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I became fascinated by the origin and evolution of life as a chemistry student after watching the TV series The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski. I have been thrilled by the dramatic breakthroughs that have occurred since then, and I’ve written many articles and reviews on this and related topics for newspapers and magazines such as the Guardian, Independent, The Times, Daily Mail, Financial Times, Scientific American, New Scientist, New Humanist, World Medicine, New Statesman, and three books on various aspects of the evolution of both life and technology, including Thinking Small and Large.
I have spent a lifetime researching the deep history of life.
All the books I’ve chosen demonstrate a convergence of exciting ideas, and I love the way Peter Brannen’s book joins the dots in a totally fresh way, showing how life gained energy at key stages, all involving CO2. It is the starting point for every living thing on the planet; it has regulated the climate throughout 4 billion years, and through the fossil remains of ancient photosynthesis has powered our world since the Industrial Revolution.
In a world seeking answers to deep-rooted problems, this is the most powerful message for the future that we need. I have never before been so mindblown by a book.
How carbon dioxide made planet Earth, shaped human history, and now holds our future in the balance
Every year, we are dangerously warping the climate by putting gigantic amounts of carbon dioxide into the air. But CO2 isn't merely the by-product of burning fossil fuels—it is also fundamental to how our planet works. All life is ultimately made from CO2, and it has kept Earth bizarrely habitable for hundreds of millions of years. In short, it is the most important substance on Earth. But how is it that CO2 is as essential to life on Earth as it is capable…
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 became fascinated by the origin and evolution of life as a chemistry student after watching the TV series The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski. I have been thrilled by the dramatic breakthroughs that have occurred since then, and I’ve written many articles and reviews on this and related topics for newspapers and magazines such as the Guardian, Independent, The Times, Daily Mail, Financial Times, Scientific American, New Scientist, New Humanist, World Medicine, New Statesman, and three books on various aspects of the evolution of both life and technology, including Thinking Small and Large.
I like the way Paul Hawken focuses on the marvellous richness of the world that carbon made, effectively reversing the title and subtitle.
The book is a celebration of the cornucopia of riches that carbon’s astonishing fertility and diverse scope allow, when left to itself. Of the microbes, Hawken writes: “If the little things run the world, the littlest things of all may hold the greatest influence.”
On a human scale, Hawken is a champion of the wisdom of traditional culture that lives as part of nature rather than apart from it, as industrial man does. Rewilding will be an important part of the way forward for carbon, and Hawken is an eloquent advocate.
A journey into the world of carbon, the most versatile element on the planet, by the New York Times bestselling author Paul Hawken
Carbon is the only element that animates the entirety of the living world. Though comprising a tiny fraction of Earth's composition, our planet is lifeless without it. Yet it is maligned as the driver of climate change, scorned as an errant element blamed for the possible demise of civilization.
Here, Paul Hawken looks at the flow of life through the lens of carbon. Embracing a panoramic view of carbon's omnipresence, he explores how this ubiquitous and essential…
I became fascinated by the origin and evolution of life as a chemistry student after watching the TV series The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski. I have been thrilled by the dramatic breakthroughs that have occurred since then, and I’ve written many articles and reviews on this and related topics for newspapers and magazines such as the Guardian, Independent, The Times, Daily Mail, Financial Times, Scientific American, New Scientist, New Humanist, World Medicine, New Statesman, and three books on various aspects of the evolution of both life and technology, including Thinking Small and Large.
I encountered the work of Geoffrey Ozin, a distinguished, award-winning chemist, some years ago, and was delighted to see him writing on this subject.
There are many angles to the story of CO2, and Ozin approaches the question as one of chemical engineering. Chemical engineers have known for decades how CO2 might be the basis of many industries that currently rely on fossil feedstocks.
This pioneering book on CO2, published back in 2020, starts from the premise that fossil feedstocks lie behind far more consumer products than most people imagine and that carbon dioxide can be used to replace them.
Since writing the book, Ozin has developed a significant new technique to enhance the economic viability of turning carbon dioxide into fuel, chemicals, and materials technologies.
The climate crisis requires that we drastically reduce carbon dioxide emissions across all sectors of society. The Story of CO2 contributes to this vital conversation by highlighting the cutting-edge science and emerging technologies - a number of which are already commercially available - that can transform carbon dioxide into a myriad of products such as feedstock chemicals, polymers, pharmaceuticals, and fuels. This approach allows us to reconsider CO2 as a resource, and to add "carbon capture and use" to our other tools in the fight against catastrophic climate change.
The Story of CO2 explores all aspects of carbon dioxide, from…
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…
I became fascinated by the origin and evolution of life as a chemistry student after watching the TV series The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski. I have been thrilled by the dramatic breakthroughs that have occurred since then, and I’ve written many articles and reviews on this and related topics for newspapers and magazines such as the Guardian, Independent, The Times, Daily Mail, Financial Times, Scientific American, New Scientist, New Humanist, World Medicine, New Statesman, and three books on various aspects of the evolution of both life and technology, including Thinking Small and Large.
I love the way that Everything Evolves insists that the way that technology develops really is the same process as evolution in nature.
People have often used this idea metaphorically, but Vellend shows how the concept of evolution didn’t have to start in biology. It’s just that Darwin’s idea had maximum impact for obvious reasons.
The book reinforces the ideas in Peter Brannen’s, showing that there is now a fresh way of looking at, yes, Everything.
How the science of evolution explains how everything came to be, from bacteria and blue whales to cell phones, cities, and artificial intelligence
Everything Evolves reveals how evolutionary dynamics shape the world as we know it and how we are harnessing the principles of evolution in pursuit of many goals, such as increasing the global food supply and creating artificial intelligence capable of evolving its own solutions to thorny problems.
Taking readers on an astonishing journey, Mark Vellend describes how all observable phenomena in the universe can be understood through two sciences. The first is physics. The second is the…
I’ve been fascinated by languages since my teenage years, when, in addition to my native Russian, I learned English, French, Spanish, Latin, Hebrew, and Esperanto to varying degrees of fluency. But it was in college that I decided to pursue linguistics as a profession, in part influenced by one of the books on my list! After 20 years of doing scientific research and teaching linguistics at different universities, I switched gears and now focus on bringing linguistic science to the general audience of lifelong learners. Even if you don’t change your career, like I did, I hope you enjoy reading the books on my list as much as I have!
Any book on language by John McWhorter is a worthwhile read, but this one, I think, is his all-time best! Who knew that a book that starts with a discussion of verb conjugation in Persian can be a page-turner, right?
I was struck by McWhorter’s appreciation for what lesser-known languages, like Ket in Siberia or Twi in Ghana, show us about how the human mind works. But the most mind-blowing thing about this book, in my opinion, is how well McWhorter succeeds in describing how complex every human idiom is in a way that is clear and engaging without being lost in the disheveled intricacies of Fongbe or Navajo.
A love letter to languages, celebrating their curiosities and smashing assumptions about correct grammar
An eye-opening tour for all language lovers, What Language Is offers a fascinating new perspective on the way humans communicate. from vanishing languages spoken by a few hundred people to major tongues like Chinese, and with copious revelations about the hodgepodge nature of English, John McWhorter shows readers how to see and hear languages as a linguist does.
Packed with big ideas about language alongside wonderful trivia, What Language Is explains how languages across the globe (the Queen's English and Suriname creoles alike) originate, evolve, multiply,…
My love for ideas and their history was born when I was still in high school. It was my old English teacher who first opened up the power of ideas in literature to change the world. I’m pretty sure he loved Eleanor Roosevelt’s comment: “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” Whether or not that’s true, my taste was further sharpened when I took a two-year course on the history of thought about nature and culture as an undergraduate student. I was captivated.
My admiration for this book knows no limits. Initially, I was put off by the title, but the subtitle says it all: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities. I know of no other book that tells the remarkable story of the very idea that there’s something called ‘the humanities’ and how it emerged as a suite of disciplines in modern education.
In a book of this scope and scale, I find it stunning that the author seems to have included a witticism on every other page!
Many today do not recognize the word, but "philology" was for centuries nearly synonymous with humanistic intellectual life, encompassing not only the study of Greek and Roman literature and the Bible but also all other studies of language and literature, as well as history, culture, art, and more. In short, philology was the queen of the human sciences. How did it become little more than an archaic word? In Philology, the first history of Western humanistic learning as a connected whole ever published in English, James Turner tells the fascinating, forgotten story of how the study of languages and texts…
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…
My sister once remarked that listening to our mother’s stories about living during World War II made it sound like we missed something really exciting. That is what history has always been for me–something I missed out on, for better or worse. What would it really have been like? Could I have survived? Family genealogies bring history to me on a personal level; archaeology and paleontology extend that wonder much deeper into the past. During the time I taught anatomy and human evolution at the University of Indianapolis, I tried to be as interdisciplinary as possible, both in study and teaching. I continue this in my retirement.
I have tried to appreciate linguistics before but never really succeeded until I stumbled across this book. For one thing, it is a difficult field if you haven’t learned a second language. (I tried but not successfully.) For another, when I have delved into language theory, it has been much easier to think about, oh, what I am going to have for dinner tonight, or the fact that my library book is due tomorrow, or almost anything else. Guy Deutscher’s narrative is refreshingly different.
Of the traits that make humans different from all animals on this planet, language is certainly near the top of the list. As an evolutionist, language is important to me for two reasons. The first is that its origin is both important and mysterious. The French Academy of Sciences famously banned discussion of the first question because it was useless speculation and wasted time. That problem…
Blending the spirit of Eats, Shoots & Leaves with the science of The Language Instinct, an original inquiry into the development of that most essential-and mysterious-of human creations: Language
Language is mankind's greatest invention-except, of course, that it was never invented." So begins linguist Guy Deutscher's enthralling investigation into the genesis and evolution of language. If we started off with rudimentary utterances on the level of "man throw spear," how did we end up with sophisticated grammars, enormous vocabularies, and intricately nuanced degrees of meaning?
Drawing on recent groundbreaking discoveries in modern linguistics, Deutscher exposes the elusive forces of creation…
I began my career in 1988 as an English language teacher in Japan. I originally went for a one-year adventure, but soon found myself fascinated by language, and how it is learned and used. This eventually led to a professorship at the University of Nottingham, where I have the good fortune to consult on language issues worldwide. I have researched language extensively, but all of my previous publications were meant for an academic/educational audience. I wanted to produce a book for general readership which outlines all that I have learned in 35 years of language research, and Language Power is the result. I hope you find it useful in your language-based life.
This is the ideal coffee table book on language. It contains an astonishing amount of information on virtually every aspect of language, ranging from interesting tidbits that might be useful in a trivia game (How many languages are there in the world?) to more extended discussions of weightier issues (What is dyslexia?).
It is the perfect book for dipping in and out of, because every page you might open up to contains something intriguing about the way language is described, used, learned, or lost. It is meant for a general audience, but when I read it, I found many new ideas that led me to advance my own academic research.
The fact that it is now in its 3rd edition shows just how useful and popular this wide-ranging gem is.
This new, thoroughly revised edition of the acclaimed Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language incorporates the major developments in language study which have taken place since the mid 1990s. Two main new areas have been added: the rise of electronic communication in all its current forms from email to texting, and the crisis affecting the world's languages, of which half are thought to be so seriously endangered that they will die out this century. * All language statistics have been updated, and additional information provided about their linguistic affiliation * All topics involving technology have been revised to take account of recent…
I grew up in a bilingual environment (Welsh and English) and have been fascinated by languages ever since, and the way they reflect thought, culture, and history. An English degree course at University College London gave me an academic grounding in language and literature, and I've been exploring and writing on those subjects ever since, eventually as a professor of linguistics, and these days as an independent scholar. My website provides a complete list of my publications, along with links to other materials. And the most fascinating thing about language? Its diversity and change. Whatever a language was like yesterday, it's different today, and will be different again tomorrow.
The important word in the title is "social." The author brings together words that belong to a particular theme, such as journalism, economics, and politics. An example? A 'historical menu' from Anglo-Saxon times (bread, butter, cucumber) through Shakespearean times (tomato, potato, banana) to the present-day (pizza, tacos, hamburger). And not forgetting drinks, from beer to Coca-Cola. It's a fascinating exercise in the linguistic archaeology of social transformation.
The word "blurb" derives from a "pulchritudinous young lady" of that fictional name who appeared on a book-cover at the turn of the century. Quarrying the "Oxford English Dictionary" for its evidence, this book traces the extraordinary way in which English words have changed their meanings over the past millennium. These shifts both reflect Britain's rich history and reveal the social determinants of the language. In English vocabulary is stored the "archaeological" evidence of such great social transformations as the Norman Conquest, the growth of capitalism, the coming of the Reformation and the evolution of feudal hierarchy into democracy. The…
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’ve been fascinated by the power of language for as long as I can remember. As a sociolinguist, I study how language shapes our relationships, identities, and the societies we live in. I’ve spent years analyzing how people communicate in high-pressure environments like professional sports, but my passion for this topic goes far beyond my research. Language is everywhere—it’s how we connect, influence, and make sense of the world. The books on this list have deepened my understanding of the profound ways language impacts our lives. I’m excited to share them with you and hope they inspire you to see language in a whole new light!
The words "language" and "myth" have graced the covers of many books, but this one is my favorite. This collection, edited by Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudgill, brings together world-renowned linguists to tackle a spectrum of unhelpful and incorrect assumptions about language. What sets this book apart is its sharp focus on how people’s attitudes toward language often recreate damaging stereotypes.
Bauer, Trudgill, and their contributors, several of whom I was taught by, arrest these misconceptions with insights grounded in linguistic research. Each myth is debunked in short, punchy chapters that are as engaging as they are informative. I love how this book leaves you feeling smarter and better equipped to think critically about the language myths we encounter every day.
A unique collection of original essays by 21 of the world's leading linguists. The topics discussed focus on some of the most popular myths about language: The Media Are Ruining English; Children Can't Speak or Write Properly Anymore; America is Ruining the English Language. The tone is lively and entertaining throughout and there are cartoons from Doonesbury andThe Wizard of Id to illustrate some of the points. The book should have a wide readership not only amongst students who want to read leading linguists writing about popular misconceptions but also amongst the large number of people who enjoy reading about…
