Here are 100 books that Darwin's Armada fans have personally recommended if you like
Darwin's Armada.
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As an Infectious Diseases specialist and epidemiologist, I became aware of the clandestine bio-weapons program in Russia when exposed—after the fall of the Soviet Union. I began to look at data and lecture on the potential problem before 9/11. I familiarized myself with the biology behind likely successful pathogens, including antibiotic resistance, inability to make a vaccine, and enhanced virulence designs. I also have a passion for Greek mythology that I wanted to stitch into a publication. This is the background for my book.
The author writes medical suspense that keeps you on the edge of your seat. I love this classical collection, perhaps the first to describe the discipline and epidemiological skills of medical detectives.
The book clearly shows the sudden arrival of epidemics, their high stakes, and the need to respond quickly and skillfully to limit the impact on society.
The classic collection of award-winning medical investigative reporting.
What do Lyme's disease in Long Island, a pig from New Jersey, and am amateur pianist have in common? All are subjects in three of 24 utterly fascinating tales of strange illnesses, rare diseases, poisons, and parasites-each tale a thriller of medical suspense by the incomparable Berton Roueche. The best of his New Yorker articles are collected here to astound readers with intriguing tales of epidemics in America's small towns, threats of contagion in our biggest cities, even bubonic plague in a peaceful urban park.
In sixth grade, I got into an argument with my neighbor, Billy. We were in his backyard, looking at the stars through his new telescope. “I see Orion,” said Billy. “What do you see?” “A bunch of stars.” “I aimed it at Orion. See him?” ”I see a bunch of stars.” “Don’t you see his belt? His sword?” Billy got more agitated. “Everybody knows that’s Orion. I can’t believe you can’t see him.” “It’s not actually Orion – it was just a bunch of stars until someone told a story about it and gave it meaning.” That compelled me to write, to construct a meaning for what I experienced, and try to make sense of it.
I loved this book because it opened my mind to new ways of thinking about thinking and how we make decisions. We are not the rational beings we think we are. Michael Lewis has the gift of being able to take complex ideas and make them understandable, informative, and very entertaining.
The book is about psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Khaneman and their research into how people make decisions. Their story is riveting, and I couldn’t help but think about how I make decisions and how to frame questions to gain greater insight into that process.
'Michael Lewis could spin gold out of any topic he chose ... his best work ... vivid, original and hard to forget' Tim Harford, Financial Times
'Gripping ... There is war, heroism, genius, love, loss, discovery, enduring loyalty and friendship. It is epic stuff ... Michael Lewis is one of the best non-fiction writers of our time' Irish Times
From Michael Lewis, No.1 bestselling author of The Big Short and Flash Boys, this is the extraordinary story of the two men whose ideas changed the world.
Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky met in war-torn 1960s Israel. Both were gifted young…
As a novelist, I am endlessly curious about people and like hearing their stories. As an erstwhile computer programmer and farmer, I also have a lifelong interest in science and natural history. When I find those two divergent interests have cross-pollinated in a single gracefully-written book, I am a very happy reader. I love books that weave together an intriguing scientific question with the human story of the scientists pursuing an answer to that question.
I am a recreational clarinetist and a friend gave me this book, thinking I would like to know how music is rewiring my brain and possibly helping stave off senility. Nina Kraus has pursued a career in the study of hearing, and her passion for her subject infuses the book. She is entranced by the two-way feedback connection between the brain and the ear, and how the sounds we have already heard and processed shape our interpretation of the next sound waves to reach our ears, sometimes in surprising ways. Her description of the miraculously intricate mechanisms inside the ear makes me grateful for every time I wore ear protection when I was using a power tool or driving a tractor.
How sound leaves a fundamental imprint on who we are.
Making sense of sound is one of the hardest jobs we ask our brains to do. In Of Sound Mind, Nina Kraus examines the partnership of sound and brain, showing for the first time that the processing of sound drives many of the brain's core functions. Our hearing is always on--we can't close our ears the way we close our eyes--and yet we can ignore sounds that are unimportant. We don't just hear; we engage with sounds. Kraus explores what goes on in our brains when we hear a word--or…
For most of my career as an oil explorationist I have worked with geologists, an exceptional group of men and women who, from observing earth’s surface as it is configured today, can decipher earth’s history. By understanding how rocks were originally formed and how in subsequent millennia rocks have been buried, transported warped, eroded, re-deposited, and altered by high pressures, high temperatures, hot water, and all the tectonic forces of nature that have formed the surface as we see it today, they believe, really believe, that they can visualize the subsurface. It’s a fascinating four-dimensional detective story.
Rising from the Plains is one of three geological and historical expeditions by John McPhee which together won the Pulitzer Prize as Annals of the Former World. The book intertwines a narrative of how the Rocky Mountains were formed with the story of its narrator, David Love, a Wyoming geologist who deciphered the geology and whose own family’s history is a fascinating snapshot of early-pioneering days in the West.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author John McPhee continues his Annals of the Former World series about the geology of North America along the fortieth parallel with Rising from the Plains.
This third volume presents another exciting geological excursion with an engaging account of life—past and present—in the high plains of Wyoming.
Sometimes it is said of geologists that they reflect in their professional styles the sort of country in which they grew up. Nowhere could that be more true than in the life of a geologist born in the center of Wyoming and raised on an isolated ranch. This is the story…
As a writer of dozens of books for children, I always learn much more that can go into each effort. A “wow” moment gets me started. It could be a giant cactus that grows so slowly, frogs that don’t ribbet, maybe a moment with a sea turtle, or thoughts on geology and natural wonders. Each book comes into a hazy focus after tons of research but much gets left out. What goes in? The best “wow” details get woven into an incredible story full of surprise, joy, and admiration for this world of constant change and those struggling to survive.
This is the best book to take a first look at evolution and creatures from long, long, long, long ago. Can you chomp? Grandmother Fish could. Can you crawl? Grandmother Reptile could. Who had a jaw, who could squeak, who cuddled with babies, who could climb? Wow! Can you do those things and talk too? With beautiful illustrations and simple wording, wonderful connections are made to show how all life is related. Thoughtful back material helps to explain natural selection and other concepts for those readers who will ask more questions.
It's a simple question, but not so simple an answer to explain especially to young children. Charles Darwin's theory of common descent no longer needs to be a scientific mystery to inquisitive young readers. Meet Grandmother Fish. Told in an engaging call and response text where a child can wiggle like a fish or hoot like an ape and brought to life by vibrant artwork, Grandmother Fish takes children and adults through the history of life on our planet and explains how we are all connected. The book also includes comprehensive backmatter, including: An elaborate illustration of the evolutionary tree…
Life really is stranger than fiction, and some of the stuff served up by evolution is outrageously bizarre. There are one-celled creatures that make rats want to cozy up to cats, a parasitic worm that turns snails into “disco zombies” and an ape that communicates across continents by pushing keys to create rows and columns of pixels. I’m fascinated by all of these creatures and love writing books for children about evolutionary biology, especially the evolution of intelligence. Besides authoring How to Build a Human, I’ve written about the evolution of intelligence in dolphins (The Dolphins of Shark Bay) and crows (Crow Smarts: Inside the Brain of the World’s Brightest Bird).
If you want to understand evolution, it certainly helps to know how and where the theory of evolution originated. This picture book rendition of Darwin’s classic work – the foundational text of all modern biology – explains Darwin’s explorations, the process of natural selection, and the common descent of all living things. The direct quotes from Darwin’s own writings are a nice touch, as are the charming illustrations. It doesn’t hurt that the writer/illustrator is a molecular biologist.
A picture book adaptation of Charles Darwin's groundbreaking On the Origin of Species, lushly illustrated and told in accessible and engaging easy-to-understand text for young readers.
On the Origin of Species revolutionized our understanding of the natural world. Now young readers can discover Charles Darwin's groundbreaking theory of evolution for themselves in this stunning picture-book adaptation that uses stylish illustrations and simple text to introduce how species form, develop, and change over time.
I could not reconcile teachings about right and wrong given to me by my parents and their religion with the evidence-based science I learned in medical school. As an adult, I studied morals, ethics, and religions and saw humanity on a self-destructive path, marked by world wars, genocides, destruction of civilizations, pollution of outer space, and poisons filling our land and oceans full of trash. There had to be a better way.
The second volume of Janet Browne's great two-part biography is set in England, where Charles Darwin set to work in earnest. His epic book was still a manuscript when the true story began. Obsessed with finding answers, he focused on barnacles. He had them sent to him from all over the world and studied them in detail, itemizing their changes and differences until a new species emerged—along with his remarkable epiphany.
Reading the book, I could feel the same sense of astonishment and discovery: that species occurred by natural selection, not some Divine hand. But Darwin chose not to fight the battles that this would cause with Christian believers, leaving that to his friend, Thomas Henry Huxley. It's a powerful reminder that every scientist and innovator needs an ally, even the most famous of them all.
In 1858, Charles Darwin was forty-nine years old, a gentleman scientist living quietly at Down House in the Kent countryside. He was not yet a focus of debate; his "big book on species" still lay on his desk as a manuscript. For more than twenty years he had been accumulating material for it, puzzling over the questions that it raised, trying to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion, and wanting to be certain that his startling theory of evolution was correct. It is at this point that the concluding volume of Janet Browne's magisterial biography opens. Beginning with the extraordinary…
My education began in a one room school in rural western New York. A lonely, curious childhood led me to love reading, and to explore woods, fields, and creeks. After high school I had no expectations of college, but serendipity led me to earn science degrees from Cornell University and the University of Massachusetts. Soon serendipity struck again: I was hired for a rookie editing/writing job at a children's science magazine. Lucky me, my curiosity about "how" and "why" questions led to being an award-winning author of 125 books, some for adults, nearly all children's nonfiction—about history, environmental problems, ecology, lives of scientists, and many creatures—including some that fascinated me as a kid.
Author Daniel Loxton's words are delightfully illustrated.
I loved that the clearly written text is made more appealing by being broken up in mini-chapters, with titles that get to the heart of explaining evolution. For example, How Change Happens; Big Changes = New Species; How Do We Know That Evolution Happens?; Can We Ever See Evolution Happening?
Evolution is the process that created the terrible teeth of Tyrannosaurus rex and the complex human brain, clever enough to understand the workings of nature. Young readers will learn how a British naturalist named Charles Darwin studied nature and developed his now-famous concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest. And how modern-day science has added to our understanding of the theory of evolution. Can something as complex and wondrous as the natural world be explained by a simple theory? The answer is yes, and now Evolution explains how in a way that makes it easy to understand.
In an ideal world, I would have liked to be a cosmologist and a philosopher. But I became a philosopher with a passion for the history and philosophy of science. This has enabled me to kill two birds with one stone: I learn about the sciences that interest me (physics, evolutionary biology, political philosophy, and sociology), and I explore their philosophical consequences. My podcast, In the Beginning, there was…Philosophy is devoted to such topics.
This book is a delightful read, full of interesting evolutionary details and a rigorous defence of Darwinism.
Steve Jones was a professor of genetics at UCL, London. His book is an updated version of Darwin’s The Origin of Species, faithfully following Darwin’s chapter plan. However, it adds to the discussion what is lacking in Darwin’s book, namely genetics. For instance, it discusses AIDS as an example of descent with modification and the evolution of whales and wolves.
There is one exception to the faithful retracing of Darwin’s topics. After Chapter XIII on Mutual Affinities, Jones inserts an Interlude in which he shows that Darwin’s argument is applicable to humans. He argues that evolution is still ongoing but at a slower pace.
In his new book, , Steve Jones takes on the challenge of going back to the book of the millennium, Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species. Before The Origin, biology was a set of unconnected facts. Darwin made it into a science, linked by the theory of evolution, the grammar of the living world.It reveals ties between cancer and the genetics of fish, between brewing and inherited disease, between the sex lives of crocodiles and the politics of Brazil. Darwin used the biology of the nineteenth century to prove his case. Now, that science has been revolutionized and his case…
I could not reconcile teachings about right and wrong given to me by my parents and their religion with the evidence-based science I learned in medical school. As an adult, I studied morals, ethics, and religions and saw humanity on a self-destructive path, marked by world wars, genocides, destruction of civilizations, pollution of outer space, and poisons filling our land and oceans full of trash. There had to be a better way.
It's hard to explain what a revelation this book was to me. When I began this book, I was a believer in the Christian mythology as described to me by my parents and the church. I read through meticulous details of how different animals gradually changed and differentiated by natural selection into new species.
After reading the last word and closing the book, suddenly, the light dawned. I understood that no Divine hand had anything to do with the development of a myriad of different species on planet Earth, and all that creation mythology was anthropomorphic imagination.
I also understood that there was no Divine hand guiding us to a Divine purpose in life—which meant that it was up to us to make this world a better place, for not only the human species but all other life on this planet.
Charles Darwin’s classic that exploded into public controversy, revolutionized the course of science, and continues to transform our views of the world.
Few other books have created such a lasting storm of controversy as The Origin of Species. Darwin’s theory that species derive from other species by a gradual evolutionary process and that the average level of each species is heightened by the “survival of the fittest” stirred up popular debate to fever pitch. Its acceptance revolutionized the course of science.
As Sir Julian Huxley, the noted biologist, points out in his illuminating introduction, the importance of Darwin’s contribution to…
