Book picks similar to
Here Be Dragons by David Koerner
science
non-fiction
seti-and-extraterrestrial-life
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Into the Bermuda Triangle: Pursuing the Truth Behind the World's Greatest Mystery
Gian Quasar - 2003
Here are the untold stories.A pilot reports a strange haze enveloping his plane, then disappears; eleven hours after fuel starvation, as if calling from a void, he is heard 600 miles away. He requests permission to land, then vanishes forever. A freighter steaming over placid seas disappears without a trace. A pleasure yacht ghosts past without a soul on board. A pilot calls for help because a weird object is harassing his plane. A jet collides with an unknown and is never found. . . .Into the Bermuda Triangle is the first comprehensive examination of these baffling disappearances in more than a generation. Drawing on official reports from the NTSB and other investigative agencies as well as interviews with scientists, theorists, and survivors, leading authority Gian Quasar not only sets the record straight on previously examined cases, he also offers a bulging file of new cases, the collective results of his twelve-year investigation. In meticulous detail this unflinching account:Documents confirmed disappearances of airplanes and shipsGathers new testimony and reexamines old interviews from eyewitnesses and survivorsExplores possible explanations ranging from zero-point energy to magnetic vorticesChallenges our assumptions with the sheer weight of accumulated evidenceIn this age of technological and scientific discovery, there are still mysteries that transcend understanding. The Bermuda Triangle is one.The best book I've ever read on this important subject.--Andrew Griffin, The Town Talk
The Angel on My Shoulder: My Life with an American Pit Bull Terrier
Jolene Mercadante - 2011
I love stories that support the underdog, and Jolene's tale of her beloved pit bull terrier is exactly that. It is also a delight to read, and a worthy story to ponder. And you will fall in love with Rumer, I'll promise you that." -Susan Knilans McElroy, author of "Animals As Teachers" and "Healers and Animals as Guides for the Soul""Jolene has truly captured the ways animals enrich and bless our lives in profound ways. Not only is "Angel On My Shoulder" a story of an exceptional, loving pit bull named Rumer, it is on a larger scale the defense of a gentle, loyal breed that has been much maligned and misunderstood. May it help everyone understand both the true nature of the American Pit Bull as well as the true nature of love." -Katrina Kittle, author of "The Kindness of strangers" and "The Blessings of the Animals""Far more than any other breed, the American pit bull represents different things to different people. Badly managed dogs grab headlines because their behavior is atypical; Jolene's experience represents the far less shocking though no less fascinating reality of life with a peaceful, loving, comedic pit bull as 'best friend'. If you enjoy tales of true love, you will value this story." -Diane Jessup, author of "The Working Pit Bull" and "The Dog Who Spoke With Gods"On a bitterly cold February day in 1992, a woman named Jolene found herself with a choice to make: the brindle puppy in a kindly stranger's left palm-or the red puppy in his right?For Jolene Mercadante, a librarian and lifelong animal advocate, this was the first tentative step on a journey that would impact the way she lived the rest of her life. She had no way of knowing how Rumer, a single little soul the size of a sausage, was about to change her life.Through all of life's great adventures-the perfect five-week-old baby; the lanky, rebellious teenager; the extraordinary, splendid adult-Rumer was a creature of humor and love. She joyfully shattered the unjust "pit bull" stereotypes. She might not have been a heroic rescue dog, a therapy dog, or a war hero; there are other pit bulls who can claim this fame. But Rumer did touch the lives of everyone who knew her, and that made her heroic in her own way.""She did save us, she did rescue us, and she was our hero in so many ways.""Rumer was an ordinary dog who lived an ordinary life, but that's what made her extraordinary. This memoir is an unforgettable love story and an uplifting journey brought about by the life of a truly pure and beautiful soul.
Silent Spring
Rachel Carson - 1962
The book documents the adverse environmental effects caused by the indiscriminate use of pesticides. Carson accused the chemical industry of spreading disinformation, and public officials of accepting the industry's marketing claims unquestioningly.The book appeared in September 1962 and the outcry that followed its publication forced the banning of DDT and spurred revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. Carson’s book was instrumental in launching the environmental movement.
The Flight of the Iguana: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature
David Quammen - 1988
From tales of vegetarian piranha fish and voiceless dogs to the scientific search for the genes that threaten to destroy the cheetah, Quammen captures the natural world with precision. A distinguished natural science essayist, Quammen’s reporting is masterful and thought provoking and his curiosity and fascination with the world of living things is infectious.
The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America
Steven Johnson - 2008
Priestley represented a unique synthesis: by the 1780s, he had established himself as one of the world's most celebrated scientists, most prominent religious figures, and most outspoken political thinkers. Yet he would also have become one of the most hated men in all of his native England. When an angry mob burned down his house in Birmingham, Priestley and his family set sail for Pennsylvania.In the nascent United States, Priestley hoped to find the freedom to bridge the disciplines that had governed his life, to find a quiet lab and a receptive pulpit. Once he arrived, as a result of his close relationships with the Founding Fathers—Jefferson credited Priestley as the man who prevented him from abandoning Christianity—Priestley found himself at the center of what would go down as one of the seminal debates in American history. And as Johnson brilliant charts, Priestley exerted profound if little-known influence on the shape and course of this great experiment in nation-building.As in his most recent bestselling work, The Ghost Map, Steven Johnson here uses a dramatic historical story to explore themes that have long engaged him: innovation and the way new ideas emerge and spread, and the environments that foster these breakthroughs. As he did in Everything Bad is Good for You, he upsets some fundamental assumptions about the world we live in—namely, what it means when we invoke the Founding Fathers—and replaces them with a clear-eyed, eloquent assessment of where we stand today.
The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos
Leonard Mlodinow - 2015
Leonard Mlodinow takes us on a passionate and inspiring tour through the exciting history of human progress and the key events in the development of science. In the process, he presents a fascinating new look at the unique characteristics of our species and our society that helped propel us from stone tools to written language and through the birth of chemistry, biology, and modern physics to today’s technological world. Along the way he explores the cultural conditions that influenced scientific thought through the ages and the colorful personalities of some of the great philosophers, scientists, and thinkers: Galileo, who preferred painting and poetry to medicine and dropped out of university; Isaac Newton, who stuck needlelike bodkins into his eyes to better understand changes in light and color; and Antoine Lavoisier, who drank nothing but milk for two weeks to examine its effects on his body. Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, and many lesser-known but equally brilliant minds also populate these pages, each of their stories showing how much of human achievement can be attributed to the stubborn pursuit of simple questions (why? how?), bravely asked. The Upright Thinkers is a book for science lovers and for anyone interested in creative thinking and in our ongoing quest to understand our world. At once deeply informed, accessible, and infused with the author’s trademark wit, this insightful work is a stunning tribute to humanity’s intellectual curiosity. (With black-and-white illustrations throughout.)
Sex in the Sea: Our Intimate Connection with Sex-Changing Fish, Romantic Lobsters, Kinky Squid, and Other Salty Erotica of the Deep
Marah J. Hardt - 2016
Through overfishing, climate change, and ocean pollution we are disrupting the creative procreation that drives the wild abundance of life in the ocean. With wit and scientific rigor, Hardt introduces us to the researchers and innovators who study the wet and wild sex lives of ocean life and offer solutions that promote rather than prevent, successful sex in the sea. Part science, part erotica, Sex in the Sea discusses how we can shift from a prophylactic to a more propagative force for life in the ocean.
The Arbornaut: A Life Discovering the Eighth Continent in the Trees Above Us
Meg Lowman - 2021
So she put together a climbing kit: she sewed a harness from an old seat belt, gathered hundreds of feet of rope, and found a tool belt for her pencils and rulers. Up she went, into the trees. Forty years later, Lowman remains one of the world’s foremost arbornauts, known as the “real-life Lorax.” She planned one of the first treetop walkways and helps create more of these bridges through the eighth continent all over the world.With a voice as infectious in its enthusiasm as it is practical in its optimism, The Arbornaut chronicles Lowman’s irresistible story. From climbing solo hundreds of feet into the air in Australia’s rainforests to measuring tree growth in the northeastern United States, from searching the redwoods of the Pacific coast for new life to studying leaf eaters in Scotland’s Highlands, from conducting a BioBlitz in Malaysia to conservation planning in India and collaborating with priests to save Ethiopia’s last forests, Lowman launches us into the life and work of a field scientist, ecologist, and conservationist. She offers hope, specific plans, and recommendations for action; despite devastation across the world, through trees, we can still make an immediate and lasting impact against climate change.A blend of memoir and fieldwork account, The Arbornaut gives us the chance to live among scientists and travel the world—even in a hot-air balloon! It is the engrossing, uplifting story of a nerdy tree climber—the only girl at the science fair—who becomes a giant inspiration, a groundbreaking, ground-defying field biologist, and a hero for trees everywhere.Includes black-and-white illustrations
The Goshawk
T.H. White - 1951
White, the author of The Once and Future King and Mistress Masham's Repose, was a young writer who found himself rifling through old handbooks of falconry. A particular sentence — "the bird reverted to a feral state" — seized his imagination, and, White later wrote, "A longing came to my mind that I should be able to do this myself. The word 'feral' has a kind of magical potency which allied itself to two other words, 'ferocious' and 'free.'" Immediately, White wrote to Germany to acquire a young goshawk. Gos, as White named the bird, was ferocious and Gos was free, and White had no idea how to break him in beyond the ancient (and, though he did not know it, long superseded) practice of depriving him of sleep, which meant that he, White, also went without rest. Slowly man and bird entered a state of delirium and intoxication, of attraction and repulsion that looks very much like love. White kept a daybook describing his volatile relationship with Gos — at once a tale of obsession, a comedy of errors, and a hymn to the hawk. It was this that became The Goshawk, one of modern literature's most memorable and surprising encounters with the wilderness — as it exists both within us and without.
HUMMINGBIRD BAKERY CUPCKES AND MUFFINS
Tarek Malouf - 2010
This book shares the bakery chefs' recipes for a range of deliciously light cupcakes with pretty buttercream frosting and muffins in a variety of flavours.
Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body
Armand Marie Leroi - 2003
This elegant, humane, and engaging book "captures what we know of the development of what makes us human" (Nature).Visit Armand Marie Leroi on the web: http: //armandleroi.com/index.htmlStepping effortlessly from myth to cutting-edge science,
Dinosaurs Rediscovered: The Scientific Revolution in Paleontology
Michael J. Benton - 2019
New technologies have revealed secrets locked in prehistoric bones that no one could have previously predicted. We can now work out the color of dinosaurs, the force of their bite, their top speeds, and even how they cared for their young.Remarkable new fossil discoveries—giant sauropod dinosaur skeletons in Patagonia, dinosaurs with feathers in China, and a tiny dinosaur tail in Burmese amber—remain the lifeblood of modern paleobiology. Thanks to advances in technologies and methods, however, there has been a recent revolution in the scope of new information gleaned from such fossil finds.In Dinosaurs Rediscovered, leading paleontologist Michael J. Benton gathers together all the latest paleontological evidence, tracing the transformation of dinosaur study from its roots in antiquated natural history to an indisputably scientific field. Among other things, the book explores how dinosaur remains are found and excavated, and especially how paleontologists read the details of dinosaurs’ lives from their fossils—their colors, their growth, and even whether we will ever be able to bring them back to life. Benton’s account shows that, though extinct, dinosaurs are still very much a part of our world.
The Radium Girls [Excerpt]
Kate Moore - 2017
During World War I, the young women who were hired to work in America's radium watch dial factories were considered the lucky ones. They were paid well, they got to work with the luminous element dubbed "liquid sunshine" that was all the rage, and they were helping the war effort by providing instruments that shone in the dark. And their bodies literally glowed because of the amount of radium they were ingesting. In her new book, The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women, author Kate Moore gives voice to two groups of workers who became horribly ill and fought back against the companies that poisoned them. Using diaries and letters from the women, their statements in court documents, medical records and archived x-rays, as well as using ancestry documents to track down their relatives for interviews, Moore showcases the forgotten young women whose legal fight led to life-changing workplace safety regulations amid one of the biggest scandals of America's twentieth century. Preorder and find out how their story ends on May 2.
The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature
David George Haskell - 2012
Visiting it almost daily for one year to trace nature’s path through the seasons, he brings the forest and its inhabitants to vivid life.Each of this book’s short chapters begins with a simple observation: a salamander scuttling across the leaf litter; the first blossom of spring wildflowers. From these, Haskell spins a brilliant web of biology and ecology, explaining the science that binds together the tiniest microbes and the largest mammals and describing the ecosystems that have cycled for thousands—sometimes millions—of years. Each visit to the forest presents a nature story in miniature as Haskell elegantly teases out the intricate relationships that order the creatures and plants that call it home.Written with remarkable grace and empathy, The Forest Unseen is a grand tour of nature in all its profundity. Haskell is a perfect guide into the world that exists beneath our feet and beyond our backyards.
The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature
Matt Ridley - 1993
The Red Queen answers dozens of other riddles of human nature and culture -- including why men propose marriage, the method behind our maddening notions of beauty, and the disquieting fact that a woman is more likely to conceive a child by an adulterous lover than by her husband. Brilliantly written, The Red Queen offers an extraordinary new way of interpreting the human condition and how it has evolved.