Showing titles in Biology

New York Times bestseller Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize One of the Washington Post's 10 Best Books of the Year “It’s no exaggeration to say that Behave is one of the best nonfiction books I’ve ever read.” —David P. Barash, The Wall Street Journal "It has my vote...

Sharks are some of the most fascinating and ecologically important, yet most threatened and misunderstood animals on Earth. More often feared than revered, their role as predators of the deep has earned them a reputation as a major threat to humans. But the truth is that sharks are not a danger to us—they’re in danger from us. In Why Sharks Matter, marine conservation biologist Dr. David Shiffman urges us to overcome our misconceptions and embrace sharks as the imperiled and elegant ocean guardians they really are. 

“Read this book and discover sex again, but from a scientific perspective, and see why it evolved. It’s almost as much fun, and needs less energy.” — Peter Macinnis, author of 100 Discoveries: The Greatest Breakthroughs in History "How Sex Works manages to inject science writing with the...

John Parrington draws on the latest research on the human brain to show how it differs strikingly from those of other animals in its structure and function at a molecular and cellular level. And he argues that this 'shift', enlarging the brain, giving it greater flexibility and enabling higher functions such as imagination, was driven by tool use, but especially by the development of one remarkable tool - language.

From the renowned neuroscientist and New York Times bestselling author of Incognito comes the companion volume to the international PBS series about how your life shapes your brain, and how your brain shapes your life. "An ideal introduction to how biology generates the mind.... Clear...

The Western world has had an enduring love affair with dolphins since the early 1960s, with fanciful claims of their 'healing powers' and 'super intelligence'. Myths and pseudoscience abound on the subject. Justin Gregg weighs up the claims made about dolphin intelligence and separates scientific fact from fiction. He puts our knowledge about dolphin behavior and intelligence into perspective, with comparisons to scientific studies of other animals, especially the crow family and great apes.

Synthetic Biology: Life’s Extraordinary New Worlds is an introduction to synthetic biology for non-scientists, covering the exciting field that is transforming health care, agriculture, environmental science, and many other areas. Using the molecules of life to answer scientific questions and manipulate life for human benefit, synthetic biology encompasses a wide range of applications—from gene editing and metabolic engineering to food synthesis and green technologies.

The Cell: Inside the Microscopic World that Determines Our Health, Our Consciousness, and Our Future is a fascinating story of the incredible complexity and dynamism inside the cell and of the fantastic advancements in our understanding of this microscopic world.

When his missionary brother renounced faith in favor of atheism, Perry Marshall was plunged into crisis and doubt. He decided: “I”m going to let science make this decision for me.” He asked: “Is the hand at the end of my arm purposeful? Or is it purposeless?” He leapt into the void of evolution and the origin of life. He could not have begun to anticipate what he was about to discover. Living things were far more sophisticated than textbooks were saying.

Walter Tschinkel has spent much of his career investigating the hidden subterranean realm of ant nests. This book takes you inside an unseen world where thousands of ants build intricate homes in the soil beneath our feet. Tschinkel describes the ingenious methods he has devised to study ant nests, showing how he fills a nest with plaster, molten metal, or wax and painstakingly excavates the cast.

For many of us, the buzzing of a bee elicits panic. But the next time you hear that low droning sound, look closer: the bee has navigated to this particular spot for a reason using a fascinating set of tools. What a Bee Knows: Exploring the Thoughts, Memories, and Personalities of Bees invites us to follow bees' mysterious paths and experience their alien world.

A riveting new exploration of the octopus from a world-leading expert, marine biologist David Scheel. Of all the creatures of the deep blue, none captivates us quite like the octopus. This highly intelligent master of disguise is one of our planet's most intriguing and enigmatic creatures. Marine biologist David Scheel's lifelong preoccupation with octopuses has led to a career of groundbreaking research, from finding previously unknown species to the discovery of signaling communication among octopuses. 

The form and function of a sprinting cheetah are quite unlike those of a rooted tree. A human being is very different from a bacterium or a zebra. The living world is a realm of dazzling variety, yet a shared set of physical principles shapes the forms and behaviors of every creature in it. So Simple a Beginning shows how the emerging new science of biophysics is transforming our understanding of life on Earth and enabling potentially lifesaving but controversial technologies such as gene editing, artificial organ growth, and ecosystem engineering.

An invisible world of astonishing complexity is all around you. A world so small you can’t see it with the naked eye. A world so crowded that its population staggers the mind. A world in which you participate every day - often without even knowing it. The inhabitants of this world are trillions of bacteria, viruses, fungi, and other organisms, collectively known as microbes. Hundreds of thousands could fit on the period at the end of this sentence. And many play a powerful role in your life.

From Pulitzer Prize-winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene, The Song of The Cell is the third book in this extraordinary writer's exploration of what it means to be human-rich with Siddhartha Mukherjee's revelatory and exhilarating stories of...

Imagine a ferocious marine hunter up to 20 metres long, weighing twice as much as a humpback whale and ten times more than Tyrannosaurus rex. With jaws that open three metres wide, crammed with 276 serrated fangs, it can bite down with the greatest force of any animal that has ever lived. This is the Megalodon, and it once existed 3 million years ago. Acclaimed conservationist, palaeontologist and explorer Tim Flannery and his scientist daughter Emma tell the story of this enthralling great shark for the first time - what we know about where and how it lived, bred, hunted and died.

A fun way to expand your knowledge with facts about the human body.

A natural history of the wilderness in our homes, from the microbes in our showers to the crickets in our basements Even when the floors are sparkling clean and the house seems silent, our domestic domain is wild beyond imagination. In Never Home Alone, biologist Rob Dunn introduces us to the...

The most valuable investment any society makes is in its children, the next generation. The more we learn about the fetus the better we are able to understand the problems and abnormalities that can occur during development. Dr. Peter Nathanielsz, the first to demonstrate that the fetal brain delivers the signals that start the process of birth, reviews the recent explosion of information on fetal development during the second half of pregnancy.

As we continue to live through a pandemic, all eyes are on microbes: an imperceptible and pervasive threat that hangs heavy on the air and clings to surfaces. But the reality of micro-organisms is far more diverse and life-sustaining than such a notion would have us believe.