The Geography of Risk by Gilbert M. Gaul
★★★★★ Hurricanes and nor’easters come and go leaving a trail of broken homes amid the debris of a lifetime of living and acquiring and they generate stories in their aftermath. Sometimes, as happened a...
Category: Science Writing
We Are the Weather by Jonathan Safran Foer
★★★★☆ “When a radical change is needed, many argue that it is impossible for individual actions to incite it, so it’s futile for anyone to try. This is exactly the opposite of the truth;...
How to Know the Birds by Ted Floyd
★★★★☆ The yellow-breasted chat had just arrived on my birding stomping grounds, calling out incessantly in an interesting conversation I wasn’t invited to, when I flipped to a chapter dedicated to this species in...
The Dark Stuff by Donald S. Murray
★★☆☆☆ Sub-titled “Stories From the Peatlands,” The Dark Stuff is far too textbook-like and not appealing enough for the casual reader. The facts are very nice but the writing does not resonate: it just...
Anesthesia by Kate Cole-Adams
★★★★☆ Anesthesia: The Gift of Oblivion and the Mystery of Consciousness “explores perhaps the most brilliant and baffling gift of modern medicine: the disappearing act that enables doctors and dentists to carry out surgery and...
Climate Justice by Mary Robinson
★★★☆☆ Former president of Ireland and UN Special Envoy on Climate Change Mary Robinson has compiled a solid new addition to the arsenal of tools with which to discuss the world’s encroaching climate troubles....
Spying on Whales by Nick Pyenson
★★★★☆ Is there anything more awe-inspiring than watching a whale, the largest creature on earth, gliding through the ocean and breaching, slapping its flukes onto the water? We travel and pay good money to...
Darwin Comes to Town by Menno Schilthuizen
★★★★☆ The Earth is human-dominated; humans consume one quarter of all plant-produced food and half of the world’s fresh water. In 2007, the number of people living in urban areas passed the number living...
The River of Consciousness by Oliver Sacks
★★★★☆ In January 2015, neurologist Oliver Sacks learned that the ocular cancer he had battled years before had metastasized to his liver. He was given six to eighteen months to live. Upon hearing the...
