Popular science non-fiction

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Find it at: 500 Bryson Mary Roach Find it at: 571.49 Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the From the space shuttle training toilet to a crash test of rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we NASA’s new space capsule (cadaver filling in for got from there being nothing at all to there being us. - astronaut), Roach takes us on a surreally entertaining trip Publisher into the science of life in space and space on Earth. - Goodreads

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Sid- The Code Book: The Evolution of Secrecy from Mary Queen dhartha Mukherjee Find it at 616.994 of Scots to Quantum Cryptography by Simon Singh Find Winner of the Pulitzer Prize The Emperor of All Maladies, it at 652.809 now a documentary from Ken Burns on PBS, is a magnificent, Combining a superb storyteller's sense of drama and a scien- profoundly humane "biography" of cancer-from its first docu- tist's appreciation for technical perfection, Singh traces the mented appearances thousands of years ago through the evolution of secret writing from ancient Greek military espi- epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and onage to the frontiers of computer science. The result is an conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence. - epic tale of human ingenuity, with examples that range from Publisher the poignant to the peculiar to the world-historical. - Publisher

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Mad- Diamond Find it at 304.28 ness, Love, and the History of the World from the Peri- Diamond weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through odic Table of the Elements by Sam Kean a series of fascinating historical-cultural narratives. Moving Find it at: 546 from the Polynesian cultures on Easter Island to the flour- The Periodic Table is a crowning scientific ishing American civilizations of the Anasazi and the Maya achievement, but it's also a treasure trove of and finally to the doomed Viking colony on Greenland, Dia- adventure, betrayal, and obsession. These mond traces the fundamental pattern of catastrophe. - fascinating tales follow every element on the table as Publisher they play out their parts in human history, and in the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them. –Publisher The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert Find it at: 576.84 New Yorker staff writer Kolbert accomplishes an amazing What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypo- feat in her latest book, which superbly blends the depress- thetical Questions by Randall Munroe ing facts associated with rampant species extinctions and Find it at: 502 impending ecosystem collapse with stellar writing to pro- From the creator of the wildly popular webcomic xkcd, duce a text that is accessible, witty, scientifically accurate, hilarious and informative answers to important ques- and impossible to put down—Library Journal tions you probably never thought to ask. –Publisher

The Immortal Life of by Rebecca Skloot Find it at 616.027 Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. –Publisher

HCL 11/17