bird journal, which captures a parade of avian visitors to her northern California backyard. You might also like: Priyanka Kumar's Conversations with Birds; Susan Fox Rogers' Learning the Birds; Joan Strassman's Slow Birding.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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