Science & Nature
Texts in this collection explore topics like climate change, energy, and humanity's place in the environment through a variety of genres, whether the science fiction of Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake or the scientific journalism of Dan Egan's The Death and Life of the Great Lakes.
21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018) is historian, philosopher, and acclaimed author Yuval Noah Harari’s in-depth look at the current global affairs and the immediate future of humankind. To Harari, the merging of biotechnology and artificial intelligence potentially represents the end of history with some humans becoming godlike. Despite the ramification of this situation on all of humanity, most people are distracted by irrelevant information and do not realize the debate that is occurring... Read 21 Lessons for the 21st Century Summary
First published in 1988, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes by British physicist Stephen Hawking is a general-audience science book that describes the basic principles of the universe as scientists have come to know them. From the beginning of everything to the fate of the cosmos—with black holes, wormholes, and time arrows in between—the book describes in non-technical language how the universe works. The 2009 edition contains a forward... Read A Brief History Of Time Summary
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke is a study of how humans think, learn, and retain knowledge. Scholars often focus first on Locke’s philosophical treatises, but his work on epistemology complements and shapes his political thought. Born in 1632, the English philosopher ushered in the Age of Enlightenment and is considered one of the greatest Western philosophers in history. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, first published in 1690, explores the origin and nature... Read An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Summary
An Essay on the Principle of Population by Thomas Malthus was first published anonymously in 1798. Its core argument, that human population will inevitably outgrow its capacity to produce food, widely influenced the field of early 19th century economics and social science. Immediately after its first printing, Malthus’s essay garnered significant attention from his contemporaries, and he soon felt the need to reveal his identity. Although it was highly controversial, An Essay on the Principle... Read An Essay on the Principle of Population Summary
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (2007) is, on its surface, a memoir detailing a year in the life of one family, told through an account of their food. However, it is also at times a manifesto and frequently veers into academic exploration of themes like sustainability and the current state of farming in the US. Author Barbara Kingsolver sets out to chronicle a year in her family’s food life when they undertake an experiment: to “attempt to... Read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Summary
An Inconvenient Truth is a 2006 nonfiction book released in conjunction with the documentary film of the same name. This book, by former vice-president Al Gore, presents scientific information about global climate change. He intersperses this information with personal anecdotes that outline the more human and social dimensions of the issue.An Inconvenient Truth begins with an introduction to the basic science of global warming and the greenhouse gases that cause it. The first forty pages... Read An Inconvenient Truth Summary
Arcadia by Tom Stoppard was first performed on April 13, 1993, at the Royal National Theatre in London. In 2006, the Royal Institution of Great Britain named it one of the best science-related works ever written.The play has dual plot lines, one historical and one modern, which share the same physical setting. In the 19th century, the play follows the young Thomasina, a mathematical genius far ahead of her time, and her tutor, Septimus Hodge... Read Arcadia Summary
A Sand County Almanac is a 1949 nonfiction book by the American naturalist and writer Aldo Leopold. The book is structured as a series of essays, beginning with Leopold’s description of a year on his farm and progressing to a series of essays on humanity’s relationship with nature, culminating in an argument for an ethical approach to the land. Published by Oxford University Press a year after Leopold’s death, the book is credited with having... Read A Sand County Almanac Summary
Bill Bryson (b. December 8, 1951) is a nonfiction author whose writing is especially concerned with travel, the English language, and science. In A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bryson attempts to succinctly summarize the Earth’s history. By looking at the most important players in the various scientific disciplines throughout the ages, he chronicles the most vital discoveries and theories in human history.Throughout the course of an introduction, thirty chapters, and nearly five-hundred pages, Bryson... Read A Short History of Nearly Everything Summary
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson, PhD, is a popular science book about astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology. The book outlines our current knowledge about the creation of the universe, supernovas, black holes, the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, invisible light, and how Earth and its materials came to be. On its release in 2017, the book became a #1 New York Times bestseller; it remained on the list for... Read Astrophysics for People in a Hurry Summary
David Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature was first published in 1740. Although the book did not sell well on its release, it became one of the key texts of the Enlightenment. It was especially known for its argument that human knowledge is based on direct experience and observation—a school of philosophy known as empiricism—and that human behavior is not based on reason, but on emotions. Divided into three books, A Treatise of Human Nature... Read A Treatise of Human Nature Summary
At the Mountains of Madness is a science-fiction novella written by H. P. Lovecraft in 1931 and published in Astounding Stories in 1936. Like much of Lovecraft’s work, it also helped establish the genre of cosmic horror, or what Lovecraft called “weird fiction”: horror that relies on existential anxieties about humanity’s place in the universe to achieve its effects. The story involves a research team discovering an ancient city buried beneath the Antarctic. At the... Read At the Mountains of Madness Summary
A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail is a 1998 travel book by American-British author Bill Bryson. The book was a New York Times bestseller, and a 2014 Cable News Network (CNN) poll named it the funniest travel book ever written. In addition, it inspired the 2015 film A Walk in the Woods starring Robert Redford as Bryson, Nick Nolte as Stephen Katz (his primary hiking companion), and Emma Thompson as... Read A Walk in the Woods Summary
“A White Heron” is the most popular short story by American author Sarah Orne Jewett. A work of American regionalism and romanticism, the tale emphasizes the setting, the human-animal connection, a celebration of nature, and individual experience. Jewett is a famous figure in literary regionalism, and her work often explores themes of the natural world. In “A White Heron,” Jewett uses literary techniques such as personification to make the environment and animals come alive as... Read A White Heron Summary
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life is a 2015 memoir by William Finnegan, a writer for The New Yorker and the author of several social journalism books such as A Complicated War: The Harrowing of Mozambique and Dateline Soweto: Travels with Black South African Reporters. In Barbarian Days, Finnegan reflects on his upbringing in California and Hawaii, as well as his coming of age in the late 1960s. He relays his experience of the surfing counterculture... Read Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life Summary
Between a Rock and a Hard Place is a 2004 adventure and survival memoir by American mountain climber Aron Ralston. The narrative focuses on Ralston’s near-death experience when his arm became stuck under a boulder in a canyon in Utah, where he remained trapped for five days until he amputated his arm. Dealing with profound existential themes, the book garnered critical acclaim and became a New York Times bestseller. A 2010 film adaptation titled 127... Read Between a Rock and a Hard Place Summary
Seminal American psychologist B.F. Skinner published Beyond Freedom and Dignity in 1971. The text argues for a more orderly structuring of society, especially through the implementation of psychological research. It was heavily criticized by other prominent intellectuals of the era, including Noam Chomsky, for its devaluation of human agency, and Richard Sennett for its overabundance of unproven statements and its underlying attempt to reinstate 18th century conservative, Victorian values. The criticism sparked a public debate... Read Beyond Freedom and Dignity Summary
Written in 2013, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants is a nonfiction book by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. The work examines modern botany and environmentalism through the lens of the traditions and cultures of the Indigenous peoples of North America. Through a series of personal reflections, the author explores the connection between living things and human efforts to cultivate a more sustainable... Read Braiding Sweetgrass Summary
Brian's Return (1999) is a young adult fiction novel and the fourth book in author Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet series. Paulsen draws on his personal experiences from the wilderness to create Brian’s outdoor adventure and survival narrative throughout the series, stating in the author note, “Virtually all that happens to Brian in these books has happened to me at some point in my life” (112). Paulsen was awarded the Newberry Honor in 1988 for Hatchet, the first... Read Brian's Return Summary
Candide, or Optimism was first published in 1759 by the French writer Voltaire (born Francois-Marie Arouet in 1694, died in 1778). The most famous and widely read work published by Voltaire, Candide is a satire that critiques contemporary philosophy, and specifically Leibnizian optimism, which posited the doctrine of the best of all possible worlds. Along with other French contemporaries, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Denis Diderot, and Montesquieu, Voltaire published at the height of the French... Read Candide Summary
Cane, Jean Toomer’s most famous book, was first published in 1923. The original publication of the novel was a foundational moment in the Harlem Renaissance literary movement. Cane’s reissue (after being out of print for many years) in 1967 came out during the Second Renaissance of African American literature. This guide cites the 2019 Penguin Books edition. This guide also briefly mentions lynching and other racial violence as they appear in the novel.Plot SummaryCane is... Read Cane Summary
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck was originally published in 1945. A Nobel Prize-winning writer, Steinbeck grew up in Salinas, California, which is near Monterey—the location of Cannery Row. Aside from a few years in Palo Alto, New York, and Los Angeles, Steinbeck spent most of his adult life living in Monterey County, and he drew on his personal experiences to write Cannery Row.Considered literary fiction or classic literature, Cannery Row is realistic and was written... Read Cannery Row Summary
Consilience is the bringing together of facts and theories from many fields of study to create a coherent, unified system of knowledge. Consilience, published in 1998 by Harvard scientist Edward O. Wilson, argues that the grand quest to unite all human thought, begun during the post-Renaissance Enlightenment era, should continue today, centered on the intellectual power of the scientific method. Professor Wilson believes that science is the foremost method of organized thought ever developed, a... Read Consilience Summary
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things is a work of nonfiction by William McDonough and Michael Braungart, published in 2002. The book argues that a radical change must be made to the Western world’s industrial and manufacturing systems, which are devastating to the natural world in their present state. Through discussions of environmentalism, industrialism, and design, the authors urge us, as a society, to think differently about what it means to be... Read Cradle To Cradle Summary
Desert Solitaire is Edward Abbey’s 1968 memoir of his six months serving as a park ranger in Utah’s Arches National Park in the late 1950s. Throughout the book, Abbey describes his vivid and moving encounters with nature in her various forms: animals, storms, trees, rock formations, cliffs and mountains. He communicates an uncommon reverence for nature, and an unmistakable disdain for tame, cultured humanity, including the vast majority of the tourists who visit the park... Read Desert Solitaire Summary
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a 1968 novel by American science fiction author Philip K. Dick. Set in a future version of San Francisco in the aftermath of a destructive world war, the novel tells the story of Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter who makes a living by tracking down and killing human-like androids. Dick was already an established science fiction author by 1968; he won the Hugo Award for The Man in... Read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Summary
Einstein’s Dreams (1993) by Alan Lightman is a best-selling novel that explores the intersection of art and science, and the nature of time. The novel imagines the dreams of a fictionalized version of Albert Einstein to explain various theories about time, leading up to Einstein’s 1905 theory of special relativity, which he formed while working as a patent clerk and starting a family in Berne, Switzerland.Each chapter of the novel features a dream that exemplifies... Read Einstein's Dreams Summary
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World—And Why Things Are Better Than You Think, written by Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, and Anna Rosling Rönnlund, was published by Flatiron Books in 2018. This book examines how people across cultures view the world through a negative lens, which leads them to believe conditions everywhere are declining. Doctor and global health expert Hans Rosling offers research and anecdotes from his medical experience and his lectures to unpack... Read Factfulness Summary
In 2006, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, New York Times journalist Elizabeth Kolbert published Field Notes from a Catastrophe, an urgent review of climate change. The book began as a tripartite publication in the New Yorker, for which the political journalist received a National Magazine Award. Kolbert’s investigation begins on Greenland’s west coast, where natives have noticed the shrinking of icebergs for years. In another northerly location, the Alaskan island of Shishmaref is disappearing... Read Field Notes from a Catastrophe Summary
Future Home of the Living God is a 2017 speculative fiction novel by American author Louise Erdrich. Told by Cedar Hawk Songmaker, a pregnant Native American woman in her mid-twenties living in Minneapolis, the story consists of her reflections as she waits to give birth. In the novel’s pre-apocalyptic America, human evolution has reversed, meaning that the species has begun to biologically regress into an infertile state. Meanwhile, the United States government has undermined citizens’... Read Future Home of the Living God Summary
In Newbery medalist Louis Sachar’s sci-fi thriller Fuzzy Mud (2015), Tamaya and Marshall cut through the restricted woods behind their school to avoid a bully—but encounter a strange mud that has the potential to destroy nearly all life on Earth. While Marshall struggles with the emotional effects of being bullied, Tamaya develops an unusually aggressive rash from the mud and worries that in protecting Marshall she has gravely injured Chad. Each character faces difficult ethical... Read Fuzzy Mud Summary
Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century, was written by Dr. Charles King, and published in 2019 by Penguin Random House. King is a professor of International Affairs and Government at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and the author of 10 books, predominantly on the subject of society, government, and culture in Eastern Europe. Gods of the Upper Air is a New... Read Gods of the Upper Air Summary
Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life (2016) is Pulitzer Prize-winning author, biologist, and environmental advocate Edward O. Wilson’s in-depth look at the planetary threat of mass extinction, known as the Sixth Extinction, taking place at humanity’s own hands. The current rate of extinction is nearly 1,000 times higher than during the pre-human era, and traditional conservation movements will not work fast enough to save the natural world. However, Wilson argues that there is still time... Read Half-Earth Summary
High Tide in Tucson is a series of essays by heralded American novelist Barbara Kingsolver, collected and published in 1995. The essays are wide-ranging in subject matter, addressing topics from politics, to nature, to midcentury domestic life, but all reflect Kingsolver’s observations about herself and the people around her. Prior to her writing career, Kingsolver had a wide range of other professional experiences that influence essays in the book.Most of the essays in High Tide... Read High Tide in Tucson Summary
H Is for Hawk (2014) is British author Helen MacDonald’s award-winning memoir about her attempts to train a goshawk named Mabel in the wake of her father’s death. It is a memoir of grief, self-discovery, and the healing power of nature. MacDonald intersperses her descriptions of training Mabel with references to the memoirs of T.H. White, who writes about his own hapless attempts at falconry in the 1930s. The memoir was an instant bestseller and... Read H Is For Hawk Summary
SummaryHoly the Firm is a 1977 book on Christian spirituality by American naturalist and author Annie Dillard. Dillard, whose 1974 Pilgrim at Tinker Creek won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction, is often championed for her ability to describe and narrativize the natural world. In Holy the Firm, Dillard applies this ability to what happened during a three-day period on an island in Puget Sound. Dillard ultimately stayed on this Island for two years... Read Holy the Firm Summary
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2015) is a work of popular science by Israeli writer, professor, and futurist Yuval Noah Harari. Published in multiple languages, it is a continuation of the work of Harari’s previous book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. While Sapiens contextualized the advents of modernity within humans’ evolutionary legacy, Homo Deus speculates about what lies in wait for humanity in the distant future. Harari grounds his discussion in an... Read Homo Deus Summary
How the Mind Works is a 1997 non-fiction book by Steven Pinker, who presents his ideas on how the human mind developed and how it produces the feats we take for granted every day, such as talking, walking, and making friends. Pinker is a cognitive neuroscientist who studies language acquisition in children. He approaches the study of the mind from a psychological and cognitive perspective, but he did extensive research for the book and brings... Read How The Mind Works Summary
How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence (2018) was written by Michael Pollan after curiosity and a personal desire to experience psychedelics for himself prompted exploration into psychedelic research. Pollan uses multiple forms of narrative to weave a story that’s part history, part memoir, part biomedical nonfiction, and part travelogue. The book follows the history of LSD and psilocybin as well as... Read How to Change Your Mind Summary
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson was published in 1954. The novel depicts a post-apocalyptic world in which people infected with a contagious disease behave like vampires. The last human man, Robert Neville, must protect himself as he studies the scientific basis for the disease. I Am Legend discusses moral relativism, the evolution of the horror genre, and loneliness. It has been adapted several times, most recently as the 2007 film I Am Legend starring... Read I Am Legend Summary
I Am Number Four (2010) is the first book in the modern young adult science fiction series Lorien Legacies by Pittacus Lore, the pseudonym of authors James Frey and Jobie Hughes. Despite the novel’s mixed reviews, I Am Number Four spent seven successive weeks at the top of the New York Times children’s bestseller list. The novel was adapted into a film of the same name in 2011 by DreamWorks Pictures.Plot SummaryI Am Number Four... Read I Am Number Four Summary
I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life is an in-depth introduction to the microbiome and how it interacts with humans and other species. Author Ed Yong is a science writer for The Atlantic. His writing has also appeared in many other publications, such as The New Yorker, Wired, The New York Times, and Nature. The book’s original hardcover edition was published in 2016; this guide is based on the... Read I Contain Multitudes Summary
If on a winter’s night a traveler is a 1979 postmodernist novel by Italo Calvino. The dual narrative is composed of two parallel strands: numbered chapters in which the narrator directly describes to the audience the process of reading the book, and titled chapters constructed from hypothetical first chapters of various books that the audience is reading. The innovative novel has been praised by critics and hailed as highly influential.This guide uses the 1998 Vintage... Read If on a Winter's Night a Traveler Summary
Susan Sontag’s 1978 book Illness as Metaphor is an 87-page work of critical theory exploring the language we use to describe disease and its victims. The work was originally published in the New York Review of Books as three long-form essays. Sontag wrote Illness as Metaphor while undergoing treatment for breast cancer, though not mentioned in the text. This genre—critical theoretical examinations of social and cultural events or phenomena—was where Sontag established her reputation. Illness... Read Illness As Metaphor Summary
Inferno by Dan Brown is the fourth installment in Brown’s Robert Langdon series of mystery/thriller novels, following (in order) Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code, and The Lost Symbol, and preceding Origin. Each edition covers a self-contained story, so readers need not follow the series in order, and often includes themes centered on European and Christian history and cultural traditions. The title character, Robert Langdon, is the only recurring character. Inferno won the Goodreads... Read Inferno Summary
Inherit the Wind is a 1955 play by American playwrights Jerome Lawrence (1915-2004) and Robert E. Lee (1918-1994). It is based on the 1925 Scopes trial, where schoolteacher John T. Scopes was put on trial for teaching the theory of evolution at a time when doing so was illegal. Although Inherit the Wind draws from the events of the Scopes trial, it deviates significantly from the details of the case, as Lawrence and Lee were... Read Inherit the Wind Summary
Published in 1971, In the Shadow of Man is the third and most famous book by British primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall. The work details Goodall’s groundbreaking study of chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park and her unlikely journey from being a secretary in the UK to heading a major chimpanzee study in East Africa and becoming one of the world’s foremost primatology experts. Functioning as both a memoir and a scientific exploration of chimp... Read In the Shadow of Man Summary
Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart is a work of nonfiction by neurosurgeon and philanthropist Dr. James R. Doty. It is at once a memoir, a self-help book, and a work of popular science; Doty draws on his professional knowledge to explain the scientific underpinnings of meditative practices like visualization, while also exploring the transformative effect these practices can have on... Read Into the Magic Shop Summary
Isaac's Storm is a nonfiction book published in 2000 by the American author and journalist Erik Larson. Subtitled A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Storm in History, the book chronicles the events surrounding the September 9, 1900 Galveston, Texas hurricane which killed between 6,000-10,000 people, making it the deadliest natural disaster in US history. The story is largely told through the experiences of Isaac Monroe Cline, a meteorologist who led the US Weather Bureau... Read Isaac's Storm Summary
Jean Craighead George’s children’s novel Julie of the Wolves (1972), set in 20th-century Alaska, tells the story of a 13-year-old Eskimo girl named Miyax who is lost in the wilderness after escaping a violent husband and a life that does not suit her. Miyax struggles to survive in a harsh environment as she attempts to make her way to San Francisco. A pack of wolves helps her, and she learns to deepen her appreciation of... Read Julie Of The Wolves Summary
Professor Hope Jahren’s 2016 memoir, Lab Girl, chronicles the author’s life and experience as a geobiologist. The memoir contains three parts, each spanning a major period in Jahren’s life. Autobiographical chapters are followed by brief, lyrical chapters examining various plants and their habits. These chapters on plants contain extensive use of personification, relating plant experience to that of humans.Part 1, “Roots and Leaves,” spans Jahren’s childhood to her first teaching job.The author grows up in... Read Lab Girl Summary
League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions, and the Battle for Truth is a 2013 work of investigative nonfiction by brothers Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru. The book chronicles the National Football League’s concussion crisis, which came to light with a few career-ending head injuries in the 1990s and became an even more serious issue as numerous deceased former players were found to have developed chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). League of Denial won the PEN/ESPN Award... Read League of Denial Summary
Dava Sobel’s best-selling book Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time tells the story of the 18th-century contest to find a precise way to locate a ship at sea, the clockmaker who built the first timepiece that could do so, and his battle with the astronomers whose alternate method competed for the winning prize. Replete with sea disasters, brilliant scientists, and scheming politicians, Longitude won... Read Longitude Summary
“Meg Merrilies” (sometimes titled “Old Meg she was a gipsy” or simply “old Meg”) is a short, playful ballad by the English Romantic poet John Keats. It was written on Keats’s walking tour of northern England and Scotland in 1818. At the time, Keats was worried about the health of his brother, Tom, and about his own health; the tuberculosis that would soon kill Tom had already begun to manifest in Keats. While his doctor... Read Meg Merrilies Summary
One of the founding documents of Western philosophy, Plato’s Meno recounts a dialog on the nature of virtue between Socrates and his pupil Meno, a rising star among the leaders of ancient Greece. They discuss how virtue can be recognized, where it comes from, and whether it can be taught.Meno takes place in 402 BCE in Athens; Plato, Socrates’s most famous student, in 385 BCE wrote down his recollection of the conversation. It offers a... Read Meno Summary
Written by historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (2010) is a nonfiction account of how a loose-knit group of scientists—Fred Seitz, Fred Singer, Bill Nierenberg, and Robert Jastrow—with similar political agendas worked to prevent government regulation by creating the appearance of scientific debate on several topics. These topics included smoking (both first- and secondhand hand... Read Merchants of Doubt Summary
Aristotle’s Metaphysics, a foundational text in Western philosophy, is attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher and polymath Aristotle and is believed to have been compiled around 350 BCE. As a work of philosophy, the book, thought to be based on his lectures and subsequently recorded by his students, dwells in the genre of metaphysical inquiry, exploring topics such as existence, reality, and the nature of being. Aristotle, a student of Plato and a teacher to... Read Metaphysics Summary
Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster (2019) is a non-fiction book by the English author and journalist Adam Higginbotham. The book explores the causes and consequences of the 1986 explosion at the Soviet Union’s Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station in Ukraine, which killed at least 31 plant workers and firefighters and resulted in the evacuation of over 100,000 people. The radioactive fallout from the disaster ostensibly caused an unknown number... Read Midnight in Chernobyl Summary
Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World is a 2003 nonfiction book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Kidder. It is an expansion of “The Good Doctor,” a 2000 article for The New Yorker and the winner of the 2004 Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage. The book profiles Dr. Paul Edward Farmer, co-founder of Partners in Health, as he treats patients in Haiti and... Read Mountains Beyond Mountains Summary
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH is a children’s science fiction novel written in 1971 by Robert C. O’Brien. It tells the story of a field mouse whose son becomes ill as moving day approaches, so she enlists the help of a group of highly intelligent experimental rats for help. Robert C. O’Brien was inspired to write the Rats of NIMH after a visit to the National Institute of Mental Health’s experimental rat compound... Read Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH Summary
Farley Mowat published Never Cry Wolf in 1963. The book is a non-fiction memoir of the 18 months he spent in the Barrens, a treeless area of tundra, studying arctic wolves for the Dominion Wildlife Service. Told that these wolves killed caribou for sport, Farley was surprised to discover that wolves never attacked humans and only culled the deer herds of unhealthy animals. Farley also encountered rampant inefficiency among his government colleagues, which he reports... Read Never Cry Wolf Summary
Novum Organum is an epistemological tract written by Francis Bacon, an early modern statesman and polymath. It was published in 1620 and written in Latin. Its full title is Novum Organum, sive Indicia Vera de Interpretatione Naturae, meaning “New Organon, or true suggestions for the interpretation of nature.” Novum Organum was intended to be the second part of a larger work—the Instauratio Magna, or “Great Instauration,” Bacon’s proposal for an overhaul and new birth of... Read Novum Organum Summary
Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (published in 1859) is a seminal work in evolutionary biology of great historical and scientific importance. Darwinian thought, especially regarding evolution, is now commonly accepted as the most powerful theory in biology and the natural history of species—and the system of natural selection that this theory advanced has been applied (and misappropriated)... Read On the Origin of Species Summary
Oryx and Crake is a dystopian science-fiction novel that deals with extreme genetic engineering. The plot does not unfold in a linear fashion, nor are the facts established from the outset. Rather, the novel moves back and forward in time, often on a chapter-by-chapter basis, and the reader gradually pieces together what has happened.The novel begins by establishing its central character, “Snowman,” who we find sitting near the sea. He is dishevelled and gaunt, and... Read Oryx and Crake Summary
Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void is one of several bestselling nonfiction works by science writer and humorist Mary Roach. Published in 2010, the work focuses on the human side of space travel and offers behind-the-scenes accounts of peculiar and taboo topics such as sex, vomit, and toilets in space. Roach writes from a candid, outsider’s point of view and demystifies some of the grandeur of space travel by reporting... Read Packing for Mars Summary
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard is a personal narrative describing her observations of a creek near her home in Virginia over the course of a year. Dillard, a suburban housewife, uses a first-person narrative voice to describe her walks, paying homage to a tradition of nature writing while posing large questions about the nature of God and wilderness. The author blends research into the natural world, philosophical inquiry, and poetic imagery while engaging... Read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek Summary
Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907) is a philosophical work by the American philosopher and psychologist William James. It consists of eight lectures originally delivered at the Lowell Institute in Boston and at Columbia University in New York. James is closely associated with the philosophy of pragmatism, originally formulated by the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, and this book is considered the major statement of the ideas and principles of... Read Pragmatism Summary
Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard (Harper Teen, 2015) is the first book in the Red Queen series, which follows one girl’s battle to bring equality to her people in a dystopian fantasy world where the power hungry Silvers oppress the lower Red class. The book won the 2015 Goodreads Choice Award for Debut Goodreads Author and was nominated for the 2015 Goodreads Choice Award for Young Adult Fantasy & Science Fiction. New York Times bestselling... Read Red Queen Summary
Riddley Walker (1980) is a dystopian science fiction novel by Russell Hoban. The novel is famous for its use of a phonetic, idiosyncratic version of English, spoken by the characters who live in a post-apocalyptic society. Riddley Walker won numerous awards, including the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1981.Plot SummaryA young boy named Riddley Walker lives in Inland, the name given to the south of England 2,000 years after a nuclear war sent human... Read Riddley Walker Summary
Ruin and Rising is the third and final book in Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone trilogy of young adult fantasy adventure/romance novels. Ruin and Rising was originally published in 2014. Bardugo has written 12 novels as of 2021, many of which are set in the “GrishaVerse” world first portrayed in the novel Shadow and Bone. The Shadow and Bone trilogy, combined with Bardugo’s Six of Crows duology, has been adapted as a television miniseries. Before... Read Ruin and Rising Summary
First published in Hebrew in 2011, with the English translation following in 2014, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind examining the shaping of human history. Israeli author Yuval Noah Harari shines a light, sometimes harshly, on how humans have exploited the ideas of capitalism, religion, and politics to control the globe and put the species Homo sapiens on the threshold of banishing natural selection. Sapiens landed on the New York Times best-seller list and won... Read Sapiens Summary
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring is widely regarded as a foundational text of the 20th century environmental movement. Originally published as a series in The New Yorker, Carson’s essays carefully articulate the impacts of widespread chemical use for insect and plant control. Throughout the text, Carson emphasizes the ways that humans disregard the interrelation of species on earth, and argues that as a result, humans are at a pivotal moment. If methods of insect control are... Read Silent Spring Summary
Stanisław Lem, a prominent Polish philosopher, essayist, and literary critic who achieved notoriety in the mid-20th century, is best known for his science fiction novels. Among these books, Solaris is regarded by most reviewers and critics as Lem’s masterpiece. Published in Polish in 1961, the English version was translated from the French version in 1970—which Lem allegedly referred to as “poor” (Flood, Alison. “First Ever Direct English Translation of Solaris Published.” The Guardian, 15 June... Read Solaris Summary
Sometimes a Great Notion (1964) is American author Ken Kesey’s second novel. The plot revolves around the Stampers, a family of independent loggers who choose to continue working in opposition to a logging union’s dispute with company leadership. The novel uses an experimental structure, switching between first-person and omniscient narrators and telling the story from the perspectives of multiple characters. Kesey and his counterculture group, the “Merry Pranksters,” were the precursors to the hippies of... Read Sometimes a Great Notion Summary
Sophie's World is a young adult book by Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder. The book follows main character Sophie, a young girl who is fourteen years old and living with her parents in Norway. Sophie's life changes dramatically when she receives a series of strange postcards, which ask her large, existential questions about the world around her. Each day, Sophie receives a postcard, and in the evenings she receives a package from a man named Alberto... Read Sophie's World Summary
Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic is a 2012 narrative nonfiction work about the relationship between animal infections and human disease. It was nominated for several awards and won the Science and Society Book Award, given by the National Association of Science Writers, and the Society of Biology (UK) Book Award in General Biology. In Spillover, Quammen’s narrative alternates between the outbreak and eventual discovery of recent emerging diseases, and the scientific discoveries... Read Spillover Summary
American author Michael Crichton’s thriller novel State of Fear (HarperCollins Publishers, 2004) dramatizes the debate surrounding global warming. Set in the contemporary world, the novel tells the story of a group of characters attempting to thwart eco-terrorist threats. The plot exudes intrigue and action—including shootouts, deadly crocodiles, deceptive agents, and the faked death of George Morton, the man who links the characters together. State of Fear is also a polemic casting doubt on the theory... Read State of Fear Summary
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers is a nonfiction book about the cultural history of the human cadaver, written by Mary Roach. Roach explores how, for nearly two thousand years, the deceased human body has been used in research and experimentation leading to some of the most consequential innovations of the medical, scientific, and mechanical (among others) fields throughout human history. Across cultures and civilizations, death has been shrouded in mystery and taboo, yet... Read Stiff Summary
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is a short, structured poem written in 1922 by the American poet Robert Frost, one of the foremost poets of the 20th century. The poem was originally published in 1923 in the magazine New Republic, and then in Frost’s poetry collection New Hampshire. The poem explores themes of nature, beauty, duty, life, and death, and is written using simple and accessible language that has made it beloved by... Read Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening Summary
Stories of Your Life and Others is a collection of short stories published in 2002 by the American science fiction and fantasy writer Ted Chiang. The book contains eight stories that belong to science fiction, science fantasy, alternative history, and magic realism genres. Seven of the eight stories appeared in previous publications. In the stories, Chiang explores concepts including the ethics of science, the benefits and dangers of intelligence, and cultural differences in alternate realities... Read Stories of Your Life and Others Summary
Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion by Pulitzer Prize-winning author and academic Edward J. Larson is a work of historical non-fiction first published in 1997 that discusses the history of the Scopes trial, the events surrounding it, and the aftermath. The 2006 edition includes a new afterword by the author.Larson begins by describing the geopolitical environment in the United States at the time of the 1925... Read Summer for the Gods Summary
The Andromeda Strain is a 1969 science fiction novel by Michael Crichton. The book tells the story of the Wildfire Project, an initiative to investigate a mysterious alien organism discovered in Arizona. The Andromeda Strain has been adapted for film and television. It was highly praised by critics on release and credited with creating the techno-thriller genre.Plot SummaryA military team is dispatched to recover a satellite that unexpectedly crashed to Earth near Piedmont, Arizona. Everyone... Read The Andromeda Strain Summary
The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time is a Pulitzer Prize-winning non-fiction book written in 1994 by Jonathan Weiner, a journalist and popular science author. This substantially unchanged edition was published in 2014 with a new preface.Weiner’s narrative relays the theory and history of evolutionary science through a case study of finch species in the Galápagos Islands. It follows evolutionists Peter and Rosemary Grant as they build substantially on the... Read The Beak of the Finch Summary
The Bean Trees (first published in 1988) is the first novel by Barbara Kingsolver. Kingsolver is an American novelist, essayist, and poet who holds degrees in ecology and evolutionary biology, and her work often addresses biodiversity, social justice, communities, and people’s interactions with their environment. The Bean Trees is a work of realistic adult fiction that follows Taylor Greer as she leaves her rural upbringing in Kentucky, drives across the country to Tucson, Arizona, and... Read The Bean Trees Summary
“The Bear” is a work of short fiction by William Faulkner, first published in The Saturday Evening Post in May 1942. Faulkner subsequently expanded the story and included it in Go Down, Moses, a collection of related short stories sometimes considered a novel, published later that year. An abbreviated version also appears in his 1955 anthology, Big Woods. As historical fiction set in an imagined Mississippi county, “The Bear” traces a young man’s development in... Read The Bear Summary
The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America (2009) tells the true story of the Great Fire of 1910, which burned 3 million acres in Idaho, Montana, Washington, and British Columbia, and is believed to be the largest wildfire in United States history. Authored by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Timothy Egan, the book describes the newly created United States Forest Service effort to stop the fire and details President Teddy Roosevelt’s conservation battles... Read The Big Burn Summary
Author and journalist Charles Fishman published The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water in 2011. This nonfiction book examines the history and origins of water, the rising concern of water scarcity, and our changed relationship with the substance. Fishman asserts that people generally take water for granted, even though it is crucial to the environment and to society. The book examines how we can repair this dismissive attitude, which Fishman contends... Read The Big Thirst Summary
Widely known for his best-selling books A Short History of Nearly Everything and A Walk in the Woods, author and educator Bill Bryson published another bestseller in 2019. The Body: a Guide for Occupants is a tour of human anatomy and its wonders. Compiled for the general reader, The Body is a compendium of facts, many amazing or weird, about human anatomy and physiology. It explores the various organ systems—skin, brain, eyes, nose, mouth and throat... Read The Body: A Guide for Occupants Summary
Michael Pollan’s 2001 nonfiction book, The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World, asks the reader to stop considering only the human point of view of nature and to take the perspective of the plants themselves. He writes about how humans have affected the evolution of plants and in turn plants have affected our evolution as well. To Pollan, humans are much like the bumblebee in that we rely on plants as much... Read The Botany Of Desire Summary
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba is a memoir about the author’s struggle to build a windmill in his village in Malawi. Beyond that, it’s a story about hope and determination. The book opens with a prologue that shows William turning his windmill on for the first time. With this success in mind, the reader is then thrust into a world of superstition and government corruption that creates obstacles to such innovation... Read The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind Summary
The Bronze Horseman: A Saint Petersburg Story is a narrative poem by 19th-century Russian poet, dramatist, and novelist Alexander Pushkin, who is considered Russia’s greatest poet. It was written in 1833, but was not published until 1841, after Pushkin’s death due to censorship of Pushkin’s works by the Russian government.Regarded as one of Pushkin’s most accomplished works, The Bronze Horseman has had a marked influence on Russian literature. The poem tells of the founding of Saint... Read The Bronze Horseman Summary
The Control of Nature by John McPhee was published in 1989 and includes three essays/articles reported from different geographic locales that reflect one common theme: man attempting to control nature. McPhee got his start in journalism writing for Time magazine. He has written for The New Yorker for several decades and has published 30 books, including Annals of the Former World, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize. He has also taught writing at Princeton... Read The Control of Nature Summary
Trapped in a picnic basket, Chester Cricket travels from his peaceful Connecticut home to the bustling Times Square subway station in George Selden’s classic children’s novel, The Cricket in Times Square (1960). There, Chester makes three good friends who help him navigate—and enjoy—his new city life: Mario Bellini, a young boy whose parents run a struggling newsstand; Tucker, a sociable mouse; and Tucker’s best friend, the cultured Harry Cat. Mishaps in the newsstand set Mama... Read The Cricket In Times Square Summary
The Death and Life of the Great Lakes is a nonfiction book of science journalism delving into key past and present issues surrounding the ecology, politics, and commerce of the Great Lakes. The book was published in 2017 and was the recipient of the J. Anthony Lukas Award as well as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Author Dan Egan is a reporter who covers the Great Lakes for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He is... Read The Death and Life of the Great Lakes Summary
Richard Preston’s The Demon in the Freezer is a nonfiction account of the recent history of bioweapons and epidemic diseases; his focus for much of the book is smallpox, the “demon” of the title. The book begins with a discussion of the lethal bioweapons attack that took place early in October of 2001. In this instance, letters containing anthrax were mailed to publications and Senate offices in the United States. However, researchers at the United... Read The Demon in the Freezer Summary
Published in 2010, New York Times bestseller The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements, by science writer Sam Kean, tells the story of the atomic elements that make up the Earth and everything else in the universe. Kean describes how they were discovered and the unique and often strange properties they possess. He also tells intriguing and sometimes heartbreaking... Read The Disappearing Spoon Summary
The Double Helix is American scientist James Watson’s personal account of the discovery of the structure of DNA. He and Francis Crick succeed in determining the three-dimensional chemical structure of DNA in 1953, while they were working together at Cavendish Laboratory, at Cambridge University. Their discovery is widely acknowledged as one of the most important scientific discoveries of the 20th century and a ground-breaking event for biology, genetics, and our understanding of life itself. This... Read The Double Helix Summary
The Elephant Whisperer: My Life With the Herd in the African Wild (2009) is a memoir by Lawrence Anthony, detailing his experiences with rehabilitating a traumatized herd of elephants on his game reserve in South Africa. The book explores themes of bonding and communicating with animals, the inherent interconnectedness of nature, and the challenges of conservation efforts.Anthony was an internationally renowned conservationist and environmentalist. He was the co-owner and head of conservation at the Thula... Read The Elephant Whisperer Summary
The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate is a young adult novel by Jacqueline Kelly set in Fentress, Texas at the turn of the 20th century. The novel follows eleven-year-old Calpurnia Tate, or Callie as she prefers to be called, as she begins to explore her interests, desires, and fascination with the natural world under the thumb of her at first intimidating, but ultimately supportive and intelligent grandfather. Over the course of six months, Callie struggles between... Read The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate Summary
The Feather Thief by American author, screenwriter, and journalist Kirk Wallace Johnson is about the 2009 heist of the British Natural History Museum at Tring. It retraces the background of the 20-year-old American thief, professional flautist, and master fly-tier, Edwin Rist, who stole 299 rare bird skins from the museum. Johnson first heard about the heist while fly-fishing on a river in New Mexico. Living with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after years of aid work... Read The Feather Thief Summary
Joe Haldeman’s science fiction novel The Forever War was published in 1974 and is considered a classic of the genre: Along with Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, The Forever War invented the science fiction war novel. It won the 1975 Nebula Award as well as the 1976 Hugo and Locus awards. Haldeman, a veteran of the Vietnam War and a Purple Heart recipient, infuses his firsthand knowledge of war and military protocols into his futuristic setting... Read The Forever War Summary
The Future of Life is a 2002 non-fiction book of popular science by the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and biologist Edward O. Wilson. In the book, Wilson draws on his decades of experience as a biologist of invertebrates, as well as his years spent advocating for conservation causes, to paint a picture of the threat people pose to the world’s biodiversity and to suggest ways that humanity can change course. The book is structured as... Read The Future of Life Summary
In his short story “The Garden of Forking Paths,” Jorge Luis Borges uses the metaphor of the labyrinth to suggest the presence of infinite possible realities. First published in 1941 under the Spanish title “El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan,” the story reflects new modes of thought and expression, ranging from developments in quantum mechanics to the advent of detective thrillers. A spy mystery, a philosophical puzzle, and a mythic history all in one... Read The Garden of Forking Paths Summary
M.R. Carey’s The Girl with All the Gifts began as a short story (“Iphigenia in Aulis”) and was adapted into a 2016 film for which Carey also wrote the screenplay. The novel, which Carey wrote concurrently, was published in 2014. It is a post-apocalyptic horror tale that fits uneasily into the zombie/science fiction literary genre. While The Girl with All the Gifts incorporates plenty of genre tropes—cannibalism, disease, high-speed chases, feeding frenzies—the core of the... Read The Girl with All the Gifts Summary
The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History is a 2004 nonfiction work by American historian John M. Barry. It traces the history of the worst pandemic in world history, the influenza pandemic of 1918 and 1919. Barry approaches the subject with a broad audience in mind, placing the story of the flu inside the broader story of medical and scientific history. While focusing on the men who fought the pandemic, Barry... Read The Great Influenza Summary
The Hot Zone by Richard Preston is a non-fiction thriller, published in 1994, two years after his article “Crisis in the Hot Zone” appeared in The New Yorker. Preston writes often on Ebola, bioweapons, and emerging viruses. The Hot Zone deals with the breaking of Ebola into the human species and a 1989 incident in which an Ebola-like virus, the Reston virus, sweeps through a monkey quarantine facility outside of Washington, DC. The book served... Read The Hot Zone Summary
The Housekeeper and the Professor, written by Yōko Ogawa, is a work of literary fiction set in modern-day Japan and loosely based on the book The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, a biography of the mathematician Paul Erdös. The Housekeeper and the Professor was originally published in Japanese in 2003; it sold more than one million copies and received the Hon’ya Taisho award in 2004. In 2006, it was adapted into a film version, titled... Read The Housekeeper and the Professor Summary
Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams is a landmark work in the field of psychoanalysis. First published in 1899, it is one of Freud's most famous and influential books. At its core, the book explores the significance of dreams in revealing the unconscious desires, fears, and conflicts of the individual. Freud argues that dreams are not just random collections of images and sensations, as was commonly held in his day. Neither are they inspirations from... Read The Interpretation of Dreams Summary
H. G. Wells is one of the earliest science fiction authors, sometimes referred to as the father of the genre. His 1897 novel, The Invisible Man, follows an albino scientist who discovers the secret to turning himself invisible. The novel’s blend of fantastical science and realistic, mundane detail is a signature of Wells. This novel has influenced generations of writers and artists, both through its powerful prose and fascinating plot, as well as for its... Read The Invisible Man Summary
“The Lake Isle of Innisfree” is a lyric poem written by William Butler Yeats, a prominent Irish poet, essayist, and dramatist, who was known for his promotion of Irish culture and its political autonomy. The poem appeared early in Yeats’s career and demonstrates his concern with incorporating positive Irish images and mythology into his writing as part of the Celtic Revival movement of the late 19th century. In the poem, the speaker expresses their longing... Read The Lake Isle of Innisfree Summary
The Man Who Knew Infinity is a 1991 biography of famed Indian mathematician Srinivāsa Ramanujan, written by Robert Kanigel. The text closely follows Ramanujan’s rise from humble origins to become one of the most influential mathematicians of the 20th century. Joining forces with another notable mathematician in his own right, G. H. Hardy of Cambridge University, Ramanujan produced some of the most insightful, imaginative, and original work in mathematics that is still studied today. From Ramanujan’s... Read The Man Who Knew Infinity Summary
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales (1973) is British neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks’s fourth book. Sacks is a renowned physician, professor, and writer whom the New York Times calls “the poet laureate of medicine.” Sacks is best known for his 1973 memoir Awakenings, in which he explores the history of the encephalitis lethargica epidemic. In 1990, the story was adapted into a critically acclaimed movie starring Robin Williams... Read The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat Summary
“The Man Who Planted Trees” is a short story published in 1953 by French author Jean Giono. It chronicles a shepherd’s three-decade-long effort to reforest a barren tract of land in Southeastern France. Spanning a time period shortly before World War I until shortly after World War II, the story is both an antiwar allegory and an environmental allegory. “The Man Who Planted Trees” inspired numerous adaptations across various mediums, including a 1988 Academy Award-winning... Read The Man Who Planted Trees Summary
Andy Weir’s debut novel, The Martian, was originally published in 2011 as serialized blog posts; after its 2014 book publication, it was a New York Times bestseller. A software engineer and son of a physicist and an electrical engineer, Weir identifies himself in the book jacket biography as a “lifelong space nerd,” and the novel is notable for staying strictly within the bounds of existing scientific understanding. Set just over two decades beyond the novel’s... Read The Martian Summary
In The Nature Principle, journalist and environmentalist Richard Louv calls for action against the nature-deficit disorder, a term he introduced in his bestselling novel Last Child in the Woods. Nature-deficit disorder is the mental, spiritual, emotional and physical detriment caused by a lack of connection with our natural environment. Written in five parts, Louv makes a compelling argument for decreasing the nature-deficit disorder in adults and presents recommendations for how to do so. Louv bases... Read The Nature Principle Summary
The Nine Billion Names of God is a collection of science-fiction short stories published in 1974 by the English author Arthur C. Clarke. Most of the stories in the collection were written in the late 1940s and ’50s. One of the most successful and prolific early science fiction writers, Clarke wrote about space exploration, scientific inventions such as satellites, and aliens long before humans even landed on the moon. His short story “The Sentinel,” which... Read The Nine Billion Names of God Summary
The Theogony is an epic poem by the archaic Greek poet Hesiod. It is both a theogony—or account of the origins of the gods—and a cosmogony, an explanation of the origins of the universe. At just over a thousand lines in length, the Theogony is among the earliest surviving works of Greek literature, dating to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. It is an epic poem, a genre defined by its meter (dactylic... Read Theogony Summary
The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan is an exploration of what people eat and why. Pollan is an immersive journalist who has studied and written on a wide range of topics including gardening, food, architecture, and psychedelics. Pollan is the Knight Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Each of Pollan’s books examines the intersection of humans and nature. Pollan’s 2001 book... Read The Omnivore's Dilemma Summary
The Orchid Thief is a nonfiction book by Susan Orlean, originally published in 1998. It is a narrative nonfiction account of the crimes and trial of John Laroche, accused of stealing endangered orchid species from the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve in Florida. The basic story of Laroche and his crimes originally ran as an article in The New Yorker, entitled “Orchid Fever” and published in 1995. The book expands the story and also details Orlean’s... Read The Orchid Thief Summary
The Perfect Storm is a 1997 nonfiction book by Sebastian Junger, who writes for numerous magazines, including Outside, American Heritage, and Men’s Journal. He has lived most of his life on the Massachusetts coast.In late September of 1991, the swordfishing boat Andrea Gail departs the town of Gloucester, Massachusetts with six men aboard, for a month-long fishing trip. In late October, as a powerful storm begins to build in the fishing waters of the North... Read The Perfect Storm Summary
Influenced by the dystopian futuristic vision of Margaret Atwood’s landmark 1985 feminist work The Handmaid’s Tale, Naomi Alderman’s 2016 novel The Power fuses genre elements of speculative fiction with the traditional historical novel. Part allegory, part satire, the novel depicts a near-contemporary world in which women move into positions of real power through an inexplicable genetic anomaly: they develop an extra braid of muscle along their collarbones that enables them to shoot devastating jolts of... Read The Power Summary
In The Selfish Gene, originally published in 1976, author and renowned British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins expands upon American biologist George C. Williams’s 1966 critique Adaptation and Natural Selection. In his text, Dawkins describes the molecular gene as the fundamental unit of evolution. Through the study of animal behavior, he explores numerous examples of natural selection. Like Williams, Dawkins shares a gene-centric view of evolution. Dawkins also extends Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by investigating... Read The Selfish Gene Summary
The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by American journalist Nicholas Carr has its roots in Carr’s essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” which was published in The Atlantic in 2008. The book was first published in the UK with the title The Shallows: How the Internet Is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember. It investigates the effects the Internet has on the brain with a central thesis that reading... Read The Shallows Summary
IntroductionThe Signature of All Things is an adult historical novel by American author Elizabeth Gilbert. It was published by Penguin Random House in 2013, and Gilbert had already established herself on the New York Times bestseller list with her two memoirs, Eat, Pray, Love (2006) and Committed (2010), after garnering critical acclaim for her earlier fiction, biographies, and magazine journalism. The Signature of All Things spans the life of the fictional Alma Whittaker, a keenly... Read The Signature of All Things Summary
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (2014) is a nonfiction book about the development, impact, and extinction of various species throughout the history of the world. Written by Elizabeth Kolbert, an American author, journalist, and Pulitzer Prize winner, the book focuses on Earth’s environmental, biological, and ecological aspects and how these factors impact the world and its inhabitants. Kolbert argues that we are currently in the process of experiencing a “Sixth Extinction” caused almost entirely... Read The Sixth Extinction Summary
The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness is a 2015 nonfiction book by naturalist and author Sy Montgomery. Inspired by a visit to an aquarium and an encounter with an octopus, Montgomery investigates the intelligence of these creatures, speculating on their emotional and rational capabilities while forming strong bonds with several octopuses. Along the way, she educates the reader about octopuses and their often mysterious physiology and motivations. The... Read The Soul of an Octopus Summary
Anne Fadiman’s non-fiction book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures chronicles the life of Lia Lee, a Hmong girl who lives with her family in Merced, California, in the 1980s and 1990s. The book examines the cultural misunderstandings and conflicting belief systems that result in Lia’s poor medical treatment after she is diagnosed with a severe form of epilepsy, Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome... Read The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down Summary
The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance is a 2013 non-fiction book by David Epstein that investigates the role of genetics in athletics. The Sports Gene became a New York Times best seller and was nominated for the 2014 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing. Epstein, an investigative reporter and a passionate runner, combines data from scientific research, interviews with experts, and biographies and anecdotes of individual athletes to paint a complex... Read The Sports Gene Summary
The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health—and a Vision for Change (2010) is a book by Annie Leonard. It is based on a short animated documentary with the same title (2007) written and narrated by Leonard. Leonard criticizes American consumer society that values novelty, accumulation, and low prices for being unsustainable. Overconsumption affects our health, our happiness, and our planet. Leonard travels from factories, to... Read The Story of Stuff Summary
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) by Thomas Kuhn stands as a seminal work that revolutionized the philosophy of science. As a scholar who shifted his focus from physics to the history of science, and later to the philosophy of science, Kuhn challenged prevailing notions about the nature of scientific progress, introducing concepts such as paradigms, normal science, and scientific revolutions. Situated at the nexus of science, history, and philosophy, Kuhn’s work upended the view... Read The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Summary
The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults (2014) is by American neurologist Frances E. Jensen with journalist Amy Ellis Nutt. A New York Times bestseller, the book was nominated for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing. The Teenage Brain is a guide to the workings of the adolescent brain aimed at parents. Using scientific research data combined with real-life stories and anecdotes, the author explains the changes... Read The Teenage Brain Summary
The Tiger Flu by Larissa Lai is a work of dystopian speculative fiction first published in 2018 by Arsenal Pulp Press, an independent publisher based in Vancouver, Canada. With its focus on futuristic technologies that merge and manipulate human biology, The Tiger Flu can be subclassified as a cyber/biopunk thriller. The book won the 2019 Lambda Literary Award, which recognizes and celebrates the best LGBTQ books of the year. A Chinese Canadian, lesbian writer, Larissa... Read The Tiger Flu Summary
Published in 1968, the essay “The Tragedy of the Commons,” by ecologist Garrett James Hardin, argues that human overpopulation will stress ecosystems beyond their limits and cause a resource catastrophe. The essay has greatly influenced environmentalists. Hardin was a politically controversial, award-winning science writer who taught ecology at the University of California at Santa Barbara for over 30 years. Critics on both sides of the political spectrum have resented not only some of his proposed... Read The Tragedy of the Commons Summary
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming is a 2019 non-fiction book by the American journalist David Wallace-Wells. Subtitled Life After Warming, the book explores the projected meteorological, sociological, and psychological consequences of climate change over the course of the 21st century. A New York Times bestseller, The Uninhabitable Earth appeared on numerous best books of the year lists, including those of The Economist, Time, and NPR. It is adapted from Wallace-Wells’s 2017 New York magazine... Read The Uninhabitable Earth Summary
The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Nature (1902) by William James is a philosophical examination of how religious revelations function in individuals’ lives and minds. This renowned work applies James’s theoretical framework of pragmatism to the study of the functionality of religion. James utilizes radical empiricism to examine both the subjective and objective experiences of religion. James argues that individual experiences, not major religious institutions, form the spiritual shape of the world. He... Read The Varieties of Religious Experience Summary
The War of the Worlds is a landmark science fiction novel published in 1897 by English author H. G. Wells. Its nameless narrator provides a firsthand account of the arrival of Martians in the area surrounding London and their subsequent devastation of central England. Vastly outmatched by Martian technology, human civilization is brought entirely to its knees in a matter of days, although the Martians are totally eradicated by terrestrial bacteria before they can expand... Read The War of the Worlds Summary
This study guide refers to the 2009 House of Anansi Press edition of Wade Davis’s The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World. The Wayfinders collects a series of five Massey Lectures that Davis delivered in Canada in 2009. Davis is a Colombian-Canadian anthropologist and ethnobotanist, and the Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society. This position, as well as his long anthropological career, has allowed Davis to spend time with many of the... Read The Wayfinders Summary
The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century is a nonfiction book by Thomas L. Friedman. It was first published in 2005 and was updated with two new editions in 2006 and 2007. The book is a wide-ranging examination of globalization at the turn of the 21st century and its impact on the United States. The book is divided into sections that explain the origin, impact, and meaning of a “flat world.”... Read The World Is Flat Summary
Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), written by Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman, examines how people exercise judgment and make decisions. It draws from Kahneman’s long career—particularly his collaboration with fellow psychologist Amos Tversky beginning in 1969—identifying the mechanisms, biases, and perspectives that constitute human decision-making. Its 38 chapters provide detailed information affecting disciplines ranging from mathematics to law. The book was named one of the best books of 2011 by The New York Times and The... Read Thinking, Fast and Slow Summary
Wallace Stevens is the author of “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” and he first published the poem in 1917 as a part of the literary anthology Others: An Anthology of New Verse. In 1923, he included the poem in his first collection of poetry, Harmonium, which features many of Stevens’s most well-known poems—poems that continue to appear in anthologies—like “The Snow Man“ and “The Emperor of Ice-Cream.” Stevens was born in Pennsylvania and... Read Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird Summary
In This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein explores the issue of climate change from a political perspective and considers why we have failed as yet to respond to the global danger it poses.Klein bases her argument on the scientific consensus that at projected rates of carbon emission we are heading towards an environmental catastrophe that would irreparably damage the natural world, destroy lives, and destabilise human society. She asks the question: considering the stakes are so... Read This Changes Everything Summary
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is a science fiction adventure novel by French author Jules Verne. It was originally published in serialized form in 1869 under the title Vingt mille lieues sous les mers, and later as a book in 1870. In 1873, the first English-language translation was released. The book was highly acclaimed at the time of its publication and was one of several successful novels by Verne. Others include Journey to the... Read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea Summary
Us and Them: Understanding Your Tribal Mind is a 2005 nonfiction book by David Berreby about how humans divide and categorize themselves. The psychological text explains human nature and the neuroscience of human groupings like races, ethnicities, classes, and nationalities. Berreby also discusses the positive and negative effects of human-kind groupings and offers advice on how to better act on human-kind beliefs.Plot SummaryBerreby begins by explaining the concept of human kinds—a number of people that... Read Us and Them Summary
Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich is a collection of 35 first-person oral accounts of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the former Soviet Union. Originally published in Russian in 1997, the book was translated into English by Keith Gessen in 2005; it has been translated into almost every European language. Alexievich, a Belarusian investigative journalist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for Voices from Chernobyl in... Read Voices from Chernobyl Summary
What the Eyes Don’t See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City (2018) is pediatrician, scientist, and public health advocate Mona Hanna-Attisha’s (Dr. Mona) debut book that provides an in-depth look at the government’s poisoning of Flint residents and subsequent coverup. This story, according to Dr. Mona, is also about much deeper crises that the broader American society is currently facing: a breakdown in local democracy; misguided austerity policies; environmental injustices... Read What the Eyes Don’t See Summary
British-American neuroscientist Matthew Walker’s Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams (2017) provides an in-depth exploration of the science of sleep health. Walker argues that sleep loss is an epidemic and one of the most serious public health issues of the 21st century. Drawing from a wealth of data and scientific studies, including his own innovative scientific breakthroughs during his time as a professor at the University of California-Berkeley, Walker illustrates the... Read Why We Sleep Summary
In his 2008 book Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body, paleontologist and biologist Neil Shubin explores the evolutionary history of various anatomical structures. As Shubin explores the histories of everything from our limbs to our eyes and ears, he shows how closely related humans are to all of Earth’s living creatures.The first two chapters of Your Inner Fish describe one of Shubin’s most important scientific contributions: the discovery... Read Your Inner Fish Summary
Social Intelligence
by Daniel Goleman
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