Science

A wild look at our natural world for fans of Steve Irwin, James Herriot, and Bear Grylls

Millions follow Dr. Evan Antin and his wildlife adventures through social media and on his popular Animal Planet television show Evan Goes Wild. Now in his first book, World Wild Vet, Evan takes us to the deep blue seas, swimming with giant whale sharks with "puppy dog eyes, to jungles filled with venomous snakes (who are more afraid of you than you are of them), to a race across the savannah and against the clock to save rhinos from the clutches of poachers--all in the name of adventure and a deep love for the wild around us.

Equal parts memoir, travelogue, and conservationist wake up call, World Wild Vet is an unforgettable exploration of the world we all call home and a love letter to the creatures we share it with.

A clear-eyed explanation of the impact of ice on Earth, its climate, and its residents.

Much has been written about global warming, but the crucial relationship between people and ice has received little focus, until now - and there is a fierce urgency as the problem accelerates. With clarity and insight, geophysicist and a co-winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, Henry Pollack, paints a compelling portrait of the delicate geological balance between Earth and its ice, and shows why the current rapid loss of ice portends serious consequences in our not-so-distant future.

Whether sculpting mountains, regulating temperatures, influencing ocean currents, or defining the limits of human settlement, ice has shaped - and continues to shape - the world we live in. This important and increasingly relevant book traces the effect of mountain glaciers on supplies of drinking water and agricultural irrigation, as well as the current results of melting permafrost and shrinking Arctic sea ice - a situation that has degraded the habitat of numerous animals and sparked an international race for seabed oil and minerals. Catastrophic possibilities loom, including rising sea levels and subsequent flooding of low-lying regions worldwide.

A World Without Ice explains why ice matters, and lays out the urgent actions we can take to restore Earth's delicate climate balance.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A Time #1 Nonfiction Book* An Entertainment Weekly #1 Nonfiction Book *A Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and Salon Book Awards* A Kansas City Star's Top 100 Book of the Year *A Mother Jones' Favorite Book*

The 15th Anniversary edition of the worldwide bestseller that answers the ultimate question: what happens to the Earth when human beings disappear? Now with a new afterword from the author.

The World Without Us is a penetrating, page-turning tour of a post-human Earth. Drawing on the expertise of engineers, atmospheric scientists, art conservators, zoologists, oil refiners, marine biologists, astrophysicists, religious leaders from rabbis to the Dalai Lama, and paleontologists, Alan Weisman deftly illustrates what the planet might be like today, if not for us.

In this revelatory account, Alan Weisman explains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish without human presence; which everyday items may become immortalized as fossils; how copper pipes and wiring would be crushed into mere seams of reddish rock; why some of our earliest buildings might be the last architecture left; and how plastic, bronze sculpture, and radio waves may be our most lasting gifts to the universe.

As he shows which human devastations are indelible, and which examples of our highest art and culture would endure longest, Weisman draws on every field of science to present an environmental assessment like no other. This is narrative nonfiction at its finest--one of the most affecting portraits yet of humankind's place on this planet.

"A penetrating, page-turning tour of a post-human Earth "

In" The World Without Us, "Alan Weisman offers an utterly original approach to questions of humanity's impact on the planet: he asks us to envision our Earth, without us.In this far-reaching narrative, Weisman explains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish without human presence; which everyday items may become immortalized as fossils; how copper pipes and wiring would be crushed into mere seams of reddish rock; why some of our earliest buildings might be the last architecture left; and how plastic, bronze sculpture, radio waves, and some man-made molecules may be our most lasting gifts to the universe.
"The World Without Us "reveals how, just days after humans disappear, floods in New York's subways would start eroding the city's foundations, and how, as the world's cities crumble, asphalt jungles would give way to real ones. It describes the distinct ways that organic and chemically treated farms would revert to wild, how billions more birds would flourish, and how cockroaches in unheated cities would perish without us. Drawing on the expertise of engineers, atmospheric scientists, art conservators, zoologists, oil refiners, marine biologists, astrophysicists, religious leaders from rabbis to the Dali Lama, and paleontologists---who describe a prehuman world inhabited by megafauna like giant sloths that stood taller than mammoths---Weisman illustrates what the planet might be like today, if not for us.
From places already devoid of humans (a last fragment of primeval European forest; the Korean DMZ; Chernobyl), Weisman reveals Earth's tremendous capacity for self-healing. As he shows which human devastations are indelible, and which examples of our highest art and culture would endure longest, Weisman's narrative ultimately drives toward a radical but persuasive solution that needn't depend on our demise. It is narrative nonfiction at its finest, and in posing an irresistible concept with both gravity and a highly readable touch, it looks deeply at our effects on the planet in a way that no other book has.

In April 1992, a discovery was made that changed the way we view the world. Dr. George Smoot, distinguished cosmologist and adventurer, whose quest for cosmic knowledge had taken him from the Brazilian rain forest to the South Pole unveiled his momentous discovery, bringing to light the very nature of the universe. For anyone who has ever looked up at the night sky and wondered, for anyone who has ever longed to pull aside the fabric of the universe for a glimpse of what lies behind it. Wrinkles in Time is the story of Smoot's search to uncover the cosmic seeds of the universe. Wrinkles in Time is the Double Helix of cosmology, an intimate look at the inner world of men and women who ask. "Why are we here?" It tells the story of George Smoot's dogged pursuit of the cosmic wrinkles in the frozen wastes of Antarctica, on mountaintops, in experiments borne aloft aboard high-altitude balloons, U-2 spy planes, and finally a space satellite. Wrinkles in Time presents the hard science behind the structured violence of the big bang theory through breathtakingly clear, lucid images and meaningful comparisons. Scientists and nonscientists alike can follow with rapt attention the story of how, in a fiery creation, wrinkles formed in space ultimately to become stars, galaxies, and even greater delicate structures. Anyone can appreciate the implications of a universe whose end is written in its beginnings - whose course developed according to a kind of cosmic DNA, which guided the universe from simplicity and symmetry to ever-greater complexity and structure. As controversial as it may seem today, Wrinkles in Time reveals truths that, in an earlier century, would have doomed its proclaimers to thefiery stake. For four thousand years some people have accepted the Genesis account of cosmic origin; for most of this century, scientists debated two rival scientific explanations known as the steady state and big bang theories. And now, Wrinkles in Time tells what really happened

Half the world's population speaks a language that has evolved from a single, prehistoric mother tongue. A mother tongue first spoken in Stone Age times, on the steppes of central Eurasia 6,500 years ago. It was so effective that it flourished for two thousand years. It was a language that spread from the shores of the Black Sea across almost all of Europe and much of Asia. It is the genetic basis of everything we speak and write today--the DNA of language.Written in Stone combines detective work, mythology, ancient history, archaeology, the roots of society, technology and warfare, and the sheer fascination of words to explore that original mother tongue, sketching the connections woven throughout the immense vocabulary of English--with some surprising results.In snappy, lively and often very funny chapters, it uncovers the most influential and important words used by our Neolithic ancestors, and shows how they are still in constant use today--the building blocks of all our most common words and phrases.

We all have our off days. Why should Evolution be any different? Maybe Evolution got carried away with an idea that was just a little too crazy--like having the Regal Horned Lizard defend itself by shooting three-foot streams of blood from its eyes. Or maybe Evolution ran out of steam (Memo to Evolution: The Irrawaddy Dolphin looks like a prototype that should have been left on the drawing board). Or maybe Evolution was feeling cheeky--a fish with hands? Joke's on you, Red Handfish! Or maybe Evolution simply goofed up: How else to explain the overgrown teeth of the babirusas that curl backward over their face? Oops.

Mara Grunbaum is a very smart, very funny science writer who celebrates the best--or, really, the worst--of Evolution's blunders. Here are more than 100 outlandish mammals, reptiles, insects, fish, birds, and other creatures whose very existence leaves us shaking our heads and muttering WTF?! Ms. Grunbaum's especially brilliant stroke is to personify Evolution as a well-meaning but somewhat oblivious experimenter whose conversations with a skeptical narrator are hilarious.

For almost 4 billion years, Evolution has produced a nonstop parade of inflatable noses, bizarre genitalia, and seriously awkward necks. What a comedian!

A necessary and thought-provoking read for the age of coronavirus, exploring eleven scenarios that may trigger the collapse of the modern world -- from pandemics to nuclear apocalypse to robot uprisings -- and what we can do to prevent and survive them.

In the twenty first century, our world has become impossibly complicated, relying on ever more advanced technology that is developing at an exponential rate. Yet it is a fact of mathematical life that higher and higher levels of complexity lead to systems that are increasingly fragile and susceptible to sudden, spectacular collapse.

In this highly provocative and grippingly readable book, John Casti brilliantly argues that today's advanced, overly complex societies have grown highly vulnerable to extreme events that will ultimately topple civilization like a house of cards. Like Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan meets Jared Diamond's Collapse, Casti's book provides a much-needed wake-up call, sounding a fascinating and frightening warning about civilized society's inability to recover from a global catastrophe.

An eye-opening and necessary read, X-Events is a shocking look at a world teetering on the brink of collapse, and a population under constant threat from pandemic viruses, worldwide communication breakdowns, nuclear winter, or any number of unforeseeable "X-Events." Fascinating and chilling, X-Events provides a provocative tour of the catastrophic outlier scenarios that could quickly send us crashing back to the preindustrial age - and shows that they may not be as far-fetched as they seem.