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One of the greatest experimental scientists of all time, Michael Faraday (1791–1867) developed the first electric motor, electric generator, and dynamo - essentially creating the science of electrochemistry. This book, the result of six lectures he delivered to young students at London's Royal Institution, concerns another form of energy - candlelight. Faraday titled the lectures "The Chemical History of a Candle," choosing the subject because,...
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Get the Summary of Jennifer A. Doudna and Samuel H. Sternberg's A Crack in Creation in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. Original book introduction: Not since the atomic bomb has a technology so alarmed its inventors that they warned the world about its use. Not, that is, until the spring of 2015, when biologist Jennifer Doudna called for a worldwide moratorium on the use of the new gene-editing tool CRISPR-a revolutionary...
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On March 10, 2013, 6 houses were lost, 7 condemned and 24 were declared to be in imminent danger on Plum Island in northern Massachusetts. But, it was only the latest skirmish in an ongoing battle between man and nature on this fragile barrier beach.
Plum Island takes readers to the core of the earth to see how Plum Island's sands were first formed in the metamorphic forge of the earth's interior. It will then follow these minerals as they erode...
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Get the Summary of Stephen Hawking's Brief Answers to the Big Questions in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book.
Original book introduction: Stephen Hawking was the most renowned scientist since Einstein, known both for his groundbreaking work in physics and cosmology and for his mischievous sense of humor. He educated millions of readers about the origins of the universe and the nature of black holes, and inspired millions...
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Get the Summary of Franck Wilczek's's Fundamentals in 20-minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. Original book introduction: In Fundamentals, Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek offers the reader a simple yet profound exploration of reality based on the deep revelations of modern science. With clarity and an infectious sense of joy, he guides us through the essential concepts that form our understanding of what the world is and how...
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Get the Summary of Avi Loeb's Extraterrestrial in the Room in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary and not the original book. Original book introduction: In Extraterrestrial, Loeb takes readers inside the thrilling story of the first interstellar visitor, to be spotted in our solar system. He outlines his controversial theory and its profound implications: for science, for religion, and for the future of our species and our planet. A mind-bending...
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Get the Summary of Bill Gate's How to Avoid a Climate Disaster in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. Original book introduction: Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide to certain environmental...
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A must-read follow-up to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, one of the most important books of the twentieth century.
This book contains the text of Thomas S. Kuhn's unfinished book, The Plurality of Worlds: An Evolutionary Theory of Scientific Development, which Kuhn himself described as a return to the central claims of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and the problems that it raised but did not resolve. The Plurality of Worlds...
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Get the Summary of David Wallace-Wells's The Uninhabitable Earth in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book.
Original book introduction: An "epoch-defining book" (The Guardian) and "this generation's Silent Spring" (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it-the ways that warming promises to transform global...
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Get the Summary of Donella H. Meadows's Thinking in Systems in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. Original book introduction: Thinking in Systems, is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute's Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into...
15) Pierre Poivre and the Networking Naturalists: Pioneering Environmentalists of the Eighteenth Century
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Although climate change is seen as a very 21st-century concern, back in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century naturalists around the world in places as far apart as Mauritius in the Indian ocean and St Vincent in the Caribbean were becoming aware of what they referred to as desiccation, the drying of the land and absence of rainfall due to the cutting down of large swathes of forest trees.
This book traces the connections between those naturalists,...
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Get the Summary of Stephen C. Meyer's Return of the God Hypothesis in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. Original book introduction: Beginning in the late 19th century, many intellectuals began to insist that scientific knowledge conflicts with traditional theistic belief-that science and belief in God are "at war." Philosopher of science Stephen Meyer challenges this view by examining three scientific discoveries...
17) Spix's Macaw
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English
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An environmental parable for our times - the story of a beautiful blue bird meeting its nemesis at the end of the 20th-century.
In December 1897, the Reverend F. G. Dutton lamented that 'there are so many calls on a parson's purse, that he cannot always treat himself to expensive parrots.' He was hoping to purchase a Spix's Macaw, a rare and beautiful parrot found in a remote area of Brazil. Today, the parson's search would be in vain. By the turn...
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Get the Summary of Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book.
Original book introduction: Did you know that:
• Every atom in your body has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to being you?
• If you are an average-sized kid, you have enough potential energy inside you to explode with the force of several...
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Grand Central Publishing
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English
Description
As a young man, Attenborough felt he was out there in the wild, experiencing the untouched natural world. But it was an illusion. The tragedy of our time has been happening all around us, barely noticeable from day to day: the loss of our planet's wild places, its biodiversity. Here he shares his witness statement from a lifetime of wisdom. And he offers a hopeful vision for the future: how we can work to restore the wonderful world we inherited....
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Atlantic Monthly Press
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English
Description
"In Europe: A Natural History, world-renowned scientist, explorer, and conservationist Tim Flannery applies the eloquent interdisciplinary approach he used in his ecological histories of Australia and North America to the story of Europe. He begins 100 million years ago, when the continents of Asia, North America, and Africa interacted to create an island archipelago that would later become the Europe we know today. It was on these ancient tropical...
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