Bioluminescent fish like “stars gone mad.” A “marine monster,” 20 ft long, with no eyes or fins. In the 1930s, William Beebe documented never-seen-before ocean life from his bathysphere, a submersible steel ball with oxygen tanks and 8” windows that allowed him to explore ½ mile below the surface. In The Bathysphere Book: Effects of the Luminous Ocean Depths, Brad Fox chronicles Beebe’s life and times.
A magazine article on a little-known sleep disorder Quinn Eastman wrote for Emory U. in 2012 spurred requests from readers seeking information and treatment. In The Woman Who Couldn’t Wake Up: Hypersomnia and the Science of Sleepiness, Eastman reports advances in understanding that disorder, idiopathic hypersomnia, and describes difficulties people with orphan diseases face in getting proper care.
After decades of clinical research, and both legal and illegal use, MDMA (short for methylenedioxymethamphetamine) also known as Molly, formerly as Ecstasy, is nearing FDA approval for the treatment of PTSD in veterans. In I Feel Love: MDMA and the Quest for Connection in a Fractured World, Rachel Nuwer details MDMA’s complex history, potential medical uses, and battle for legalization.
“Infectious fungi and fungus-like pathogens are the most devastating disease agents known on the planet,” Emily Monosson asserts. While most of the six million different species of fungi are harmless, some kill their host plants and animals, including humans. In Blight: Fungi and the Coming Pandemic, Monosson offers examples of fungal spread & details scientists’ efforts to stop fungal invasions.
The resurgence of white sharks along the northeastern US seacoast, a conservation success story, has sparked worries about public safety. Fatal attacks, while rare, have occurred. In Chasing Shadows: My Life Tracking the Great White Shark, Greg Skomal, Massachusetts Shark Research Program director, and science writer Ret Talbot, provide perspective on advances in understanding shark biology.
Uncertainties in medicine arise from both what is unknowable and what is missing, Ilana Yurkiewicz, MD, asserts in Fragmented: A Doctor’s Quest to Piece Together American Health Care. Seemingly mundane clinical decisions may have profound effects later on, Yurkiewicz says. She offers vignettes that include care her father received after a cardiac arrest & proposes ways to improve medical culture.
Lifelong Minnesota science writer Marie Zhuikov takes readers along as she explores her state’s peatland bogs on snowshoes, hikes to ice-filled sea caves on the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, and paddles a canoe around remote lakes. In Meander North, a book of collected blog posts, she also reports on dog-walking despite 30-below windchills, wildlife encounters, and community life.
Two endangered ocelots seeking food and mates attempt a journey between the US and Mexico. The border wall blocks one while the other crosses freely where wall construction is incomplete. In Border Crossings, Sneed B. Collard III explores the border wall’s threat to the survival of native animals and plants, many found nowhere else on Earth. Collard is the author of 85+ children’s science books.
The 130+ national monuments in the US include a 6-mile wide lake in a volcanic caldera; a riverbed with more than 750 types of fossils, some 44 million years old; homes of many of the nation’s heroes, and sites where historically significant events occurred. Cameron Walker describes them all in National Monuments of the U.S.A., a richly illustrated book for readers aged 6-10 & their families.
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