Here are 100 books that Science as a Contact Sport fans have personally recommended if you like
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I am a historian by training and have spent my career of nearly forty years studying human violence, and economic change and development. This has brought me to many dark places, to the human capacity to destroy. But all this work has also brought me to the study of those who resisted, all the people who envisioned different ways of being in the world, different futures. I have written many books on these topics. My latest, The Killing Age, is in many respects the summation of work I have been doing since the early 1980s.
I love this clear-eyed exposé of the rise of climate denialism and the harms of tobacco smoke.
At a time when these issues are at the forefront of public attention and public health is under threat, I loved the way the authors coolly exposed the making and marketing of fake science.
The U.S. scientific community has long led the world in research on such areas as public health, environmental science, and issues affecting quality of life. Our scientists have produced landmark studies on the dangers of DDT, tobacco smoke, acid rain, and global warming. But at the same time, a small yet potent subset of this community leads the world in vehement denial of these dangers.
Merchants of Doubt tells the story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I am a university professor with a deep interest in the systems that shape our lives. In my previous job, I led a research team at NASA, studying software safety for the space shuttle and International Space Station. But after my kids were born, I started thinking about how climate change would affect their future, and I decided to switch my research to investigate how the computer models used to predict future climate change are developed and tested and how much we can trust their predictions. That was more than twenty years ago. I’ve been working on climate change problems ever since, and I’m keen to share what I’ve learned.
This was the first (and still the best) book I ever read on how scientists collect and use the data for forecasting the weather and predicting climate change. I am particularly impressed with its scope–it starts with early attempts by 17th and 18th-century scientists to agree on how to measure things like wind and rainfall and ends with today’s world of satellites and computer models.
The book really brings alive the work of a massive network of scientists around the world collecting and analyzing observations about planet Earth.
The science behind global warming, and its history: how scientists learned to understand the atmosphere, to measure it, to trace its past, and to model its future.
Global warming skeptics often fall back on the argument that the scientific case for global warming is all model predictions, nothing but simulation; they warn us that we need to wait for real data, “sound science.” In A Vast Machine Paul Edwards has news for these skeptics: without models, there are no data. Today, no collection of signals or observations—even from satellites, which can “see” the whole planet with a single instrument—becomes global…
I am a university professor with a deep interest in the systems that shape our lives. In my previous job, I led a research team at NASA, studying software safety for the space shuttle and International Space Station. But after my kids were born, I started thinking about how climate change would affect their future, and I decided to switch my research to investigate how the computer models used to predict future climate change are developed and tested and how much we can trust their predictions. That was more than twenty years ago. I’ve been working on climate change problems ever since, and I’m keen to share what I’ve learned.
This book reads like a scientific detective story, and I found it hard to put down. Wally Broecker is one of the world's leading oceanographers, and in this book, he gives us an inside account of an incredible scientific discovery: the global ‘superhighway’ of ocean currents that transport water around the entire planet over the course of a thousand years.
While fascinating in its own right, the story is vital for understanding climate change, as the ocean operates as a planet-wide heat pump, and changes in the ocean circulation patterns bring dramatic and abrupt shifts in regional climates.
Wally Broecker is one of the world's leading authorities on abrupt global climate change. More than two decades ago, he discovered the link between ocean circulation and climate change, in particular how shutdowns of the Great Ocean Conveyor--the vast network of currents that circulate water, heat, and nutrients around the globe--triggered past ice ages. Today, he is among the researchers exploring how our planet's climate system can abruptly "flip-flop" from one state to another, and who are weighing the implications for the future. In The Great Ocean Conveyor, Broecker introduces readers to the science of abrupt climate change while providing…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I am a university professor with a deep interest in the systems that shape our lives. In my previous job, I led a research team at NASA, studying software safety for the space shuttle and International Space Station. But after my kids were born, I started thinking about how climate change would affect their future, and I decided to switch my research to investigate how the computer models used to predict future climate change are developed and tested and how much we can trust their predictions. That was more than twenty years ago. I’ve been working on climate change problems ever since, and I’m keen to share what I’ve learned.
This book pairs particularly well with Stephen Schneider’s book, as it picks up where that book ends. When I met Michael and heard him talk about his experiences, I didn’t think this book would surprise me, but I still found it shocking. Michael is one of the world’s leading climate scientists, and his work was fundamental in identifying the early signs of rising global temperatures in the 1980s and 1990s.
But in this book, it’s not the science that is shocking, but the behavior of politicians, lobbyists, and conspiracy theorists, who have turned their attacks on the science into personal and vindictive attacks on the scientists themselves. Michael’s accounts of his battles against misinformation make for important reading for anyone who wants to understand why we’ve been so slow to act on climate change.
The ongoing assault on climate science in the United States has never been more aggressive, more blatant, or more widely publicized than in the case of the Hockey Stick graph-a clear and compelling visual presentation of scientific data, put together by MichaelE. Mann and his colleagues, demonstrating that global temperatures have risen in conjunction with the increase in industrialization and the use of fossil fuels. Here was an easy-to-understand graph that, in a glance, posed a threat to major corporate energy interests and those who do their political bidding. The stakes were simply too high to ignore the Hockey Stick-and…
I retired in 2019 after 38 years of teaching journalism, environmental studies, and Native American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. About half of my employment time was set aside for writing and editing as part of several endowed professorships I held sequentially between 1990 and 2018. After 2000, climate change (global warming) became my lead focus because of the urgency of the issue and the fact that it affects everyone on Earth. As of 2023, I have written and published 56 books, with about one-third of them on global warming. I have had an intense interest in weather and climate all my life.
Very probably the world’s foremost organizer against global warming, Bill McKibben played a leading role in founding 350.org, a worldwide citizen-based, grass-roots solution for climate changes that already are well underway.
An eloquent writer and author of several other books that focus on humankind’s debt to nature, his role as an author on natural issues began in 1989 with The End of Nature. In October, 2009, McKibben took a leading role in organizing what CNN called “The most widespread day of political action in the planet’s history.”
Twenty years ago, with "The End of Nature", Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about global warming. Those warnings went mostly unheeded; now, he insists, we need to acknowledge that we've waited too long, and that massive change is not only unavoidable but already under way. Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding, and burning in ways that no human has ever seen. We've created, in very short order, a new planet, still recognizable but fundamentally different. We may as well call it Eaarth. That new planet is filled with new binds and traps. A…
I’ve been teaching in higher education for two decades, and I can honestly say that introducing Carbon Literacy Training as an extra-curricular activity to students and staff, as well as to external stakeholders, to learn about climate solutions has been one of the best things I’ve done in my career. I’ve always had an interest in the environment and sustainability, but struggled with how to communicate. The books I’ve chosen have changed my perspectives and provided positive examples of how we can talk about this in a way that encourages hope and action as opposed to the prevailing doom and gloom or facts and stats that paralyse rather than mobilise.
I bought this book after hearing its author, Simon Sharpe, speak about it at a festival. His talk was very inspiring and convincing, and the book definitely matched my expectations.
As a sustainability academic, it really appealed to me the way he sets out how current practices in science, economics, and diplomacy don’t work, and then proceeds to provide alternative solutions to address climate change, which is very compelling.
I liked that the call for action was not in the obvious areas that we normally pursue for climate action, and that despite all setbacks and lack of progress, there is grounds for hope, and regardless of who we are or what we do, there are things we all can do.
We need to act five times faster to avoid dangerous climate change. As Greenland melts, Australia burns, and greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, we think we know who the villains are: oil companies, consumerism, weak political leaders. But what if the real blocks to progress are the ideas and institutions that are supposed to be helping us? Five Times Faster is an inside story from Simon Sharpe, who has spent ten years at the forefront of climate change policy and diplomacy. In our fight to avoid dangerous climate change, science is pulling its punches, diplomacy is picking the wrong…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I am an astronomer and educator (Ph.D. Astrophysics, University of Colorado), and I’ve now been teaching about global warming for more than 40 years (in courses on astronomy, astrobiology, and mathematics). While it’s frustrating to see how little progress we’ve made in combatting the ongoing warming during this time, my background as an astronomer gives me a “cosmic perspective” that reminds me that decades are not really so long, and that we still have time to act and to build a “post-global warming future.” I hope my work can help inspire all of us to act while we still can for the benefit of all.
I’ve known for a long time that scientific understanding of global warming has a long history, but I didn’t know very many of the details.
This book filled the gaps in my knowledge, and reminded me that while we still have a lot to learn, the basic science behind global warming has been known for more than a century. I also really appreciate the way this book describes some of the many efforts that have been undertaken to call attention to this issue – many dating back to decades before most people had ever heard of it.
The award-winning book is now revised and expanded.
In 2001 an international panel of distinguished climate scientists announced that the world was warming at a rate without precedent during at least the last ten millennia, and that warming was caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases from human activity. The story of how scientists reached that conclusion-by way of unexpected twists and turns-was the story Spencer Weart told in The Discovery of Global Warming. Now he brings his award-winning account up to date, revised throughout to reflect the latest science and with a new conclusion that shows how the scientific…
I retired in 2019 after 38 years of teaching journalism, environmental studies, and Native American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. About half of my employment time was set aside for writing and editing as part of several endowed professorships I held sequentially between 1990 and 2018. After 2000, climate change (global warming) became my lead focus because of the urgency of the issue and the fact that it affects everyone on Earth. As of 2023, I have written and published 56 books, with about one-third of them on global warming. I have had an intense interest in weather and climate all my life.
This book dissects the arguments of global-warming opponents through the scientific lens of Jim Hansen, who at the time it was published, directed the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).
Hansen and Bowen finds the climate deniers’ opinions dangerous for their inaccuracies and ignorance of how the geophysical world works. For interpreting geophysical reality to those who didn’t want to hear it (or stood to lose money if such thinking became part of policy), Hansen became a target to some, and a hero to others.
It’s not a common event to see a renowned scientist carried away from a protest in handcuffs. Hansen got used to it.
Documents the Bush administration's censorship of a leading climatologist whose work demonstrated the significant dangers of global warming, in an account that explains the scientific principles behind global warming while identifying ways to prevent an imminent environmental disaster.
I’ve been teaching in higher education for two decades, and I can honestly say that introducing Carbon Literacy Training as an extra-curricular activity to students and staff, as well as to external stakeholders, to learn about climate solutions has been one of the best things I’ve done in my career. I’ve always had an interest in the environment and sustainability, but struggled with how to communicate. The books I’ve chosen have changed my perspectives and provided positive examples of how we can talk about this in a way that encourages hope and action as opposed to the prevailing doom and gloom or facts and stats that paralyse rather than mobilise.
I loved reading this book as it is so refreshingly different compared to other books in this space.
It focuses on what we can do rather than what we can’t and emphasises that we have more in common than what divides us when it comes to climate change.
And the most important thing we can do about climate change is talk about it based on shared values, and it’s all about discovering what those are, whether it’s family, hobbies, outdoor activities, or faith. Talking about climate change is both a challenge and an encouragement for an introverted (yet social) sustainability academic like me.
I love how down-to-earth Katherine Hayhoe is. The book is peppered with lots of humour and personal anecdotes, yet clearly underpinned by scientific facts, and I finished the book feeling hopeful and inspired.
"An optimistic view on why collective action is still possible-and how it can be realized." -The New York Times
"A must-read if we're serious about enacting positive change from the ground up, in communities, and through human connections and human emotions." -Margaret Atwood, Twitter
United Nations Champion of the Earth, climate scientist, and evangelical Christian Katharine Hayhoe changes the debate on how we can save our future.
Called "one of the nation's most effective communicators on climate change" by The New York Times, Katharine Hayhoe knows how to navigate all sides of the conversation on our changing planet. A Canadian…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
As a biology professor, I communicate frankly with adults about climate change, trusting them to comprehend the accelerating crisis. As a mom of Millennials, I channeled worries about their coping with wildfires, droughts, and extinctions into editing an anthology of young adults’ climate essays. Grandchildren posed a new worry: how should climate realities be introduced to the newest generation? My attempt at that task is a biography of Thoreau, focusing on his 1850s nature observations that ecologists now use to assess 21st-century climate shifts. Luckily, other children’s book writers also offer stories, memoirs, and other approaches to inform without alarming young readers; the best inspire determination to craft a better future.
Facts matter to kids, of course, and library shelves groan with attempts to distill climate causes and effects down to child-sized volumes. For middle graders, visual encyclopedia-style nonfiction can work well, covering broad ranges of information from atmospheric chemistry to statistics on carbon emissions sources in photo-rich chunks.
But I’ve seen younger readers wince at graphic pictures of bleached coral or violent wildfires. Pen and acrylic drawings soften this book’s approach, supporting student learning by avoiding traumatic imagery. The polar bear theme draws readers in yet gradually widens to encompass people and places affected near home.
My special kudos for spreads that explain scientific concepts, like the greenhouse effect, with accurate prose and illustrations abounding with life.
In the Arctic, the summer ice is melting, making it hard for polar bears and their cubs to survive. Why is the world getting warmer? The heat of the sun is trapped by the "greenhouse" gases that surround Earth―carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and water vapor. If there is just the right amount of these trapped gases, the air is warm enough for plants, animals, and people to thrive. But now there is too much greenhouse gas, especially carbon dioxide. Polar bears, and all of us, are in trouble. Robert E. Wells shows why so much carbon dioxide is going…
