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Nature and Science August 2026 |
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| The Madness Pill: One Doctor's Quest to Understand Schizophrenia by Justin GarsonPhilosopher Justin Garson’s biography of Dr. Solomon Snyder, a pharmacology professor at Johns Hopkins University, examines Snyder’s research in the 1970s and '80s to isolate the cause of schizophrenia. Although Snyder’s research ultimately failed, he instead discovered the brain’s dopamine receptors, which would in turn lead to the development of a range of useful psychoactive drugs and forever change the practice of psychopharmacology. |
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| In Deep Water: A True Story of Sharks, Survival, and Courage by Michael J. TougiasA terrifying cautionary tale of survival on the open ocean. In 2022, three friends in coastal Louisiana embark on a fishing trip on the Gulf of Mexico in a recently purchased boat that suddenly proves un-seaworthy. The vessel sinks so quickly that the fishermen barely have time to don life vests and cling to a cooler for dear life. They spend the next 28 hours facing down stinging jellyfish, circling sharks, and their own exhaustion before being rescued. For fans of: harrowing ocean rescue stories. |
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The Echoing Universe: How Radio Astronomy Helps Us See the Invisible Cosmos
by Emma Chapman
Chapman tunes us in to the universe and what it is trying to say, through the science of radio astronomy. Everything is sending out signals: the surface of the Moon, distant stars--maybe even extraterrestrials. With radio waves, we can uncover what visible light cannot show us and peer into realms that are otherwise unreachable. This exhilarating expedition is just the beginning as new and bigger radio telescopes come into play and propel our curiosity well beyond the edge of our galaxy. Despite the seeming silence of space, the future of astronomy is loud and vibrant.
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On the Origin of Sex: The Weird and Wonderful Science of Reproduction
by Lixing Sun
Biologist Lixing Sun has spent decades researching sexual reproduction and evolution. Here, he reveals the wild and weird world of how creatures reproduce. In slime molds, sex can involve dozens--or even hundreds--of mating types, or proto-sexes. Among certain algae, nearly every individual can mate with almost any other--a veritable free-for-all. Clownfish sequentially change from male to female, and bearded dragons can undergo temperature-dependent sex reversal, all of which challenge the notion that sex is binary and fixed in the natural world. Assiduously researched and narrated with humor and verve, On the Origin of Sex offers an expert and entertaining investigation into the science of how our planet is populated.
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Lightning Beneath the Sea: The Race to Wire the World and the Dawn of the Information Age
by James M. Tabor
The thrilling story of the nineteenth century's Apollo moonshot: an Atlantic-spanning telegraph cable that created the global village and changed the world. In 1854, American entrepreneur Cyrus Field set out to lay a 2,000-mile telegraph cable across the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Field knew nothing about telegraphy, electricity, ships, or oceans, and science itself still lacked a universal theory of electricity. But he believed that wiring the world for near-instantaneous communication would bring about peace on Earth. The cable's legacy can be traced today in the hundreds of descendants that still carry 98 percent of the world's information through a "world undersea web."
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The Summer of Death: The Great Heat Wave of 1936 and the Making of Modern-Day America
by Geoff Williams
A riveting historic narrative that tells the iconic story of the great heat wave that ravaged the continent in the last gasps of the Dust Bowl. In 1936, after one of the coldest winters on record, North America experienced a heat wave that remains unmatched today. The heat wave of 1936 sparked massive social changes and technological advances, as well as improvements in health care, and it ignited an ongoing impassioned national dialogue about climate change that continues, to varying degrees, to this day.
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