I’m a geoscientist and writer, and ever since my childhood explorations of the ponds, creeks, cliffs and forests of my native Ontario I’ve been fascinated with the natural world. During my PhD studies and subsequent academic career I’ve been fortunate to experience the thrill of experiment and discovery, and I’m passionate about communicating the wonders of science to others. I try to do that in my own books. Those I’ve recommended here, in my opinion, do it superbly.
I wrote...
Endless Novelties of Extraordinary Interest: The Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger and the Birth of Modern Oceanography
My most recent book, Endless Novelties, is about adventure and scientific discovery during the three-and-a-half-year long Challenger expedition of the 1870s, which set out with the aim – no less – of determining the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of the world’s oceans, with particular attention to the deep sea (the title comes from a phrase the expedition’s scientific director used to describe what they might find).
I examine the factors that drove the small band of ceaselessly curious scientists on board Challenger (numbering only six, and embedded with more than 250 British Navy personnel who ran the ship) to leave their comfortable lives in Britain and embark on a long, difficult, and sometimes dangerous sea voyage. I explore their triumphs and hardships, their humor in the face of adversity, and most of all the discoveries they made by dredging up strange materials and creatures from the seafloor, and examining the biology of remote oceanic islands.
This book is a collection of essays, letters, and lectures about the intrinsic value, importance, and beauty of science by one of its most talented and passionate communicators. Dawkins’s clear and often witty treatment of complex scientific issues is a breath of fresh air in this time of misinformation and ‘fake news.’ He writes primarily about biology, his own specialty, but ranges widely from ecology to evolution to genetics and even life beyond planet earth. Throughout, his incisive prose conveys the thrill and wonder of scientific discovery.
Richard Dawkins - author of The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, and The God Delusion - is one of science's greatest communicators. This anthology of more than forty pieces is a kaleidoscopic argument for the power and the glory of science.
Breathtaking, brilliant and passionate, these essays, journalism, lectures and letters make an unanswerable case for the wonder of scientific discovery and its power to stir the imagination; for the practical necessity of scientific endeavour to society; and for the importance of the scientific way of thinking - particularly in today's 'post-truth' world.
The ‘obsessive genius’ of the title is Marie Curie, the only woman to have won two Nobel Prizes. I love Goldsmith’s book because it humanizes Curie, starting with her childhood in Poland and progressing to her determination to someday become a scientist, the difficulties she faced as a woman seeking an education in Poland at the end of the nineteenth century, and finally the combination of serendipity, enduring curiosity and fierce determination that led to her groundbreaking discoveries about radioactivity, a word she is credited with coining.
Through family interviews, diaries, letters, and workbooks that had been sealed for over sixty years, Barbara Goldsmith reveals the Marie Curie behind the myth-an all-too-human woman struggling to balance a spectacular scientific career, a demanding family, the prejudice of society, and her own passionate nature. Obsessive Genius is a dazzling portrait of Curie, her amazing scientific success, and the price she paid for fame.
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was a scientific superstar in his day, a prolific communicator of the wonders and workings of the natural world, a friend of Goethe and Thomas Jefferson, and an inspirer of Charles Darwin and John Muir. Wulf’s book about this fascinating scientist is an engaging and thoroughly readable account of his quest to understand nature, a quest that took him across Russia to Siberia, across the Atlantic from Europe to the Caribbean, and into South America and the Andes. Wulf’s prose brings to life Humboldt’s sense of awe before nature, and his intense curiosity and drive to draw connections between what were (especially in his time) thought of as disparate aspects of our planet, such as the link between climate and vegetation, or the harmful effects of agriculture on ecology and the environment.
WINNER OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE 2016
'A thrilling adventure story' Bill Bryson
'Dazzling' Literary Review
'Brilliant' Sunday Express
'Extraordinary and gripping' New Scientist
'A superb biography' The Economist
'An exhilarating armchair voyage' GILES MILTON, Mail on Sunday
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) is the great lost scientist - more things are named after him than anyone else. There are towns, rivers, mountain ranges, the ocean current that runs along the South American coast, there's a penguin, a giant squid - even the Mare Humboldtianum on the moon.
Beginning late in the 19C the Harvard Observatory employed a group of female assistants from a wide variety of backgrounds to work in the laboratory; they were sometimes referred to as ‘human computers.’ They were all fascinated by the stars and good at mathematics, and their task, initially, was to use images taken through telescopes to locate stars precisely and measure their brightness. Later, again using images recorded on glass photographic plates (hence the book’s title) they began to classify stars based on their spectra – essentially determining their chemical composition. Sobel’s wonderful book highlights the thrill of discovery and chronicles the amazing advances made by these women, one of whom eventually became the first female professor of astronomy at Harvard.
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Dava Sobel, the "inspiring" (People), little-known true story of women's landmark contributions to astronomy
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book
Named one of the best books of the year by NPR, The Economist, Smithsonian, Nature, and NPR's Science Friday
Nominated for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award
"A joy to read." -The Wall Street Journal
In the mid-nineteenth century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as calculators, or "human computers," to interpret the observations their male counterparts made via telescope each night. At the outset this group included the…
This book has special resonance for me as a geoscientist, because it relates to events from deep in geological history, more than half a billion years ago. It is also a quintessential story of scientific discovery. Gould, in his inimitable style, writes about a unique assemblage of fossils in a rock formation in British Columbia called the Burgess Shale, and how these fossils transformed ideas about the evolution of life on earth. The anatomically bizarre and truly wonderful fossils are part of what is known as the Cambrian explosion, the sudden appearance in the fossil record of wholly new and unexpected life forms. Gould’s sense of awe for both the organisms and the scientists who painstakingly extracted their secrets is evident.
High in the Canadian Rockies is a small limestone quarry formed 530 million years ago called the Burgess Shale. It hold the remains of an ancient sea where dozens of strange creatures lived-a forgotten corner of evolution preserved in awesome detail. In this book Stephen Jay Gould explores what the Burgess Shale tells us about evolution and the nature of history.
Four years old and homeless, William Walters boarded one of the last American Orphan Trains in 1930 and embarked on an astonishing quest through nine decades of U.S. and world history.
For 75 years, the Orphan Trains had transported 250,000 children from the streets and orphanages of the East Coast into homes in the emerging West, sometimes providing loving new families, other times delivering kids into nightmares. Taken by a cruel New Mexico couple, William faced a terrible trial, but his strength and resilience carried him forward into unforgettable adventures.
Whether escaping his abusers, jumping freights as a preteen during…
WINNER, DA VINCI EYE AWARD FOR COVER DESIGN, ERIC HOFFER BOOK AWARDS
HONORABLE MENTION, ERIC HOFFER BOOK AWARDS, E-BOOK NONFICTION
FINALIST, NEXT GENERATION INDIE BOOK AWARDS, E-BOOK NONFICTION
FINALIST, NEXT GENERATION INDIE BOOK AWARDS, MEMOIRS (Overcoming Adversity)
HONORABLE MENTION, READERS' FAVORITE BOOK AWARDS, GENERAL NONFICTION
From 1854 to the early 1930s, the American Orphan Trains transported 250,000 children from the streets and orphanages of the East Coast into homes in the emerging West. Unfortunately, families waiting for the trains weren’t always dreams come true—many times they were nightmares.