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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe 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--
Rising from the Plains
John McPhee · 213 pages
Bestselling author McPhee takes us on another exciting geological excursion with this engaging account of life--past and present--in the high plains of Wyoming.
The Invention of Air
Steven Johnson · 254 pages
Bestselling author Steven Johnson recounts—in dazzling, multidisciplinary fashion—the story of the brilliant man who embodied the relationship between science, religion, and politics for America’s Founding Fathers. The Invention of Air is a book of world-changing ideas wrapped around a compelling narrative, a story of genius and violence and friendship in the midst of sweeping historical change th
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.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Rebecca Skloot · 381 pages
Earth: An Intimate History
Richard Fortey · 501 pages
In Earth, the acclaimed author of Trilobite! and Life takes us on a grand tour of the earth's physical past, showing how the history of plate tectonics is etched in the landscape around us.Beginning with Mt. Vesuvius, whose eruption in Roman times helped spark the science of geology, and ending in a lab in the West of England where mathematical models and lab experiments replace direct observation
Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History
Stephen Jay Gould · 350 pages
T. 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
Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman
James Gleick · 532 pages
A gem of a book, about the life and mind of one of the most influential and iconoclastic characters in 20th century physics. Really a pleasure to read.
Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout
Lauren Redniss · 205 pages
Presents the professional and private lives of Marie and Pierre Curie, examining their personal struggles, the advancements they made in the world of science, and the issue of radiation in the modern world.
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
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
Walter Isaacson · 560 pages
A scientific biography of Jennifer Doudna, a founder and co-developer of the CRISPR gene-editing mechanism, and an examination of what happened after CRISPR hit the marketplace.
Cascadia's Fault: The Coming Earthquake and Tsunami That Could Devastate North America
Jerry Thompson · 337 pages
The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness
Oren Harman · 451 pages
Describes the intellectual journey of eccentric American genius George Price, who tried to answer the evolutionary riddle of why people are nice, and eventually gave away all his belongings and took his own life in a squatter's flat.
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
Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II
Jennet Conant · 352 pages
"In the fall of 1940, as German bombers flew over London and with America not yet at war, a small team of British scientists on orders from Winston Churchill carried out a daring transatlantic mission. The British unveiled their most valuable military secret in a clandestine meeting with American nuclear physicists at the Tuxedo Park mansion of a mysterious Wall Street tycoon, Alfred Lee Loomis.
Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love
Dava Sobel · 420 pages
A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and LoveInspired by her long fascination with Galileo, and by the remarkable surviving letters of his daughter, which she has translated into English for the first time, Dava Sobel has written a book of great originality and power, a biography unlike any ever written on the man Albert Einstein called “the father of modern physics – indeed of modern science al
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherwin · 721 pages
Biography of American physicist Robert J. Oppenheimer. Winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds
Michael Lewis · 362 pages
Examines the history of behavioral economics, discussing the theory of Israeli psychologists who wrote the original studies undoing assumptions about the decision-making process and the influence it has had on evidence-based regulation.
The Anatomist: A True Story of Gray's Anatomy
Bill Hayes · 250 pages
"Hayes's history of the illustrated medical text "Gray's Anatomy" coincides with the hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of its first publication. Fascinated by the fact that little was known about the famous book's genesis, Hayes combed through nineteenth-century letters and medical-school records, learning that, besides Henry Gray, the brilliant scholar and surgeon who wrote the text, another anato