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The Knife Man – Wendy Moore

by Myrna Posted on September 11, 2019

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The Knife Man

Blood, Body Snatching, and the Birth of Modern Surgery

Wendy Moore

Genre: History

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: September 13, 2005

Publisher: Crown/Archetype

Seller: Penguin Random House LLC


The vivid, often gruesome portrait of the 18th-century pioneering surgeon and father of modern medicine, John Hunter. When Robert Louis Stevenson wrote his gothic horror story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he based the house of the genial doctor-turned-fiend on the home of John Hunter. The choice was understandable, for Hunter was both widely acclaimed and greatly feared.   From humble origins, John Hunter rose to become the most famous anatomist and surgeon of the eighteenth century. In an age when operations were crude, extremely painful, and often fatal, he rejected medieval traditions to forge a revolution in surgery founded on pioneering scientific experiments. Using the knowledge he gained from countless human dissections, Hunter worked to improve medical care for both the poorest and the best-known figures of the era—including Sir Joshua Reynolds and the young Lord Byron.   An insatiable student of all life-forms, Hunter was also an expert naturalist. He kept exotic creatures in his country menagerie and dissected the first animals brought back by Captain Cook from Australia. Ultimately his research led him to expound highly controversial views on the age of the earth, as well as equally heretical beliefs on the origins of life more than sixty years before Darwin published his famous theory.   Although a central figure of the Enlightenment, Hunter’s tireless quest for human corpses immersed him deep in the sinister world of body snatching. He paid exorbitant sums for stolen cadavers and even plotted successfully to steal the body of Charles Byrne, famous in his day as the “Irish giant.”   In The Knife Man , Wendy Moore unveils John Hunter’s murky and macabre world—a world characterized by public hangings, secret expeditions to dank churchyards, and gruesome human dissections in pungent attic rooms. This is a fascinating portrait of a remarkable pioneer and his determined struggle to haul surgery out of the realms of meaningless superstitious ritual and into the dawn of modern medicine.

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The Knife Man – Wendy Moore

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Life on the Edge – Johnjoe McFadden & Jim Al-Khalili

by Myrna Posted on July 31, 2019

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Life on the Edge

The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology

Johnjoe McFadden & Jim Al-Khalili

Genre: Physics

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: July 28, 2015

Publisher: Crown/Archetype

Seller: Penguin Random House LLC


New York Times bestseller •  Life on the Edge alters our understanding of our world's fundamental dynamics through the use of quantum mechanics. Life is the most extraordinary phenomenon in the known universe; but how did it come to be? Even in an age of cloning and artificial biology, the remarkable truth remains: nobody has ever made anything living entirely out of dead material. Life remains the only way to make life. Are we still missing a vital ingredient in its creation? Using first-hand experience at the cutting edge of science, Jim Al-Khalili and Johnjoe Macfadden reveal that missing ingredient to be quantum mechanics. Drawing on recent ground-breaking experiments around the world, each chapter in Life on the Edge illustrates one of life's puzzles: How do migrating birds know where to go? How do we really smell the scent of a rose? How do our genes copy themselves with such precision? Life on the Edge accessibly reveals how quantum mechanics can answer these probing questions of the universe. Guiding the reader through the rapidly unfolding discoveries of the last few years, Al-Khalili and McFadden describe the explosive new field of quantum biology and its potentially revolutionary applications, while offering insights into the biggest puzzle of all: what is life? As they brilliantly demonstrate in these groundbreaking pages, life exists on the quantum edge. Winner, Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication

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Life on the Edge – Johnjoe McFadden & Jim Al-Khalili

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Meghan and Harry want you to care about the environment (at least for July)

by ShanonCurry Posted on July 2, 2019

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Meghan and Harry want you to care about the environment (at least for July)

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The Alchemy of Air – Thomas Hager

by Myrna Posted on June 5, 2019

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The Alchemy of Air

A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler

Thomas Hager

Genre: Chemistry

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: September 9, 2008

Publisher: Crown/Archetype

Seller: Penguin Random House LLC


A sweeping history of tragic genius, cutting-edge science, and the Haber-Bosch discovery that changed billions of lives–including your own. At the dawn of the twentieth century, humanity was facing global disaster: Mass starvation was about to become a reality. A call went out to the world’ s scientists to find a solution. This is the story of the two men who found it: brilliant, self-important Fritz Haber and reclusive, alcoholic Carl Bosch. Together they discovered a way to make bread out of air, built city-sized factories, and saved millions of lives. But their epochal triumph came at a price we are still paying. The Haber-Bosch process was also used to make the gunpowder and explosives that killed millions during the two world wars. Both men were vilified during their lives; both, disillusioned and disgraced, died tragically. The Alchemy of Air is the extraordinary, previously untold story of a discovery that changed the way we grow food and the way we make war–and that promises to continue shaping our lives in fundamental and dramatic ways.

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The Alchemy of Air – Thomas Hager

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Evolution – Edward J. Larson

by Myrna Posted on May 4, 2019

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Evolution

The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory

Edward J. Larson

Genre: Life Sciences

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: August 8, 2006

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group

Seller: Penguin Random House LLC


“I often said before starting, that I had no doubt I should frequently repent of the whole undertaking.” So wrote Charles Darwin aboard The Beagle , bound for the Galapagos Islands and what would arguably become the greatest and most controversial discovery in scientific history. But the theory of evolution did not spring full-blown from the head of Darwin. Since the dawn of humanity, priests, philosophers, and scientists have debated the origin and development of life on earth, and with modern science, that debate shifted into high gear. In this lively, deeply erudite work, Pulitzer Prize–winning science historian Edward J. Larson takes us on a guided tour of Darwin’s “dangerous idea,” from its theoretical antecedents in the early nineteenth century to the brilliant breakthroughs of Darwin and Wallace, to Watson and Crick’s stunning discovery of the DNA double helix, and to the triumphant neo-Darwinian synthesis and rising sociobiology today. Along the way, Larson expertly places the scientific upheaval of evolution in cultural perspective: the social and philosophical earthquake that was the French Revolution; the development, in England, of a laissez-faire capitalism in tune with a Darwinian ethos of “survival of the fittest”; the emergence of Social Darwinism and the dark science of eugenics against a backdrop of industrial revolution; the American Christian backlash against evolutionism that culminated in the famous Scopes trial; and on to today’s world, where religious fundamentalists litigate for the right to teach “creation science” alongside evolution in U.S. public schools, even as the theory itself continues to evolve in new and surprising directions. Throughout, Larson trains his spotlight on the lives and careers of the scientists, explorers, and eccentrics whose collaborations and competitions have driven the theory of evolution forward. Here are portraits of Cuvier, Lamarck, Darwin, Wallace, Haeckel, Galton, Huxley, Mendel, Morgan, Fisher, Dobzhansky, Watson and Crick, W. D. Hamilton, E. O. Wilson, and many others. Celebrated as one of mankind’s crowning scientific achievements and reviled as a threat to our deepest values, the theory of evolution has utterly transformed our view of life, religion, origins, and the theory itself, and remains controversial, especially in the United States (where 90% of adults do not subscribe to the full Darwinian vision). Replete with fresh material and new insights, Evolution will educate and inform while taking readers on a fascinating journey of discovery.

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Evolution – Edward J. Larson

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The Man Who Planted Trees – Jim Robbins

by Myrna Posted on February 12, 2019

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The Man Who Planted Trees

A Story of Lost Groves, the Science of Trees, and a Plan to Save the Planet

Jim Robbins

Genre: Nature

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: April 17, 2012

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group

Seller: Penguin Random House LLC


The Man Who Planted Trees is the inspiring story of David Milarch’s quest to clone the biggest trees on the planet in order to save our forests and ecosystem—as well as a hopeful lesson about how each of us has the ability to make a difference. “When is the best time to plant a tree? Twenty years ago. The second best time? Today.”—Chinese proverb   Twenty years ago, David Milarch, a northern Michigan nurseryman with a penchant for hard living, had a vision: angels came to tell him that the earth was in trouble. Its trees were dying, and without them, human life was in jeopardy. The solution, they told him, was to clone the champion trees of the world—the largest, the hardiest, the ones that had survived millennia and were most resilient to climate change—and create a kind of Noah’s ark of tree genetics. Without knowing if the message had any basis in science, or why he’d been chosen for this task, Milarch began his mission of cloning the world’s great trees. Many scientists and tree experts told him it couldn’t be done, but, twenty years later, his team has successfully cloned some of the world’s oldest trees—among them giant redwoods and sequoias. They have also grown seedlings from the oldest tree in the world, the bristlecone pine Methuselah.   When New York Times journalist Jim Robbins came upon Milarch’s story, he was fascinated but had his doubts. Yet over several years, listening to Milarch and talking to scientists, he came to realize that there is so much we do not yet know about trees: how they die, how they communicate, the myriad crucial ways they filter water and air and otherwise support life on Earth. It became clear that as the planet changes, trees and forest are essential to assuring its survival. Praise for The Man Who Planted Trees   “This is a story of miracles and obsession and love and survival. Told with Jim Robbins’s signature clarity and eye for telling detail, The Man Who Planted Trees is also the most hopeful book I’ve read in years. I kept thinking of the end of Saint Francis’s wonderful prayer, ‘And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in the world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.’ ” —Alexandra Fuller, author of Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight “Absorbing, eloquent, and loving . . . While Robbins’s tone is urgent, it doesn’t compromise his crystal-clear science. . . . Even the smallest details here are fascinating.” —Dominique Browning, The New York Times Book Review “The great poet W. S. Merwin once wrote, ‘On the last day of the world I would want to plant a tree.’ It’s good to see, in this lovely volume, that some folks are getting a head start!” —Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet “Inspiring . . . Robbins lucidly summarizes the importance and value of trees to planet Earth and all humanity.” — The Ecologist   “ ‘Imagine a world without trees,’ writes journalist Jim Robbins. It’s nearly impossible after reading The Man Who Planted Trees, in which Robbins weaves science and spirituality as he explores the bounty these plants offer the planet.” — Audubon

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The Man Who Planted Trees – Jim Robbins

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With the world on the line, scientists outline the paths to survival

by AkilahGregson Posted on October 4, 2018

This week, scientists and representatives from every country on Earth are gathering in South Korea to put the finishing touches on a report that, if followed, would change the course of history.

The report is a roadmap for possible ways to keep climate change to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. Anything beyond that amount of warming, and the planet starts to really go haywire. So the International Panel on Climate Change — a U.N.-sponsored, Nobel Peace Prize-winning assemblage of scientists — wants to show how we can avoid that. To be clear, hitting that goal would require a radical rethink in almost every aspect of society. But the report finds that not meeting the goal would upend life as we know it, too.

“This will be one of the most important meetings in the IPCC’s history,” said Hoesung Lee, the group’s chair, in his opening address on Monday.

The report will be released on October 8. From leaked drafts, we know the basics of scientists’ findings: World greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2020 — just 15 months from now. The scientists also show the difference in impacts between 1.5 and 2 degrees would not be minor — it could be make-or-break for the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, for example, which would flood every coastal city on Earth should it collapse.

“The decisions we make now about whether we let 1.5 or 2 degrees or more happen will change the world enormously,” said Heleen de Coninck, a Dutch climate scientist and one of the report’s lead authors, in an interview with the BBC. “The lives of people will never be the same again either way, but we can influence which future we end up with.”

The report has been in the works since the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Three years ago, during the climate talks, leaders of a few dozen small island nations and other highly vulnerable nations, like Ethiopia, Bangladesh, and Vietnam, demanded the bolder 1.5 degrees C temperature target be included in the first-ever global climate pact. The group represents 1 billion people, and for some of the involved countries, like the Marshall Islands, their entire existence is at stake.

At the time, the lead negotiator from that tiny Pacific island nation used the word “genocide” to describe the inevitable process of forced abandonment of his country due to sea-level rise, should global temperature breach the 1.5 degree target.

Even taking into account the policies and pledges enacted globally since the Paris Agreement, the world is on course to warm between 2.6 to 3.2 degrees C by the end of the century, according to independent analysis by Climate Action Tracker.

According to a U.N. preview of the report, meeting the 1.5 goal would “require very fast changes in electricity production, transport, construction, agriculture and industry” worldwide, in a globally coordinated effort to bring about a zero-carbon economy as quickly as possible. It would also very likely require eventually removing huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere using technology that is not currently available at the scale that would be necessary. And there’s no time to waste: “The longer CO2 is emitted at today’s rate, the faster this decarbonization will need to be.”

The world has already warmed by about 1.1 degrees C, and the implications of that are increasingly obvious. In just the three years since the Paris Agreement was signed, we’ve seen thousand-year rainstorms by the dozens, the most destructive hurricane season in U.S. history, disastrous fires on almost every continent, and an unprecedented coral bleaching episode that affected 70 percent of the world’s reefs.

In this age of rapid warming, the IPCC report is inherently political — there are obvious winners and losers if the world fails to meet the 1.5-degree goal. If the world’s governments are to take the implications of IPCC’s findings seriously, it would be nothing less than revolutionary — a radical restructuring of human society on our planet.

Right now, scientists are trying to find the precise words to describe an impending catastrophe and the utterly heroic efforts it would take to avert it.

“We’re talking about the kind of crisis that forces us to rethink everything we’ve known so far on how to build a secure future,” Greenpeace’s Kaisa Kosonen told AFP in response to a draft of the report. “We have to try to make the impossible possible.”

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With the world on the line, scientists outline the paths to survival

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Did Brett Kavanaugh lie about his environmental record?

by AmieSheppard Posted on October 4, 2018

Brett Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court nominee accused of sexual assault by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, wants you to know that, at the time of the alleged incident, he was just an average teenage virgin. His pastimes included “hanging out and having some beers” with his buddies, OK? In normal amounts, allegedly. And you know what? It’s difficult to definitively prove that his version of events isn’t true.

What we do have a record of, however, is how Kavanaugh has voted on the environment. “In some cases, I’ve ruled against environmentalists’ interests, and in many cases I’ve ruled for environmentalists’ interests,” he testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 5. So why did one law professor call him the “Voldemort” of environmental law?

Unfortunately for lovers of the truth and also planet Earth, the honorable judge may have mischaracterized his environmental credentials, as the Intercept reports. Let us please turn to the receipts.

During that testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Kavanaugh named Natural Resources Defense Council v. EPA as an example of a time he upheld environmental regulations. As Sharon Lerner wrote in the Intercept, he actually ruled against three out of four of the challenges brought by environment groups in that case. And the one point he sided with environmentalists on wasn’t “especially environmental,” an NRDC senior attorney told Lerner.
But what of his opinions? Did the judge pen fiery defenses of the environment during his tenure? Not really. An Earthjustice analysis found that, when deciding 26 EPA-related cases, Kavanaugh sided with the deregulation camp 89 percent of the time.
Kavanaugh, unlike most normal human beings, doesn’t seem to have a soft spot for nature’s majestic fauna. An analysis from the Center for Biological Diversity shows that Kavanaugh voted against wildlife 96 percent of the time. Do all judges just hate animals? Nope! That same analysis shows conservative judge David Sentelle voted against animals 57 percent of the time, and moderate judge Merrick Garland voted against them 46 percent of the time.
The last nail in Kavanaugh’s environmental coffin comes from President Trump himself, who sent out an email this summer praising the Supreme Court nominee for overruling federal regulators “75 times on cases involving clean air, consumer protections, net neutrality and other issues.”

For someone who has attended so many sports games, this former football bro is pretty bad at keeping score. Maybe all the beverages he’s consumed in his lifetime have clouded his ability to remember his environmental voting record.

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Did Brett Kavanaugh lie about his environmental record?

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What do vaping and offshore drilling have in common? Amendment 9.

by minnahawthorne Posted on October 4, 2018

The Sunshine State is no stranger to high drama come election season. This year, Florida is the place to watch if you’re curious how toxic algae has changed the Senate race or how Puerto Rican émigrés are shaping policy on the mainland. It’s also the place to be for voters with a disdain for both fossil fuels and e-cigarette vapors — they’ll get a chance to hit two birds with just one ticked oval on the ballot.

If passed, Amendment 9 would ban both offshore drilling and indoor vaping in the state constitution. A series of unusual events has led to the pairing, which only could have happened in Florida.

Florida is the sole state that appoints a commission with the power to refer constitutional amendments to the ballot. This Constitution Revision Commission only forms once every 20 years — and this is the lucky year. It exercised a unique power: “bundling” several proposals that span multiple issues into a single amendment. In contrast, if a proposed amendment were to make it to the ballot via petition, it’s bound by a “single-subject rule” aimed at preventing “log-rolling” — forcing voters to compromise one issue for another, or leading an unpopular measure to success by tying it to a more likable cause.

“Grouping some ideas which share common elements is for the benefit of the voter,” Brecht Heuchan, chair of the commission’s Style & Drafting Committee, said in a press release. “Grouping some ideas together keeps the ballot from becoming too lengthy to complete.”

The commission is now defending that reasoning in court after a retired Florida Supreme Court justice challenged six amendments on the ballot — including Amendment 9 — and charged the commission with “a form of issue gerrymandering.” In early September, a circuit judge sided with the plaintiff and ruled to have the amendments taken off the ballot, but Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi quickly appealed.

“I’m hopeful and I have every reason to believe it will be on the ballot from November,” Lisa Carlton, author of the proposal to limit where e-cigarettes can be used, tells Grist. “We’ll have to wait and see what the final decision is.”

Carlton, a former Republican state senator, was appointed to this year’s Constitution Revision Commission by Governor Rick Scott. When it comes to pairing her proposal with a stop to offshore drilling, she’s enthusiastic.

“The issues together send a message of clean air, clean water,” says Carlton, who believes her original proposal encompassed both health and environmental benefits. “I cannot think of anything more important than protecting our near shores in Florida,” she says.

Others are worried about marrying the two issues. The Florida League of Women Voters’ endorsement of the amendment comes with a caveat: “Our concern for the environment overrides our concern about putting vaping in the Constitution.”

“Frankly, bundling offshore drilling with vaping — it’s laughable,” says Patricia Brigham, president of the Florida League of Women Voters. Asking Floridians to vote on an amendment that encompasses unrelated issues puts voters in a difficult position, she says. It also makes the amendment harder to understand.

Another pairing that has left some voters scratching their heads is an amendment that addresses both college fees and death benefits for spouses of first responders and military members killed in the line of duty.

Manley Fuller is the president and CEO of Florida Wildlife Federation, the organization that wrote the language on offshore drilling now included in Amendment 9. He wasn’t happy about the bundling at first, either — but if his organization was going to be forced to tango with anybody, he’s glad it happened to be the vaping measure.

“There were other [proposals] which were much more complicated and very divergent,” Fuller says. “Vaping was probably the least objectionable.”

It’s been a long battle to stop offshore drilling. Only recently has it become a cause with bipartisan support. Rick Scott opposed a similar constitutional ban in 2010, but he’s now running to keep his seat on a platform that challenges the Trump administration’s attempts to expand offshore drilling. If passed, Amendment 9 offers permanent protection of the state’s shores and marine habitats.

“The reason we need to put it in the constitution is to send a clear message that Floridians do not want oil or gas drilling in our state marine waters,” says Fuller.

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What do vaping and offshore drilling have in common? Amendment 9.

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The Tree – Colin Tudge

by Myrna Posted on September 25, 2018

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The Tree

A Natural History of What Trees Are, How They Live, and Why They Matter

Colin Tudge

Genre: Nature

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: October 3, 2006

Publisher: Crown/Archetype

Seller: Penguin Random House LLC


A blend of history, science, philosophy, and environmentalism, The Tree is an engaging and elegant look at the life of the tree and what modern research tells us about their future. There are redwoods in California that were ancient by the time Columbus first landed, and pines still alive that germinated around the time humans invented writing. There are Douglas firs as tall as skyscrapers, and a banyan tree in Calcutta as big as a football field. From the tallest to the smallest, trees inspire wonder in all of us, and in The Tree, Colin Tudge travels around the world—throughout the United States, the Costa Rican rain forest, Panama and Brazil, India, New Zealand, China, and most of Europe—bringing to life stories and facts about the trees around us: how they grow old, how they eat and reproduce, how they talk to one another (and they do), and why they came to exist in the first place. He considers the pitfalls of being tall; the things that trees produce, from nuts and rubber to wood; and even the complicated debt that we as humans owe them. Tudge takes us to the Amazon in flood, when the water is deep enough to submerge the forest entirely and fish feed on fruit while river dolphins race through the canopy. He explains the “memory” of a tree: how those that have been shaken by wind grow thicker and sturdier, while those attacked by pests grow smaller leaves the following year; and reveals how it is that the same trees found in the United States are also native to China (but not Europe). From tiny saplings to centuries-old redwoods and desert palms, from the backyards of the American heartland to the rain forests of the Amazon and the bamboo forests, Colin Tudge takes the reader on a journey through history and illuminates our ever-present but often ignored companions.

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The Tree – Colin Tudge

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