As a child in New England, I used to look up to the trees around my home and the stars beyond. The trees caught my gaze by day, their branches twisting into the blue sky. I imagined myself turning upside-down, so the branches actually plunged into blue water, like the tree-islands of my novel A Door into Ocean. By night I imagined falling off the Earth into the dark well of stars. My vision of stars ultimately morphed into the multicolored microbes of Brain Plague. The books on my list expanded my view of trees and stars into many dimensions. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
Growing up as a Canadian logger, Suzanne Simard faced formidable challenges to figure out how trees communicate. Ingenious experiments showed how mother trees pass on food to younger seedlings, and how trees of all kinds share a “World Wood Web” of fungi. This fungal internet of trees, called “mycorrhizae,” has fundamentally reshaped forest ecology—and led us to recalculate contributions to the global carbon budget. As a microbiologist, it staggers my mind to realize how the tiniest of fungal threads interconnect the great giants of the forest. Loggers fought the knowledge, but Simard never backed down. The fungal internet she discovered carries hope for our planet, like Eywa from the film Avatar.
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the world's leading forest ecologist who forever changed how people view trees and their connections to one another and to other living things in the forest—a moving, deeply personal journey of discovery
“Finding the Mother Tree reminds us that the world is a web of stories, connecting us to one another. [The book] carries the stories of trees, fungi, soil and bears--and of a human being listening in on the conversation. The interplay of personal narrative, scientific insights and the amazing revelations about the life of the forest make a compelling story.”—Robin Wall…
One of my earliest memories was hearing of John Glenn’s orbit in space. My father developed physics for future computers that would guide the rockets. Later I was amazed to read Margot Shetterly’s true story of Katherine Johnson and other Black women “computers” of the early space race. In a segregated workplace, these stellar professionals computed our first steps toward the stars. They did the math for space flight before any computers. Their astounding performance used entirely pencil and paper, and chalk on the board. Even when the first electronic computers came in, John Glenn asked Katherine Johnson to recheck the math before he would go up.
Soon to be a major motion picture starring Golden Globe-winner Taraji P. Henson and Academy Award-winners Octavia Spencer and Kevin Costner Set against the backdrop of the Jim Crow South and the civil rights movement, the never-before-told true story of NASA's African-American female mathematicians who played a crucial role in America's space program-and whose contributions have been unheralded, until now. Before John Glenn orbited the Earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of professionals worked as "Human Computers," calculating the flight paths that would enable these historic achievements. Among these were a coterie of bright, talented African-American…
From the remote wilderness to the research lab, this book comes alive with the passion of discovering trees from a million years ago. For Hope Jahren and her fellow workers, the lab is a window into past millennia of climate change—and sheds light on the future. A leaf, a speck of soil, a shower of amber on your head; and then, the fascination of watching numbers on your instruments reveal secrets that you’re the first in the world to know. The joys of sampling soil, and of coaxing recalcitrant machines to work, come alive. And I love how Jahren manages to shape an opera-worthy epic out of the struggle for laboratory funding—the unsung challenge of all scientists.
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER •NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Geobiologist Hope Jahren has spent her life studying trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Lab Girl is her revelatory treatise on plant life—but it is also a celebration of the lifelong curiosity, humility, and passion that drive every scientist.
"Does for botany what Oliver Sacks’s essays did for neurology, what Stephen Jay Gould’s writings did for paleontology.” —The New York Times
In these pages, Hope takes us back to her Minnesota childhood, where she spent hours in unfettered play in her father’s college laboratory. She tells us how she found a sanctuary…
This Harvard-trained cosmologist takes us on a journey into the universe, from colliding black holes to neutrons and protons “faking it” as elementary particles. If you ever wondered why the universe has more matter than antimatter, and what is dark matter made of, this book is for you. And physics is about more than theories; it’s about people doing physics. Black lives matter, and Black lives are the stuff of stars. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein shares her exploration of a universe that is “bigger than the bad things that are happening to us.” Along the way, we gain new clues to the fate of our galaxies full of stars.
From a star theoretical physicist, a journey into the world of particle physics and the cosmos -- and a call for a more just practice of science.
In The Disordered Cosmos, Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein shares her love for physics, from the Standard Model of Particle Physics and what lies beyond it, to the physics of melanin in skin, to the latest theories of dark matter -- all with a new spin informed by history, politics, and the wisdom of Star Trek.
One of the leading physicists of her generation, Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is also one of fewer than one hundred…
Peter Wohlleben is a forester who shares his remarkable observations of trees. Trees have a language—they communicate by chemicals from root to branch, and send scent warnings to other trees. For humans, the forest is more than beautiful; forest air is actually cleaner because the trees filter it. Wohlleben acknowledges the under-appreciated role of the soil microbial communities that keep forests alive, their heat production warming the roots in winter. Amazingly, trees even need “sleep” at night as we do. Producing light at night, as in cities, is not good for trees. As a scientist, I might question Wohlleben’s points here and there, but always enjoy his provocative ideas to explore further.
"A paradigm-smashing chronicle of joyous entanglement that will make you acknowledge your own entanglement in the ancient and ever-new web of being."--Charles Foster, author of Being a Beast Are trees social beings? In this international bestseller, forester and author Peter Wohlleben convincingly makes the case that, yes, the forest is a social network. He draws on groundbreaking scientific discoveries to describe how trees are like human families: tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, support them as they grow, share nutrients with those who are sick or struggling, and even warn each other of impending dangers. Wohlleben…
A Cuban-American president’s granddaughter finds an alien ultraphyte crawling up a tree. The ultraphytes are blamed for Earth’s floods and fires. Jenny Kennedy escapes it all and takes the anthrax-powered space elevator up to Frontera College, a satellite amidst the high frontier of stars. Virtual worlds teach biology and colonial history, financed by a Native American casino. Jenny meets her neurodivergent roommate and starts research on intelligent plants. Yet even out in space, students cannot escape Earth’s disasters and invaders. Only Jenny and her roommate’s research might save Earth from itself.
I’ve always been fascinated by group dynamics, large and small. Why things functioned well, why they didn’t. It’s possible my ability to empathize and use humor as a consensus-builder is the reason I was elected president of a homeowners association, a music production association, and even an agricultural group. Books were not particularly involved in this fascination! But in recent years, experiencing the breakdown of civility and trust in our political and cultural discourse, I’ve taken a more analytical view of the dynamics. These books, in their very different ways, have taught me lessons about life, understanding those with different beliefs, and finding ways to connect and move forward.
We’ve all experienced the overwhelming level of political and social divisiveness in our country. This invisible “virus” of negativity is, in part, the result of the name-calling and heated rhetoric that has become commonplace among commentators and elected leaders alike.
My book provides a clear perspective on the historical and modern-day causes of our nation's divisive state. It then proposes easy-to-understand solutions—an action plan for our elected leaders and citizens as well. Rather than a scholarly treatment of a complex topic, the book challenges us to take the obvious steps required of those living in a free democracy. And it…
Uniting the States of America: A Self-Care Plan for a Wounded Nation
Lyle Greenfield's "Uniting the States of America―A Self-Care Plan for a Wounded Nation" is a work of nonfiction and opinion. Incorporating the lessons of history and the ideas and wisdom of many, it is intended as both an educational resource and a call-to-action for citizens concerned about the politically and culturally divided state of our Union. A situation that has raised alarm for the very future of our democracy.
First, the book clearly identifies the causes of what has become a national crisis of belief in and love for our country. How the divisiveness and hostility rampant in our political…
