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Nature and Science February 2026 |
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Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party: How an Eccentric Group of Victorians Discovered Prehistoric Creatures and Accidentally Upended the World
by Edward Dolnick
In the early 1800s the natural world was a safe and cozy place, or so people believed. But then a twelve-year-old farm boy in Massachusetts stumbled on a row of fossilized three-toed footprints the size of dinner plates--the first dinosaur tracks ever found. Soon, in England, scientists unearthed enormous bones that reached as high as a man's head. Outside of myths and fairy tales, no one had even imagined that creatures like three-toed giants had once lumbered across the land--nor dreamed that they could all have vanished, hundreds of millions years ago. In Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party, celebrated storyteller and historian Edward Dolnick leads us through a compelling true adventure as the paleontologists of the early 19th century puzzled their way through the fossil record to create the story of dinosaurs we know today.
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One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon
by Charles Fishman
When Kennedy announced the goal, no one knew how to navigate to the Moon. No one knew how to build a rocket big enough to reach the Moon, or how to build a computer small enough (and powerful enough) to fly a spaceship there. No one knew what the surface of the Moon was like, or what astronauts could eat as they flew there. On the day of Kennedy’s historic speech, America had a total of fifteen minutes of spaceflight experience—with just five of those minutes outside the atmosphere. Russian dogs had more time in space than U.S. astronauts. Over the next decade, more than 400,000 scientists, engineers, and factory workers would send 24 astronauts to the Moon. Each hour of space flight would require one million hours of work back on Earth to get America to the Moon on July 20, 1969. More than fifty years later, One Giant Leap is the sweeping, definitive behind-the-scenes account of the furious race to complete one of mankind’s greatest achievements.
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Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy
by Mary Roach
An Instant New York Times Bestseller A BEST BOOK OF 2025: TIME - SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN - SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE - KiRKUS - SHELF AWARENESS - CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY A Goodreads Choice Awards Nominee From the New York Times best-selling author of Stiff and Fuzz, a rollicking exploration of the quest to re-create the impossible complexities of human anatomy.
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The Bathysphere Book: Effects of the Luminous Ocean Depths
by Brad Fox
A gorgeous account of William Beebe's 1934 Bathysphere expedition, the first-ever deep-sea voyage to the otherworldly environment 3,024 feet below sea level. In the summer of 1930, aboard a ship floating near the Atlantic island of Nonsuch, marine biologist Gloria Hollister sat on a crate, writing furiously in a notebook with a telephone receiver pressed to her ear. The phone line was attached to a steel cable that plunged 3,000 feet into the sea. There, suspended by the cable, dangled a four-and-a-half-foot steel ball called the bathysphere. Crumpled inside, gazing through three-inch quartz windows at the undersea world, was Hollister’s colleague William Beebe. He called up to her, describing previously unseen creatures, explosions of bioluminescence, and strange effects of light and color. The Bathysphere Book is a hypnotic assemblage of brief chapters along with over fifty full-color images, records from the original bathysphere logbooks, and the moving story of surreptitious romance between Beebe and Hollister that anchors their exploration. Brad Fox blurs the line between poetry and research, unearthing and rendering a visionary meeting with the unknown.
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Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman
by Patrick Hutchison
Wit's End isn't just a state of mind. It's an address for a run-down off-the-grid cabin, 120 shabby square feet of fixer-upper Patrick Hutchison purchased on a whim in the mossy woods of the Cascade Mountains in Washington State. To say Hutchison didn't know what he was getting into is no more an exaggeration than to say he's a man with nearly zero carpentry skills. Well, used to be--you can learn a lot over 7 years or renovations. This is the story of those renovations, but it's also a love story: of a place, of possibilities, and of the process of renovation, of seeing what could be instead of what is. It is a book for those who know what it's like to bite off more than you can chew, or who desperately wish to--
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The Disappearing Spoon and Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements
by Sam Kean
From New York Times bestselling author Sam Kean comes incredible stories of science, history, finance, mythology, the arts, medicine, and more, as told by the Periodic Table. Why did Gandhi hate iodine (I, 53)? How did radium (Ra, 88) nearly ruin Marie Curie's reputation? And why is gallium (Ga, 31) the go-to element for laboratory pranksters? The Periodic Table is a crowning scientific achievement, but it's also a treasure trove of adventure, betrayal, and obsession. These fascinating tales follow every element on the table as they play out their parts in human history, and in the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them. The Disappearing Spoon masterfully fuses science with the classic lore of invention, investigation, and discovery--from the Big Bang through the end of time. This book is a Charlotte County Library staff favorite!
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The Lost Art of Reading Nature's Signs: Use Outdoor Clues to Find Your Way, Predict the Weather, Locate Water, Track Animals - And Other Forgotten Ski
by Tristan Gooley
When writer and navigator Tristan Gooley journeys outside, he sees a natural world filled with clues. The roots of a tree indicate the sun’s direction; the Big Dipper tells the time; a passing butterfly hints at the weather; a sand dune reveals prevailing wind; the scent of cinnamon suggests altitude; a budding flower points south. To help you understand nature as he does, Gooley shares more than 850 tips for forecasting, tracking, and more, gathered from decades spent walking the landscape around his home and around the world. Whether you’re walking in the country or city, along a coastline, or by night, this is the ultimate resource on what the land, sun, moon, stars, plants, animals, and clouds can reveal―only if you know how to look!
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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Charlotte County Library
112-116 LeGrande Avenue,
P.O. Box 788, Charlotte Court House, Virginia 23923
(434) 542-5247https://cclibrary.net/ |
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