Nature and Science
February 2022
Recent Releases
Super Volcanoes: What They Reveal about Earth and the Worlds Beyond
by Robin George Andrews

What it's about: A science journalist with a doctorate in volcanology explains volcanic processes while taking readers on a vividly descriptive tour of notable eruptions on Earth and elsewhere in the solar system.

You might also like: Natalie Starkey's Fire and Ice: The Volcanoes of the Solar System.

Did you know? In 2017, researchers attempted to determine how many volcano-related fatalities have occurred in the past 500 years and came up with a final tally of 278,368.
Atlas of the Invisible: Maps & Graphics That Will Change How You See the World
by James Cheshire

What it is: a thought-provoking and engaging atlas offering "an ode to the unseen, to a world of information that cannot be conveyed through text or numbers alone."

What's inside: colorful, eye-opening maps and infographics that chart everything from airplane turbulence and melting glaciers to happiness levels and use of bike share programs.
Underwater Wild: My Octopus Teacher's Extraordinary World
by Craig Foster and Ross Frylinck

Welcome to: the Great African Sea Forest, a vast kelp forest located off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, whose depths filmmaker Craig Foster and diver Ross Frylink spent years exploring and documenting.

Don't miss: the many gorgeous photographs of this mysterious underwater world.

About the authors: Craig Foster is the filmmaker behind the Academy Award-winning documentary My Octopus Teacher; Ross Frylinck is a photographer and free-diver who started the Wavescape Ocean Festival.
The Last Winter: The Scientists, Adventurers, Journeymen, and Mavericks Trying to Save...
by Porter Fox

Contains: an immersive blend of travel writing, history, and climate science, and sobering reflections on the end of winter as we know it. 

Featuring: a sprawling cast of "scientists, ranchers, adventurers, vagabonds, time travelers, hunters, and guides" who live and work in the coldest and most inhospitable places on Earth.

Further reading: Bjorn Vassnes' Kingdom of Frost; Dahr Jamail's The End of Ice.
The Complete Guide to Absolutely Everything: Adventures in Math and Science
by Adam Rutherford and Hannah Fry

What it's about: a geneticist and a mathematician explain everyday things, both big (what is time?) and small (do our dogs really love us?).

About the authors: Adam Rutherford (A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived) and Hannah Fry (Hello World) are the cohosts of the BBC Radio show The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry.

Includes: entertaining sidebars and conversational footnotes full of fascinating trivia.
The Everybody Ensemble: Donkeys, Essays, and Other Pandemoniums
by Amy Leach

What it is: an exuberant, wide-ranging miscellany of essays, poems, and other short pieces by Whiting Award-winning writer Amy Leach.

For fans of: Aimee Nezhukumatathil's World of Wonders, Annie Dillard's Teaching a Stone to Talk.

Want a taste? "But however current you feel, remember that everyone is as contemporary as everyone else, and as temporary."
A Bigger Picture: My Fight to Bring a New African Voice to the Climate Crisis
by Vanessa Nakate

Introducing: Ugandan activist Vanessa Nakate, one of the founders of the Rise Up Climate Movement.

The moment of truth: Getting cropped out of a photo taken at the World Economic Forum in Davos proved to be a turning point for Nakate, one of the few Black, non-European attendees.

The takeaway: Africans and other denizens of the Global South (who are disproportionally impacted by climate change) deserve to play a bigger role in shaping climate policy, which is currently dominated by white Western voices.
Contact your librarian for more great books!
Contact your librarian for more great books!
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