Naturalist

Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science

James D. Watson · 347 pages

From a living legend--James D. Watson, who shared the Nobel Prize for having revealed the structure of DNA--a personal account of the making of a scientist. In Avoid Boring People, the man who discovered "the secret of life" shares the less revolutionary secrets he has found to getting along and getting ahead in a competitive world.Recounting the years of his own formation--from his father's birdi

Lab Girl

Hope Jahren · 408 pages

An illuminating debut memoir of a woman in science; a moving portrait of a longtime friendship; and a stunningly fresh look at plants that will forever change how you see the natural world Acclaimed scientist Hope Jahren has built three laboratories in which she’s studied trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Her first book is a revelatory treatise on plant life—but it is also so much more. Lab

Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science

Richard Dawkins · 464 pages

"Dawkins shares with us his infectious sense of wonder at the natural world, his enjoyment of the absurdities of human interaction, and his bracing awareness of life's brevity: all of which have made a deep imprint on our culture" --

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.

The Book of Barely Imagined Beings: A 21st Century Bestiary

Caspar Henderson · 437 pages

The creatures that abound in Henderson's book—from the axolotl to the zebrafish—are, with one exception, very much with us, albeit sometimes in depleted numbers. *The Book of Barely Imagined Beings* transports readers to a world of real creatures that seem as if they should be made up—that are somehow more astonishing than anything we might have imagined. The yeti crab, for example, uses its furry

The Magic School Bus Meets The Rot Squad: A Book About Decomposition

Joanna Cole, Bruce Degen · 35 pages

In this simplified series, Ms. Frizzle and her students embark on numerous entertaining scientific journeys. The books are based on the PBS television series.

In the Shadow of Man

Jane Goodall · 297 pages

Goodall's classic account of primate behavior combines a landmark scientific study with a fascinating adventure story of a determined young woman's struggle in remote Africa to approach primates in the wild as no one had ever done before.

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.

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character

Richard Feynman · 350 pages

The biography of the physicist and Nobel prize winner Richard P. Feynman - a collection of short stories, chapters told to and written down by Ralph Leighton. Feynman tells of his childhood and youth and goes into his adult life, both personally and professionally.

Uncle Tungsten

Oliver Sacks · 337 pages

"From his earliest days, Oliver Sacks - the distinguished neurologist who is also one of the most remarkable storytellers of our time - was irresistibly drawn to understanding the natural world. Born into a large family of doctors, metallurgists, chemists, physicists, and teachers, his curiosity was encouraged and abetted by aunts, uncles, parents, and older brothers. But soon after his sixth b

The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworm

Amy Stewart · 240 pages

Disturbing the Universe

Freeman Dyson · 304 pages

The classic intellectual autobiography of a great theoretical physicist Spanning the years from World War II, when he was a civilian statistician in the operations research section of the Royal Air Force Bomber Command, through his studies with Hans Bethe at Cornell University, his early friendship with Richard Feynman, and his postgraduate work with J. Robert Oppenheimer, Freeman Dyson has compos

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

Michael Pollan · 450 pages

What should we have for dinner?" To one degree or another this simple question assails any creature faced with a wide choice of things to eat. Anthropologists call it the omnivore's dilemma. Choosing from among the countless potential foods nature offers, humans have had to learn what is safe, and what isn't—which mushrooms should be avoided, for example, and which berries we can enjoy. Today, as

My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey

Jill Bolte Taylor · 188 pages

The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist

Neil deGrasse Tyson · 205 pages

This is the absorbing story of Neil de Grasse Tyson's lifelong fascination with the night sky, a restless wonder that began some thirty years ago on the roof of his Bronx apartment building and eventually led him to become the director of the Hayden Planetarium. A unique chronicle of a young man who at one time was both nerd and jock, Tyson's memoir could well inspire other similarly curious young

Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery

Scott Kelly · 387 pages

The veteran of four space flights and the American record holder for consecutive days spent in space, Scott Kelly has experienced things very few have. Now, he takes us inside a sphere utterly inimical to human life. He describes navigating the extreme challenge of long-term spaceflight, both existential and banal: the devastating effects on the body; the isolation from everyone he loves and the c

The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal

Jared Diamond · 407 pages

Explores the question of what in the less than two percent of genes has made humans different from apes.

The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems

Fritjof Capra · 333 pages

In The Web of Life Capra offers a radical synthesis of such recent scientific breakthroughs as the theory of complexity, Gaia theory, chaos theory and other explanations of the properties of organisms, social systems and ecosystems.

LSD: My Problem Child – Reflections on Sacred Drugs, Mysticism and Science

Albert Hofmann · 220 pages

High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society

Carl Hart · 346 pages

"As a youth, Carl Hart didn't realize the value of school; he studied just enough to stay on the basketball team. At the same time, he was immersed in street life. Today he is a cutting-edge neuroscientist--Columbia University's first tenured African American professor in the sciences--whose landmark, controversial research is redefining our understanding of addiction. In this provocative and eye-

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Rebecca Skloot · 381 pages

My Brief History

Stephen Hawking · 127 pages

Stephen Hawking is one of the most brilliant cosmologists of our time, and author of the 10 million copy bestselling A Brief History of Time, one of the iconic books of its generation. Now, for the first time, he tells the story of his life in his own words, in a book expanded from a lecture of the same name.

The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries from a Secret World

Peter Wohlleben, Susanne Simard · 288 pages

A visually stunning journey into the diversity and wonders of forests. In his international bestseller The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben opened readers' eyes to the amazing processes at work in forests every day. Now this new, breathtakingly illustrated edition brings those wonders to life like never before. With compelling selections from the original book and stunning, large-format photo

Life: An Unauthorised Biography: A Natural History of the First Four Thousand Million Years of Life on Earth

Richard Fortey · 416 pages

Richard Fortey guides us from the barren globe spinning in space, through the very earliest signs of life in the sulphurous hot springs and volcanic vents of the young planet, the appearance of cells, the slow creation of an atmosphere and the evolution of myriad forms of plants and animals that could then be sustained, including the magnificent era of the dinosaurs, and on to the last moment befo