Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Science & Engineering

In Stone Work, critically-acclaimed author John Jerome describes the back-breaking but soul-strengthening task of building a stone wall on his New England farm. Equipped only with gloves, elemental tools, and the sense to get out of the way of rolling boulders, Jerome tries to reconstruct a wall in a year. The job begins on a whim - he decides to move a stone wall hidden in the woods on his property for the sheer pleasure of seeing it from his house. Philosophical, yet almost giddy with the excitement of doing something extraordinary, Stone Work is a delight.

The history of Western civilization can be divided neatly into pre-Darwinian and post-Darwinian periods. Darwin's 1859 treatise, On the Origin of Species, was not the first work to propose that organisms had descended from other, earlier organisms and the mechanism of evolution it proposed remained controversial for years. Nevertheless, no biologist after 1859 could ignore Darwin's theories and few areas of thought and culture remained immune to their influence.

Often hailed as the heir apparent to Wallace Stegner, Ivan Doig is among the finest chroniclers of the contemporary American West. In Mountain Time, Lexa McCaskell and Mitch Rozier leave their Seattle home to visit Mitch’s dying father in Montana. There Mitch clashes with both Lexa and his father as events from the past are explored and difficult memories resurface.

Renowned professor Michael B. McElroy leads a comprehensive examination of energy, including its history, use in the world today, and environmental consequences. Whether discussing the "oil shocks" of the 1970s, the current reliance on imported oil, or the growing buildup of carbon dioxide in the planet's atmosphere, it is clear that energy represents one of the world's most daunting challenges.

Rolf Nelson of Wheaton College has been widely published in the fields of psychology and visual perception. Seeing Eye to I examines the human visual system, from basic processes like perceiving color and shape to recognizing and categorizing objects to self-awareness. Professor Nelson also demonstrates how the human brain constructs a representation of the world replete with meaning, a task beyond the capability of any current computer.

James Smithson is best known as the founder of the Smithsonian Institution, but few people know his full and fascinating story. He was a widely respected chemist and mineralogist and a member of the Royal Society, but in 1865, his letters, collection of 10,000 minerals, and more than 200 unpublished papers were lost to a fire in the Smithsonian Castle. His scientific legacy was further written off as insignificant in an 1879 essay published through the Smithsonian 50 years after his death - a claim that author Steven Turner demonstrates is far from the truth.

The Blue Communities Project is dedicated to three primary things: that access to clean, drinkable water is a basic human right; that municipal and community water will be held in public hands; and that single-use plastic water bottles will not be available in public spaces. The movement has been growing around the world for a decade. In Whose Water Is It, Anyway?, renowned water justice activist Maude Barlow recounts her own education in water issues as she and her fellow grassroots water warriors woke up to the immense pressures facing water in a warming world.

High in the mountainous rain forests of Burma and India grow some of the world's last stands of mature, wild teak. For more than a thousand years, people here have worked with elephants to log these otherwise impassable forests and move people and goods (often illicitly) under cover of the forest canopy. In Giants of the Monsoon Forest, geographer Jacob Shell takes us deep into this strange elephant country to explore the lives of these extraordinarily intelligent creatures.

In Apollo's Legacy, space historian Roger D. Launius explores the many-faceted stories told about the meaning of the Apollo program and how it forever altered American society. The Apollo missions marked the first time human beings left Earth's orbit and visited another world, and thus they loom large in our collective memory. Many have detailed the exciting events of the Apollo program, but Launius offers unique insight into its legacy as seen through multiple perspectives.

Become a better birder with brief profiles of 200 top North American birds. This friendly, relatable audiobook is a celebration of the art, science, and delights of bird-watching. How to Know the Birds introduces a new, holistic approach to bird-watching, by noting how behaviors, settings, and seasonal cycles connect with shape, song, color, gender, age distinctions, and other features traditionally used to identify species. With short essays on 200 observable species, expert author Ted Floyd guides us through a year of becoming a better birder.

What can beer teach us about biology, history, and the natural world? From ancient Mesopotamian fermentation practices to the resurgent American craft brewery, authors Rob DeSalle and Ian Tattersall peruse the historical record and traverse the globe for engaging and often surprising stories about beer. They explain how we came to drink beer, what ingredients combine to give beers their distinctive flavors, how beer's chemistry works at the molecular level, and how various societies have regulated the production and consumption of beer.

The unprecedented access to other humans that technology provides has ironically freed us from engaging with them. According to social psychologist Adam Waytz, our increasingly human-free lives come with a serious cost that we’ve already begun to pay: the loss of our humanity. Humans have superpowers. More than any other psychological stimulus, our presence can make experiences feel significant, inspire moral behavior, and encourage action. The Power of Human shows us how to rehumanize and harness these unique abilities to improve our lives, beginning with our jobs.

With a brand-new approach to environmental responsibility, environmental expert Gay Browne offers small and simple changes we can make that will have a huge impact on the environment and our health. In an increasingly toxic world, the paths to environmental safety and personal well-being run parallel. The damage we're doing to our planet is literally making us sick. In this quietly revolutionary book, Gay Browne shares a roadmap for living a greener, healthier life.

Since the commercial introduction of the automobile, US automakers have always sought women as customers and advertised accordingly. How, then, did car culture become so masculine? In Pink Cars and Pocketbooks, Jessica Brockmole shares the untold history of women's relationship with automobiles: a journey marked by struggle, empowerment, and the relentless pursuit of independence. This groundbreaking work explores the evolution of women's automotive participation and the cultural shifts that have redefined their roles as drivers, mechanics, and consumers.

Flying more than 8,000 miles from Alaska to eastern Australia without stopping to eat or rest, the Bar-tailed Godwit holds the record for the longest nonstop migration of any land bird in the world. Flight of the Godwit invites readers on ornithologist Bruce M. Beehler's awe-inspiring journey in search of North America's largest and farthest-flying shorebirds. Driving 35,000 miles between 2019 to 2023, Beehler sought birds he dubs the "Magnificent Seven."

For budding apiarists, this introductory guide invites you into the amazing world of honeybees. Discover the inner workings of the beehive, the properties of honey, the basics of beekeeping, and the joys that come from this meditative hobby, including a thriving garden, environmental stewardship, and a supportive community (not to mention delicious honey!). A whole world awaits—and it’s just outside your door.

Two questions guide this seven-year project: First, how can we approach the phenomenon, representation, and interpretation of total solar eclipses? Second, how can we heal the historical divide separating the natural sciences from the humanities, arts, history, music, and theology? The result of this interdisciplinary investigation into eclipses is an exciting look behind the scenes—into labs, archives, museums, studies, around fieldwork in astronomy, meteorology, animal behavior, and ecophysiology.

The idea that gender is a performance—a tenet of queer feminist theory since the 1990s—has spread from college classrooms to popular culture. In Performance All the Way Down, MacArthur Fellow and Pulitzer Prize finalist Richard O. Prum brings gender performativity into conversation with genetics, development, and evolutionary biology, arguing that the sexual binary is not essential to human genes, chromosomes, or embryos. Our genomes are not blueprints, algorithms, or recipes for the physical representation of our personal sexual essences or fates.

There is no doubt science is currently suffering from a credibility crisis. This thought-provoking book argues that, ironically, science’s credibility is being undermined by tools created by scientists themselves. Scientific disinformation and damaging conspiracy theories are rife because of the Internet that science created, the scientific demand for empirical evidence and statistical significance leads to data torturing and confirmation bias, and data mining is fuelled by the technological advances in Big Data and the development of ever-increasingly powerful computers.