Science

Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning “knowledge”) is the effort to discover, and increase human understanding of how the physical world works. Through controlled methods, science uses observable physical evidence of natural phenomena to collect data, and analyzes this information to explain what and how things work.

New Releases Tagged "Science"

Blood: The Science, Medicine, and Mythology of Menstruation

Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet

Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine

Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum

Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters

Come Together: The Science (and Art!) of Creating Lasting Sexual Connections

Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture

Our Moon: How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are

Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science

The Allure of the Multiverse: Extra Dimensions, Other Worlds, and Parallel Universes

The Algorithm: How AI Decides Who Gets Hired, Monitored, Promoted, and Fired and Why We Need to Fight Back Now

How Not to Age: The Scientific Approach to Getting Healthier as You Get Older

Giveaways

The Birds That Audubon Missed by Kenn Kaufman

The Birds That Audubon Missed: Discovery and Desire in the American Wilderness

Kenn Kaufman (Goodreads Author)

Release date: May 07, 2024

Renowned naturalist Kenn Kaufman examines the scientific discoveries of John James Audubon and his artistic and ornithologist peers to show how what t Renowned naturalist Kenn Kaufman examines the scientific discoveries of John James Audubon and his artistic and ornithologist peers to show how what they saw (and what they missed) reflects how we perceive and understand the natural world.

Raging ambition. Towering egos. Competition under a veneer of courtesy. Heroic effort combined with plagiarism, theft, exaggeration, and fraud. This was the state of bird study in eastern North America during the early 1800s, as a handful of intrepid men raced to find the last few birds that were still unknown to science.

The most famous name in the bird world was John James Audubon, who painted spectacular portraits of birds. But although his images were beautiful, creating great art was not his main goal. Instead, he aimed to illustrate (and write about) as many different species as possible, obsessed with trying to outdo his rival, Alexander Wilson. George Ord, a fan and protégé of Wilson, held a bitter grudge against Audubon for years, claiming he had faked much of his information and his scientific claims. A few of Audubon’s birds were pure fiction, and some of his writing was invented or plagiarized. Other naturalists of the era, including Charles Bonaparte (nephew of Napoleon), John Townsend, and Thomas Nuttall, also became entangled in the scientific derby, as they stumbled toward an understanding of the natural world—an endeavor that continues to this day.

Despite this intense competition, a few species—including some surprisingly common songbirds, hawks, sandpipers, and more—managed to evade discovery for years. Here, renowned bird expert and artist Kenn Kaufman explores this period in history from a new angle, by considering the birds these people discovered and, especially, the ones they missed. Kaufman has created portraits of the birds that Audubon never saw, attempting to paint them in that artist’s own stunning style, as a way of examining the history of natural sciences and nature art. He shows how our understanding of birds continues to gain clarity, even as some mysteries persist from Audubon’s time until ours. ...more
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Availability: 10 copies available, 3519 people requesting

Giveaway dates: Feb 01 - Feb 22, 2024

Countries available: U.S.

The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth

Zoë Schlanger

Release date: May 07, 2024

Award-winning environment and science reporter Zoë Schlanger delivers a groundbreaking work of popular science that probes the hidden world of the pla Award-winning environment and science reporter Zoë Schlanger delivers a groundbreaking work of popular science that probes the hidden world of the plant kingdom and reveals the astonishing capabilities of the green life all around us. It takes tremendous biological creativity to be a plant. To survive and thrive while rooted in a single spot, plants have adapted ingenious methods of survival. In recent years, scientists have learned about their ability to communicate, recognize their kin and behave socially, hear sounds, morph their bodies to blend into their surroundings, store useful memories that inform their life cycle, and trick animals into behaving to their benefit, to name just a few remarkable talents. The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence. In looking closely, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system. What is intelligent life if not a vine that grows leaves to blend into the shrub on which it climbs, a flower that shapes its bloom to fit exactly the beak of its pollinator, a pea seedling that can hear water flowing and make its way toward it? Zoë Schlanger takes us across the globe, digging into her own memories and into the soil with the scientists who have spent their waking days studying these amazing entities up close. What can we learn about life on Earth from the living things that thrive, adapt, consume, and accommodate simultaneously? More important, what do we owe these life forms once we come to understand their rich and varied abilities? Examining the latest epiphanies in botanical research, Schlanger spotlights the intellectual struggles among the researchers conceiving a wholly new view of their subject, offering a glimpse of a field in turmoil as plant scientists debate the tenets of ongoing discoveries and how they influence our understanding of what a plant is. We need plants to survive. But what do they need us for—if at all? An eye-opening and informative look at the ecosystem we live in, this book challenges us to rethink the role of plants—and our own place—in the natural world. ...more
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Availability: 50 copies available, 3400 people requesting

Giveaway dates: Feb 02 - Feb 22, 2024

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The Asteroid Hunter: A Scientist’s Journey to the Dawn of our Solar System

Dante Lauretta

Release date: Mar 19, 2024

A "captivating, behind-the-scenes account" of NASA’s historic OSIRIS-REx mission to return an asteroid sample and unlock the mystery of formation on l ...more
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Availability: 50 copies available, 4271 people requesting

Giveaway dates: Feb 09 - Feb 22, 2024

Countries available: U.S.

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