Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Science

When Jon Katz got a call from an animal control officer about Simon, a neglected donkey who had been found on a failing farm in upstate New York, he wasn't expecting to add another animal to his already full life. But when he made the trek out to meet him, he couldn't help falling in love with the skinny, mangy donkey who had already suffered so much, and he ended up taking him into his home. It was Simon who listened in the fields as Jon read to him and discussed philosophy.

The second volume in his autobiographical quartet based on the seasons, Winter is an achingly beautiful collection of daily meditations and letters addressed directly to Knaugsaard's unborn daughter.

We have lost the war on cancer. We spend $150 billion each year treating it, yet - a few innovations notwithstanding - a patient with cancer is as likely to die of it as one was 50 years ago. Most new drugs add mere months to one's life at agonizing physical and financial cost. In The First Cell, Azra Raza offers a searing account of how both medicine and our society (mis)treats cancer, how we can do better, and why we must.

The 2018 Nobel laureate for economics analyzes the politics and economics of the central environmental issue of today and points the way to real solutions.

At a conference in Hong Kong in November 2018, Dr. He Jiankui announced that he had created the first genetically modified babies - twin girls named Lulu and Nana - sending shockwaves around the world. A year later, a Chinese court sentenced Dr. He to three years in prison for "illegal medical practice". As scientists elsewhere start to catch up with China's vast genetic research program, gene editing is fueling an innovation economy that threatens to widen racial and economic inequality. Fundamental questions about science, health, and social justice are at stake.

The heart of this course examines the planets themselves, and reveals how they are constructed and how they differ from one another. By studying the physical astronomy of all the planets in the Solar System, we can attempt to understand their true nature. Ultimately, these lectures will bring us to a greater understanding of the Solar System's creation, which brings us again back to the beginning and what it means to us as we look outward from our rotating Earth.

In her graceful, compelling style, Dava Sobel chronicles the history of the Copernican Revolution, relating the story of astronomy from Aristotle to the Middle Ages. In its midst will be her play, And the Sun Stood Still, imagining the dialogue that would have transpired between Rheticus and Copernicus in their months together. As she achieved with her bestsellers Longitude and Galileo's Daughter, Sobel expands the bounds of science writing, giving us an unforgettable portrait of scientific achievement.

Having worked on numerous high-profile genetic investigations, including one focused on the famed Iceman of the Italian Alps, Bryan Sykes has become a premier authority on human genetics. In DNA USA, Sykes examines the unique fabric of the population of the United States - one of the world’s most genetically variegated countries. His fascinating discoveries offer new insights into the biological profile of the great melting pot.

Martin Arrowsmith is fascinated by science and medicine. As a boy, he immerses himself in Gray’s Anatomy. In medical school, he soaks up knowledge from his mentor, a renowned bacteriologist. But soon he is urged to focus on politics and promotions rather than his research. Even as Martin progresses from doctor to public health official and noted pathologist, he still yearns to devote his time to pure science.

Jeffrey W. Martz of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science is widely renowned for his expertise in the field of paleontology, a science that lies at the crossroads of biology and geology. Paleontologists seek to unearth and re-create life hundreds of millions of years old, and the work of paleontologists offers us detailed glimpses of the prehistoric world. These fascinating lectures delve into the techniques and processes of paleontologists while providing a better understanding of this often misunderstood science.

With Evolutionary Psychology I and II, Allen D. MacNeill of Cornell University led a thought-provoking series of lectures on why people do the things they do. In Evolutionary Biology I, MacNeill addresses a different side of the coin by examining the biological component, from Charles Darwin’s and Gregor Mendel’s “dangerous ideas” to contemporary thought leaders and the forming of the modern synthesis of this vital field of study.

"Creativity is the unique and defining trait of our species, and its ultimate goal, self-understanding", begins Edward O. Wilson's sweeping examination of the humanities and its relationship to the sciences. By studying fields as diverse as paleontology, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience, Wilson demonstrates that human creativity began not 10,000 years ago, as we have long assumed, but over 100,000 years ago in the Paleolithic Age.

The conclusion to one of the most extraordinary and original literary projects in recent years, Summer once again intersperses short, vividly descriptive essays with emotionally raw diary entries addressed directly to Knausgaard's newborn daughter. Writing more expansively and, if it is possible, even more intimately and unguardedly than in the previous three volumes, he mines with new depth his difficult memories of his childhood and fraught relationship with his own father.

Bill Weir has spent decades telling the stories of unique people, places, cultures, and creatures on the brink of change. As the first Chief Climate Correspondent in network news, he is immersed in the latest scientific warnings and breakthroughs while often on the frontlines of disasters, natural and manmade. After the birth of his son in April 2020, Bill began distilling these experiences into a series of Earth Day letters to his boy, weaving together worry and wonder into a poignant reminder that a better future can still be written.

There is no more profound, enduring, or fascinating question in all of science than that of how time, space, and matter began. Now John Barrow, who has been at the cutting edge of research in this area and has written extensively about it, guides us on a journey to the beginning of time, into a world of temperatures and densities so high that we cannot recreate them in a laboratory.

Nano Comes to Life opens a window onto the nanoscale - the infinitesimal realm of proteins and DNA where physics and cellular and molecular biology meet - and introduces listeners to the rapidly evolving nanotechnologies that are allowing us to manipulate the very building blocks of life. Sonia Contera gives an insider's perspective on this new frontier, revealing how nanotechnology enables a new kind of multidisciplinary science that is poised to give us control over our own biology, our health, and our lives.

We all have habits we’d like to break, but for many of us it can be nearly impossible to do so. There is a good reason for this: The brain is a habit-building machine. In Hard to Break, leading neuroscientist Russell Poldrack provides an engaging and authoritative account of the science of how habits are built in the brain, why they are so hard to break, and how evidence-based strategies may help us change unwanted behaviors.

After 25 years on a farm in the Ozarks, award-winning writer and naturalist Sue Hubbell moved to a small town on the coast of Maine. There, in the pools, tides, and thickets, she found a vast array of creatures that aroused her considerable curiosity. Join Hubbell on a unique tour of the world of invertebrates. From humpbacked camel crickets to glow worms, from horseshoe crabs to elegantly-furred sea mice, Hubbell offers vivid descriptions and fascinating details about these superb examples of survival.

Most of us think of bugs as pesky creatures we squish under our shoes or bat away with our hands. Under the microscope of Sue Hubbell’s keen eye emerges an exciting world we rarely take the time to see. Author of A Country Year, Hubbell writes regularly for The New Yorker, Smithsonian, and Discover magazines, bringing to her delightful essays the practical veracity of a gentlewoman farmer, and the style and élan of an eccentric who has found her bliss.

Spring is a deeply moving novel about family, our everyday lives, our joys and our struggles. Spring follows a father and his newborn daughter through one day in April, from sunrise to sunset. A day filled with everyday routine, the beginnings of life and its light, but also its deep struggles and its darkness.