A whirlwind journey through fungus frontiers that underscores how appreciating fungi is key to understanding our planet's power and fragility. What can we learn from the lives of fungi? Splitting time between the northern and southern hemispheres, ecologist Alison Pouliot ensures that she experiences two autumns per year in the pursuit of fungi - from Australia's deserts to Iceland's glaciers to America's Cascade Mountains. In Meetings with Remarkable Mushrooms, we journey alongside Pouliot, magnifiers in hand, as she travels the world. With Pouliot as our guide, we smell fire-loving truffles that transform their scent after burning to lure mammals who eat them and, ultimately, spread their spores. We spot the eerie glow of the ghost fungus, a deceptive entity that looks like an edible oyster mushroom but will soon heave back out - along with everything else in your stomach - if you take a bite.
University of Chicago Press
|
9780226829630
|
Hardcover
Handprints on Hubble
By Sullivan, Kathryn D.
The first American woman to walk in space recounts her experience as part of the team that launched, rescued, repaired, and maintained the Hubble Space Telescope.The Hubble Space Telescope has revolutionized our understanding of the universe. It has, among many other achievements, revealed thousands of galaxies in what seemed to be empty patches of sky; transformed our knowledge of black holes; found dwarf planets with moons orbiting other stars; and measured precisely how fast the universe is expanding. In Handprints on Hubble, retired astronaut Kathryn Sullivan describes her work on the NASA team that made all of this possible. Sullivan, the first American woman to walk in space, recounts how she and other astronauts, engineers, and scientists launched, rescued, repaired, and maintained Hubble, the most productive observatory ever built.Along the way, Sullivan chronicles her early life as a "Sputnik Baby," her path to NASA through oceanography, and her initiation into the space program as one of "thirty-five new guys." (She was also one of the first six women to join NASA's storied astronaut corps.) She describes in vivid detail what liftoff feels like inside a spacecraft (it's like "being in an earthquake and a fighter jet at the same time") , shows us the view from a spacewalk, and recounts the temporary grounding of the shuttle program after the Challenger disaster.Sullivan explains that "maintainability" was designed into Hubble, and she describes the work of inventing the tools and processes that made on-orbit maintenance possible. Because in-flight repair and upgrade was part of the plan, NASA was able to fix a serious defect in Hubble's mirrors -- leaving literal and metaphorical "handprints on Hubble."
The MIT Press
|
9780262043182
|
Hardcover
Swearing Is Good for You
By Byrne, Emma
An irreverent and impeccably researched defense of our dirtiest words.We're often told that swearing is outrageous or even offensive, that it's a sign of a stunted vocabulary or a limited intellect. Dictionaries have traditionally omitted it and parents forbid it. But the latest research by neuroscientists, psychologists, sociologists, and others has revealed that swear words, curses, and oaths -- when used judiciously -- can have surprising benefits.In this sparkling debut work of popular science, Emma Byrne examines the latest research to show how swearing can be good for you. With humor and colorful language, she explores every angle of swearing -- why we do it, how we do it, and what it tells us about ourselves. Not only has some form of swearing existed since the earliest humans began to communicate, but it has been shown to reduce physical pain, to lower anxiety, to prevent physical violence, to help trauma victims recover language, and to promote human cooperation. Taking readers on a whirlwind tour through scientific experiments, historical case studies, and cutting-edge research on language in both humans and other primates, Byrne defends cursing and demonstrates how much it can reveal about different cultures, their taboos and their values.Packed with the results of unlikely and often hilarious scientific studies -- from the "ice-bucket test" for coping with pain, to the connection between Tourette's and swearing, to a chimpanzee that curses at her handler in sign language -- Swearing Is Good for You presents a lighthearted but convincing case for the foulmouthed.
W. W. Norton & Company
|
9781324000280
|
Hardcover
Random Acts of Medicine
By Jena, Anupam B.
A groundbreaking book at the intersection of health and economics, revealing the hidden side of medicine and how unexpected - but predictable - events can profoundly affect our health.. "Smart, entertaining, and full of surprises." - Steven D. Levitt, #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of Freakonomics. Why do kids born in the summer get diagnosed more often with A.D.H.D.? How are marathons harmful for your health, even when you're not running? What do surgeons and salesmen have in common? Which annual event made people 30 percent more likely to get COVID-19?. As a University of Chicago-trained economist and Harvard medical school professor and doctor, Anupam Jena is uniquely equipped to answer these questions. And as a critical care doctor at Massachusetts General who researches health care policy, Christopher Worsham confronts their impact on the hospital's sickest patients.
Doubleday
|
9780385548816
|
Hardcover
Women Rowing North
By Pipher, Mary Bray
New York Times Bestseller * USA Today Bestseller * Los Angeles Times Bestseller * Publishers Weekly BestsellerThe instant New York Times bestseller from the author of Reviving Ophelia--a guide to wisdom, authenticity, and bliss for women as they age.Women growing older contend with ageism, misogyny, and loss. Yet as Mary Pipher shows, most older women are deeply happy and filled with gratitude for the gifts of life. Their struggles help them grow into the authentic, empathetic, and wise people they have always wanted to be.In Women Rowing North, Pipher offers a timely examination of the cultural and developmental issues women face as they age. Drawing on her own experience as daughter, sister, mother, grandmother, caregiver, clinical psychologist, and cultural anthropologist, she explores ways women can cultivate resilient responses to the challenges they face. "If we can keep our wits about us, think clearly, and manage our emotions skillfully," Pipher writes, "we will experience a joyous time of our lives. If we have planned carefully and packed properly, if we have good maps and guides, the journey can be transcendent."
Bloomsbury Publishing
|
9781632869609
|
Hardcover
Billion Dollar Dimebag
By Tilley, Jackson D.
Experience the Green Rush through the eyes of Jackson D. Tilley - the sober twenty-something who climbed the ladder at a small vape company while it grew into the nation's leading cannabis distributor."At once funny, enlightening, and timely, Tilley's is a deftly-executed debut." - Bethany McLean, New York Times bestselling co-author of The Smartest Guys in the Room "Smart, funny, and fast-paced, this debut from Jackson Tilley is both a deeply felt memoir and a crash-course in the Green Rush." - Jonathan Small, Editor-in-Chief, Green Entrepreneur The cannabis industry exploded in Colorado in January of 2014. A few months later, Jackson Tilley stumbled his way through his college graduation and into an internship at O.penVAPE, a Denver-based vaporizer company.
Post Hill Press
|
9781642932690
|
Hardcover
The Lives of Octopuses and Their Relatives
By Staaf, Danna
An engaging and beautifully illustrated introduction to some of the world's most interesting and charismatic marine creatures. Dive deep into the fascinating world of cephalopods -- octopuses, squid, cuttlefish, and the mysterious nautilus -- to discover the astonishing diversity of this unique group of intelligent invertebrates and their many roles in the marine ecosystem. Organized by marine habitat, this book features an extraordinary range of these clever and colorful creatures from around the world and explores their life cycles, behavior, adaptations, ecology, links to humans, and much more. With stunning photographs and illustrations as well as profiles of selected species, The Lives of Octopuses and Their Relatives is a comprehensive, authoritative, and inviting introduction to the natural history of these charismatic creatures.
Princeton University Press
|
9780691244303
|
Hardcover
Fighting for Space
By Teitel, Amy Shira
Spaceflight historian and creator of YouTube's "Vintage Space" Amy Shira Teitel tells the riveting story of the female pilots who each dreamed of being the first American woman in space.A book that will appeal to readers of Fly Girls and The Astronaut Wives' Club, Fighting for Space is the mostly-unknown tale of Jackie Cochran and Jerrie Cobb--two accomplished aviatrixes, one generation apart, who each dreamed of being the first woman in space, but along the way battled their egos, their expectations, and ultimately the patriarchal society that stood between them and the stars.Fighting for Space is a dual biography of these fascinating and fearless women, using their stories as guides through the changing social, political, and technical landscape of the time.
Grand Central Publishing
|
9781538716045
|
Hardcover
If We Burn
By Bevins, Vincent
A meticulous investigation into the recent uprisings that aimed to restructure societies around the world, but too often fell shortFrom 2010 to 2020, more people participated in protests than at any other point in human history. But we are not living in a world that is more just and democratic as a result. In If We Burn, acclaimed journalist and author of The Jakarta Method Vincent Bevins sets out to answer a pivotal question: How did so many mass protests lead to the opposite of what they asked for?From the so-called Arab Spring to the Gezi Park protests in Turkey, to the "V for Vinegar" eruption in Brazil, to Ukraine's Euromaidan uprising, to the student movements in Chile and Hong Kong, Bevins aims to provide a deep history of these movements and their consequences.
PublicAffairs
|
9781541788978
|
Hardcover
The Uninhabitable Earth
By Wallace-wells, David
It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible. In California, wildfires now rage year-round, destroying thousands of homes. Across the US, "500-year" storms pummel communities month after month, and floods displace tens of millions annually. This is only a preview of the changes to come. And they are coming fast. Without a revolution in how billions of humans conduct their lives, parts of the Earth could become close to uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable, as soon as the end of this century. In his travelogue of our near future, David Wallace-Wells brings into stark relief the climate troubles that await - food shortages, refugee emergencies, and other crises that will reshape the globe. But the world will be remade by warming in more profound ways as well, transforming our politics, our culture, our relationship to technology, and our sense of history. It will be all-encompassing, shaping and distorting nearly every aspect of human life as it is lived today.Like An Inconvenient Truth and Silent Spring before it, The Uninhabitable Earth is both a meditation on the devastation we have brought upon ourselves and an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation.
Meetings with Remarkable Mushrooms
By Pouliot, Alison
A whirlwind journey through fungus frontiers that underscores how appreciating fungi is key to understanding our planet's power and fragility. What can we learn from the lives of fungi? Splitting time between the northern and southern hemispheres, ecologist Alison Pouliot ensures that she experiences two autumns per year in the pursuit of fungi - from Australia's deserts to Iceland's glaciers to America's Cascade Mountains. In Meetings with Remarkable Mushrooms, we journey alongside Pouliot, magnifiers in hand, as she travels the world. With Pouliot as our guide, we smell fire-loving truffles that transform their scent after burning to lure mammals who eat them and, ultimately, spread their spores. We spot the eerie glow of the ghost fungus, a deceptive entity that looks like an edible oyster mushroom but will soon heave back out - along with everything else in your stomach - if you take a bite.
Handprints on Hubble
By Sullivan, Kathryn D.
The first American woman to walk in space recounts her experience as part of the team that launched, rescued, repaired, and maintained the Hubble Space Telescope.The Hubble Space Telescope has revolutionized our understanding of the universe. It has, among many other achievements, revealed thousands of galaxies in what seemed to be empty patches of sky; transformed our knowledge of black holes; found dwarf planets with moons orbiting other stars; and measured precisely how fast the universe is expanding. In Handprints on Hubble, retired astronaut Kathryn Sullivan describes her work on the NASA team that made all of this possible. Sullivan, the first American woman to walk in space, recounts how she and other astronauts, engineers, and scientists launched, rescued, repaired, and maintained Hubble, the most productive observatory ever built.Along the way, Sullivan chronicles her early life as a "Sputnik Baby," her path to NASA through oceanography, and her initiation into the space program as one of "thirty-five new guys." (She was also one of the first six women to join NASA's storied astronaut corps.) She describes in vivid detail what liftoff feels like inside a spacecraft (it's like "being in an earthquake and a fighter jet at the same time") , shows us the view from a spacewalk, and recounts the temporary grounding of the shuttle program after the Challenger disaster.Sullivan explains that "maintainability" was designed into Hubble, and she describes the work of inventing the tools and processes that made on-orbit maintenance possible. Because in-flight repair and upgrade was part of the plan, NASA was able to fix a serious defect in Hubble's mirrors -- leaving literal and metaphorical "handprints on Hubble."
Swearing Is Good for You
By Byrne, Emma
An irreverent and impeccably researched defense of our dirtiest words.We're often told that swearing is outrageous or even offensive, that it's a sign of a stunted vocabulary or a limited intellect. Dictionaries have traditionally omitted it and parents forbid it. But the latest research by neuroscientists, psychologists, sociologists, and others has revealed that swear words, curses, and oaths -- when used judiciously -- can have surprising benefits.In this sparkling debut work of popular science, Emma Byrne examines the latest research to show how swearing can be good for you. With humor and colorful language, she explores every angle of swearing -- why we do it, how we do it, and what it tells us about ourselves. Not only has some form of swearing existed since the earliest humans began to communicate, but it has been shown to reduce physical pain, to lower anxiety, to prevent physical violence, to help trauma victims recover language, and to promote human cooperation. Taking readers on a whirlwind tour through scientific experiments, historical case studies, and cutting-edge research on language in both humans and other primates, Byrne defends cursing and demonstrates how much it can reveal about different cultures, their taboos and their values.Packed with the results of unlikely and often hilarious scientific studies -- from the "ice-bucket test" for coping with pain, to the connection between Tourette's and swearing, to a chimpanzee that curses at her handler in sign language -- Swearing Is Good for You presents a lighthearted but convincing case for the foulmouthed.
Random Acts of Medicine
By Jena, Anupam B.
A groundbreaking book at the intersection of health and economics, revealing the hidden side of medicine and how unexpected - but predictable - events can profoundly affect our health.. "Smart, entertaining, and full of surprises." - Steven D. Levitt, #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of Freakonomics. Why do kids born in the summer get diagnosed more often with A.D.H.D.? How are marathons harmful for your health, even when you're not running? What do surgeons and salesmen have in common? Which annual event made people 30 percent more likely to get COVID-19?. As a University of Chicago-trained economist and Harvard medical school professor and doctor, Anupam Jena is uniquely equipped to answer these questions. And as a critical care doctor at Massachusetts General who researches health care policy, Christopher Worsham confronts their impact on the hospital's sickest patients.
Women Rowing North
By Pipher, Mary Bray
New York Times Bestseller * USA Today Bestseller * Los Angeles Times Bestseller * Publishers Weekly BestsellerThe instant New York Times bestseller from the author of Reviving Ophelia--a guide to wisdom, authenticity, and bliss for women as they age.Women growing older contend with ageism, misogyny, and loss. Yet as Mary Pipher shows, most older women are deeply happy and filled with gratitude for the gifts of life. Their struggles help them grow into the authentic, empathetic, and wise people they have always wanted to be.In Women Rowing North, Pipher offers a timely examination of the cultural and developmental issues women face as they age. Drawing on her own experience as daughter, sister, mother, grandmother, caregiver, clinical psychologist, and cultural anthropologist, she explores ways women can cultivate resilient responses to the challenges they face. "If we can keep our wits about us, think clearly, and manage our emotions skillfully," Pipher writes, "we will experience a joyous time of our lives. If we have planned carefully and packed properly, if we have good maps and guides, the journey can be transcendent."
Billion Dollar Dimebag
By Tilley, Jackson D.
Experience the Green Rush through the eyes of Jackson D. Tilley - the sober twenty-something who climbed the ladder at a small vape company while it grew into the nation's leading cannabis distributor."At once funny, enlightening, and timely, Tilley's is a deftly-executed debut." - Bethany McLean, New York Times bestselling co-author of The Smartest Guys in the Room "Smart, funny, and fast-paced, this debut from Jackson Tilley is both a deeply felt memoir and a crash-course in the Green Rush." - Jonathan Small, Editor-in-Chief, Green Entrepreneur The cannabis industry exploded in Colorado in January of 2014. A few months later, Jackson Tilley stumbled his way through his college graduation and into an internship at O.penVAPE, a Denver-based vaporizer company.
The Lives of Octopuses and Their Relatives
By Staaf, Danna
An engaging and beautifully illustrated introduction to some of the world's most interesting and charismatic marine creatures. Dive deep into the fascinating world of cephalopods -- octopuses, squid, cuttlefish, and the mysterious nautilus -- to discover the astonishing diversity of this unique group of intelligent invertebrates and their many roles in the marine ecosystem. Organized by marine habitat, this book features an extraordinary range of these clever and colorful creatures from around the world and explores their life cycles, behavior, adaptations, ecology, links to humans, and much more. With stunning photographs and illustrations as well as profiles of selected species, The Lives of Octopuses and Their Relatives is a comprehensive, authoritative, and inviting introduction to the natural history of these charismatic creatures.
Fighting for Space
By Teitel, Amy Shira
Spaceflight historian and creator of YouTube's "Vintage Space" Amy Shira Teitel tells the riveting story of the female pilots who each dreamed of being the first American woman in space.A book that will appeal to readers of Fly Girls and The Astronaut Wives' Club, Fighting for Space is the mostly-unknown tale of Jackie Cochran and Jerrie Cobb--two accomplished aviatrixes, one generation apart, who each dreamed of being the first woman in space, but along the way battled their egos, their expectations, and ultimately the patriarchal society that stood between them and the stars.Fighting for Space is a dual biography of these fascinating and fearless women, using their stories as guides through the changing social, political, and technical landscape of the time.
If We Burn
By Bevins, Vincent
A meticulous investigation into the recent uprisings that aimed to restructure societies around the world, but too often fell shortFrom 2010 to 2020, more people participated in protests than at any other point in human history. But we are not living in a world that is more just and democratic as a result. In If We Burn, acclaimed journalist and author of The Jakarta Method Vincent Bevins sets out to answer a pivotal question: How did so many mass protests lead to the opposite of what they asked for?From the so-called Arab Spring to the Gezi Park protests in Turkey, to the "V for Vinegar" eruption in Brazil, to Ukraine's Euromaidan uprising, to the student movements in Chile and Hong Kong, Bevins aims to provide a deep history of these movements and their consequences.
The Uninhabitable Earth
By Wallace-wells, David
It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible. In California, wildfires now rage year-round, destroying thousands of homes. Across the US, "500-year" storms pummel communities month after month, and floods displace tens of millions annually. This is only a preview of the changes to come. And they are coming fast. Without a revolution in how billions of humans conduct their lives, parts of the Earth could become close to uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable, as soon as the end of this century. In his travelogue of our near future, David Wallace-Wells brings into stark relief the climate troubles that await - food shortages, refugee emergencies, and other crises that will reshape the globe. But the world will be remade by warming in more profound ways as well, transforming our politics, our culture, our relationship to technology, and our sense of history. It will be all-encompassing, shaping and distorting nearly every aspect of human life as it is lived today.Like An Inconvenient Truth and Silent Spring before it, The Uninhabitable Earth is both a meditation on the devastation we have brought upon ourselves and an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation.