Showing titles in Biological Sciences

Storytelling, a tradition that built human civilization, may soon destroy it Humans are storytelling animals. Stories are what make our societies possible. Countless books celebrate their virtues. But Jonathan Gottschall, an expert on the science of stories, argues that there is a dark side to...

From the author of Apocalyptic Planet, an unsparing, vivid, revelatory travelogue through prehistory that traces the arrival of the First People in North America 20,000 years ago and the artifacts that enable us to imagine their lives and fates. This book upends our notions of where these people came from and who they were.

The Heartbeat of Trees highlights the special bond humans share with nature and how it must be preserved. This book marks a powerful return to the forest, where trees have heartbeats and roots are like brains that extend underground, where the colour green calms us and the forest sharpens our...

The fifth volume of memoirs from the author who inspired the BBC and Channel 5 series All Creatures Great and Small. In Every Living Thing James Herriot brings back familiar and much-loved friends, including his partner Siegfried and his most lucrative patient, the delightful Tricki Woo. There...

Our ancestors crossed deserts, mountains, and oceans without even a whisper of what anyone today might consider modern technology. Those feats of endurance now seem impossible in an age where we take comfort for granted. But what if we could regain some of our lost evolutionary strength by simulating the environmental conditions of our forbears? Investigative journalist and anthropologist Scott Carney takes up the challenge to find out: Can we hack our bodies and use the environment to stimulate our inner biology?

A pathbreaking neuroscientist reveals how our social instincts turn Me into Us, but turn Us against Them - and what we can do about it. The great dilemma of our shrinking world is simple: never before have those we disagree with been so present in our lives. The more globalization dissolves national borders, the more clearly we see that human beings are deeply divided on moral lines - about everything from tax codes to sexual practices to energy consumption - and that, when we really disagree, our emotions turn positively tribal.

Whales are among the largest, most intelligent, deepest diving species to have ever lived on our planet. We have hunted them for thousands of years and scratched their icons into our mythologies. They simultaneously fill us with waves of terror, awe and affection – yet we know hardly anything...

In these ten absorbing series, award-winning authors Naomi Alderman and Philip Ball and guest presenters Tracey Logan, Kevin Fong, Simon Schaffer and Lindsey Fitzharris take a look at the many amazing events and characters from science's long history. In this collection, which runs close to 23...

This "valuable and entertaining" (New York Times Book Review) book explores how scientists are adapting nature's best ideas to solve tough 21st century problems. Biomimicry is rapidly transforming life on earth. Biomimics study nature's most successful ideas over the past 3.5 million years, and...

What happens in our brains to make us feel fear, love, hate, anger, joy? Do we control our emotions, or do they control us? Do animals have emotions? How can traumatic experiences in early childhood influence adult behavior, even though we have no conscious memory of them? In The Emotional Brain, Joseph LeDoux investigates the origins of human emotions and explains that many exist as part of complex neural systems that evolved to enable us to survive.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of The Future of the Mind by Michio Kaku, The international bestselling author of Physics of the Impossible. Read by the actor Feodor Chin. Recording memories, mind reading, videotaping our dreams, mind control, avatars, and...

In Methusaleh's Zoo, Steven Austad tells the stories of some extraordinary animals, considering why, for example, animal species that fly live longer than earthbound species and why animals found in the ocean live longest of all. Austad—the leading authority on longevity in animals—argues that the best way we will learn from these long-lived animals is by studying them in the wild.

Un diptyque essentiel pour comprendre le monde d'aujourd'hui et de demain. "Dans Où atterrir ?" Comment s'orienter en politique, l'hypothèse est qu'on ne comprend rien aux positions politiques si l'on ne donne pas une place centrale à la question du climat et à sa dénégation. Tout se passe comme si une partie importante des classes dirigeantes était arrivée à la conclusion qu'il n'y aurait plus assez de place sur terre pour elles et pour le reste de ses habitants.

In the 200 years since we discovered that microbes cause infectious diseases, we've battled to keep them at bay. But a recent explosion of scientific knowledge has led to undeniable evidence that early exposure to these organisms is beneficial to our children's well-being. Our current emphasis on hyper-cleanliness is taking a toll on our children's lifelong health. This engaging and important book explains how the millions of microbes that live in our bodies influence childhood development.

When Speaker Newt Gingrich greeted Dr. David Lewis in his office overlooking the National Mall, he looked at Dr. Lewis and said: "You know you’re going to be fired for this, don’t you?" "I know," Dr. Lewis replied, "I just hope to stay out of prison." Gingrich had just read Dr. Lewis' commentary in Nature, titled "EPA Science: Casualty of Election Politics".

First heard every weekday morning at 5.58am on BBC Radio 4, Tweet of the Day captured the imagination of early risers and bird lovers, proving so popular that it was named Radio Programme of the Year 2014. Each episode begins with a bird call or song, followed by fascinating ornithological detail about its owner. This collection contains every edition from the first series, British Birds.

The study of human evolution is advancing rapidly. Newly discovered fossil evidence is adding ever more pieces to the puzzle of our past, while revolutionary technological advances in the study of ancient DNA are completely reshaping theories of early human populations and migrations. In this Very Short Introduction, Bernard Wood traces the history of paleoanthropology from its beginnings in the 18th century to the very latest fossil finds.

Ben Barres was known for his groundbreaking scientific work and for his groundbreaking advocacy for gender equality in science. In this book, completed shortly before his death, Barres (born Barbara Barres in 1954) describes a life full of remarkable accomplishments. Barres recounts his early life and felt even as a very young child that he was assigned the wrong gender. After years of being acutely uncomfortable in his own skin, Barres transitioned from female to male. It was after transitioning that he realized how differently male and female scientists are treated.

206 bones. One heart. Two eyes. Ten fingers. You may think you know what makes up a human. But it turns out our bodies are full of surprises. What makes tears of joy different from tears of sadness? Why is a gut feeling so much smarter than you think? And why is 90% of you not even human? You...

In LIFE AS NO ONE KNOWS IT, physicist and astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker argues that solving the origin of life requires radical new thinking and an experimentally testable theory for what life is. This is an urgent issue for efforts to make life from scratch in laboratories here on Earth and missions searching for life on other planets. Walker proposes a new paradigm for understanding what physics encompasses and what we recognize as life.