|
|
|
|
Nature and Science April 2026 |
|
|
|
| The Company of Owls by Polly AtkinThe Company of Owls is a book about birdwatching, and yet author and poet Polly Atkin is no bird expert. Rather, she has written a thoughtful, lyrical memoir about observing the different species of owls around her home in England’s Lake District. Her interactions with these beings stir ruminations about chronic illness, solitude, and how intimacy with nature can enhance our understanding of ourselves. Try this next: The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year by Margaret Renkl. |
|
|
|
The Feather Wars and the Great Crusade to Save America's Birds
by James H. McCommons
In the late 19th century, America’s bird populations were under serious threat, with many species hunted to near extinction for sport, biological research, and (wait for it...) the ladies’ hat industry. Luckily for the birds, a concerted conservation effort took hold, led by an unlikely alliance between academics, wardens, hunters, docents, artists, and politicians. James H. McCommons’ book serves as a happy example of what is achievable when concerned parties come together. Read alike: The Birds That Audubon Missed by Kenn Kaufman.
|
|
|
|
Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization
by Bill McKibben
From the acclaimed environmentalist, a call to harness solar power and rewrite our scientific, economic, and political future. Every eighteen hours, the world puts up a nuclear power plant's-worth of solar panels. At the same time, combustion continues to melt our poles, poison our bodies, and drive our global inequality. And it is no longer necessary: For the first time in 700,000 years, we know how to catch the sun's rays and convert them into energy. In Here Comes the Sun, world-renowned author Bill McKibben tells the story of our sudden spike in power from the sun and wind. McKibben traces the arrival of plentiful, inexpensive solar energy, which, if it accelerates, gives us a chance not just to limit climate change's damage, but to reorder the world on saner and more humane grounds. Getting there means overcoming obstacles like Big Oil, but McKibben sees a chance for a new civilization: one that looks up to the sun, every day, as the star that fuels our world.
|
|
| How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature's Revolutionaries by David George HaskellFlowers are so much more than aesthetically pleasing, asserts biologist David George Haskell: they are nature’s true survivors. In addition to providing food and shelter for insects and birds, they adapt incredibly quickly to environmental changes, foster biodiversity, act as catalysts between different species, and are even capable of things like self-reproduction and “chromosome doubling” when the chips are down. For fans of: The Light Eaters by Zoë Schlanger. |
|
|
|
Human Nature: Nine Ways to Feel about Our Changing Planet
by Kate Marvel
A Scientific American Best Book of the YearA captivating exploration of climate change that uses nine different emotions to better understand the science, history, and future of our evolving planetScientist Kate Marvel has seen the world end before, sometimes several times a day. In the computer models she uses to study climate change, it's easy to simulate rising temperatures, catastrophic outcomes, and bleak futures. But climate change isn't just happening in those models. It's happening here, to the only good planet in the universe. It's happening to us. And she has feelings about that. Human Nature is a deeply felt inquiry into our rapidly changing Earth. In each chapter, Marvel uses a different emotion to explore the science and stories behind climate change. As expected, there is anger, fear, and grief--but also wonder, hope, and love. With her singular voice, Marvel takes us on a soaring journey, one filled with mythology, physics, witchcraft, bad movies, volcanoes, Roman emperors, sequoia groves, and the many small miracles of nature we usually take for granted.Hopeful, heartbreaking, and surprisingly funny, Human Nature is a vital, wondrous exploration of how it feels to live in a changing world.Human Nature is a biography of the Earth in nine emotions: WonderAngerGuiltFearGriefSurprisePrideHopeLove
|
|
|
|
The Man Who Made Plants Write: Essays by Jagadish Chandra Bose
by Jagadish Chandra Bose
An internationally celebrated poet and critic translates Jagadish Chandra Bose's revolutionary writings on plant sentience and communication Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858-1937) was a Bengali scientist and polymath who developed a theory of plant communication more than a century ago. Bose suggested that plants had their own vocabulary, an unvoiced life that he recorded as a script with a crescograph, a device that measured how plants respond to each other and their environments. Inviting readers into the resounding silence of the green plant kingdom, he described an underlying unity beneath the multiplicity of phenomena, and a world in which endless music is sung everywhere. Dismissed as idiosyncratic and unscientific when he was alive, Bose provocatively challenged the hierarchy of living beings, which relegated plants to the bottom, and created a mesmerizing body of work on nonhuman intelligence. Through her lyrical translations from Bose's essay collection Abyakta (The Unsaid; 1922), Sumana Roy reveals the revolutionary character of his mind, as poetic and philosophical as it was scientific.
|
|
| 99 Ways to Die: And How to Avoid Them by Ashely Alker, MDAs a physician specializing in emergency services, Ashely Alker knows a thing or two about the myriad ways that humans can perish. Including pithy advice about how to avoid premature death and job-related anecdotes that are unsettling, funny, and flat-out scary, Alker’s book is “enormously informative and exceedingly entertaining” (Library Journal). For another witty read about dark topics, try The Chick and the Dead: Life and Death Behind Mortuary Doors by Carla Valentine. |
|
|
|
Ocean: Earth's Last Wilderness
by David Attenborough
Award-winning broadcaster and natural historian David Attenborough and longtime collaborator Colin Butfield present a ... call to action focused on our planet's oceans, exploring how critical this habitat is for the survival of humanity and the earth's future--Provided by publisher.
|
|
|
|
Tigers Between Empires: The Improbable Return of Great Cats to the Forests of Russia...
by Jonathan C. Slaght
In conservation biologist Jonathan C. Slaght’s Tigers Between Empires, he describes a coordinated effort between Russian and American scientists to rescue the wild tigers of the Amur River basin -- a forested area straddling Russia and China -- from unchecked hunting and habitat loss. After decades of work, the population of these magnificent predators is robust and growing. For fans of: The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant.
|
|
|
|
Webb's Cosmos: Images and Discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope
by Marcin Sawicki
Webb's Cosmos is the definitive and most up-to-date book on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) available today. Covering Webb's breathtaking discoveries from its launch in 2021 to 2025, Webb's Cosmos brings together beauty, wonder, and understanding in one spectacular volume. While older books show Webb's first images, all that was available when they were published, Webb's Cosmos includes many more images, and more recent ones. Author Marcin Sawicki is an experienced science educator and a professional astronomer who actively uses Webb data in his own research. In this book he offers a uniquely informed perspective on what Webb's beautiful images mean. His lucid, engaging text takes us behind the splendor of the images and explains how they reveal information about the birth of stars, the growth of galaxies from tiny seeds in the early cosmic epochs to the grand structures around us today, and humanity's ongoing search for worlds beyond our Solar System. Organized into ten richly illustrated chapters, the book explores topics such as star-forming regions where young stars form and grow, planets that orbit distant suns, and galaxies both nearby and in the farthest reaches of the cosmos. Along the way, readers also discover answers to frequently asked questions such as: How does NASA decide what Webb observes? How are Webb's digital observations processed to reveal the dazzling images we see? What are the immense scales and distances that Webb reveals? Blending the visual beauty of a rich photo album with the insight of a working scientist and engaging prose of an experienced science communicator, Webb's Cosmos is both a feast for the eyes and a guided tour through humanity's newest and most powerful window on the Universe. It is the most complete and up-to-date celebration of the James Webb Space Telescope available today.
|
|
Contact your librarian for more great books!
|
|
|
|
|
|