You wake up and feel a tickle in your throat. Your head hurts. You're mildly annoyed as you get the kids ready for school and dress for work yourself. Meanwhile, an epic war is being fought, just below your skin. Millions are fighting and dying for you to be able to complain as you head out the door. So what, exactly, is your immune system? Second only to the human brain in its complexity, it is one of the oldest and most critical facets of life on Earth. Without it, you would die within days. In Immune, Philipp Dettmer, the brains behind the most popular science channel on YouTube, takes readers on a journey through the fortress of the human body and its defenses. There is a constant battle of staggering scale raging within us, full of stories of invasion, strategy, defeat, and noble self-sacrifice.
Random House
|
9780593241318
|
Hardcover
We Need New Stories
By Malik, Nesrine
Publisher: n/a
|
9781324007296
|
Hardcover
Journey to the Edge of Reason
By Budiansky, Stephen
Publisher: n/a
|
9781324005445
|
Hardcover
Tesla
By Munson, Richard
Tesla's inventions transformed our world, and his visions have continued to inspire great minds for generations.Nikola Tesla invented the radio, robots, and remote control. His electric induction motors run our appliances and factories, yet he has been largely overlooked by history. In Tesla, Richard Munson presents a comprehensive portrait of this farsighted and underappreciated mastermind.When his first breakthrough - alternating current, the basis of the electric grid - pitted him against Thomas Edison's direct-current empire, Tesla's superior technology prevailed. Unfortunately, he had little business sense and could not capitalize on this success. His most advanced ideas went unrecognized for decades: forty years in the case of the radio patent, longer still for his ideas on laser beam technology. Although penniless during his later years, he never stopped imagining. In the early 1900s, he designed plans for cell phones, the Internet, death-ray weapons, and interstellar communications. His ideas have lived on to shape the modern economy.Who was this genius? Drawing on letters, technical notebooks, and other primary sources, Munson pieces together the magnificently bizarre personal life and mental habits of the enigmatic inventor. Born during a lightning storm at midnight, Tesla died alone in a New York City hotel. He was an acute germaphobe who never shook hands and required nine napkins when he sat down to dinner. Strikingly handsome and impeccably dressed, he spoke eight languages and could recite entire books from memory. Yet Tesla's most famous inventions were not the product of fastidiousness or linear thought but of a mind fueled by both the humanities and sciences: he conceived the induction motor while walking through a park and reciting Goethe's Faust.Tesla worked tirelessly to offer electric power to the world, to introduce automatons that would reduce life's drudgery, and to develop machines that might one day abolish war. His story is a reminder that technology can transcend the marketplace and that profit is not the only motivation for invention. This clear, authoritative, and highly readable biography takes account of all phases of Tesla's remarkable life.
W. W. Norton & Company
|
9780393635447
|
Print Length
Vitamin N
By Louv, Richard
"From the author of the New York Times bestseller that defined nature-deficit disorder and launched the international children-and-nature movement, Vitamin N (for "nature") is a complete prescription for connecting with the power and joy of the natural world right now,"--Amazon.com.Nature-deficit disorder: the alienation of children from the natural world. Louv provides a one-of-a-kind practical guidebook with tips not only for parents eager to share nature with their kids but also for those seeking nature-smart schools, medical professionals, and even careers. He reminds us that looking up at the stars or taking a walk in the woods is as exhilarating as it is essential, at any age.
Algonquin Of Chapel Hill
|
9781616205782
|
Print book
Animal Weapons
By Emlen, Douglas J.
The story behind the stunning extreme weapons we see in the animal world--teeth and horns and claws--and what they can tell us about the way humans develop and use arms and other weaponsIn Animal Weapons Doug Emlen takes us outside the lab and deep into the forests and jungles where hes been studying animal weapons in nature for years to explain the processes behind the most intriguing and curious examples of extreme animal weapons--fish with mouths larger than their bodies and bugs whose heads are so packed with muscle they dont have room for eyes As singular and strange as some of the weapons we encounter on these pages are we learn that similar factors set their evolution in motion Emlen uses these patterns to draw parallels to the way we humans develop and employ our own weapons and have since battle began He looks at everything from our armor and camouflage to the evolution of the rifle and the structures human populations have built across different regions and eras to protect their homes and communities With stunning black and white drawings and gorgeous color illustrations of these concepts at work Animal Weapons brings us the complete story of how weapons reach their most outsized dramatic potential and what the results we witness in the animal world can tell us about our own relationship with weapons of all kinds.
Henry Holt and Co.
|
9780805094503
|
Hardcover
The Tangled Tree
By Quammen, David
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 the history of all life. Perhaps the most startling discovery to come out of this new field - the study of life's diversity and relatedness at the molecular level - is horizontal gene transfer (HGT) , or the movement of genes across species lines. It turns out that HGT has been widespread and important. For instance, we now know that roughly eight percent of the human genome arrived not through traditional inheritance from directly ancestral forms, but sideways by viral infection - a type of HGT. In The Tangled Tree David Quammen, "one of that rare breed of science journalists who blends exploration with a talent for synthesis and storytelling" (Nature) , chronicles these discoveries through the lives of the researchers who made them - such as Carl Woese, the most important little-known biologist of the twentieth century; Lynn Margulis, the notorious maverick whose wild ideas about "mosaic" creatures proved to be true; and Tsutomu Wantanabe, who discovered that the scourge of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a direct result of horizontal gene transfer, bringing the deep study of genome histories to bear on a global crisis in public health. "Quammen is no ordinary writer. He is simply astonishing, one of that rare class of writer gifted with verve, ingenuity, humor, guts, and great heart" (Elle) . Now, in The Tangled Tree, he explains how molecular studies of evolution have brought startling recognitions about the tangled tree of life - including where we humans fit upon it. Thanks to new technologies such as CRISPR, we now have the ability to alter even our genetic composition - through sideways insertions, as nature has long been doing. The Tangled Tree is a brilliant guide to our transformed understanding of evolution, of life's history, and of our own human nature.
Simon & Schuster
|
9781476776620
|
Hardcover
Adventures in the Anthropocene
By Vince, Gaia
We all know our planet is in crisis, and that it is largely our fault. But all too often the full picture of change is obstructed by dense data sets and particular catastrophes. Struggling with this obscurity in her role as an editor at Nature, Gaia Vince decided to travel the world and see for herself what life is really like for people on the frontline of this new reality. What she found was a number people doing the most extraordinary things.During her journey she finds a man who is making artificial glaciers in Nepal along with an individual who is painting mountains white to attract snowfall; take the electrified reefs of the Maldives; or the man who's making islands out of rubbish in the Caribbean. These are ordinary people who are solving severe crises in crazy, ingenious, effective ways.
Milkweed Editions
|
9781571313577
|
Hardcover
The Mutant Project
By Kirksey, Eben
"That rare kind of scholarship that is also a page-turner." At a conference in Hong Kong in November 2018, Dr. He Jiankui announced that he had created the first genetically modified babies -- twin girls named Lulu and Nana -- sending shockwaves around the world. A year later, a Chinese court sentenced Dr. He to three years in prison for "illegal medical practice."As scientists elsewhere start to catch up with China's vast genetic research program, gene editing is fueling an innovation economy that threatens to widen racial and economic inequality. Fundamental questions about science, health, and social justice are at stake: Who gets access to gene editing technologies? As countries loosen regulations around the globe, from the U.
St. Martin's Press
|
9781250265357
|
Hardcover
Talking to Strangers
By Gladwell, Malcolm
Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers--and why they often go wrong.How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to each other that isn't true?Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland---throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don't know. And because we don't know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. In his first book since his #1 bestseller, David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell has written a gripping guidebook for troubled times.
Immune
By Dettmer, Philipp
You wake up and feel a tickle in your throat. Your head hurts. You're mildly annoyed as you get the kids ready for school and dress for work yourself. Meanwhile, an epic war is being fought, just below your skin. Millions are fighting and dying for you to be able to complain as you head out the door. So what, exactly, is your immune system? Second only to the human brain in its complexity, it is one of the oldest and most critical facets of life on Earth. Without it, you would die within days. In Immune, Philipp Dettmer, the brains behind the most popular science channel on YouTube, takes readers on a journey through the fortress of the human body and its defenses. There is a constant battle of staggering scale raging within us, full of stories of invasion, strategy, defeat, and noble self-sacrifice.
We Need New Stories
By Malik, Nesrine
Journey to the Edge of Reason
By Budiansky, Stephen
Tesla
By Munson, Richard
Tesla's inventions transformed our world, and his visions have continued to inspire great minds for generations.Nikola Tesla invented the radio, robots, and remote control. His electric induction motors run our appliances and factories, yet he has been largely overlooked by history. In Tesla, Richard Munson presents a comprehensive portrait of this farsighted and underappreciated mastermind.When his first breakthrough - alternating current, the basis of the electric grid - pitted him against Thomas Edison's direct-current empire, Tesla's superior technology prevailed. Unfortunately, he had little business sense and could not capitalize on this success. His most advanced ideas went unrecognized for decades: forty years in the case of the radio patent, longer still for his ideas on laser beam technology. Although penniless during his later years, he never stopped imagining. In the early 1900s, he designed plans for cell phones, the Internet, death-ray weapons, and interstellar communications. His ideas have lived on to shape the modern economy.Who was this genius? Drawing on letters, technical notebooks, and other primary sources, Munson pieces together the magnificently bizarre personal life and mental habits of the enigmatic inventor. Born during a lightning storm at midnight, Tesla died alone in a New York City hotel. He was an acute germaphobe who never shook hands and required nine napkins when he sat down to dinner. Strikingly handsome and impeccably dressed, he spoke eight languages and could recite entire books from memory. Yet Tesla's most famous inventions were not the product of fastidiousness or linear thought but of a mind fueled by both the humanities and sciences: he conceived the induction motor while walking through a park and reciting Goethe's Faust.Tesla worked tirelessly to offer electric power to the world, to introduce automatons that would reduce life's drudgery, and to develop machines that might one day abolish war. His story is a reminder that technology can transcend the marketplace and that profit is not the only motivation for invention. This clear, authoritative, and highly readable biography takes account of all phases of Tesla's remarkable life.
Vitamin N
By Louv, Richard
"From the author of the New York Times bestseller that defined nature-deficit disorder and launched the international children-and-nature movement, Vitamin N (for "nature") is a complete prescription for connecting with the power and joy of the natural world right now,"--Amazon.com.Nature-deficit disorder: the alienation of children from the natural world. Louv provides a one-of-a-kind practical guidebook with tips not only for parents eager to share nature with their kids but also for those seeking nature-smart schools, medical professionals, and even careers. He reminds us that looking up at the stars or taking a walk in the woods is as exhilarating as it is essential, at any age.
Animal Weapons
By Emlen, Douglas J.
The story behind the stunning extreme weapons we see in the animal world--teeth and horns and claws--and what they can tell us about the way humans develop and use arms and other weaponsIn Animal Weapons Doug Emlen takes us outside the lab and deep into the forests and jungles where hes been studying animal weapons in nature for years to explain the processes behind the most intriguing and curious examples of extreme animal weapons--fish with mouths larger than their bodies and bugs whose heads are so packed with muscle they dont have room for eyes As singular and strange as some of the weapons we encounter on these pages are we learn that similar factors set their evolution in motion Emlen uses these patterns to draw parallels to the way we humans develop and employ our own weapons and have since battle began He looks at everything from our armor and camouflage to the evolution of the rifle and the structures human populations have built across different regions and eras to protect their homes and communities With stunning black and white drawings and gorgeous color illustrations of these concepts at work Animal Weapons brings us the complete story of how weapons reach their most outsized dramatic potential and what the results we witness in the animal world can tell us about our own relationship with weapons of all kinds.
The Tangled Tree
By Quammen, David
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 the history of all life. Perhaps the most startling discovery to come out of this new field - the study of life's diversity and relatedness at the molecular level - is horizontal gene transfer (HGT) , or the movement of genes across species lines. It turns out that HGT has been widespread and important. For instance, we now know that roughly eight percent of the human genome arrived not through traditional inheritance from directly ancestral forms, but sideways by viral infection - a type of HGT. In The Tangled Tree David Quammen, "one of that rare breed of science journalists who blends exploration with a talent for synthesis and storytelling" (Nature) , chronicles these discoveries through the lives of the researchers who made them - such as Carl Woese, the most important little-known biologist of the twentieth century; Lynn Margulis, the notorious maverick whose wild ideas about "mosaic" creatures proved to be true; and Tsutomu Wantanabe, who discovered that the scourge of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a direct result of horizontal gene transfer, bringing the deep study of genome histories to bear on a global crisis in public health. "Quammen is no ordinary writer. He is simply astonishing, one of that rare class of writer gifted with verve, ingenuity, humor, guts, and great heart" (Elle) . Now, in The Tangled Tree, he explains how molecular studies of evolution have brought startling recognitions about the tangled tree of life - including where we humans fit upon it. Thanks to new technologies such as CRISPR, we now have the ability to alter even our genetic composition - through sideways insertions, as nature has long been doing. The Tangled Tree is a brilliant guide to our transformed understanding of evolution, of life's history, and of our own human nature.
Adventures in the Anthropocene
By Vince, Gaia
We all know our planet is in crisis, and that it is largely our fault. But all too often the full picture of change is obstructed by dense data sets and particular catastrophes. Struggling with this obscurity in her role as an editor at Nature, Gaia Vince decided to travel the world and see for herself what life is really like for people on the frontline of this new reality. What she found was a number people doing the most extraordinary things.During her journey she finds a man who is making artificial glaciers in Nepal along with an individual who is painting mountains white to attract snowfall; take the electrified reefs of the Maldives; or the man who's making islands out of rubbish in the Caribbean. These are ordinary people who are solving severe crises in crazy, ingenious, effective ways.
The Mutant Project
By Kirksey, Eben
"That rare kind of scholarship that is also a page-turner." At a conference in Hong Kong in November 2018, Dr. He Jiankui announced that he had created the first genetically modified babies -- twin girls named Lulu and Nana -- sending shockwaves around the world. A year later, a Chinese court sentenced Dr. He to three years in prison for "illegal medical practice."As scientists elsewhere start to catch up with China's vast genetic research program, gene editing is fueling an innovation economy that threatens to widen racial and economic inequality. Fundamental questions about science, health, and social justice are at stake: Who gets access to gene editing technologies? As countries loosen regulations around the globe, from the U.
Talking to Strangers
By Gladwell, Malcolm
Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers--and why they often go wrong.How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to each other that isn't true?Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland---throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don't know. And because we don't know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. In his first book since his #1 bestseller, David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell has written a gripping guidebook for troubled times.