100 Books Like Bite

“Natural history” may have been my first words. As a college biology major, I came to deeply appreciate the diversity and adaptations of animal life. In medical school, I learned how human tissues, especially bone, work and fail. Orthopedic surgery residency allowed me to drill down, literally and figuratively, on living bone. I have traveled extensively on all continents and, in so doing, continue to expand my passion for learning about bone’s historical and cultural aspects along with its marvelous biological properties. In 2017, I began blogging (aboutbone.com), and in 2020, I published Bones, Inside and Out. Now I’m also biting into teeth. I love life’s hard stuff. 

“Natural history” may have been my first words. As a college biology major, I came to deeply appreciate the diversity and adaptations of animal life. In medical school, I learned how human tissues, especially bone, work and fail. Orthopedic surgery residency allowed me to drill down, literally and figuratively, on living bone. I have traveled extensively on all continents and, in so doing, continue to expand my passion for learning about bone’s historical and cultural aspects along with its marvelous biological properties. In 2017, I began blogging (aboutbone.com), and in 2020, I published Bones, Inside and Out. Now I’m also biting into teeth. I love life’s hard stuff. 

“Natural history” may have been my first words. As a college biology major, I came to deeply appreciate the diversity and adaptations of animal life. In medical school, I learned how human tissues, especially bone, work and fail. Orthopedic surgery residency allowed me to drill down, literally and figuratively, on living bone. I have traveled extensively on all continents and, in so doing, continue to expand my passion for learning about bone’s historical and cultural aspects along with its marvelous biological properties. In 2017, I began blogging (aboutbone.com), and in 2020, I published Bones, Inside and Out. Now I’m also biting into teeth. I love life’s hard stuff. 

“Natural history” may have been my first words. As a college biology major, I came to deeply appreciate the diversity and adaptations of animal life. In medical school, I learned how human tissues, especially bone, work and fail. Orthopedic surgery residency allowed me to drill down, literally and figuratively, on living bone. I have traveled extensively on all continents and, in so doing, continue to expand my passion for learning about bone’s historical and cultural aspects along with its marvelous biological properties. In 2017, I began blogging (aboutbone.com), and in 2020, I published Bones, Inside and Out. Now I’m also biting into teeth. I love life’s hard stuff. 

I have always wondered why people choose and act in particular ways, from heroism and altruism to selfishness and greed. Human society is a kaleidoscope of changing actions and fortunes. Social science tries to explain why. But I was dissatisfied with its answers. Then I discovered writers who used evolutionary ideas to help explain social and economic change. I realized that evolution did not mean reducing everything to biology. I became fascinated by Darwin’s deeper and wider ideas about human society, cooperation, and motivation. I read widely and joined with others of similar mind. It is an exciting and rewarding intellectual landscape to explore. I strongly recommend a long visit.

Over the past decade, I’ve become very concerned with the direction authoritarianism is taking human society. It’s a global problem that now infects America, leaving us with a partisan divide we may not be able to bridge. My recommended books helped me understand the situation and how one might speak out against this negative force effectively. Convinced that bombarding readers with facts alone is useless, I chose to provide a novel that is interesting and captivates readers. My goal is to entice readers to press on to the end regardless of their political persuasion, in hopes that along the way some thought will be devoted to the issues raised.

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 studied chemistry at university but nature and biology are lifelong passions. I’ve researched and written about biology over three decades and published many articles and reviews, as well as the three books: The Gecko's Foot; Dazzled and Deceived: Mimicry and Camouflage; and Nanoscience: Giants of the Infinitesimal, co-written with the sculptor Tom Grimsey. We are at a tipping point with climate change and the books I’ve chosen show how the convergence of chemistry, biology, and geology have provided the most dramatic revelations about life on earth and are the best guides to understanding and mitigating our current environmental predicament. 

I am a classicist (Greek and Latin) and a serious student of history. Modernity has obsessed me for the last 10 years, how it unfolds, what its implications are, whether it generates more gains than losses, whether it’s changing us profoundly and whether we can dodge it or not. Because of this interest (which I lecture on often) I am fascinated to see modernity’s gleanings in earlier times and always curious to see what other critics make of it. Because its effects will only grow down the road, the task of understanding its mechanisms and outcomes is one of extreme urgency, as these books illustrate in different ways.

I have spent my career studying the evolution of female biology. My PhD thesis was on the evolution of pregnancy and menstruation. I am currently a researcher at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging studying the evolution of menopause. I also inhabit a female body and have a personal interest in understanding how and why my own body works the way it does. As a lifelong teacher who has taught high school, college, and graduate students, I am passionate about sharing what I know with other women. I hope you enjoy these fascinating books about the female body and its amazing evolutionary history.