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Chasing the Demon: A Secret History of the Quest for the Sound Barrier, and the Band of American Aces Who Conquered It

DAN HAMPTON · William Morrow
Pages: 400
Format: Hardcover

The New York Times bestselling author of Viper Pilot chronicles another thrilling chapter in American aviation history: the race to break the sound barrier.In the aftermath of World War II, the United States accelerated the development of technologies that would give it an advantage over...
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Extreme Conservation: Life at the Edges of the World

Joel Berger · University of Chicago Press
Pages: 368
Format: Hardcover

"By turns lyrical, despairing, and hilariously funny. . . . Informative and impassioned." - Publishers Weekly On the Tibetan Plateau, there are wild yaks with blood cells thinner than those of horses' by half, enabling the endangered yaks to survive at 40 below zero and in the lowest...
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Underbug: An Obsessive Tale of Termites and Technology

Lisa Margonelli · Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pages: 320
Format: Hardcover

The award-winning journalist Lisa Margonelli, national bestselling author of Oil on the Brain: Petroleum's Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank, investigates the environmental and economic impact termites inflict on human societies in this fascinating examination of one of nature's most misunderstood...
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The Disordered Mind: What Unusual Brains Tell Us About Ourselves

Eric R Kandel · Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pages: 336
Format: Hardcover

Nobel Prize recipient Eric R. Kandel investigates The Disordered Mind to uncover what brain disorders reveal about human nature. This challenging study will not only help transform medical care but also encourage a new humanism based in part on the biological confirmation of individuality.Eric...
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The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization

Vince Beiser · Riverhead Books
Pages: 304
Format: Hardcover

The gripping story of the most important overlooked commodity in the world--sand--and the crucial role it plays in our lives.After water and air, sand is the natural resource that we consume more than any other--even more than oil. Every concrete building and paved road on Earth, every...
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Ticker: The Quest to Create an Artificial Heart

Mimi Swartz · Crown
Pages: 320
Format: Hardcover

It wasn't supposed to be this hard. If America could send a man to the moon, shouldn't the best surgeons in the world be able to build an artificial heart? In Ticker, Texas Monthly executive editor and two time National Magazine Award winner Mimi Swartz shows just how complex and difficult...
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Through Two Doors at Once: The Elegant Experiment That Captures the Enigma of Our Quantum Reality

Anil Ananthaswamy · Dutton
Pages: 304
Format: Hardcover

The intellectual adventure story of the "double-slit" experiment, showing how a sunbeam split into two paths first challenged our understanding of light and then the nature of reality itself--and continues to almost 200 years later.Many of the greatest scientific minds have grappled...
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Nodding Off: The Science of Sleep from Cradle to Grave

Alice Gregory · Bloomsbury Sigma
Pages: 304
Format: Hardcover

Sleep is vital to the way we learn, remember and forget, to how we feel about family and partners, our wellbeing, and our mental and physical health. It is essential for life itself. In Nodding Off, renowned sleep researcher Alice Gregory explores every aspect of sleep, from the different...
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The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life

David Quammen · Simon & Schuster
Pages: 448
Format: Hardcover

Nonpareil science writer David Quammen explains how recent discoveries in molecular biology can change our understanding of evolution and life's history, with powerful implications for human health and even our own human nature. In the mid-1970s, scientists began using DNA sequences to reexamine...
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Seaweed Chronicles: A World at the Water's Edge

Susan Hand Shetterly · Algonquin Books
Pages: 288
Format: Hardcover

Glimpse the wonders of a hidden world. An ancient, and vital, part of nature's ecosystem, seaweed is now emerging as an increasingly important source of food in a world faced with diminishing natural resources. In Seaweed Chronicles, acclaimed nature writer Susan Hand Shetterly opens...
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