National Network for Equitable Library Service

At nine years old, Eugenie Clark developed an unexpected passion for sharks after a visit to the Battery Park Aquarium in New York City. At the time, sharks were seen as mindless killing machines, but Eugenie knew better and set out to prove it. Despite many obstacles in her path, Eugenie was able to study the creatures she loved so much. From her many discoveries to the shark-related myths she dispelled, Eugenie made wide scientific contributions that led to her being nicknamed Shark Lady.

In the mid- to late-nineteenth century, a burgeoning science called electricity promised to shine new light on a rousing nation. Inventive and ambitious minds were hard at work. Soon that spark was fanned, and a fiery war was under way to be the first to light—and run—the world with electricity. Thomas Alva Edison, the inventor of direct current (DC), engaged in a brutal battle with Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse, the inventors of alternating current (AC). There would be no ties in this race—only a winner and a loser—and the prize was a nationwide monopoly in electric current.

Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) was the daughter of Lord Byron, a poet, and Anna Isabella Milbanke, a mathematician. Her parents separated when she was young, and her mother insisted on a logic-focused education, rejecting Byron's mad love of poetry. But Ada remained fascinated with her father and considered mathematics poetical science. Via her friendship with inventor Charles Babbage, she became involved in programming his Analytical Engine, a precursor to the computer, thus becoming the world's first computer programmer.

A searing look at the birth of America's space program, and the men and women aviators who set its course. In the 1960s, locked in a heated race to launch the first human into space, the United States selected seven superstar test pilots and former military air fighters to NASA's astronaut class—the Mercury 7. The men endured grueling training and constant media attention for the honor of becoming America's first space heroes.

First published in 1962, Silent Spring can singlehandedly be credited with sounding the alarm and raising awareness of humankind's collective impact on its own future through chemical pollution. No other book has so strongly influenced the environmental conscience of Americans and the world at large.

The fascinating, little-known story of how two brilliant female physicists' groundbreaking discoveries led to the creation of the atomic bomb. In 1934, IrEne Curie, working with her husband and fellow scientist, Frederic Joliot, made a discovery that would change the world: artificial radioactivity. This breakthrough allowed scientists to modify elements and create new ones by altering the structure of atoms. Curie shared a Nobel Prize with her husband for their work.

A fascinating tour of the planet exploring ecosystems large and small, from reefs, deserts, and rainforests to a single drop of water-from the New York Times bestselling author of Women in Science Making earth science accessible and entertaining, The Wondrous Workings of Planet Earth explains how our planet works-and how we can protect it-from its diverse ecosystems and their inhabitants, to the levels of ecology, the importance of biodiversity, the cycles of nature, and more.

The New York Times bestseller Women in Science highlights the contributions of fifty notable women to the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) from the ancient to the modern world.

Charles Darwin was just twenty-two when he went on his first voyage around the world in 1831. Darwin's father at first refused to allow his young son to go on the voyage. Fortunately, his father relented, and Darwin's journal is now considered by many to be the greatest scientific travel narrative ever written. Revised by the author in 1860, this is an account of his experiences on the HMS Beagle, a ship that was mapping the coast of South America. What was set to be a two- or three-year voyage stretched out to a five-year adventure.

A radical manifesto for how to deal with climate breakdown The environment is collapsing at a rapid rate, and in increasingly unpredictable ways. Everyone knows that this is happening, and yet the only politics that is emerging to tackle it are coming from the increasingly nativist far-right. How should the left respond? In Planet on Fire, two rising stars of the British left lay down a set of proposals for a fundamental re-shaping of the global economy and offer a roadmap for tackling climate breakdown.