The library has always been my favorite place to visit. As a child, I would travel the world through books. I learned about different cultures and studied other languages. Through these experiences, I gained a deep appreciation for cultures around the world. I also learned an important lesson that inclusion is the thread that weaves together a rich multicultural tapestry. Fast forward to today, I share these lessons through my work as an author, leadership scholar, and law professor. My booklist reflects a celebration of diverse cultures, introduces learning tools for becoming an inclusive leader, and provides an invitation to join me in taking intentional action for justice and equity.
This book teaches the importance of community-building. It celebrates diversity and inclusion as both a strength and asset.
It dispels the myth of race by focusing on our shared humanity and common destiny. It gets to the basics that our DNA is 99.999% similar hence building common ground across differences.
It also encourages each of us to discover the values of love and kindness.
I shared this book with my students as a tool to explore their cultural heritage and build new connections.
Now a New York Times bestseller! Using child-friendly language, this playful picture book explains how genetics make each person unique and celebrates how we are more alike than different and are all part of the human race. In The Smallest Spot of a Dot: The Little Ways We’re Different, The Big Ways We’re the Same, Linsey Davis, bestselling children’s author, Emmy-winning correspondent, and host for ABC News, together with co-author Michael Tyler, encourages children to find their own unique dot with sweet, rhyming prose.
”Only .1% of our genes make us uniquely who we are. We are 99.9% identical, alike,…
By now you are probably wondering why the author of a dark and violent tale set in the Zombie Apocalypse is recommending humorous books. The answer lies within the five elements of survival: Shelter, Fire, Food, Water, and Mindset. A positive mindset can get you through a lot of dark and dangerous times, and being able to find the funny in the darkness will help you maintain that mindset (especially if you are injured or scared).
Have you ever been camping, or to a party, and heard the immortal phrase, "Hold my beer and watch this"? If so, you know you are about to witness a tale you’ll be retelling for the rest of your life, or you will soon be assisting police with their inquiries. The stories in this book fall into the latter category.
The hilarious New York Times bestselling phenomenon and the perfect funny gift!
The Darwin Awards shares the stories of those human beings who improve the gene pool by removing themselves from it in a sublimely idiotic fashion.
Marvel at the thief who tries to steal live electrical wires. Gape at the lawnchair jockey who floats to a height of 16,000 feet suspended by helium balloons. And learn from the man who peers into a gasoline can using a cigarette lighter. All contend for Darwin Awards when their choices culminate in magnificent misadventures.
These tales of trial and awe-inspiring error-verified by…
I love prickly children. I was one myself, and I’ve quite a few of them in my family. I’ve also worked with desperate families over the years, children who are out of control, parents feeling overwhelmed, nobody knowing what to do to find the calm and loving core of connection we all yearn for. I feel the suffering these authors document—the child’s sense of being misunderstood and punished unfairly, and the parent’s desperation. So, when I read a book that offers intelligent and caring solutions driven by science, compassion, and experience, I share it with everyone who will listen. I’m delighted to have a chance here to do that.
Thomas Boyce not only has impeccable credentials as a pediatrician, academic, and epidemiologist, but he also has deep personal history motivating his writing of The Orchid and the Dandelion. That is, he not only knows this topic, he feels it. On top of all of that, he writes with a warmth and poetic sensitivity so often lacking in evidence-based books like this. Boyce writes about orchid children being exquisitely sensitive, so they absorb their environment and thrive under the right circumstances, becoming remarkably insightful and creative. Under adverse circumstances, however, orchid children wilt. Dandelion children, by contrast, are more resilient and can accommodate more adversity without showing too much harm. Another interesting dimension Boyce explores is how the family, school, community, and society can all have an impact on an orchid child’s development.
'A necessary and important book.' Philippa Perry, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read
'The Orchid and the Dandelion is based on groundbreaking research that has the power to change the lives of countless children - and the adults who love them.' - Susan Cain, New York Times bestselling author of Quiet
Why do some people succeed and others struggle? Why are some people's lives filled with satisfaction and happiness and others with frustration and despair? Why do some people die young, while others live into healthy old age? Is it simply chance and…
Morally gray heroes are my absolute favorite kind. Whether it’s Batman, Dean Winchester from Supernatural, or the heroes on this list—if he’s not dark and stormy, well, I’m not interested. There’s a depth to these characters that others often lack, and I find it so fascinating. Especiallywhen there’s romance involved. The books on this list are nearly all polar opposites, and yet... they each stretch our capacity to love to the very breaking point—and then make us catch our breath. How far into the darkness can he go, and still come back with a heart left to give to his heroine?
There is nothing about this book, and the heroine in it, that isn’t fun and hilarious. Jen is mouthy and wild, and more than willing to tempt Decebel—a hunky, dangerous werewolf—to throw all his rules against getting involved with humans to the wind. This grumpy and sunshine book hooked me before the grumpy/sunshine trend was even a thing. But don’t let the fun fool you—dark magic is at work, and they will be up against life-and-death odds if they’re going to make it as a couple.
Jennifer Adams, best friend to a werewolf and a gypsy healer, is spicy, outspoken, a little crazy, and completely human...or so she thought. Jen has just found out that human DNA isn't the only thing that resides in her veins. She happens to share that little pesky werewolf gene, although it isn't more than just a drop. Now that she and her friends are living in Romania with Fane's pack, she is oh-so-conveniently stuck with the object of her affection, the broody furball, Decebel. Drawn to each other by something…
Even though I am a scientist who has written over 130 scientific articles, I have a longstanding passion for scientific books that are written for non-scientists. I love books about science, no matter how distant they are from my area of expertise. To me, the best science books convey the excitement of science and scientific thinking in an accessible manner, but without pandering or dumbing things down. My favorite books tackle big ideas and respect the reader’s intelligence. My choices here reflect my core interests in biology, evolution, and behavior—and the aesthetics of science, too. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.
Genes have variously been described as selfish and controlling—as providing a blueprint or a program for development—as even “the cell’s brain”. These descriptions of genes get in the way of our understanding of what genes actually do—and what they don’t (and cannot) do. Evelyn Fox Keller provides an antidote to the simplistic notions of genes that permeate our society and infect our scientific discourse. She carefully walks us through the history of the field and provides us with a much more realistic view of the intricacies of DNA. By the end of this marvelous book, you may not even think that genes are a thing at all.
In a book that promises to change the way we think and talk about genes and genetic determinism, Evelyn Fox Keller, one of our most gifted historians and philosophers of science, provides a powerful, profound analysis of the achievements of genetics and molecular biology in the twentieth century, the century of the gene. Not just a chronicle of biology's progress from gene to genome in one hundred years, The Century of the Gene also calls our attention to the surprising ways these advances challenge the familiar picture of the gene most of us still entertain.
Keller shows us that the…
When I was at school in 1991, the terrible news came out that Freddie Mercury, lead singer of Queen, had died of HIV/AIDS. At the time, this virus was fatal in nearly everyone it infected. And yet, only 30 years later, we now have drugs that completely prevent the disease. This amazing breakthrough is just one of the many success stories that inspired my passion for infectious diseases, the way our immune system can fight them off, and how science can help us fight infections. The list of books goes from fiction about when infections go wrong and to popular science about how scientists ensure the nightmare scenario never happens.
I love this book because Dan combines his passion for immunology with his own voice. It inspired me to write my own book.
Dan’s boundless enthusiasm for his field explodes off the page, breathing life into what could have been a dry topic. I learnt a huge amount about both writing and immunology.
The Compatibility Gene takes readers on a global journey of discovery spanning 60 years, involving scores of scientists, and encompassing the history of transplants and immunology. That journey has revealed astonishing links between who we are as individuals and our never-ceasing struggle to survive disease.
Most of the 25,000 genes we possess are the same for all of us. Compatibility genes are those that vary most from person to person and give each of us a unique molecular signature. These genes determine both the extent to which we are susceptible to a vast range of illnesses and the different ways…
I’m an evolutionary biologist and a Wenner-Gren Fellow at the Evolutionary Biology Centre at Uppsala University, Sweden. My research focuses on the biology of genetic conflicts and what they can tell us about the evolution of conflict and cooperation more generally. I develop population genetic theory and perform comparative analyses to ask how and why such conflicts occur and how they fit into models of social evolution. I also work on the foundations of the so-called gene’s-eye view of evolution, also known as selfish gene theory. I studied at Edinburgh and Toronto and was a postdoc at Cornell and Harvard.
When I read Richard Dawkins’s The Extended Phenotype I knew I wanted to become an evolutionary biologist. The book is the most ambitious articulation of the gene’s-eye view (a work of ‘unabashed advocacy’, as Dawkins put it). Less famous thatThe Selfish Gene, it also includes responses to the criticisms thatThe Selfish Genereceived, which also made debates in theoretical biology seem so exciting. In many ways, that excitement has never left me.
In The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins crystallized the gene's eye view of evolution developed by W.D. Hamilton and others. The book provoked widespread and heated debate. Written in part as a response, The Extended Phenotype gave a deeper clarification of the central concept of the gene as the unit of selection; but it did much more besides. In it, Dawkins extended the gene's eye view to argue that the genes that sit within an organism have an influence that reaches out beyond the visible traits in that body - the phenotype - to the wider environment, which can include other…
Though my undergraduate degrees are in electrical engineering and English, I have always been fascinated by the natural world. When I was a kid, my mother -- herself a mainframe computer programmer who loved her college biology courses -- bought me a microscope. I used it to peer at everything from the microscopic inhabitants of the canal behind our South Florida home to the onions and celery that we were having with lunch. Now I’m a law professor, but in addition to patents and property, I also teach about genetics and medical ethics. I think it’s really important that we all understand something about how the world works, how the law regulates it, and how we can try to change those aspects of it that aren’t working well.
It is hard to believe that Matt Ridley’s grand tour of the human genome was published back in 1999. Yet even today, more than two decades later, Ridley’s engaging, chromosome by chromosome investigation of our genetic make-up remains a marvel that has never been equaled. From the genes that enable the most basic chemical processes in our cells to those that determine our height and eye color, the mysterious “junk DNA” that lives between our genes, and speculation about the ways that genes affect personality, behavior, and society, Ridley brings science to life in this engaging and timeless book.
The most important investigation of genetic science since The Selfish Gene, from the author of the critically acclaimed and best-selling The Red Queen and The Origins of Virtue.
The genome is our 100,000 or so genes. The genome is the collective recipe for the building and running of the human body. These 100,000 genes are sited across 23 pairs of chromosomes. Genome, a book of about 100,000 words, is divided into 23 chapters, a chapter for each chromosome. The first chromosome, for example, contains our oldest genes, genes which we have in common with plants.
Psychiatric genetics is now entering its second century. Lifetimes of work, billions of dollars spent, and not a single finding that has benefitted a single patient anywhere in the world.
Moreover, these labors are a preposterous distraction from addressing the real causes of those complaints that fall under the diagnostic rubric of “mental illness” – abuse, trauma, loss, and so forth. It’s time to move on.
Schizophrenia is a widely investigated psychiatric condition, and though there have been claims of gene "associations," decades of molecular genetic studies have failed to produce confirmed causative genes. In this book, Joseph focuses on the methodological shortcomings of schizophrenia genetic research.
His findings have major implications not only on how we understand the causes of schizophrenia and other psychiatric conditions, but also on how we understand the causes of human behavior in general. Chapters explore the differing theoretical concepts of schizophrenia, molecular genetic research around schizophrenia, family, twin, and adoption studies, and non-medical prevention and intervention strategies. Prominent researchers and…
K. Lee Lerner is an author, editor, and producer of science and factual media, including four editions of the Gale Encyclopedia of Science and the Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and Security. His expansive writing on science, climate change, disasters, disease, and global issues has earned multiple book and media awards, including books named Outstanding Academic Titles. An aviator, sailor, and member of the National Press Club in Washington, his two global circumnavigations and portfolio of work in challenging and dangerous environments reveal a visceral drive to explore and investigate. With a public intellectual's broad palate and a scientist's regard for evidence-based analysis, Lerner dissects and accessibly explains complex issues.
Carl Zimmer's authoritative writing, grounded in both science and journalism, reads and captivates like a page-turner novel. Written for a general audience, Zimmer's rich exploration of the history and controversies surrounding how we pass genes and associate traits from one generation to another also offer insights into a field of science central to social and cultural issues related to ancestry, race, sexual differences, evolution, as well as inherited traits and diseases.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2018 BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION
'Elegantly written, wittily constructed . . . My science book of the year.' Robin McKie, Observer, 'Best Books of 2018'
She Has Her Mother's Laugh presents a profoundly original perspective on what we pass along from generation to generation. Charles Darwin played a crucial part in turning heredity into a scientific question, and yet he failed spectacularly to answer it. The birth of genetics in the early 1900s seemed to do precisely that. Gradually, people translated their old notions about heredity into a language of genes. As the technology for studying…
