Nature and Science December 2025 |
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| The Story of CO₂ Is the Story of Everything: How Carbon Dioxide Made Our World by Peter BrannenScience journalist Peter Brannen elucidates the role of carbon dioxide on Earth, explaining the paradox that this substance is both an essential part of the carbon life cycle and the reason that our climate is in trouble. Brannen’s book is both alarming and fascinating and makes clear that it is only in the last couple of centuries that human activity has pushed the CO₂ equation out of balance. |
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Never Out of Season: How Having the Food We Want When We Want It Threatens Our Food Supply and Our Future by Rob DunnThe bananas we eat today aren't your parents' bananas: We eat a recognizable, consistent breakfast fruit that was standardized in the 1960s from dozens into one basic banana. But because of that, the banana we love is dangerously susceptible to a pathogen that might wipe them out. That's the story of our food today: Modern science has brought us produce in perpetual abundance once-rare fruits are seemingly never out of season, and we breed and clone the hardiest, best-tasting varieties of the crops we rely on most. As a result, a smaller proportion of people on earth go hungry today than at any other moment in the last thousand years, and the streamlining of our food supply guarantees that the food we buy, from bananas to coffee to wheat, tastes the same every single time. Our corporate food system has nearly perfected the process of turning sunlight, water and nutrients into food. But our crops themselves remain susceptible to the nature's fury. And nature always wins. Authoritative, urgent, and filled with fascinating heroes and villains from around the world, Never Out of Season is the story of the crops we depend on most and the scientists racing to preserve the diversity of life, in order to save our food supply, and us.
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The Miraculous from the Material: Understanding the Wonders of Nature by Alan LightmanNature is capable of extraordinary phenomena. Standing in awe of those phenomena, we experience a feeling of connection to others, to wildlife, or to the cosmos. For Alan Lightman, just as remarkable is that all of what we see around us--from soap bubbles and scarlet ibises to shooting stars--are made out of the same material stuff, and obey the same rules and laws. This is what Lightman calls 'spiritual materialism, ' the belief that we can embrace spiritual experiences without letting go of our scientific worldview.
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Domesticated: Evolution in a Man-Made World by Richard C. FrancisIn "Domesticated", Richard C. Francis weaves history and anthropology with cutting-edge ideas in genomics and evo devo to tell the story of how we domesticated the world, and ourselves in the process.
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Visionary Women: How Rachel Carson, Jane Jacobs, Jane Goodall, and Alice Waters Changed Our World by Andrea BarnetThis is the story of four visionaries who profoundly shaped the world we live in today. Together, these women showed what one person speaking truth to power can do. With a keen eye for historical detail, Andrea Barnet traces the arc of each woman's career and explores how their work collectively changed the course of history. Consummate outsiders, each prevailed against powerful and mostly male adversaries while also anticipating the disaffections of the emerging counterculture.
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Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI by Ethan MollickEthan Mollick has become one of the most prominent and provocative explainers of AI, focusing on the practical aspects of how these new tools for thought can transform our world. In "Co-Intelligence", Mollick urges us to engage with AI as co-worker, co-teacher, and coach. He assesses its profound impact on business and education, using dozens of real-time examples of AI in action. "Co-Intelligence" shows what it means to think and work together with smart machines, and why it's imperative that we master that skill. Mollick challenges us to utilize AI's enormous power without losing our identity, to learn from it without being misled, and to harness its gifts to create a better human future. Wide ranging, hugely thought-provoking, optimistic, and lucid, "Co-Intelligence" reveals the promise and power of this new era.
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