Why am I passionate about this?

I have always been interested in the overview, the joined-up, the patterns, trends, and directions rather than the details of things. As a biologist, this led me to study animal behaviour rather than molecules. Great things come from the cross-overs between disciplines. Bridges are there to be made between islands of knowledge. Both my books (Wild Health and Another Self) are books that bridge a huge divide between knowledge acquired from reductionist research and that gained by experience. We humans use both.


I wrote

Wild Health: How Animals Keep Themselves Well and What We Can Learn from Them

By Cindy Engel,

Book cover of Wild Health: How Animals Keep Themselves Well and What We Can Learn from Them

What is my book about?

My book explores how animals keep themselves well in the wild. Chimpanzees carefully select anti-parasitic medicines to deal with parasites.ā€¦

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Underland: A Deep Time Journey

Cindy Engel Why did I love this book?

I loved the evocative (almost poetic) language that carried me with the author deep underground into places, situations, and ecosystems that I will never have the opportunity to explore myself.

Robert MacFarlane joins the dots, including the people who live and work in his landscapes, the wildlife, and even the minerals involved in a global and geological timeline.

By Robert Macfarlane,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked Underland as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In Underland, Robert Macfarlane delivers an epic exploration of the Earth's underworlds as they exist in myth, literature, memory, and the land itself. Traveling through the dizzying expanse of geologic time-from prehistoric art in Norwegian sea caves, to the blue depths of the Greenland ice cap, to a deep-sunk "hiding place" where nuclear waste will be stored for 100,000 years to come-Underland takes us on an extraordinary journey into our relationship with darkness, burial, and what lies beneath the surface of both place and mind.

Global in its geography and written with great lyricism, Underland speaks powerfully to our presentā€¦


Book cover of Intelligence in the Flesh: Why Your Mind Needs Your Body Much More Than It Thinks

Cindy Engel Why did I love this book?

I loved the way Guy Claxton joined the dots between so many separate scientific disciplines.

He is (I believe) a professor of linguistics, yet he dove into human biology with clarity and gusto, presenting an accessible description of an extremely complex conceptā€”that intelligence incorporates our whole body, not just our brain.

By Guy Claxton,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Intelligence in the Flesh as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An enthralling exploration that upends the prevailing view of consciousness and demonstrates how intelligence is literally embedded in the palms of our hands

If you think that intelligence emanates from the mind and that reasoning necessitates the suppression of emotion, you'd better think again-or rather not "think" at all. In his provocative new book, Guy Claxton draws on the latest findings in neuroscience and psychology to reveal how our bodies-long dismissed as mere conveyances-actually constitute the core of our intelligent life. From the endocrinal means by which our organs communicate to the instantaneous decision-making prompted by external phenomena, our bodiesā€¦


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Book cover of Her Little Secret

Her Little Secret by Julia Stone,

If youā€™re intrigued by the psychology of relationships this is the novel for you.

Described as a modern-day Rebecca, this is a story of a bereaved manā€™s obsession with his deceased married lover, Michelle. Determined to find out all he can about Michelleā€™s life when she wasnā€™t with him,ā€¦

Book cover of The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision

Cindy Engel Why did I love this book?

This science book is so joined up that its subtitle is A Unifying Vision.

The authors draw together a broad range of scientific disciplines to present a holistic view of how life emerged and, more importantly, how life is organized. You might be surprised to hear that biologists still donā€™t know how life organizes itself. The question is usually left to philosophers rather than biologists. So it's good to read all this material brought into one place.

By Fritjof Capra, Pier Luigi Luisi,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Systems View of Life as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Over the past thirty years, a new systemic conception of life has emerged at the forefront of science. New emphasis has been given to complexity, networks, and patterns of organisation, leading to a novel kind of 'systemic' thinking. This volume integrates the ideas, models, and theories underlying the systems view of life into a single coherent framework. Taking a broad sweep through history and across scientific disciplines, the authors examine the appearance of key concepts such as autopoiesis, dissipative structures, social networks, and a systemic understanding of evolution. The implications of the systems view of life for health care, management,ā€¦


Book cover of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures

Cindy Engel Why did I love this book?

When I was a biology undergraduate, there was talk of ecosystems and joined-up thinking but it has taken 40 years for such ideas to be truly brought into the public realm.

Merlin Sheldrake uses the latest discoveries about fungi to illustrate how interconnected everything is and how blurred the definition of an individual living organism is.

By Merlin Sheldrake,

Why should I read it?

21 authors picked Entangled Life as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ā€¢ A ā€œbrilliant [and] entrancingā€ (The Guardian) journey into the hidden lives of fungiā€”the great connectors of the living worldā€”and their astonishing and intimate roles in human life, with the power to heal our bodies, expand our minds, and help us address our most urgent environmental problems.

ā€œGrand and dizzying in how thoroughly it recalibrates our understanding of the natural world.ā€ā€”Ed Yong, author of I Contain Multitudes

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEARā€”Time, BBC Science Focus, The Daily Mail, Geographical, The Times, The Telegraph, New Statesman, London Evening Standard, Science Friday

When we thinkā€¦


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Book cover of The Bangalore Detectives Club

The Bangalore Detectives Club by Harini Nagendra,

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year. The first in a charming, joyful crime series set in 1920s Bangalore, featuring sari-wearing detective Kaveri and her husband Ramu.

When clever, headstrong Kaveri moves to Bangalore to marry handsome young doctor Ramu, she's resigned herself to a quiet life. Butā€¦

Book cover of We Are Electric: The New Science of Our Body's Electrome

Cindy Engel Why did I love this book?

I loved Sally Adeeā€™s journalistic approach to a scientific topic that has been ignored by biologists for too long. She has a relaxed voice that allows her to personalize the question of why physicists, medics, and biologists are not communicating sufficiently about our electrical properties.

It's a wonderful joining up of scientific reluctance with the bloody obvious.

By Sally Adee,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked We Are Electric as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.


Explore my book šŸ˜€

Wild Health: How Animals Keep Themselves Well and What We Can Learn from Them

By Cindy Engel,

Book cover of Wild Health: How Animals Keep Themselves Well and What We Can Learn from Them

What is my book about?

My book explores how animals keep themselves well in the wild. Chimpanzees carefully select anti-parasitic medicines to deal with parasites. Elephants roam miles to find the clay they need to help counter dietary toxins. Birds line their nests with pungent medicinal leaves to improve their chicksā€™ chances of survival. 

Many of the health-maintenance strategies employed by wild animals can be used to improve the health of animals in our care. By observing wild health, we may even discover (or rediscover) ways to benefit our own health.

Book cover of Underland: A Deep Time Journey
Book cover of Intelligence in the Flesh: Why Your Mind Needs Your Body Much More Than It Thinks
Book cover of The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision

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Book cover of No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

No Average Day by Rona Simmons,

October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on any other single day of the war.

The narrative of No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident while focusing its attention onā€¦

Book cover of This Animal Body

This Animal Body by Meredith Walters,

Neuroscience PhD student Frankie Conner has finally gotten her life togetherā€”sheā€™s determined to discover the cause of her depression and find a cure for herself and everyone like her. But the first day of her program, she meets a group of talking animals who have an urgent message they refuseā€¦

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