Science

Long before GPS, Google Earth, and global transit, humans traveled vast distances using only environmental clues and simple instruments. John Huth asks what is lost when modern technology substitutes for our innate capacity to find our way. Encyclopedic...

For readers of Braiding Sweetgrass and The Overstory From The Center for Humans and Nature, a collection in five volumes: essays, interviews, poetry, and stories of solidarity that highlight the interdependence that exists between humans and nonhuman...

"Rutherford describes Humanimal as being about the paradox of how our evolutionary journey turned 'an otherwise average ape' into one capable of creating complex tools, art, music, science, and engineering. It's an intriguing question, one his book sets...

Race is not a biological reality. Racism thrives on our not knowing this. Racist pseudoscience has become so commonplace that it can be hard to spot. But its toxic effects on society are plain to see--feeding nationalism, fueling hatred, endangering...

Until recently, archaeology was concerned mainly with piecing together the material lives of our ancestors. In this groundbreaking book, master storyteller and respected archaeologist Brian Fagan explains how cutting-edge science can now take us beyond...

"The rabbit hole gets wrestled here. An old school saying applies: the more you know, the more you don't know. Dance along this read into the unknown and find out that this book may be the best ever answer to 'What is soul?'" --Chuck D, rapper and...

In the New York Times bestseller Everything All at Once, Bill Nye shows you how thinking like a nerd is the key to changing yourself and the world around you. Everyone has an inner nerd just waiting to be awakened by the right passion. In Everything...

"This book is about language and its evolution, yet it also is an adventure in learning about the human brain and how it works. The mystery of how speech organs make sounds is exposed, as is the incredible cognitive processing that is needed to produce...

Published on the 100th anniversary of the science of ethnobotany, this volume provides a comprehensive summary of the history and current state of the field. The 36 articles present a truly global perspective on the theory and practice of today's...

In the tradition of Being Digital and The Tipping Point, Steven Johnson, acclaimed as a cultural critic with a poet's heart (The Village Voice), takes readers on an eye-opening journey through emergence theory and its applications. A NEW YORK TIMES...

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. This book is about a strange object-strange in part because it is something that we all have been, and that many of us eat. Nicole Walker's Egg...

This inspiring memoir of one woman's experience in the field is an exotic adventure story, a surprise journey of self-discovery, and a deeply personal appreciation of a place that's unlike any other. At age twenty-five, graduate student Keriann McGoogan...

"Surprising. Impressive. Cannibalism restores my faith in humanity." --Sy Montgomery, The New York Times Book Review For centuries scientists have written off cannibalism as a bizarre phenomenon with little biological significance. Its presence in...

This "ambitious [and] delightful" (The New York Times) work of literary nonfiction interweaves the science and history of the powerful refrigerant (and dangerous greenhouse gas) Freon with a haunting meditation on how to live meaningfully and morally in...

In his previous books, A Scientist At The Seashore and Meditations At Sunset, James Trefil used commonplace settings in the natural world as a point of departure for probing the mysteries of nature. In A Scientist In The City, Trefil takes the opposite...

National Book Critics Circle Award--2017 Nonfiction Finalist "Nothing less than a tour de force--a heady amalgam of science, history, a little bit of anthropology and plenty of nuanced, captivating storytelling."--The New York Times Book Review,...