Professional Science

This is the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of John Muir, the rugged individualist and passionate protector of the wild who saw that the encroachment of civilization into nature would threaten civilization itself.

When 22-year-old Jennifer Worth, from a comfortable middle-class upbringing, went to work as a midwife in the poorest section of postwar London, she not only delivered hundreds of babies and touched many lives, she also became the neighborhood's most vivid chronicler. Call the Midwife: Farewell to the East End is the last book in Worth's memoir trilogy, which the Times Literary Supplement described as "powerful stories with sweet charm and controlled outrage" in the face of dire circumstances.

In medical school, Paul Farmer found his life’s calling: to cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most. Tracy Kidder’s magnificent account shows how one person can make a difference in solving global health problems through a clear-eyed understanding of the interaction of politics, wealth, social systems, and disease. Profound, Mountains Beyond Mountains takes us from Harvard to Haiti, Peru, Cuba, and Russia as Farmer changes people’s minds through his dedication to the philosophy that “the only real nation is humanity.”

In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of 19th-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation. She conjures up early operating theaters - no place for the squeamish - and surgeons, working before anesthesia, who were lauded for their speed and brute strength. They were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. A young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister would solve the deadly riddle and change the course of history.

American Sniper meets Jaws in this gripping true account of the deadliest animal of all time, the Champawat Tiger - responsible for killing more than 400 humans in Northern India and Nepal in the first decade of the 20th century - and the legendary hunter who finally brought it down.

This audiobook narrated by Juliet Stevenson shares the story of a world-renowned physicist who seeks gravity’s true nature and finds wisdom in embracing its force in her life.

In 1968, nine sailors set off on the most daring race ever held: to single-handedly circumnavigate the globe nonstop. It was a feat that had never been accomplished and one that would forever change the face of sailing. Ten months later, only one of the nine men would cross the finish line and earn fame, wealth, and glory. For the others, the reward was madness, failure, and death. In this extraordinary book, Peter Nichols chronicles a contest of the individual against the sea, waged at a time before cell phones and electronic positioning systems.

Elisabeth Tova Bailey tells the intimate and inspiring story of her year-long encounter with a snail. While an illness keeps her bedridden, she becomes an astute and amused observer of the snail's surprising nocturnal adventures as it lives in a flowerpot on her nightstand. Intrigued by the snail’s clear decision making abilities, hydraulic locomotion, mysterious courtship, and molluscan anatomy, Bailey takes the listener deep into the life of this tiny amazing animal. With wit and grace, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating recounts a remarkable journey of human and gastropod survival and resilience, and shows how the natural world illuminates our own human existence. Winner of the William Saroyan International Prize for Nonfiction, the John Burrough Medal Award for Natural History, and a National Outdoor Book Award. If you enjoyed Wesley the Owl, The Guest Cat, and Marley & Me, you'll enjoy this unique interspecies audiobook listen.

Apfel mit Biss und andere Visionen – Steve Jobs plaudert aus dem Nähkästchen. In "Steve Jobs: Die autorisierte Biografie des Apple-Gründers" von Walter Isaacson tauchen wir tief ein in das Leben und Wirken von Steve Jobs. Die enge Zusammenarbeit des Autors mit Jobs, dessen Familie, Freunden und Bekannten ermöglicht es dem Biografen, den Lebensweg des Apple-Gründers facettenreich und informativ nachzuzeichnen.

When Apollo 11 touched down on the Moon’s surface in 1969, the first man on the Moon became a legend. In First Man, author James R. Hansen explores the life of Neil Armstrong. Based on over 50 hours of interviews with the intensely private Armstrong, who also gave Hansen exclusive access to private documents and family sources, this "magnificent panorama of the second half of the American twentieth century" (Publishers Weekly, starred review) is an unparalleled biography of an American icon.

At the dawn of the 20th century, humanity was facing global disaster. Mass starvation, long predicted for the fast-growing population, was about to become a reality. A call went out to the worlds scientists to find a solution. This is the story of the two enormously gifted, fatally flawed men who found it: the brilliant, self-important Fritz Haber and the reclusive, alcoholic Carl Bosch. Together they discovered a way to make bread out of air, built city-sized factories, controlled world markets, and saved millions of lives.

Gifted Hands reveals the remarkable journey of Dr. Ben Carson from an angry, struggling young boy with everything stacked against him to the director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center. Join Dr. Carson on his journey from a struggling inner-city student to the pinnacle of his career as a world-renowned neurosurgeon. A man of humility, decency, compassion, courage, and sensitivity, he now serves as a role model for everyone who wants to achieve their God-given potential.

This anthology is a miscellany of maxims and anecdotes that generations of Western readers have consulted for edification as well as entertainment ever since Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, first compiled in the AD third century, came to prominence in Renaissance Italy. To this day, it remains a crucial source for much of what we know about the origins and practice of philosophy in ancient Greece.

Volcanoes have fascinated - and terrified - people for ages. They have destroyed cities and ended civilizations. In this book, John Dvorak, the acclaimed author of Earthquake Storms, looks into the early years of volcanology and its "father", Thomas Jaggar. Jaggar was the youngest of five scientists to investigate the explosion of Mount Pelee in Martinique, which leveled the entire city of St. Pierre and killed its entire population in two minutes.

From award-winning author Merilyn Simonds, a remarkable biography of an extraordinary woman—a Swedish aristocrat who survived the Russian Revolution to become an internationally renowned naturalist, one of the first to track the mid-century decline of songbirds.

Before Bill Gross was known among investors as the Bond King, he was a gambler. In 1966, a fresh college grad, he went to Vegas armed with his net worth ($200) and a knack for counting cards. Ten thousand dollars and countless casino bans later, he was hooked, so he enrolled in business school. The Bond King is the story of how that whiz kid made American finance his casino.

When Sky and her older sister Avril were taken into care, the social workers knew this was a case like no other. Raised by unhinged parents who hoarded compulsively, creating horrific conditions no child should live in, the two girls arrived at foster carer Louise's home, neglected, malnourished and indoctrinated. Louise had to draw on all of her experience as one of Britain's leading foster carers to rehabilitate and change the course of their lives.

On the shores of Lake Tanganyika, Gombe is a community where the principal residents are chimpanzees. Through Jane Goodall's eyes we watch young Figan's rise to power and old Mike's crushing defeat. We learn how one mother rears her children to succeed, and another dooms hers to failure. We witness horrifying murders, touching moments of affection, joyous births, and wrenching deaths. As Goodall compellingly tells the story of this intimately intertwined community, we are shown human emotions stripped to their essence. In the mirror of chimpanzee life, we see ourselves reflected.

Part memoir, part manifesto, in Eat Like a Fish Bren Smith - a former commercial fisherman turned restorative ocean farmer - shares a bold new vision for the future of food: seaweed. Through tales that span from his childhood in Newfoundland to his early years on the high seas aboard commercial fishing trawlers, from pioneering new forms of ocean farming to surfing the frontiers of the food movement, Smith introduces the world of sea-based agriculture and advocates getting ocean vegetables onto American plates (there are thousands of edible varieties in the sea!).

Josh Harris had been New York's first net millionaire. He founded the city's first dotcom, Pseudo.com, and paved the way for a cadre of net-savvy 20-somethings to follow, riding a wave of tech euphoria to unimagined wealth and fame for five years, before losing it all in the great dotcom crash of 2000. Long before then, however, Harris's view of where the web would take us had darkened, and he began a series of lurid social experiments aimed at illustrating his worst fear: that the internet would soon alter the very fabric of society - cognitive, social, political, and otherwise.