National Network for Equitable Library Service

Johnson brings the gentleman-scientist and his times brilliantly into focus. From Darwin's birth into great fortune to his voyage aboard the Beagle, to the long-delayed publication of his masterpiece, Johnson delves into what made this Victorian gentleman into a visionary scientist--and into the tragic flaws that later led Darwin to support the burgeoning eugenics movement.

Bob Berman guides us through cosmic violence both mammoth and microscopic. From the creation of dazzling "new stars" to the ways in which humanity has harnessed cataclysmic energy for its gain, Berman masterfully synthesizes our worst fears into an astonishing portrait of the universe.

Neil deGrasse Tyson introduces young listeners to astrophysics and the principles of scientific inquiry, fostering the "cosmic perspective" that outer space inspires in all.

For six years Jim and Jamie Dutcher lived intimately with a pack of wolves, gaining their trust as no one has before. In this book, the Dutchers reflect on the virtues they observed in wolf society and behavior. Their heartfelt stories combine into a thought-provoking meditation on the values shared between the human and the animal world.

Surgeon Joshua D. Mezrich takes us inside the operating room to unlock the process of transplant surgery, a delicate, intense ballet requiring precise timing, breathtaking skill, and at times, creative improvisation. Mezrich examines centuries of medical breakthroughs, connecting this history with the stories of his patients and the ethical debates surrounding organ transplantation.

Surgeon Arnold van de Laar uses his own experience and expertise to tell this engrossing history of surgery through 28 famous operations'from Louis XIV and Einstein to JFK and Houdini. From the story of the desperate man from seventeenth-century Amsterdam who grimly cut a stone out of his own bladder to Bob Marley's deadly toe, Under the Knife offers a wealth of fascinating and unforgettable insights into medicine and history via the operating room. What happens during an operation? How does the human body respond to being attacked by a knife, a bacterium, a cancer cell or a bullet?

"Delightfully horrifying."-Popular Science This wryly humorous collection of stories about bizarre medical treatments and cases offers a unique portrait of a bygone era in all its jaw-dropping weirdness. A puzzling series of dental explosions beginning in the nineteenth century is just one of many strange tales that have long lain undiscovered in the pages of old medical journals. Award-winning medical historian Thomas Morris delivers one of the most remarkable, cringe-inducing collections of stories ever assembled.

A brain-bending exploration of real-life zombies and mind controllers, and what they reveal to us about nature and ourselves Zombieism isn't just the stuff of movies and TV shows like The Walking Dead. It's real, and it's happening in the world around us, from wasps and worms to dogs and moose, and even humans. In Plight of the Living Dead, science journalist Matt Simon documents his journey through the bizarre evolutionary history of mind control.

Hearing, the first of our senses to develop in the womb, is also the most recent of our senses to appear in evolutionary terms. This episode explores how sound is produced and transmitted, how the human ear is designed to receive certain frequencies, and whether the physics of relative frequencies, together with the physical structure of the human ear, makes us hear some combinations of sounds more ‘deeply’ than others. We investigate how the brain interprets music, and why we hear some sounds as music; other sounds as noise.

The Monarch butterfly is the marathon runner of the insect world. Each year in May hundreds of millions take off from their winter quarters in Mexico to begin a perilously delicate 3000-mile journey north. Three months later by the human calendar (but three generations later in butterfly time) they return back through the United States to Mexico. We don't know how they navigate the annual route along identical fight paths, or how they pass on the knowledge of those routes to future generations making the return trip.