Science and Nature

Discover new and trending science and nature titles.
Updated January 3, 2025
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The Secret History of Sharks: The Rise of the Ocean's Most Fearsome Predators
John Long
Paper Book
From ancient megalodons to fearsome Great Whites, this book tells the complete, untold story of how sharks emerged as Earth's ultimate survivors, by world-leading paleontologist John Long. "Will keep you on the edge of your seat from its first page to its last page."--Jared...
Quanta and Fields: The Biggest Ideas in the Universe
Sean Carroll
Paper Book
The instant New York Times bestseller Quanta and Fields, the second book of Sean Carroll's already internationally acclaimed series The Biggest Ideas in the Universe, is an adventure into the bare stuff of reality.   Sean Carroll is creating...
Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life
Ferris Jabr
Paper Book
A vivid account of a major shift in how we understand Earth, from an exceptionally talented new voice. Earth is not simply an inanimate planet on which life evolved, but rather a planet that came to life. "Glorious . . . full of achingly beautiful passages, mind-bending conceptual...
Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party: How an Eccentric Group of Victorians Discovered Prehistoric Creatures and Accidentally Upended the World
Edward Dolnick
Paper Book
From the bestselling author of The Clockwork Universe and The Writing of the Gods, an "utterly delightful...hugely entertaining" (Air Mail) book about the eccentric Victorians who discovered dinosaur bones, leading to a whole new understanding of human history.
The Birds That Audubon Missed: Discovery and Desire in the American Wilderness
Kenn Kaufman
Paper Book
Renowned naturalist Kenn Kaufman examines the scientific discoveries of John James Audubon and his artistic and ornithologist peers to show how what they saw (and what they missed) reflects how we perceive and understand the natural world. Raging ambition. Towering egos....
Secrets of the Octopus
Sy Montgomery
Paper Book
Take an illuminating journey into the life of the octopus, one of nature's most intelligent and complex animals. Learn from an international bestselling author, the world's brightest octopus researchers, and vivid National Geographic photography to come closer than ever to these...
The Great River: The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi
Boyce Upholt
Paper Book
The Mississippi River lies at the heart of America, an undeniable life force that is intertwined with the nation's culture and history. Its watershed spans almost half the country, Mark Twain's travels on the river inspired our first national literature, and jazz and blues were born in its...
The Catalyst: RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life's Deepest Secrets
Thomas R. Cech
Paper Book
For over half a century, DNA has dominated science and the popular imagination as the "secret of life." But over the last several decades, a quiet revolution has taken place. In a series of breathtaking discoveries, the biochemist Thomas R. Cech and a diverse cast of brilliant scientists have...
Space Oddities: The Mysterious Anomalies Challenging Our Understanding of the Universe
Harry Cliff
Paper Book
Experimental physicist at CERN and acclaimed science presenter Harry Cliff offers an eye-opening account of the inexplicable phenomena that science has only recently glimpsed, and that could transform our understanding of the fundamental nature of reality. Something strange is...
The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science
Dava Sobel
Paper Book
The acclaimed Pulitzer Prize finalist and #1 New York Times bestselling author of Galileo's Daughter crafts a luminous chronicle of the life and work of the most famous woman in the history of science, and the untold story of the many young women trained in her laboratory who...
Adventures in Volcanoland: What Volcanoes Tell Us About the World and Ourselves
Tamsin Mather
Paper Book
*A Library Journal Best Book of 2024* A mix of memoir, travel and popular science, charting journeys across deserts, through jungles and up ice caps, to some of the most important volcanoes around the world In this captivating book from one of...
Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet
Hannah Ritchie
Paper Book
This "eye-opening and essential" book (Bill Gates) will transform how you see our biggest environmental problems--and explains how we can solve them. It's become common to tell kids that they're going to die from climate change. We are constantly bombarded by doomsday headlines...
Alien Earths: The New Science of Planet Hunting in the Cosmos
Dr. Lisa Kaltenegger
Paper Book
"Kaltenegger's breezy narrative style invites you to experience with her the challenges and joys of being a scientist on the frontier of discovery." --Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysicist, American Museum of Natural History "Horizon-expanding... [Kaltenegger] has...
Dispersals: On Plants, Borders, and Belonging
Jessica J. Lee
Paper Book
A prize-winning memoirist and nature writer turns to the lives of plants entangled in our human world to explore belonging, displacement, identity, and the truths of our shared future A seed slips beyond a garden wall. A tree is planted on a precarious border. A shrub is stolen...
Meet the Neighbors: Animal Minds and Life in a More-than-Human World
Brandon Keim
Paper Book
Honeybees deliberate democratically. Rats reflect on the past. Snakes have friends. In recent decades, our understanding of animal cognition has exploded, making it indisputably clear that the cities and landscapes around us are filled with thinking, feeling individuals besides ourselves. But the...
Accidental Astronomy: How Random Discoveries Shape the Science of Space
Chris Lintott
Paper Book
A "riveting real-life Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (The Telegraph), told "with an engaging voice, a diverting sense of humor, and a humble awe for the wonders of the universe" (Wall Street Journal), shows why so much of astronomy comes down to looking up and...
What the Wild Sea Can Be: The Future of the World’s Ocean
Helen Scales
Paper Book
The acclaimed marine biologist and author of The Brilliant Abyss examines the existential threats the world's ocean will face in the coming decades and offers cautious optimism for much of the abundant life within in No matter where we live, "we are all ocean people," Helen...
Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence
Sara Imari Walker
Paper Book
An intriguing new scientific theory that explains what life is and how it emerges. What is life? This is among the most difficult open problems in science, right up there with the nature of consciousness and the existence of matter. All the definitions we have fall short. None...
Cheaper, Faster, Better: How We’ll Win the Climate War
Tom Steyer
Paper Book
Instant New York Times Bestseller * Financial Times Best Books of 2024 Climate investor and activist Tom Steyer shows us how we can win the war on climate--and why fighting for a sustainable future can help bring meaning and prosperity to our lives. The...
Waves in an Impossible Sea: How Everyday Life Emerges from the Cosmic Ocean
Matt Strassler
Paper Book
Big Think's Best Science Book of 2024 A theoretical physicist takes readers on an awe-inspiring journey--found in "no other book" (Science)--to discover how the universe generates everything from nothing at all: "If you want to know what's really going on...
Living on Earth: Forests, Corals, Consciousness, and the Making of the World
Peter Godfrey-Smith
Paper Book
One of the Washington Post's 50 Best Nonfiction Books of 2024 The bestselling author of Other Minds shows how we and our ancestors have reinvented our planet. If the history of the Earth were compressed down to a year, our species would arise...
Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks
Marcia Bjornerud
Paper Book
Earth is vibrantly alive and full of wisdom for those who learn to listen. Earth has been reinventing itself for more than four billion years, keeping a record of its experiments in the form of rocks. Yet most of us live our lives on the planet with no idea of its...
How to Love a Forest: The Bittersweet Work of Tending a Changing World
Ethan Tapper
Paper Book
A tender, fearless debut by a forester writing in the tradition of Suzanne Simard, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Robert Macfarlane. Only those who love trees should cut them, writes forester Ethan Tapper.In How to Love a Forest, he asks what it means to live in a time in which...
It's A Gas: The Sublime and Elusive Elements That Expand Our World: A Rollicking Science Adventure with Odd and Essential Elements, Perfect for Fall ... the Invisible Forces Shaping Our World
Mark Miodownik
Paper Book
The New York Times bestselling author of Stuff Matters presents a rollicking guided tour of the secret lives of gases: the magnificent, strange, and fascinating substances that shape our world. Gases are all around us--they fill our lungs, power our movement, create stars,...
Our Moon: How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are
Rebecca Boyle
Paper Book
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * "A riveting feat of science writing that recasts that most familiar of celestial objects into something eerily extraordinary, pivotal to our history, and awesome in the original sense of the word."--Ed Yong, New York Times...
Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality
Venki Ramakrishnan
Paper Book
"Utterly fascinating." --Bill Bryson "An incredible journey." --Siddhartha Mukherjee A groundbreaking exploration of the science of longevity and mortality--from Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist Venki Ramakrishnan The knowledge of death is so terrifying that we live...
Birding to Change the World: A Memoir
Trish O'Kane
Paper Book
In this uplifting memoir, a professor and activist shares what birds can teach us about life, social change, and protecting the environment. Trish O'Kane never expected to be a birder. It was a lone red cardinal and a bumptious cast of house sparrows that changed everything...
Atlas Obscura: Wild Life: An Explorer's Guide to the World's Living Wonders
Cara Giaimo
Paper Book
From the bestselling authors of Atlas Obscura and Gastro Obscura comes a nature book like no other--a dazzling, over-the-top collection of the world's most extraordinary wild species that takes you to all seven continents and beyond. It's more than a field...
Why Animals Talk: The New Science of Animal Communication
Arik Kershenbaum
Paper Book
"Animal communication doesn't need to resemble human language to be full of meaning and nuance. Arik Kershenbaum delivers an expert overview of the astonishing discoveries made in the last few decades" --Frans de Waal From leading zoologist Arik Kershenbaum, a delightful and...
The Secret Life of the Universe: An Astrobiologist's Search for the Origins and Frontiers of Life
Nathalie A. Cabrol
Paper Book
One ofScientific American's Best Books of 2024 One of the world's leading astrobiologists takes us on an awe-inspiring journey across the cosmos to investigate some of humanity's most profound questions: Are we alone in the universe? And how did life on Earth begin? ...
42 Reasons to Hate the Universe: (And One Reason Not To)
Chris Ferrie
Paper Book
If you've always suspected the universe was out to get you... you were right! Yes, the universe we live in is cosmically beautiful and mysterious and all that crap. But it's also a bit of an asshole. After all, remember that you are just a group of atoms structured in a specific way for...
Life as We Know It (Can Be): Stories of People, Climate, and Hope in a Changing World
Bill Weir
Paper Book
Award-winning journalist and CNN chief climate correspondent Bill Weir takes readers through time and around our changing world to confront the biggest threats to life as we know it and search for proven ways to build happier, healthier, and more resilien
Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves
Nicola Twilley
Paper Book
How often do we open the fridge or peer into the freezer with the expectation that we'll find something fresh and ready to eat? It's an everyday act - but just a century ago, eating food that had been refrigerated was cause for both fear and excitement. The introduction of artificial refrigeration...
Eclipse: Our Sky's Most Dazzling Phenomenon
Kelsey Oseid
Paper Book
Discover the ancient myths and fascinating science of the world's most striking celestial phenomena-eclipses-in this educational, beautifully illustrated guide by the acclaimed author of What We See in the Stars. Awe-inspiring, majestic, and always a little otherworldly,...
The Asteroid Hunter: A Scientist’s Journey to the Dawn of our Solar System
laurettadante
Paper Book
FEATURED IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, NPR'S SCIENCE FRIDAY, THE WASHINGTON POST, AND SCIENCE MAGAZINE   A "brilliant account of a 21st century real-life fantasy" (Sir Brian May) of space exploration and a lesson in fragility in the quest...
How to Win Friends and Influence Fungi: Collected Quirks of Science, Tech, Engineering, and Math from Nerd Nite
Chris Balakrishnan
Paper Book
In the vein of acclaimed popular-science bestsellers such as Atlas Obscura, Astrophysics for Young People in a Hurry, The Way Things Work, What If?, and Undeniable, the co-founders of the global science organization Nerd Nite bring readers a collection of...
Escape from Shadow Physics: The Quest to End the Dark Ages of Quantum Theory
Adam Forrest Kay
Paper Book
The "artfully written...splendid history of classical and quantum physics" (Science) that "rightfully highlights the limitations of current physics" (Wall Street Journal) and argues for a revolutionary new understanding of quantum mechanics 
The Well-Connected Animal: Social Networks and the Wondrous Complexity of Animal Societies
Lee Alan Dugatkin
Paper Book
"Combines accessible prose with solid science."--Wall Street Journal * "Demonstrates that whatever creature you are--from a giraffe to a Tasmanian devil--life is all about who you know."--New Scientist * "Fascinating. . . . Easily the most intriguing, thorough...
Unrooted: Botany, Motherhood, and the Fight to Save an Old Science
Erin Zimmerman
Paper Book
Growing up in rural Ontario, Erin Zimmerman became fascinated with plants - an obsession that led to a life in academia as a professional botanist. But as her career choices narrowed in the face of failing institutions and subtle, but ubiquitous, sexism, Zimmerman began to doubt herself - and to...
Amphibious Soul: Finding the Wild in a Tame World
Craig Foster
Paper Book
"An important book that will transform how we think about being human. ... that will inspire hope."--Jane Goodall How can we reclaim the soul-deepening wildness that grounds us and energizes us when so much of the modern world seems designed to tame us? In this thrilling memoir of a...
When the Ice Is Gone: What a Greenland Ice Core Reveals About Earth's Tumultuous History and Perilous Future
biermanpaul
Paper Book
In 2018, frozen soil from the bottom of the world's first deep ice core, lost for decades, reappeared in Denmark. When geologist Paul Bierman and his team analyzed this material, it led them to a startling discovery: Greenland's ice sheet melted naturally 400,000 years ago. That meant the ice was...

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