Books, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Science

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Bill Bryson
A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Broadway (Paperback) (Release Date: 2004-09-14)

Jared Diamond
Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
by W. W. Norton & Company (Hardcover)

WILLIAM WILSON JUDY JONES
AN INCOMPLETE EDUCATION
by HARPERCOLLINS (Hardcover)

Daniel J. Levitin
This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
by Plume/Penguin (Paperback)

In this groundbreaking union of art and science, rocker-turned-neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin explores the connection between music—its performance, its composition, how we listen to it, why we enjoy it—and the human brain. Drawing on the latest research and on musical examples ranging from Mozart to Duke Ellington to Van Halen, Levitin reveals: • How composers produce some of the most pleasurable effects of listening to music by exploiting the way our brains make sense of the world • Why we are so emotionally attached to the music we listened to as teenagers, whether it was Fleetwood Mac, U2, or Dr. Dre • That practice, rather than talent, is the driving force behind musical expertise • How those insidious little jingles (called earworms) get stuck in our heads And, taking on prominent thinkers who argue that music is nothing more than an evolutionary accident, Levitin argues that music is fundamental to our species, perhaps even more so than ...

Jared M. Diamond
Collapse (Allen Lane Science)
by Allen Lane (Hardcover)

Bert Hölldobler, Edward O. Wilson
The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies
by W.W. Norton & Co. (Hardcover)

The Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of The Ants render the extraordinary lives of the social insects in this visually spectacular volume. The Superorganism promises to be one of the most important scientific works published in this decade. Coming eighteen years after the publication of The Ants, this new volume expands our knowledge of the social insects (among them, ants, bees, wasps, and termites) and is based on remarkable research conducted mostly within the last two decades. These superorganisms—a tightly knit colony of individuals, formed by altruistic cooperation, complex communication, and division of labor—represent one of the basic stages of biological organization, midway between the organism and the entire species. The study of the superorganism, as the authors demonstrate, has led to important advances in our understanding of how the transitions between such levels have occurred in evolution and how life as a whole has progressed from simple ...

Alan Weisman
The World Without Us
by Thomas Dunne Books (Hardcover) (Release Date: 2007-07-10)

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 ...

Richard Dawkins
The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition--with a new Introduction by the Author
by Oxford University Press, USA (Paperback)

Walter Isaacson
Einstein: His Life and Universe
by Simon & Schuster (Hardcover)

Steven Pinker
The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
by Penguin (Non-Classics) (Paperback)

This New York Times bestseller is an exciting and fearless investigation of language Bestselling author Steven Pinker possesses that rare combination of scientific aptitude and verbal eloquence that enables him to provide lucid explanations of deep and powerful ideas. His previous books—including the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Blank Slate—have catapulted him into the limelight as one of today’s most important popular science writers. In The Stuff of Thought, Pinker presents a fascinating look at how our words explain our nature. Considering scientific questions with examples from everyday life, The Stuff of Thought is a brilliantly crafted and highly readable work that will appeal to fans of everything from The Selfish Gene and Blink to Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

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