Here are 100 books that Natural Selection fans have personally recommended if you like
Natural Selection.
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I could not reconcile teachings about right and wrong given to me by my parents and their religion with the evidence-based science I learned in medical school. As an adult, I studied morals, ethics, and religions and saw humanity on a self-destructive path, marked by world wars, genocides, destruction of civilizations, pollution of outer space, and poisons filling our land and oceans full of trash. There had to be a better way.
It's hard to explain what a revelation this book was to me. When I began this book, I was a believer in the Christian mythology as described to me by my parents and the church. I read through meticulous details of how different animals gradually changed and differentiated by natural selection into new species.
After reading the last word and closing the book, suddenly, the light dawned. I understood that no Divine hand had anything to do with the development of a myriad of different species on planet Earth, and all that creation mythology was anthropomorphic imagination.
I also understood that there was no Divine hand guiding us to a Divine purpose in life—which meant that it was up to us to make this world a better place, for not only the human species but all other life on this planet.
Charles Darwin’s classic that exploded into public controversy, revolutionized the course of science, and continues to transform our views of the world.
Few other books have created such a lasting storm of controversy as The Origin of Species. Darwin’s theory that species derive from other species by a gradual evolutionary process and that the average level of each species is heightened by the “survival of the fittest” stirred up popular debate to fever pitch. Its acceptance revolutionized the course of science.
As Sir Julian Huxley, the noted biologist, points out in his illuminating introduction, the importance of Darwin’s contribution to…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
I’ve spent 20 years researching Antarctica and polar history to learn about my father’s experiences on Admiral Richard E. Byrd’s III expedition or the USASE in 1939-41. I’ve been passionate about art, travel, and learning about other cultures for most of my life. I’m excited to say, I’ve worked on all the continents! My interests led me to a career as a leadership consultant, executive coach and team facilitator. Since 2020, I have had a dream job working with Antarctic scientists and teams, assisting them to manage stress and conflict in the field. With a lifetime of experience in the performing arts, my work inspires leaders to unlock their full potential and drive meaningful change.
I’ve never seen anything like this body of work—it’s mesmerizing to see Brian Jarvi’s paintings and thought process behind his 17-year creation. It makes me celebrate Nature as he intended and I feel awe for the realism he depicts.
As I read, I witness the conversation that must be taking place between animals and humanity to shape the future on our planet.
Depicting more than 220 African species, the stunning large-scale mural African Menagerie is artist Brian Jarvi s masterwork. Lavishly reproduced in an oversize format with a gatefold, this book brings this landscape masterpiece to the conservationist, lover of Africa, and fan of wildlife art. In oversized colour reproductions, the book African Menagerie offers readers a look at the finer details of the realist renderings of the animals and birds across the seven panels and thirty feet. There are also reproductions of the animal studies Jarvi created in the seventeen years leading up to the final work. Measuring 28 feet across…
I have always been fascinated by the workings of the human mind.What instincts and influences make us who we are? This Alien Shore grew out of research I was doing into atypical neurological conditions.It depicts a society that has abandoned the concept of “neurotypical”, embracing every variant of human perspective as valid and valuable. One of my main characters, Kio Masada, is autistic, and that gives him a unique perspective on computer security that others cannot provide. What might such a man accomplish, in a world where his condition is embraced and celebrated? Good science fiction challenges our definition of “Other,” and asks what it really means to be human, all in the context of an exciting story.
This anthology has one of my favorite stories by Tiptree, it is called "We who stole the dream". The Joilani have long been enslaved and abused by humans. So has another race, of “delicately winged creatures”, whose sweat is a powerful intoxicant to humans. It is most potent when the donor experiences pain and fear, so humans have taken to torturing mated pairs of them, so the partners can watch each other suffer. The resulting sweat is a drug called Star Tears. Although that unnamed race plays no active role in the story, they are on my list because of the powerful manner in which they influence other species, invoking the darkest and most brutal aspects of human nature simply by existing.
The diminutive, weak, and peace-loving Joilani make a desperate break for freedom. Stealing a spaceship called The Dream, they seek out the mythical planet of their…
Ten tantalizing tales of man, woman and child - and their cosmic connections...
Contents: Angel Fix (1974) Beaver Tears (1976) Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light! (1976) The Screwfly Solution (1977) Time-Sharing Angel (1977) We Who Stole the Dream (1978) Slow Music (1980) A Source of Innocent Merriment (1980) Out of the Everywhere (1981) With Delicate Mad Hands (1981)
The Guardian of the Palace is the first novel in a modern fantasy series set in a New York City where magic is real—but hidden, suppressed, and dangerous when exposed.
When an ancient magic begins to leak into the world, a small group of unlikely allies is forced to act…
As a UK nature writer and amateur naturalist, I have a fascination with the natural world. If it squeaks, buzzes, croaks, hisses, or tweets, I want to know more about it. I enjoy books that are both captivating and easy to understand, and I’m at my happiest when uncovering unusual facts and exploring the rich folklore surrounding our wildlife. As a writer, I contribute to magazines focusing on nature and wildlife-friendly gardening. I also teach creative writing and have authored a book celebrating the wonders of our UK wildlife. I live in Dorset and find endless joy in observing and nurturing whatever wanders or flies into my overgrown garden.
In the summer, this book takes over from British Wildlife as my favourite reference book that doesn’t bamboozle me with science. I nearly always find the insect I’m looking for and then inevitably spend half an hour lost in details of the plants it eats or places it lives.
I wouldn’t want to be without this book, and I regularly buy it as a present for friends and family.
A photographic field guide to 1,500 species of insects found in Britain A photographic field guide to all the common and some unusual species of insects across Britain that the keen amateur naturalist is likely to spot. Approximately 1,500 species are illustrated with clear photographs chosen for their help in identification. / Details of distribution for each insect, and whether it is common or rare / Includes photographs of larvae / Each section is coded with a symbol for easy reference / Information on easily confused species / All the information on the species together in the same place Insect…
I’ve been reading science fiction and fantasy, and specifically space opera, since I was seven and first discovered The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet. I read my way through every book in the school library and public library that dealt with aliens, space travel, starships, and especially adventure.
Esen is a shapechanger, a young one. While exploring a world considered ‘safe’ by her matriarch, she is captured by the natives. Her only hope of rescue is to betray her species' strict rules and reveal her true nature to her fellow prisoner, a human.
I adore Esen as a character. She is very relatable. I also love the breadth and scope of species and habitats and worlds in this series. Julie Czerneda is one of my favorite authors. Her storytelling skills shine. Esen is definitely not human, but Czerneda creates such a warm character you can’t help but love her. Beholder’s Eye is part coming-of-age but mostly a darn good science fiction adventure.
United in their natural form they are one, sharing all their memories, experiences, and lives. Apart they are six, the only existing members of their ancient race, a species with the ability to assume any form once they understand its essence.
Their continued survival in a universe filled with races ready to destroy anyone perceived as different is based on the Rules. And first among those Rules is: Never reveal your true nature to another being. But when the youngest among them, Esen-alit-Quar, receives her first independent assignment to a world considered safe to explore, she stumbles into a trap…
Growing up, I was exposed to the same influences as most other SF writers of my generation – Clarke, Heinlein, and Asimov. But I was also exposed to the more nuanced, more psychologically realistic work of writers like Harlan Ellison, Norman Spinrad, Ursula K. LeGuin, and J.G. Ballard, none of whom shared the unquestioning techno-utopianism of an earlier generation of writers. They taught me not to automatically respect power or authority, and to always question ideas that might otherwise be taken for granted. It’s an approach that’s carried over into my own writing ever since.
I first read Pohl’s Jem when I was a kid, and his fatalistic, even cynical take on first contact and interstellar colonization, along with the works of Harlan Ellison, Philip K. Dick, and Ursula LeGuin, greatly informed my developing views on politics and society. A near-future Earth divided into three major power blocs discovers a world ripe for exploitation and populated by not one, but three, sentient species, It’s not long before each bloc is currying the favor of different species in order to set each against the other, with absolutely no one thinking beyond their own immediate needs or with any concern about the consequences of their actions.
A cynical and compelling tale of politics, exploitation and colonisation on another planet
The discovery of another habitable world might spell salvation to the three bitterly competing power blocs of the resource-starved 21st century; but when their representatives arrive on Jem, with its multiple intelligent species, they discover instead the perfect situation into which to export their rivalries.
Subtitled, with savage irony, 'The Making of a Utopia', JEM is one of Frederik Pohl's most powerful novels.
Aury and Scott travel to the Finger Lakes in New York’s wine country to get to the bottom of the mysterious happenings at the Songscape Winery. Disturbed furniture and curious noises are one thing, but when a customer winds up dead, it’s time to dig into the details and see…
I’ve been a hiker for a long time, but it wasn’t until COVID-19 that I began to pay attention to the forests I was hiking through. I started with field guides to edible plants, then used Seek and iNaturalist apps to identify more species, and started taking macro photography of what I found. The more I paid attention to the minutiae of the natural world, the more I fell in love with every part of it. I’m worried our current priorities for climate change (preserving our way of life) are misguided. I’m worried about the future of all species. Every insect and every plant I’ve looked at close up is breathtakingly beautiful and worth saving.
This collection contains, hands down, my favorite exploration of non-human consciousness: the story “The Author of the Acacia Seeds and Other Extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics.” The title is a mouthful but I love how this story acknowledges we may never fully understand other species’ communications, that there will always be some matter of uncertainty or mistranslation.
At the same time, this story captures for me the intelligence and creativity of the non-human while making a persuasive argument that we need to at least try to understand forms of life that see and experience the world so differently from us.
Is it worth buying an entire collection for this one story? Totally. But there are a lot of other great gems in Real and the Unreal as well.
Outer Space, Inner Lands includes many of the best known Ursula K. Le Guin nonrealistic stories (such as "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," "Semley’s Necklace," and "She Unnames Them") which have shaped the way many readers see the world. She gives voice to the voiceless, hope to the outsider, and speaks truth to powerall the time maintaining her independence and sense of humor.
Companion volume Where on Earth explores Le Guin's satirical, risky, political and experimental earthbound stories. Both volumes include new introductions by the author.
I’ve been a non-fiction writer my entire career and I love learning new things and then sharing them with readers in an approachable and engaging way, as these books do. These books encourage curiosity and that kind of “Oh! I didn’t know that!” response, which can spark a young reader to dig deeper and even share their new knowledge with others.
This book is much meatier than the others on the list. But it also delivers information in easy-to-digest blocks and is filled with amazing photographs, many of which the author himself took.
This book provides information that corrects some myths or misunderstandings that people have about sharks.
Dive into the wild world of sharks! Get up close to learn the truth behind these fantastic, ferocious fish with famed National Geographic photographer and explorer Brian Skerry.
Join this amazing underwater adventure to track the sharks of the world, from the teeniest dogfish to the everfeared great white. This ultimate book features every species of shark on the planet, with awesome photos, fascinating facts, the latest science, and firsthand stories of real-life encounters with these incredible creatures. Learn how sharks live, how they eat, the challenges they face, and whether or not you are actually on the menu.
I’m a penguin expert, TED speaker, and lifelong animal lover. After getting a BS degree in Animal Science, I became a Penguin Aquarist at Boston’s New England Aquarium. For 9 years, I took care of the penguins there and educated visitors during daily talks. In 2000, I helped manage the rescue of 40,000 penguins from an oil spill in South Africa. (With the help of 12,500 volunteers, we saved most of them!) I founded my educational company The Penguin Lady in 2005, and speak at schools, universities, libraries, for TED-Ed and TEDx, and on National Geographic’s ships in Antarctica. I love sharing my knowledge, and passion for penguins with others!
This beautiful book is written by a famous penguin expert who wrote the ‘bible’ about penguins for adults, so you can be absolutely certain that all of the information is 100% accurate! (Which, unfortunately, is not always the case for books written by individuals who aren’t penguin experts. That said, you can be assured that every book on this curated list has extremely accurate information about penguins!) Each species in this book has a page with fact sheets, geographical ranges, and biological details. There are also numerous photos and absolutely gorgeous illustrations that are highly detailed, bringing the author’s words to life in a visually engaging way. This is the perfect book for children who want to take a deeper dive into the lives of penguins. Best for ages 9-12.
This illustrated guide to penguins includes profiles of emperor penguins, king penguins, adelie penguins, chinstraps and gentoos, rockhopper penguins, macaroni and royal penguins, fjordland snares island and erect-crested penguins, yellow-eyed penguins and jackass penguins.
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I’m an English professor in New England whose research and teaching interests focus on the Shakespearean Stage and the Environmental Humanities. As an educator, I’m always looking for ways to romanticize the impact that literature can have on the world—either politically, ideologically, or physically. The story that Kim Todd shares about the European Starling proliferating in North America because of a Shakespeare-loving member of a New York Acclimatization Society has changed the way that I look at birds, at Shakespeare, and the world. It has encouraged me to find other stories like this one to share with my students—and to tell a few of my own.
In addition to providing a fascinating biological history of North America, this book is also extremely well-written.
Its chapters offer history lessons of North American landscape and ecosystems, disguised as lyrical essays that focus on a series of unlikely non-human protagonists (or antagonists, depending on how you look at them)—including hessian flies, gypsy moths, pigeons, starlings, and honeybees.
These stories matter because they remind us of how great our illusion of control is, especially when it comes to the natural world, and how far the consequences of even the most well-intentioned actions can reach. It also showed me how engaging a story can be when the human characters are resigned to the margins.
A bewitching look at nonnative species in American ecosystems, by the heir apparent to McKibben and Quammen. Mosquitoes in Hawaii, sea lampreys in the Great Lakes, mountain goats in the Olympic Mountains of Washington State--not one of these species is native to the environment in which it now flourishes, sometimes disastrously. Kim Todd's Tinkering with Eden is a lyrical, brilliantly written history of the introduction of exotic species into the United States, and how the well-meaning endeavors of scientists, explorers, and biologists have resulted in ecological catastrophe. Todd's amazingly assured voice will haunt her readers, and the stories she tells--the…
