National Network for Equitable Library Service

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 Girl is a book about work, love, and the mountains that can be moved when those two things come together.

Cheese puffs. Coffee. Sunscreen. Vapes. George Zaidan reveals what will kill you, what won't, and why - explained with high-octane hilarity, hysterical hijinks, and other things that don't begin with the letter H. INGREDIENTS offers the perspective of a chemist on the stuff we eat, drink, inhale, and smear on ourselves. Apart from the burning question of whether you should eat that Cheeto, Zaidan explores a range of topics. Here's a helpful guide: Stuff in this book: - How bad is processed food? How sure are we? - Is sunscreen safe? Should you use it?

In his three previous books-Feathers, The Triumph of Seeds, and Buzz-Thor Hanson has taken his readers on unforgettable journeys into nature, rendered with great storytelling, the soul of a poet, and the insight of a biologist. In this new book, he is doing it again, but exploring one of the most vital scientific and cultural issues of our time: climate change. As a young biologist, Hanson by his own admission watched with some detachment as our warming planet presented plants and animals with an ultimatum: change or face extinction.

An international best sellerThe book-length answer to anyone who ever put their hand up in math class and asked, "When am I ever going to use this in the real world?" Our whole world is built on math, from the code running a website to the equations enabling the design of skyscrapers and bridges. Most of the time this math works quietly behind the scenes ... until it doesn't. All sorts of seemingly innocuous mathematical mistakes can have significant consequences.

What would you do if you had a time machine that took you hundreds or thousands of years into the past ... and then broke? How would you survive? Could you improve on civilization's original timeline? And how hard would it be to domesticate a giant wombat? In How to Invent Everything, bestselling author and time-travel enthusiast Ryan North answers all these questions so you don't have to.

In this ambitious and thought-provoking book we see, for example, that globalization isn't inevitable--the foolishness of allowing 70 per cent of the world's rubber gloves to be made in just one factory became glaringly obvious in 2020--and that our societies have been steadily increasing Ultimately, Smil answers the most profound question of our age: are we irrevocably doomed or is a brighter utopia ahead? Compelling, data-rich and revisionist, this wonderfully broad, interdisciplinary guide finds faults with both extremes.

People have always been fascinated by how the mind works. Thousands of times each day, we are presented with choices that require decisions: from what to wear each day to where to live. Over millennia philosophers, theologians, and mathematicians have all weighed in on how we make decisions, and in recent centuries economists, psychologists, and sociologists have joined this investigation. Some of these past theories are essentially aspirational, describing decision making as it should be, not as it often is. This course provides a different view.

Building on his national bestseller The Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley chronicles the history of innovation, and how we need to change our thinking on the subject. Innovation is the main event of the modern age, the reason we experience both dramatic improvements in our living standards and unsettling changes in our society. Forget short-term symptoms like Donald Trump and Brexit, it is innovation itself that explains them and that will itself shape the 21st century for good and ill.

Moshe Hoffman is a research scientist at the MIT Media Lab Human Dynamics Group and lecturer at Harvard's department of economics. His research focuses on using game theory, models of learning and evolution, and experimental methods to decipher the motives that shape our social behavior, preferences, and ideologies. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Erez Yoeli is a research associate at MIT's Sloan School of Management, where he directs the Applied Cooperation Team (ACT). His research focuses on altruism: understanding how it works and how to promote it.

One of the world's most renowned theoretical physicists, Carlo Rovelli has entranced millions of readers with his singular perspective on the cosmos. In Helgoland, Rovelli examines the enduring enigma of quantum theory. The quantum world Rovelli describes is as beautiful as it is unnerving. Helgoland is a treeless island in the North Sea where the 21-year-old Werner Heisenberg first developed quantum theory, setting off a century of scientific revolution.