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Nature and Science December 2021 |
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For your convenience, beginning in January we will be consolidating our newsletters into one, all-encompassing newsletter. Suggestions from each individual genre will now be included in the new newsletter format on a rotating basis. The separate newsletters for these genres are now discontinued. |
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| Our Biggest Experiment: An Epic History of the Climate Crisis by Alice BellWhat it is: a "thorough and sweeping history of the climate crisis" (Publishers Weekly), focusing on the people whose attempts to forestall ecological devastation were either ignored or punished.
Such as? Eunice Newton Foote, who in 1856 discovered the greenhouse effect; the Bishnoi people of Northern India, who died in a 1730 massacre while protecting their beloved khejri trees.
Further reading: Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert; Climate Chaos: Lessons on Survival from Our Ancestors by Brian M. Fagan and Nadia Durrani. |
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| Immune: A Journey Into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive by Philipp DettmerWhat it is: an accessible and lavishly illustrated journey through the human immune system.
About the author: Philipp Dettmer is the founder of the German animation studio Kurzgesagt, which creates popular educational science videos that can be seen on their YouTube channel, "In A Nutshell." |
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| Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid: The Fraught and Fascinating Biology of Climate... by Thor HansonWhat it's about: While humans struggle to mount a response to climate change, plants and animals are busily adapting to a new reality, whether by migrating or modifying their behaviors.
The big idea: "Understanding biological responses to climate change can help us find our place within it."
About the author: Biologist Thor Hanson is the author of Buzz: The Nature and Necessity of Bees and The Triumph of Seeds. |
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| The Plant Hunter: A Scientist's Quest for Nature's Next Medicines by Cassandra Leah QuaveMeet: medical ethnobotanist Dr. Cassandra Leah Quave, who studies plants to discover their medicinal properties.
Read it for: the author's enthusiasm for her chosen career and her reflections on being a disabled woman in a male-dominated discipline that requires conducting field research in the wilderness.
Further listening: Quave also hosts the Foodie Pharmacology podcast. |
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| The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter IsaacsonWhat it is: a biography of Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Jennifer Doudna, best known for her work on CRISPR gene editing.
About the author: Journalist Walter Isaacson is the author of bestselling books The Innovators and Leonardo da Vinci.
In her own words: Doudna has written about her work in A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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