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The Story of Earth: The First 4.5 Billion Years, from Stardust to Living Planet
Robert M. Hazen · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorT. Rex and the Crater of Doom
Walter Alvarez · 185 pages
Sixty-five million years ago, a comet or asteroid larger than Mt. Everest slammed into the Earth, causing an explosion equivalent to the detonation of a hundred million hydrogen bombs. Vaporized impactor and debris from the impact site were blasted out through the atmosphere, falling back to Earth all around the globe. Terrible environmental disasters ensued, including a giant tsunami, continent-s
When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time
Michael J. Benton · 336 pages
Voyage of the Beagle
Charles Darwin · 480 pages
"The first fully illustrated edition of Charles Darwin's account of the second voyage of the HMS Beagle, featuring excerpts from related works, letters by Darwin, and other supplementary resources."--
Trilobite: Eyewitness to Evolution
Richard Fortey · 302 pages
"With Fortey's expert guidance, we begin to understand how trilobites reveal the pattern and mechanism of evolution through their fossil legacy in the rocks. Through the eyes of trilobites, he allows us glimpses of former worlds as foreign in their geography as in their life forms. Altogether, he provides a unique picture of our geological past, which in turn provides us - scientist and layperson
Annals of the Former World
John McPhee · 695 pages
"Twenty years ago, when John McPhee began his journeys back and forth across the United States, he planned to describe a cross-section of North America at about the fortieth parallel and, in the process, come to an understanding not only of the science but of the style of the geologists he traveled with." "Like the terrain it covers, Annals of the Former World tells a many-layered tale, and the re
Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded
Simon Winchester · 432 pages
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Bill Bryson · 560 pages
A Short History of Nearly Everything by American author Bill Bryson is a popular science book that explains some areas of science, using easily accessible language that appeals more so to the general public than many other books dedicated to the subject. It was one of the bestselling popular science books of 2005 in the United Kingdom, selling over 300,000 copies. A Short History deviates from
Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History
Stephen Jay Gould · 350 pages
Written in Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature
Brian Switek · 320 pages
This book is about the epic quest for missing links and other myths about evolution. The author proposes that the strides made in paleontology have helped with understanding evolution, and discusses how fossils, prominent scientists, technology, and other factors have each influenced the theory's development.
The Seashell on the Mountaintop: A Story of Science, Sainthood, and the Humble Genius who Discovered a New History of the Earth
Alan Cutler · 228 pages
The tale of a seventeenth-century scientist-turned-priest who forever changed our understanding of the Earth and created a new field of science. It was an ancient puzzle: How did the fossils of seashells find their way far inland, sometimes high up into the mountains? Fossils only made sense in a world old enough to form them, and in the seventeenth century, few people could imagine such a thing--
Cascadia's Fault: The Coming Earthquake and Tsunami That Could Devastate North America
Jerry Thompson · 337 pages
Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe
Lisa Randall · 422 pages
"Sixty-six million years ago, an object the size of a city descended from space to crash into Earth, creating a devastating cataclysm that killed off the dinosaurs, along with three-quarters of the other species on the planet. What was its origin? In Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs, Lisa Randall proposes it was a comet that was dislodged from its orbit as the Solar System passed through a disk of da
Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History
David Christian · 653 pages
"An introduction to a new way of looking at history, from a perspective that stretches from the beginning of time to the present day, Maps of Time is world history on an unprecedented scale. Beginning with the Big Bang, David Christian views the interaction of the natural world with the more recent arrivals in flora and fauna, including human beings. Cosmology, geology, archeology, and population
The Magic School Bus Blows Its Top: A Book About Volcanoes
Joanna Cole, Gail Herman · 32 pages
Ms. Frizzle's class is having a hard time putting together a giant globe of the world.
Color: A Natural History of the Palette
Victoria Finlay · 448 pages
Volcano: The Eruption and Healing of Mount St. Helens
Patricia Lauber · 60 pages
An account of how and why Mount St. Helens erupted in May 1980 and the destruction it caused, and a discussion of the return of life to that area.
What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
Randall Munroe · 312 pages
Millions of people visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe's iconic webcomic. His stick-figure drawings about science, technology, language, and love have a large and passionate following. Fans of xkcd ask Munroe a lot of strange questions. What if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light? How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? If there was a
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Jared Diamond · 592 pages
"In his Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond examined how and why Western civilizations developed the technologies and immunities that allowed them to dominate much of the world. Now, Diamond probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates?" "As in Guns, G
Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens
Steve Olson · 300 pages
For months in early 1980, scientists, journalists, sightseers, and nearby residents listened anxiously to rumblings in Mount St. Helens, part of the chain of western volcanoes fueled by the 700-mile-long Cascadia fault. Still, no one was prepared when an immense eruption took the top off of the mountain and laid waste to hundreds of square miles of verdant forests in southwestern Washington State.
Tsunamis and Other Natural Disasters
Mary Pope Osborne, Natalie Pope Boyce · 121 pages
An introduction to natural disasters including tsunamis, earthquakes and avalanches.