Science

Instant New York Times Bestseller! New York Times Editors' Choice One of People's 15 Most Anticipated Books of Summer The Next Big Idea Club's July 2026 Must-Read Books One of the New York Times Nonfiction Everyone Will Be Reading This Summer Sunset Magazine's 15 New Books You Don't Want to Miss...

Throughout history, Earth’s great rivers have lived at the heart of human life. As sources of food, and arteries of transport, trade, irrigation, travel, religious ritual, and more, rivers have not only shaped the landscapes through which they flow, they have also shaped civilization.

Have you ever wondered what the next century bodes for humanity? Then keep listening... As mankind seeks to guide its own evolution and create intelligent machines, we stand at the brink of doing something no other living being has ever done before. The power to prolong life far beyond natural limits and beat back death itself. The ability to control computers and machines with our minds, and even merge with them. We are poised to become gods.

What is life? In this majestic book, Christophe Galfard, celebrated author and former graduate student of Stephen Hawking, takes us on a wonder-filled voyage to answer this question. He guides us from our planet’s birth and the mysterious bacteria that lived billions of years ago, through the extreme evolutionary turns that saw dog-sized sea scorpions and trees covered in scales, to the visionary discoveries of the past two centuries that have allowed us to understand human bodies and imagine alien ones.

Humans have long observed animals for advanced warnings of danger. What can they tell us about the growing threat of viruses and other infectious organisms in the age of climate change? Coronaviruses jump from bats to chimpanzees to humans. You can give your cat the flu, and pass tuberculosis to an elephant. The scientific term for this –zoonosis – reveals how human and animal lives are inextricably linked. Scientists warn that human destruction of the environment is responsible for the accelerating spillover of animal diseases, posing a global health threat.

An entertaining tour of the seemingly simple formula guiding the search for extraterrestrial intelligence Cloudy with a Chance of Starships takes listeners on an irreverent expedition through the marvelous world of astrobiology, using as a guide the most important equation in science since E=mc2...

Bloomsbury presents The Devil’s Garden: The World's Most Sinister Plants and Fungi by Peter Marren, read by Justin Avoth “Peter Marren is a master storyteller … he was destined to write The Devil’s Garden.” Richard Mabey A lively exploration of the poisoners, tricksters, stingers...

A pioneering researcher unveils the neuroscience of executive function: how it works and what we can (and can’t) do to improve it. From the ever-rising rate of ADHD diagnoses to the life-changing challenges of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s to the everyday brain fog many of us muddle through...

Why Nature Matters is a practical guide for restoring the bond between children and the natural world. Grounded in evidence-based practice, it provides the listener with an understanding of why a connection to nature is so vital for children and how to make that connection happen. The book...

A story of love, marriage, and flowers from beloved writer and gardening enthusiast Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn Six months before her wedding, Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn’s fiancé broke off their engagement. Stunned, reeling, and newly uninsured, Alysia married her friend Sarah in an arrangement that...

What is time? Does it exist? Can it be stopped? Can time's arrow be reversed? Can we ever free ourselves from the seemingly inexorable flow of time? Chronos is a mystery, and not only for us: it was a mystery for our distant ancestors too. In this book, Guido Tonelli guides us along the path to...

This volume traces the origins and evolution of the idea of human extinction, from the ancient Presocratics through contemporary work on "existential risks." Many leading intellectuals agree that the risk of human extinction this century may be higher than at any point in our 300,000-year...

Over the past five hundred years, human exploration, settlement, and commerce have carried countless plants and animals far from their original homes, where they sometimes go on to transform familiar landscapes, cause large-scale agricultural damage, and endanger precious native species. But the...

Bloomsbury presents Lost Among the Birds by Neil Hayward, read by Sam Devereaux Early in 2013 Neil Hayward was at a crossroads. He didn’t want to open a bakery or whatever else executives do when they quit a lucrative but unfulfilling job. He didn’t want to think about his failed...

A lyrical exploration of the world’s wildest, most forbiddingly remote places—and the humans who have always been there, by “the best non-fiction writer of her generation,” according to The Times From the blacksand beaches of Iceland, to river crossings deep in the Amazon jungle, to the...

A hauntingly beautiful diptych of works inspired by Robert Macfarlane's travels with celebrated collaborators to two eerie corners of England. In Holloway, "a perfect miniature prose-poem" (William Dalrymple), Macfarlane, artist Stanley Donwood, and writer Dan Richards travel to Dorset, near the...

Every atom in your body has already been replaced. You didn’t notice. You didn’t stop being you. So what makes you you? It’s not the matter. The atoms in your brain right now aren’t the same ones that were there ten years ago. Neuroscience says your consciousness comes from how your brain is organized and how it functions, not from which specific carbon atoms happen to be sitting in your neurons on any given Tuesday. Mark Douglas spent decades following that observation to its logical end. The conclusion is not what you’d expect.

Bloomsbury presents Shadows on the Gulf by Rowan Jacobsen, read by Kevin Young While other books play the blame game of what went wrong on the Deepwater Horizon and who is responsible, Shadows on the Gulf offers a surprising, harder truth: As bad as the oil spill was, it doesn't touch the damage...

This text outlines the relative merits of qualitative interviewing to new and emerging scholars in an accessible way. This is achieved not by providing an exhaustive 'how-to' guide but in introducing researchers to the interview technique and using examples of 'best practice' from across the...

Once dismissed as unscientific, psychoanalytic therapy is proving to be among our most effective medical treatments of any kind—outperforming psychiatric drugs and rivalling vaccines in its power to prevent and heal. Why does it work so well? Perhaps because one of the most controversial...

Can nature be read like art? Does God sign his artwork? Do the wavy and weaving lines of tree branches reveal insights about their Artist in the same way that the impasto brushstrokes of a Van Gogh tree do about theirs? (Spoiler alert: The answer to all of the above is, Yes!) These and other unorthodox questions emerge in the mind of Ben Keys, who in the midst of a personal and career crisis, paints his way out of job-induced depression by re-discovering a long-lost childhood dream: becoming an artist.

An updated edition of an underground classic This is the 4th edition of a self-published book that no respectable publisher would touch with a ten-foot shovel. The 1st edition was published in 1994 with a print run of 600 copies, which the author expected to watch decompose in his garage for the...

The ultimate collection of the most historic trees on the planet. Uncover remarkable trees from around the world, many of which have borne witness to key moments in history or reached a scale and age that have allowed them to become a part of history themselves. “[A] rich history … it...

Your genes respond to your thoughts, emotions, and energy. When researcher Dawson Church first published this claim in 2007, it was a visionary hypothesis. Two decades later, epigenetics has documented, in hundreds of peer-reviewed studies, that consciousness, emotion, and energy switch genes on and off and shape the molecular landscape of your health.

The human mind is both extraordinary and compelling. From the leader who convinced his followers to kill themselves to the man who lost his memory, these famous accounts have provided invaluable insights for scholars and researchers and amazed the public at large. Brought to life by Rolls, each...