Here are 70 books that The Mediterranean was a Desert fans have personally recommended if you like
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A philosophy professor, my central interest has always been something historical: what is going on in this strange modern world we live in? Addressing this required forty years of background work in the natural sciences, history, social sciences, and the variety of contemporary philosophical theories that try to put them all together. In the process, I taught philosophy courses on philosophical topics, social theory, and the sciences, wrote books, and produced video courses, mostly focused on that central interest. The books listed are some of my favorites to read and to teach. They are crucial steps on the journey to understand who we are in this unprecedented modern world.
Best recent book examining human morality from a scientific, psychological point of view.
Darwinians used to think humans had to be selfish and immoral. Contemporary evolution argues the opposite, that humans evolved moral limits on our selfishness in order to live together. Haidt’s is the best book presenting this new evolutionary psychology.
But it goes further to connect those scientific issues with contemporary politics, explaining why people from “red” and “blue” states cannot understand each other: they each embody a short list of human moral values, but different ones. This is a great book for thinking carefully about human morality and contemporary politics. Students love it, and so do I.
'A landmark contribution to humanity's understanding of itself' The New York Times
Why can it sometimes feel as though half the population is living in a different moral universe? Why do ideas such as 'fairness' and 'freedom' mean such different things to different people? Why is it so hard to see things from another viewpoint? Why do we come to blows over politics and religion?
Jonathan Haidt reveals that we often find it hard to get along because our minds are hardwired to be moralistic, judgemental and self-righteous. He explores how morality evolved to enable us to form communities, and…
I grew up on the wild island of Tasmania. I saw the Vietnam War on TV, then went to a farm my father was ‘developing.’ It felt like war. The natural beauty that I’d once played in was destroyed by machines, poisons, and fire. During agricultural college in mainland Australia, I recognized an absence of reverence for Mother Nature. Women were missing from the rural narrative that increasingly held an economics-only mindset when it came to food. I’m a co-founder of Ripple Farm Landscape Healing Hub–a 100-acre farm we’re restoring to natural beauty and producing loved meat and eggs for customers. And I’m a devoted mum, shepherd, and working dog trainer.
This is an oldie but a goldie. Written in 1962, it helped me understand why we are in the corrupt, red-hot mess we are in in terms of the food and climate crisis. It gave me a historical lens on why we are getting sicker, why the land is struggling, and why so many creatures are becoming extinct.
Rachel was slammed for this book at the time, and I feel we need to resurrect her and give her a platform and time in the sunshine to change our modern-day madness. At first, I had to listen in ‘grabs’ because the content was so utterly disturbing. We didn’t listen then! She cites so many actions by government agencies that sanctioned deadly chemicals sprayed over everything and everyone… and it’s happening today with increasing vigor because corporations wield so much power! After listening to the audio, I read the hard copy—it gives…
First published by Houghton Mifflin in 1962, Silent Spring alerted a large audience to the environmental and human dangers of indiscriminate use of pesticides, spurring revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. "Silent Spring became a runaway bestseller, with international reverberations . . . [It is] well crafted, fearless and succinct . . . Even if she had not inspired a generation of activists, Carson would prevail as one of the greatest nature writers in American letters" (Peter Matthiessen, for Time"s 100 Most Influential People of the Century). This fortieth anniversary edition celebrates Rachel Carson"s watershed…
I am a scientist who has worked at the coal face of the debate around the origin of animals and ‘Snowball Earth’ his entire career, using a combination of experimental and descriptive science. Over three decades, I have witnessed first-hand how careful attention to detail in study after study has removed doubt from once provocative, even crazy, ideas that are now widely accepted. I love reading popular science from the perspective of the hands-on scientist who has witnessed the debate first-hand and contributed to received knowledge by conceiving new experiments, amassing data, and, more than often, in entirely unexpected ways through sheer curiosity.
I love this book because of the author’s infectious passion for fossils and geology.
The book reads like a detective story, with the innermost secrets of long-extinct animal groups unveiled bit by bit by a master of forensic paleontology.
When I was an undergraduate student over 40 years ago, Richard showed us behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum in London. What I remember most was him describing how long it took his team to reveal just one trilobite eye. Only after many months of painstaking attention to detail were they finally able to work out how a trilobite saw the world 500 million years ago.
With Trilobite, Richard Fortey, paleontologist and author of the acclaimed Life, offers a marvelously written, smart and compelling, accessible and witty scientific narrative of the most ubiquitous of fossil creatures.
Trilobites were shelled animals that lived in the oceans over five hundred million years ago. As bewilderingly diverse then as the beetle is today, they survived in the arctic or the tropics, were spiky or smooth, were large as lobsters or small as fleas. And because they flourished for three hundred million years, they can be used to glimpse a less evolved world of ancient continents and vanished oceans. Erudite…
I am a scientist who has worked at the coal face of the debate around the origin of animals and ‘Snowball Earth’ his entire career, using a combination of experimental and descriptive science. Over three decades, I have witnessed first-hand how careful attention to detail in study after study has removed doubt from once provocative, even crazy, ideas that are now widely accepted. I love reading popular science from the perspective of the hands-on scientist who has witnessed the debate first-hand and contributed to received knowledge by conceiving new experiments, amassing data, and, more than often, in entirely unexpected ways through sheer curiosity.
I cherish this book as I can dip into any part of it and will always learn something new.
I have always been fascinated by the origin of things, and there is nothing more fundamental than the origin of life itself. Nick Lane is on the front line of such research and brings a lot to bear down on this question, from his own laboratory experiments to theoretical biochemistry, all without a hint of condescension. Nick wants to take the reader with him on a personal journey to discover why we are here, and this is a journey I wouldn’t miss for the world.
The Earth teems with life: in its oceans, forests, skies and cities. Yet there's a black hole at the heart of biology. We do not know why complex life is the way it is, or, for that matter, how life first began. In The Vital Question, award-winning author and biochemist Nick Lane radically reframes evolutionary history, putting forward a solution to conundrums that have puzzled generations of scientists.
For two and a half billion years, from the very origins of life, single-celled organisms such as bacteria evolved without changing their basic form. Then, on just one occasion in four billion…
Robert M. Hazen, Senior Staff Scientist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s Earth and Planets Laboratory and the Clarence Robinson Professor of Earth Science at George Mason University, received the B.S. and S.M. in geology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Ph.D. at Harvard University in Earth science. His most recent book is The Story of Earth: The First 4.5 Billion Years from Stardust to Living Planet, which explores the intricate coevolution of the geosphere and biosphere.
At their very best, textbooks synthesize knowledge in new, informative ways. Understanding Earth is a classic, covering the basics of geology, geophysics, and environmental science with stylish prose, classy illustrations, and the insights of two great scientist educators (earlier editions were championed by Frank Press and Ray Siever, who began the franchise). It’s a whirlwind tour of modern science, from the microscopic view of rocks and minerals to the global sweep of plate tectonics.
The field of physical geology continues to evolve with new tools, new ideas new approaches. Working closely with Frank Press and Ray Siever, the new co-authors of the fourth edition, John Grotzinger and Tom Jordan, have introduced a wealth of more recent data and applications to keep the science in the text on the cutting edge. This introductory physical geology textbook aims to help students understand what physical geology teaches us about the world and what it brings to our lives. It is designed to bring the worldview of the working geologist to an audience not only new to this…
I’m a mystery-writing geology buff who came across a textbook on forensic geology, and was hooked. Here was the perfect fit for my stories--using earth evidence to solve crimes. My characters go from the lab to the field, reading the rock to track the evidence to its source. Along the way, they’ve developed a passion for protecting the environment. I’ve hiked the same trails, skied the same mountains, run the same river, and kayaked the same sea as my characters--although I don’t get into the trouble that they do. My books have hit a number of bestseller lists, including USA Today.
This book is an enthralling field trip through my home state. McPhee--in company with a larger-than-life California geologist--takes apart and puts together the wildly varying regions of the state. He roams the coast, the mountains, the valleys, the rivers, the cities, and even puts the reader into the cataclysm of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. What more could a reader want? Well, staggeringly good writing and lively wit. Done.
“It is said that if a cow lies down in California, a seismologist will know it.” John McPhee.
At various times in a span of fifteen years, John McPhee made geological field surveys in the company of Eldridge Moores, a tectonicist at the University of California at Davis. The result of these trips is Assembling California, a cross-section in human and geologic time, from Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada through the golden foothills of the Mother Lode and across the Great Central Valley to the wine country of the Coast Ranges, the rock of San Francisco, and the San Andreas family of faults. The two disparate time scales occasionally intersect―in the gold disruptions of the nineteenth century…
Nature enthusiasts, David Attenborough superfans, and the best campsite hot toddy makers you’ll ever encounter… We’re best friends who have been traveling through national parks together for millenia. During our travels, we’ve developed our own style of tourism based on science and following our curiosity. We’ve hiked with paleontologists, asked renowned scientists ridiculous questions about which prehistoric creature they’d want for a pet, and introduced a parks astronomer/pilot/ER doctor to bourbon. In 2023, we released National Parks Trivia: A Card Game so that when you’re done hiking around with our first book, you have something to keep you entertained at the campsite all evening long.
If you’re taking a road trip through any of the fifty states, you’ll want to grab the relevant copies of the Roadside Geology series. It’s especially fun to read aloud in the car as the geology flies by your window.
We’re highlighting Oregon here because it’s by badass author, geologist, and photographer Marli Miller, but the whole series is gold. One favorite memory from our 2018 book-writing research trip: this guide helped us spot the very impressive band of ash from the Crater Lake (Mount Mazama) Eruption in a road cut on the highway south of the park.
When the first edition of Roadside Geology of Oregon was published in 1978, it was revolutionary�the first book in a series designed to educate, inspire, and wow nongeologists. Back then, the implications of plate tectonic theory were only beginning to shape geologic research and discussion. Geologists hadn�t yet learned that Oregon�s Klamath and Blue Mountains were pieces of far-traveled island arcs and ocean basins that had been piled against the growing North American continent. Steaming volcanoes, ghost forests, recent landslides, and towns heated with geothermal energy attest to Oregon�s still-prominent position at the edge of an active tectonic plate. Author,…
I‘m a Sydney-based exploration geologist and science writer, travelling the world in search of gold, exotic metals, gemstones, and the stories they have to tell — writing is my tool to bring alive ideas and concepts important to me, and my popular books include Rocks, Fossils and Dinosaurs;Natural Disasters; and Geologica. Working in the world's poorest regions has also sparked a strong humanitarian interest. I'm the founding president of FreeSchools World Literacy – Australia, a charity dedicated to education of underprivileged children, and towards which earnings from my writing go. It is my belief that education for all, not just a privileged few, is key to solving the world's problems.
Earthquakes and Volcanoes is another one of the fabulous Reader’s Digest Pathfinders series specifically for kids. It features scientists at work measuring the temperature of red-hot lava, destructive earthquakes, and monstrous tsunamis bearing down on coastal ports. The cause of all of these is simply explained in the context of our planet’s shifting plate tectonic motor. The book’s author, Dr. Lin Sutherland, gave me a great helping hand during my Ph.D. degree at Macquarie University by organizing access to state-of-the-art uranium-lead age dating equipment for my sapphire samples. We became firm friends and colleagues after that, going on together to publish numerous research articles on sapphires and rubies.
Stimulating text, multi-layered illustrations, and hands-on activities present information about earthquakes and volcanoes, including notable examples in history, in the latest addition to a nonfiction science series. Teacher's Guide available.
For the past two decades, I have written about the intersection of people and place, particularly as viewed through the lens of geology and how it influences our lives. My nine books include Too High and Too Steep: Reshaping Seattle’s Topography, Cairns: Messengers in Stone, and Homewaters: A Human and Natural History of Puget Sound. All of them have a goal of helping people develop a better connection with the natural world around them.
In this brilliant, evocative, and imaginative novel, Claire Dudman has written a fictionalized autobiography of Alfred Wegener. Best known for his 1912 proposal about continental drift, Wegener was a first-rate meteorologist, polar researcher, and balloonist (he held the record for longest continuous flight). Dudman’s insights into Wegener’s personality, the challenges he faced with his proposal, and his love of science shine through and create a unique and memorable portrait of a brilliant and fascinating life.
A fictional biography of German meteorologist Alfred Wegener follows the groundbreaking scientist from his 1880 birth to his final Arctic exploration in 1930, discussing the offbeat scientific adventures and exploits that marked his life--from a record-breaking long-distance balloon flight in 1906, to his horrific experiences during World War I, to his struggle to defend his controversial theories. A first novel. Reprint.
I am a senior geologist emeritus (retired in 2020) whose research focused on volcanic features on Mars, Venus, and the Moon, particularly very long lava flows. I enjoy studying features on Earth in order to improve our understanding of similar features on other planets (also including the study of sand dunes). I worked for more than 32 years at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., which allowed me to do scientific research while also presenting the wonder of planetary geology to public audiences throughout the U.S. and in several countries across the world.
I recommend this book to anyone who asks me about volcanoes. It is a concise, easy-to-read account of the major volcanic revelations that have resulted from the robotic spacecraft exploration throughout the solar system.
The book is filled with exquisite photographs and logically organized chapters. Eleven chapters describe volcanic features both on Earth as well as many other worlds in our solar system. Each chapter is written well by an expert on each particular subject (and interestingly, all of the authors are women).
Written by active research scientists who study the volcanism of Earth and of other planets, the contributions provide the first general review of volcanic activity throughout the Solar System. Successive chapters describe past and present volcanic activity as it is observed throughout the Solar System. These chapters relate to readers not only our present knowledge of volcanism throughout the Solar System but also how frontline scientists working in this field conduct their research.
