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Nature and Science February 2026 |
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The Call of the Honeyguide: What Science Tells Us About How to Live Well With the Rest of Life
by Rob Dunn
The evolution of life is mainly a story of competition. But this has caused scientists to miss the cooperation between organisms happening everywhere in nature. These “mutualisms” (mutually beneficial relationships between species) occur between animals and plants of all types on every continent, and biologist Rob Dunn’s vivid descriptions enable the reader to envision the complex interdependencies in nature’s ecosystems in his “triumph of popular science” (Publishers Weekly).
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The Breath of the Gods: The History and Future of the Wind
by Simon Winchester
Author and journalist Simon Winchester presents a celebration of wind. Drawing fascinating references from science, engineering, and literature, Winchester is clearly enraptured by this natural force, evidenced by his vivid depictions of its role in civilization’s destruction (typhoons, tornadoes, wildfires) and salvation (wind-powered energy solutions). This is a captivating ode to elemental nature in the vein of Cynthia Barnett’s Rain: A Natural and Cultural History.
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The Fabulous Ordinary: Discovering the Natural Wonders of the Wild South
by Georgann Eubanks
Georgann Eubanks offers readers a tour of the seasonal joys of ecosystems in the Southeast. The ordinary destinations and events she explores are scattered across seven states and include such wonders as a half-million purple martins roosting on an island in a South Carolina lake, the bloom of thirty acres of dimpled trout lilies in a remote Georgia forest, gnat larvae that glow like stars on the rock walls of an obscure Alabama canyon, and the overnight accumulation of elaborately patterned moths on the side of a North Carolina mountain cabin. These phenomena and others reveal how plants, mammals, amphibians, and insects are managing to persevere despite pressures from human invasion, habitat destruction, and climate change. Their stories also shine a light on the efforts of dedicated scientists, volunteers, and aspiring young naturalists who are working to reverse losses and preserve the fabulous ordinary that's still alive in the fields, forests, rivers, and coastal estuaries of this essential and biodiverse region--
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Turning to Birds: The Power and Beauty of Noticing
by Lili Taylor
Award-winning actor Lili Taylor first became a birdwatcher and nature advocate about 15 years ago during a break between film projects. She noticed how observing the sparrows and jays outside her house awakened her senses, especially her ability to listen, a skill she prizes in her acting work. Today she goes birding whenever she can, in the city and country, and will inspire her readers to rediscover the gift of noticing the world around them. For fans of: Amy Tan’s The Backyard Bird Chronicles.
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Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
by John Green
Instant #1 New York Times bestseller! - #1 Washington Post bestseller! - #1 Indie Bestseller! - USA Today Bestseller!John Green, acclaimed author and passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world's deadliest infectious disease. The real magic of Green's writing is the deeply considerate, human touch that goes into every word. -The Associated PressTold with the intelligence, wit, and tragedy that have become hallmarks of the author's work.... This is the story of us. -SlateEarnest and empathetic. -The New York TimesTuberculosis has been entwined with hu-manity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is seen as a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.In 2019, author John Green met Henry Reider, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. John be-came fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequi-ties that allow this curable, preventable infec-tious disease to also be the deadliest, killing over a million people every year.In Everything Is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry's story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world--and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.
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The Brain, Wellness, and AI: |
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Change Your Brain, Change Your Pain: Breaking the Doom Loop to Heal Chronic Physical and Emotional Pain
by Daniel G. Amen
One of our leading experts on the brain and #1 New York Times bestselling author explores how chronic physical and emotional pain are both rooted in your brain's wiring, leaving you stuck in the doom loop and how you can break free to heal from the doom loop and reclaim a vibrant, pain-free life.In the United States alone, one in five adults experiences chronic pain. For too long, when a doctor couldn't find the source of frequent pain, the patient was dismissively told it's all in your head. Today, we know that our somatic responses to trauma, anxiety, and depression create real suffering, and that physical pain can lead to trauma, anxiety, and depression. Dr. Daniel Amen calls this the doom loop--the dance between physical and emotional pain. These doom loops interfere with our ability to live our lives. But we can shift the doom loop into a healing loop, and in this vital book, he shows us how.Dr. Amen has been researching a new brain-based approach to pain. In Change Your Brain, Change Your Pain he draws on those studies to reveal: Pain producing versus pain soothing thought patterns Muscle tension and trauma vs calmness and clarityThe use of medical and nutraceuticals to help calm the pathwaysThe effects of diet, exercise, meditation, breath to help painOur current approach to understanding and treating physical and emotional pain is misguided. Change Your Brain, Change Your Pain offers a healthier way, one that involves less medication, less surgery, and better outcomes. Just like the human heart, the human brain is an organ, and that to be free of emotional or physical pain, it is critical to get the brain as healthy as it can be--not just physically, but emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually, as well.Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the enhancement.
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The Intelligence Explosion: When AI Beats Humans at Everything
by James Barrat
In this era of unprecedented technological growth, understanding the profound impacts of AI--both positive and negative--is more crucial than ever. In [this book], James Barrat, a leading technology expert, equips readers with the tools to navigate the complex and often chaotic landscape of modern AI. [He] dives deep into the challenges posed by generative AI, exposing how tech companies have built systems that are both error-prone and impossible to fully interpret. Through ... interviews with AI pioneers, Barrat highlights the unstable trajectory of AI development, showcasing its potential for modest benefits and catastrophic consequences--
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Empire of Madness: Reimagining Western Mental Health Care for Everyone
by Khameer Kidia
An urgent rethinking of the Western approach to mental health, which treats the symptoms rather than the exploitative systems causing our distress--by a Rhodes Scholar and Harvard Medical School physician-anthropologist--offering lessons from the rest of the world. What if the mainstay of mental health care involved cancelling onerous debt, giving poor people free housing, and paying reparations to the descendants of slavery and colonialism? In Empire of Madness, Dr. Khameer Kidia re-evaluates the Western approach to mental health, which medicates symptoms instead of changing the structures that harm the human psyche. A physician and researcher whose own family suffers from the psychological effects of colonialism, Kidia highlights the limitations of the Western mental health model by reporting from the front lines of mental health crises at home, in the clinic, and during a decade of fieldwork. Clear-eyed and openhearted, Kidia asks the nuanced questions unaddressed by our current mental health model: How do history, culture, and politics shape mental distress? Are hoarding and burnout medical diagnoses or social problems? Why are schizophrenia outcomes sometimes better in poor countries without antipsychotics? Can a traditional healer treat mental illness better than a Western-trained clinician? For those living in poverty, can cash replace pills? With rigorous research, cutting analysis, and illuminating prose, Kidia invites us to reimagine mental health as a global idea where our wellbeing is mutual and everyone's voice--patients, caregivers, and healthcare workers alike--matters.
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Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI
by Karen Hao
A New York Times Notable Book - Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award - An Instant New York Times Bestseller - Named a Best Book of the Year by Smithsonian, Scientific American, and Elle - Porchlight 2025 Business Book Award Winner A bestselling page-turner that has made waves not just in Silicon Valley but around the world . . . With Empire of AI, Hao is fundamentally shaping many people's perceptions and understanding of the company at the center of the AI revolution. --TIME Magazine, TIME100 AI 2025 Excellent and deeply reported. --Tim Wu, The New York Times Startling and intensely researched . . . an essential account of how OpenAI and ChatGPT came to be and the catastrophic places they will likely take us. --Vulture From a brilliant longtime AI insider with intimate access to the world of Sam Altman's OpenAI from the beginning, an eye-opening account of arguably the most fateful tech arms race in history, reshaping the planet in real time, from the cockpit of the company that is driving the frenzy When AI expert and investigative journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, the organization was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely mercantile, and potentially dangerous, forces. What could go wrong? Over time, Hao began to wrestle ever more deeply with that question. Increasingly, she realized that the core truth of this massively disruptive sector is that its vision of success requires an almost unprecedented amount of resources: the compute power of high-end chips and the processing capacity to create massive large language models, the sheer volume of data that needs to be amassed at scale, the humans cleaning up that data for sweatshop wages throughout the Global South, and a truly alarming spike in the usage of energy and water underlying it all.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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