My Beloved Brontosaurus: On the Road with Old Bones, New Science, and Our Favorite Dinosaurs

Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms: Essays on Natural History

Stephen Jay Gould · 422 pages

Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms is the newest collection of bestselling scientist Stephen Jay Gould's popular essays from Natural History magazine (the longest-running series of scientific essays in history). In this collection, Gould consciously and unconventionally formulates a humanistic natural history, a consideration of how humans have learned to study and understand natu

How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of de-Extinction

Beth Shapiro · 220 pages

"Could extinct species like mammoths and passenger pigeons be brought back to life? The science says yes. In [this book], Beth Shapiro, evolutionary biologist and pioneer in 'ancient DNA' research, walks readers through the astonishing and controversial process of de-extinction. From deciding which species should be restored, to sequencing their genomes, to anticipating how revived populations mig

The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True

Richard Dawkins · 272 pages

What are things made of? What is the sun? Why is there night and day, winter and summer? Why do bad things happen? Are we alone? Throughout history people all over the world have invented stories to answer profound questions such as these. Have you heard the tale of how the sun hatched out of an emu's egg? Or what about the great catfish that carries the world on its back? Has anyone ever t

Origins: 14 Bllion Years of Cosmic Evolution

Neil deGrasse Tyson, Donald Goldsmith · 336 pages

"Drawing on the current cross-pollination among geology, biology, astrophysics, and cosmology, Origins explains the soul-stirring leaps in our understanding of the universe while capturing the importance of such extraordinary events as the first image of a galaxy being born and the exploration of Martian frontiers by Spirit Rover. Distilling complex science into clear and lively prose, coauthors N

Lucy: the beginnings of humankind

Donald C. Johanson, Maitland Armstrong Edey · 492 pages

En 1974, en Ethiopie, un tout jeune paléoanthropologue américain, Donald Johanson, découvrait, "en pièces détachées", le squelette d'une petite dame d'un mètre à peine, de trente kilos et de trois millions et demi d'années. En l'honneur des Beatles, elle était aussitôt baptisée Lucy.En 1979, l'annonce officielle de cette stupéfiante découverte, avec tous les détails résultant des travaux de J0hans

Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum

Richard Fortey · 335 pages

A remarkable behind-the-scenes look at the extraordinary people, meticulous research, and driving passions that make London's Natural History Museum one of the world's greatest institutions.In an elegant and illuminating narrative, Richard Fortey takes his readers to a place where only a few privileged scientists, curators, and research specialists have been--the hallowed halls that hold the perma

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life

Ed Yong · 368 pages

Joining the ranks of popular science classics like The Botany of Desire and The Selfish Gene, a groundbreaking, wondrously informative, and vastly entertaining examination of the most significant revolution in biology since Darwin—a “microbe’s-eye view” of the world that reveals a marvelous, radically reconceived picture of life on earth. Every animal, whether human, squid, or wasp, is home to

How the Mind Works

Steven Pinker · 661 pages

"Presented with extraordinary lucidity, cogency and panache...Powerful and gripping...To have read [the book] is to have consulted a first draft of the structural plan of the human psyche...a glittering tour de force" - Spectator "Why do memories fade? Why do we lose our tempers? Why do fools fall in love? Pinker's objective in this erudite account is to explore the nature and history of the human

Woman: An Intimate Geography

Natalie Angier · 407 pages

Natalie Angier lifts the veil of secrecy from that most enigmatic of evolutionary masterpieces, the female body, exploring the essence of what it means to be a woman. Angier takes on everything from organs (breasts "are funny things, really, and we should learn to laugh at them") to orgasm (happily for women, the clitoris has 8,000 nerve fibers, twice the number in the penis). Also delving into t

Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body

Neil Shubin · 240 pages

Why do we look the way we do? What does the human hand have in common with the wing of a fly? Are breasts, sweat glands, and scales connected in some way? To better understand the inner workings of our bodies and to trace the origins of many of today's most common diseases, we have to turn to unexpected sources: worms, flies, and even fish.Neil Shubin, a leading paleontologist and professor of

Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

Edward O. Wilson · 375 pages

"In this new book, the American biologist Edward O. Wilson argues for the fundamental unity of all knowledge and the need to search for consilience - the proof that everything in our world is organized in terms of a small number of fundamental natural laws that comprise the principles underlying every branch of learning." "Professor Wilson shows how and why our explosive rise in intellectual maste

The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor

Colin Tudge, Josh Young · 267 pages

For more than a century, scientists have raced to unravel the human family tree and have grappled with its complications. Now, with an astonishing new discovery, everything we thought we knew about primate origins could change. Lying inside a high-security vault, deep within the heart of one of the world's leading natural history museums, is the scientific find of a lifetime - a perfectly fossiliz

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

Elizabeth Kolbert · 336 pages

From the author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe, a powerful and important work about the future of the world, blending intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a compelling account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes.

Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures

Carl Zimmer · 298 pages

A look inside the often hidden world of parasites turns the clock back to the beginning of life on Earth to answer key questions about these highly evolved and resilient life forms.

Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease

Sharon Moalem · 279 pages

Survival of the Sickest: The Surprising Connections Between Disease and Longevity is a 2007 New York Times Bestselling science book by Sharon Moalem, an evolutionary biologist and neurogeneticist, and Jonathan Prince, senior advisor and speechwriter for the Clinton administration. It was originally titled, Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease.

The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

Frans de Waal · 304 pages

A renowned primatologist argues that ethical behavior witnessed in animals is the evolutionary and biological origin of human fairness and explains that morality has more to do with natural instincts than with religion.

Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation

Olivia Judson · 320 pages

Do your genitals explode? Are you 200,000 times smaller than your mate? Do you drug your lover with a potion that keeps her faithful? You may not get up to such tricks, but some creatures do: sex is one of the most powerful forces in nature, and generates an astounding diversity of forms and behaviors. But why? Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation explores the science of sex, considering eve

Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures

Virginia Morell · 291 pages

This book explores the frontiers of research on animal cognition and emotion, offering a surprising examination into the hearts and minds of wild and domesticated animals. Have you ever wondered what it is like to be a fish? Or a parrot, dolphin, or an elephant? Do they experience thoughts that are similar to ours, or have feelings of grief and love? These are tough questions, but scientists are

Genome: the Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters

Matt Ridley · 344 pages

The human genome, the complete set of genes housed in twenty-three pairs of chromosomes, is nothing less than an autobiography of our species. Spelled out in a billion three-letter words using the four-letter alphabet of DNA, the genome has been edited, abridged, altered and added to as it has been handed down, generation to generation, over more than three billion years. With the first draft of t

Why Evolution is True

Jerry A. Coyne · 309 pages

Why evolution is more than just a theory: it is a factIn all the current highly publicized debates about creationism and its descendant "intelligent design," there is an element of the controversy that is rarely mentioned—the evidence, the empirical truth of evolution by natural selection. Even Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould, while extolling the beauty of evolution and examining case studie

Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life

Nick Lane · 368 pages

"Today, mitochondria are central to research into human prehistory, genetic diseases, cell suicide, fertility, ageing, bioenergetics, sex, and the eukaryotic cell. Piecing together puzzles from the forefront of research, this book paints a sweeping canvas that will thrill all who are interested in biology, while also contributing to evolutionary thinking and debate. This is a book full of insights

The Ascent of Man

Jacob Bronowski · 448 pages

Traces the development of science and the discoveries that have made man unique among animal species.

Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle

Thor Hanson · 336 pages

Feathers are an evolutionary marvel: aerodynamic, insulating, beguiling. They date back more than 100 million years. Yet their story has never been fully told. In Feathers, biologist Thor Hanson details a sweeping natural history, as feathers have been used to fly, protect, attract, and adorn through time and place. Applying the research of paleontologists, ornithologists, biologists, engineers,

Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo

Sean B. Carroll · 384 pages