Here are 100 books that The Magic School Bus Explores Human Evolution fans have personally recommended if you like
The Magic School Bus Explores Human Evolution.
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Life really is stranger than fiction, and some of the stuff served up by evolution is outrageously bizarre. There are one-celled creatures that make rats want to cozy up to cats, a parasitic worm that turns snails into ādisco zombiesā and an ape that communicates across continents by pushing keys to create rows and columns of pixels. Iām fascinated by all of these creatures and love writing books for children about evolutionary biology, especially the evolution of intelligence. Besides authoring How to Build a Human, Iāve written about the evolution of intelligence in dolphins (The Dolphins of Shark Bay) and crows (Crow Smarts: Inside the Brain of the Worldās Brightest Bird).
This superb picture book for children aged 6 to 9 begins by asking children to wonder why dolphins and sharks look superficially similar, yet are less closely related than dolphins and hippos. It covers the emergence of life, evolution in the seas, the appearance of land animals, and the āreturn to the blueā by dolphins and whales. The illustrations are terrific: bright, simple, and kid-friendly while retaining scientific details.Ā Ā
Graceful, succinct prose and engaging illustrations trace the evolution of life on Earth out of the blue and back again.
Clear and inviting nonfiction prose, vetted by scientistsātogether with lively illustrations and a time lineānarrate how life on Earth emerged āout of the blue.ā It began in the vast, empty sea when Earth was young. Single-celled microbes too small to see held the promise of all life-forms to come. Those microbes survived billions of years in restless seas until they began to change, to convert sunlight into energy, to produce oxygen until one dayāGulp!āone cell swallowed another, and the raceā¦
In 1894, Annie Cohen Kopchovsky set out to ride her bicycle. Not to the market. Not around the block. Not across town. Annie was going to ride her bike all the way around the worldābecause two men bet no woman could do it. Ha!
This picture book, with watercolor illustrationsā¦
Life really is stranger than fiction, and some of the stuff served up by evolution is outrageously bizarre. There are one-celled creatures that make rats want to cozy up to cats, a parasitic worm that turns snails into ādisco zombiesā and an ape that communicates across continents by pushing keys to create rows and columns of pixels. Iām fascinated by all of these creatures and love writing books for children about evolutionary biology, especially the evolution of intelligence. Besides authoring How to Build a Human, Iāve written about the evolution of intelligence in dolphins (The Dolphins of Shark Bay) and crows (Crow Smarts: Inside the Brain of the Worldās Brightest Bird).
I love the simple, evocative way this story is told through a visit to the beach and the sketching in the sand of creatures representing various stages in evolution, from the first cells to human beings, reminding us of what we share with these long-lost ancestors and what divides us from earlier life forms. This picture book for children aged 4 to 7 distills a complex subject with verve and imagination and deserves a place on your childās bookshelf.
All of us are part of an old, old family. The roots of our family tree reach back millions of years to the beginning of life on earth. Open this family album and embark on an amazing journey. You'll meet some of our oldest relatives--from both the land and the sea--and discover what we inherited from each of them along the many steps of our wondrous past. Complete with an illustrated timeline and glossary, here is the story of human evolution as it's never been told before.
Life really is stranger than fiction, and some of the stuff served up by evolution is outrageously bizarre. There are one-celled creatures that make rats want to cozy up to cats, a parasitic worm that turns snails into ādisco zombiesā and an ape that communicates across continents by pushing keys to create rows and columns of pixels. Iām fascinated by all of these creatures and love writing books for children about evolutionary biology, especially the evolution of intelligence. Besides authoring How to Build a Human, Iāve written about the evolution of intelligence in dolphins (The Dolphins of Shark Bay) and crows (Crow Smarts: Inside the Brain of the Worldās Brightest Bird).
A step more sophisticated than the picture books above, Life on Earth is targeted to children ages 9 to 12. The eye-catching format and succinct text cover the diversity of life on Earth, major evolutionary transitions, and nicely illustrates the process of natural selection through a succession of illustrations of frogs as the fittest individuals are selected by their environment. Engaging and packed with information.
There are millions of different kinds of plants and animals living on the earth, and millions more have lived here in the past. Where did they all come from? Why have some become extinct and others lived on?
What lived on Earth before us, who is still with us, and what prompts evolutionary change? In this remarkable picture book, Steve Jenkins uses his signature eye-popping art to answer these questions and explore the fascinating history of life on earth and the awe-inspiring story of evolution.
The summer holidays have finally arrived and Scout canāt wait for her adventure in the big rig with Dad. Theyāre on a mission to deliver donations of dog food to animal rescue shelters right across the state. Thereāll be dad-jokes, rock-collecting, and a brilliant plan that will make sure everyoneāsā¦
Life really is stranger than fiction, and some of the stuff served up by evolution is outrageously bizarre. There are one-celled creatures that make rats want to cozy up to cats, a parasitic worm that turns snails into ādisco zombiesā and an ape that communicates across continents by pushing keys to create rows and columns of pixels. Iām fascinated by all of these creatures and love writing books for children about evolutionary biology, especially the evolution of intelligence. Besides authoring How to Build a Human, Iāve written about the evolution of intelligence in dolphins (The Dolphins of Shark Bay) and crows (Crow Smarts: Inside the Brain of the Worldās Brightest Bird).
If you want to understand evolution, it certainly helps to know how and where the theory of evolution originated. This picture book rendition of Darwinās classic work ā the foundational text of all modern biology ā explains Darwinās explorations, the process of natural selection, and the common descent of all living things. The direct quotes from Darwinās own writings are a nice touch, as are the charming illustrations. It doesnāt hurt that the writer/illustrator is a molecular biologist.Ā
A picture book adaptation of Charles Darwin's groundbreaking On the Origin of Species, lushly illustrated and told in accessible and engaging easy-to-understand text for young readers.
On the Origin of Species revolutionized our understanding of the natural world. Now young readers can discover Charles Darwin's groundbreaking theory of evolution for themselves in this stunning picture-book adaptation that uses stylish illustrations and simple text to introduce how species form, develop, and change over time.
Telmo Pievani is Full Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Padua, where he covers the first Italian chair of Philosophy of Biological Sciences. A leading science communicator and columnist for Il corriere della sera, he is the author of The Unexpected Life, Creation without God, Serendipity, and other books.
I like this book so much because it tells us that we are the last twig in a bush of human species.
Until a few tens of millennia ago, five different human species lived on our planet, thatās amazing! Only recently, thanks to the surge of symbolic intelligence, have we become a marvel of creativity and invasiveness, an ambivalent species.
Human life, and how we came to be, is one of the greatest scientific and philosophical questions of our time. This compact and accessible book presents a modern view of human evolution. Written by a leading authority, it lucidly and engagingly explains not only the evolutionary process, but the technologies currently used to unravel the evolutionary past and emergence of Homo sapiens. By separating the history of palaeoanthropology from current interpretation of the human fossil record, it lays numerous misconceptions to rest, and demonstrates that human evolution has been far from the linear struggle from primitiveness to perfection that we'veā¦
In 1990, I introduced the idea of emotional intelligence with my colleague Peter Salovey. This was followed, in 2008, with the introduction of the theory of personal intelligence. Emotional, personal, and social intelligence form a group I labeled the āpeople-centered intelligences,ā which are partly distinct from intelligences focused on things such as objects in space and mathematical symbols.
One quality the diverse books I recommend here share in common is that they help us reason about who we areāa key element of personal intelligence.
It provides a historical perspective on our rapidly evolving technological world by looking at how technology influenced humanityās era of evolutionary adaptation. Among the accounts are how fire promoted brain growth (by permitting humans to extract more calories from their food), and the almost certain early development of baby slings, that made it possible for human communities to migrate long distances.
Such reflections seem particularly useful today as we face working with AIāand as we wonder how it will affect us.
A breakthrough theory that tools and technology are the real drivers of human evolution. Although humans are one of the great apes, along with chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans, we are remarkably different from them. Unlike our cousins who subsist on raw food, spend their days and nights outdoors, and wear a thick coat of hair, humans are entirely dependent on artificial things, such as clothing, shelter, and the use of tools, and would die in nature without them. Yet, despite our status as the weakest ape, we are the masters of this planet. Given these inherent deficits, how did humansā¦
Eleven-year-old Sierra just wants a normal life. After her military mother returns from the war overseas, the two hop from home to homelessness while Sierra tries to help her mom through the throes of PTSD.
Iām a scientist at the University of Cambridge whoās worked on
environmental research topics such as jet streams and the Antarctic
ozone hole. Iāve also worked on solar physics and musical acoustics.
And other branches of science have always interested me. Toward the
end of my career, I became fascinated by cutting-edge issues in
biological evolution and natural selection. Evolution is far
richer and more complex than youād think from its popular description
in terms of āselfish genesā. The complexities are central to
understanding deep connections between the sciences, the arts, and
human nature in general, and the profound differences between human
intelligence and artificial intelligence.
I was blown away by the vistas it opened across classic work on
genetics and palaeoanthropology, and the implications for
understanding how our ancestors evolved.
It also showed how the
politics of so-called āsociobiologyā impeded that understanding,
through acrimonious disputes that later turned out to be pointless.
Those disputes were very much examples of what I call
ādichotomizationā, the unconscious assumption that an issue is
binary, an either-or question, when in reality it is far more
complex with many different aspects.
You might not suspect it, but we are currently living through a revolution in scientific knowledge. What we know about the human brain's workings and about the earliest history of our distant humanoid ancestors changes almost weekly. A new view of humanity is being forged - new theories appear all the time, splinter, are revised and adandoned. Scientists from different fields of research are finally co-operating and sharing their insights in order to map out a new view of the human brain. Paleaoanthropologists digging in Kenya, neuropyschologists building organic robots in their labs and geneticists unearthing the secret in allā¦
Iām interested in everything ā which is a problem, because thereās not time for everything. So how do you find the best of the world and your own place in it? Understanding your motivations is a good place to start, hence The Molecule of More. The rest comes from exploring as much as you can, and that begins with understanding the scope of whatās out there: ideas, attitudes, and cultures. The greatest joy in my life comes from the jaw-dropping realization that the world is so full of potential and wonder. These books are a guide to some of the best of it, and some of the breadth of it.
If youāre reading my book recommendations, itās almost certainly because you read the book Dan Lieberman and I wrote about dopamine. In that case, youāll want to read the book that inspired us to write our book, Fred Previcās seminal explanation of the technical aspects of dopamine and psychology. If you were hoping for a deeper diver on certain points, Previcās text is the only way to go ā and we remain grateful to him for his groundbreaking work.
What does it mean to be human? There are many theories of the evolution of human behavior which seek to explain how our brains evolved to support our unique abilities and personalities. Most of these have focused on the role of brain size or specific genetic adaptations of the brain. In contrast, in this text, Fred Previc presents a provocative theory that high levels of dopamine, the most widely studied neurotransmitter, account for all major aspects of modern human behavior. He further emphasizes the role of epigenetic rather than genetic factors in the rise of dopamine. Previc contrasts the greatā¦
I went to university wanting to become a Roman specialist, but ended up going backwards in time until I landed with a bump on the hard flints of the Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age). I research aspects of the behaviour of the Pleistocene (Ice Age) indigenous Europeans ā the Neanderthals ā and the origins and evolution of our own species, Homo sapiens. I undertake fieldwork across Europe, and Iām particularly interested in the origins and early development of art ā both on portable objects and cave walls ā and the long-term evolution of our treatment of the dead. My scientific love is how we can try to get inside the mind of our most remote ancestors.
A raw and bloody gem of a book, which plunges the reader into the cold and dirty world of our deep past, not just seen but experienced by its multi-talented author.
A philosophical hankering to know what it means to be human ā and what we have inherited from our evolutionary past -leads this trained veterinarian, barrister, and writer to go back to nature in a Derbyshire wood. He and his long-suffering son experience the freezing, claw-red, and skin-tearing nature of the wild, as they seek to live similarly to our prehistoric ancestors.
Drawing inspiration from the 40,000 years of the Upper Palaeolithic, in an environment similar to the Mesolithic, Foster paints a blistering, spraining, and chilling account of the demands of a more primitive life. Essential reading from the comfort of my couch.
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE ATLANTIC, KIRKUS REVIEWS, AND NEW STATESMAN
A radically immersive exploration of three pivotal moments in the evolution of human consciousness, asking what kinds of creatures humans were, are, and might yet be
How did humans come to be who we are? In his marvelous, eccentric, and widely lauded book Being a Beast, legal scholar, veterinary surgeon, and naturalist extraordinaire Charles Foster set out to understand the consciousness of animal species by living as a badger, otter, fox, deer, and swift. Now, he inhabits three crucial periods of human development to understandā¦
Zeni lives in the Flint Hills of Southeast Kansas. This tale begins with her dream of befriending a miniature zebu calf coming true and follows Zeni as she works to befriend Zara. Enjoy full-color illustrations and a story filled with whimsy and plenty of opportunity for discussions around the perspectivesā¦
I have been exploring the relationship between the brain and religious/spiritual phenomena (a field known as neurotheology) for the past 30 years. My neuroimaging research has helped uncover the brain processes involved with practices like meditation and prayer and a broad array of experiences. The origin of this work derives from evolutionary theories about religion and the brain that tie directly into sexuality. The books on this list greatly helped to provide the foundation for the connection between spirituality and sexuality, opening up all kinds of avenues for exploration, including where human morals, societies, political systems, and religions come from with respect to the human mind.
I loved this book because it clarified a fundamental concept about how our minds evolved through sexual selection. This idea is strongly connected to my own research, which aims to understand the evolutionary basis of religious and spiritual experiences and how they are connected to sexuality.
By understanding how sexual selection works, we can explore the intricate relationship between sexuality and spirituality.
Evolutionary psychologist geoffrey Miller shows the evolutionary power of sexual choice, and the reason why our ancestors became attracted not only to pretty faces and healthy bodies, but to minds that were witty, articulate, generous, and conscious.
