National Network for Equitable Library Service

Imagine you’re sitting next to a pilot on a flight and he’s eager to answer all those nagging questions you have about air travel. Are those bumps and noises normal? Why are some take-offs delayed? What happens if there’s a storm? How does this plane stay in the air, anyway?

Edison’s Concrete Piano highlights the careers of famous inventors — revealing the lesser-known and most fascinating facts about their careers, their wackier hobbies, and especially their big flops and great successes. Take Thomas Edison for example, who revolutionized our world with the light bulb, the phonograph, and the forerunner to the movie camera. He also created a concrete piano, a non-operational helicopter made from box kites and piano wire, and a machine to speak to the dead.

Linus Pauling, one of the most celebrated scientists of the twentieth century, once remarked that satisfying curiosity is one of the greatest sources of pleasure in life. Dr. Joe and What You Didn’t Know to act as both the source and satiation of such curiosity, providing pleasure through a series of 99 chemistry-related questions and answers designed to both inform and entertain. Ranging from the esoteric to the everyday, Dr. Joe Schwarcz tackles topics from Beethoven’s connection to plumbing to why rotten eggs smell like rotten eggs.

Could we create a real-life superhero by changing human biology itself?

We are complacent. We bask in the idea that Canada holds 20% of the world's fresh water--water crises face other countries, but not ours. We could not be more wrong. In Boiling Point, bestselling author and activist Maude Barlow lays bare the issues facing Canada's water reserves, including long-outdated water laws, unmapped and unprotected groundwater reserves, agricultural pollution, industrial-waste dumping, boil-water advisories, and the effects of deforestation and climate change.

A captivating memoir set during the pinnacle of West Coast fishing

How does our environment impact our health, and what can we do about it? 12,000 Canaries Can't Be Wrong is a culmination of Dr. Molot's 30 years of experience seeing more than 12,000 patients with environmentally linked illnesses. He explains how the environment contributes to the development and progression of many common conditions and illnesses, including chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and other pain disorders, chemical sensitivity, irritable bowel syndrome, allergies and asthma, diabetes, autistic spectrum disorder, and even obesity. Dr.

Canada is experiencing an unparalleled crisis involving forests and communities across the country. While municipalities, policy makers, and industry leaders acknowledge common challenges such as an overdependence on US markets, rising energy costs, and lack of diversification, no common set of solutions has been developed and implemented. Ongoing and at times contentious public debate has revealed an appetite and need for a fundamental rethinking of the relationships that link our communities, governments, industrial partners, and forests towards a more sustainable future.

When you're cooking, you're a chemist! Every time you follow or modify a recipe you are experimenting with acids and bases, emulsions and suspensions, gels and foams. In your kitchen you denature proteins, crystallize compounds, react enzymes with substrates, and nurture desired microbial life while suppressing harmful microbes. And unlike in a laboratory, you can eat your experiments to verify your hypotheses. In Culinary Reactions, author Simon Quellen Field explores the chemistry behind the recipes you follow every day.

Can you describe how the flavor of halibut differs from red snapper? How Brie differs from cheddar? For most of us, unfortunately, the answer is: badly. Flavor remains a vague, undeveloped concept we don't know enough about to describe-or to appreciate-fully. In Flavor, Bob Holmes shows us just how much we're missing. He tackles questions like why cake tastes sweetest on white plates, how wine experts' eyes fool their noses, and how language affects flavor.