I am a scientist with a love for fiction, and I’m very intrigued by and like to explore the intersections of science with the rest of the world— art, fiction, race, religion, life, and death. I bring these intersections into my teaching and writing. Over the past 30 years, I’ve taught Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns, undergraduates, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, physicians and professors at Emory University, cadets at the Air Force Academy, and the general public. Why does science matter? Why is it beautiful? Dangerous? It’s the novelists who tell us best.
I guess this book is officially qualified as ‘science fiction’ but I think of it instead as great fiction that appreciates and then grabs the very edges of our current knowledge and extends them like a wild rubber band in ways that captivate. Bear takes some of the guesses and hints about what lies within the 95% of our DNA that at first seems to have no clear ‘purpose’ and imagines it is part of a sensor that is able to catalyze the creation of new versions of life in response to the kinds of dramatic stressors— climate change, etc— that humans have made for ourselves.
Ancient diseases encoded in the DNA of humans wait like sleeping dragons to wake and infect again--or so molecular biologist Kaye Lang believes. And now it looks as if her controversial theory is in fact chilling reality. For Christopher Dicken, a "virus hunter" at the Epidemic Intelligence Service, has pursued an elusive flu-like disease that strikes down expectant mothers and their offspring. Then a major discovery high in the Alps --the preserved bodies of a prehistoric family--reveals a shocking link: something that has slept in our genes for millions of years is waking up.
I am a young adult fantasy author and paranoid survivalist. I have spent years curating items for my end-of-days go-bag, and nothing gives me greater pleasure than hanging out in universes that are about to go bang!
Do not read this series if you have Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).
Coral is on vacation when her world lights up. It starts with a fire so intense that the ash entirely blocks out the sun, not for a season, but for years. The sky is perpetually grey, and her world goes seriously cold. She must survive the elements, but the real threat comes from the desperation of those left alive and fighting for their lives. This is a brutal world.
As a paranoid survivalist, this book had me taking notes. Some books you read and forget, others teach you something. Most authors push a moral agenda, but this book teaches real-life skills, like how it’s a good idea to burrow into snow when it’s REALLY cold, or why hanging out in caves isn’t just for Neanderthals, and my personal favourite, how to spot a cannibal.
A dense black cloud boiled up in the southeastern sky. It rose high and fast, like a time-lapse movie of the birth of a thunderhead. But it was no rain cloud. Wholly black, it reached up and up until it loomed over her, blocking out the sun. Somehow, she knew, it was Death coming for her.Pre-med student Coral is on vacation in Idaho when something terrible happens. The black cloud is followed by a wildfire and searing heat that lasts for days. She survives deep in a cave but emerges days later to find the world transformed, with blackened trees,…
I’m an accidental historian, one that stumbled over a love of history in spite of myself. In school, history was all just dates and places—not the kind of thing to inspire a kid that loved stories about people, not dusty old battles. But then a funny thing happened on the way to an English degree. A few history electives suddenly seemed way more appealing than another round of Austen, and led me to a BA History with Distinction. The first half of the twentieth century is a favorite period, but I say bring on the Renaissance and Viking ships too!
In The Inheritors, William Golding brings to life a creature from the distant past: Lok, a hairy, barely verbal hominid whose small band is the last of their kind. New words and thoughts confuse him, flashes of logic slip out of his grasp, and he discovers the existence of mysterious Others; invaders with the formidable technology of bow and arrow. But The Inheritorsis much morethan an exciting adventure. The story stays with me because Lok is a mirror of us—of the human urge to try, to fail, to push on despite the odds. We have no idea what the next thousand years will hold. Neither did Lok. But just like him, we can’t help moving forward.
Hunt, trek, and feast among Neanderthals in this stunning novel by the radical Nobel Laureate and author of Lord of the Flies, introduced by Ben Okri.
This was a different voice; not the voice of the people. It was the voice of other.
When spring comes, the people leave their winter cave, foraging for honey, grubs, and the hot richness of a deer's brain. They awaken the fire to heat their naked bodies, lay down their thorn bushes, and share pictures in their minds. But strange things are happening: inexplicable scents and sounds. Imaginable beasts are half-glimpsed in the forest;…
I’ve read romance since I was teenager, and I’ve written all my professional life, first in journalism, then public relations, finally as an author. Being a sci-fi romance author is my dream job! There is nothing on this planet I’d rather do. I love the freedom and creativity of science fiction romance. There are new worlds to explore and fascinating characters to meet. The best books of any genre are those with “legs.” Years after reading them, you stillremember the story. My goal is to send my readers on an unforgettable emotional journey to an exciting new world filled with characters they can’t help but fall in love with.
A young woman volunteers for a “research project” unaware she’ll be taking a one-way trip into past—40,000 years. She’s sent to provide companionship for Nathan, a modern man also trapped in the past.
The descriptions of primitive Earth and its dangers were so realistically portrayed the book put me right there with the Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon. I sympathized with Riley’s shock and betrayal and with Nathan’s crushing loneliness and despair.
The research project was only supposed to be for an "extended period." No one said anything about forever! So Riley's journey begins. Unknowingly sent back 40,000 years to be the mate of a man she had never before met, Riley struggles to understand and adjust. Her journey will take her into a world fraught with dangers - a world made more treacherous by savage beasts, primitive Neanderthals, and the incursion of the aggressive Cro-Magnon man. Surviving alone for five years in this vast wilderness, Nathan, along with his enormous dog, Demon, carve out a life in the perilous environment. Though…
I am a biologist, a writer, and a teacher. I like knowing how the human body works but what I really like is knowing why it works the way it does. Those explanations lie deep in our past and I use my broad biological background to dig up the answers in scientific journals. Then I take those articles and figure out how to describe them to people who last took a biology class in 10th grade. I start with those drab scientific threads and knit them into big, bold scientific sweaters that anyone can curl up in and feel warm and comfortable.
At the end of the day, we are humans because of our DNA and Sam Kean breaks down that DNA in a way that is surprisingly page-turning.
You will learn more about your genetic code than you ever thought possible. Who would have thought that there is more viral DNA in the human genome than actual human genes!
The Violinist’s Thumb is a ride that weaves the biology of DNA and the cultural and societal impacts of the molecular revolution into a compelling story you won’t want to put down.
From New York Times bestselling author Sam Kean comes incredible stories of science, history, language, and music, as told by our own DNA.
In The Disappearing Spoon, bestselling author Sam Kean unlocked the mysteries of the periodic table. In The Violinist's Thumb, he explores the wonders of the magical building block of life: DNA.
There are genes to explain crazy cat ladies, why other people have no fingerprints, and why some people survive nuclear bombs. Genes illuminate everything from JFK's bronze skin (it wasn't a tan) to Einstein's genius. They prove that Neanderthals and humans bred thousands of years more…
I’m a New Zealand philosopher who’s written a lot about the human enhancement debate. Philosophers are well known for their willingness to defend unpopular conclusions against all critics. Sometimes they engage in what I call “philosophical shit-stirring". You may think that’s a profanity but it’s actually a technical term. I’ve advocated some deliberately unpopular shit-stirring conclusions in the past. One of these is liberal eugenics - the idea that you can turn an evil like eugenics into something good by prefacing it with the feel-good term “liberal”. These dialogues are the beginning of a philosophical stock-take on what we should or might become.
There’s a lot of thoughtless talk by techno-optimistic philosophers about futures in which we all get to become superintelligent and live for thousands of years if we can apply the right tech to ourselves.
Sykes describes fascinating research on the Neanderthals, beings who were almost, but not quite, us. Reading her book, I wondered what it might have been like to grow up as the child of a union between a Homo sapiens and a Neanderthal. I found this especially useful when we consider future relationships between people determined to remain human and others who want tech to make them posthuman ASAP.
There’s so much information to gleen from Sykes to help us guess at how posthumans might treat beings whom they view as different and possibly inferior.
** WINNER OF THE PEN HESSELL-TILTMAN PRIZE 2021 **
'Beautiful, evocative, authoritative.' Professor Brian Cox
'Important reading not just for anyone interested in these ancient cousins of ours, but also for anyone interested in humanity.' Yuval Noah Harari
Kindred is the definitive guide to the Neanderthals. Since their discovery more than 160 years ago, Neanderthals have metamorphosed from the losers of the human family tree to A-list hominins.
Rebecca Wragg Sykes uses her experience at the cutting-edge of Palaeolithic research to share our new understanding of Neanderthals, shoving aside cliches of rag-clad brutes in an icy wasteland. She reveals them…
I’m a musician – singer/composer/educator/researcher – based in Northern England, and I’ve become fascinated through my community music work to see how music can change people’s experience – of themselves, of other people, of their community and their relationship to the world around them. With all of the complex challenges we currently face as a species, I’m interested in the potential of music-making as a resource to help us navigate toward a more hopeful future. Making music is an important part of our unique collective history as humans – and we need to draw on it now to help us evolve into a species that can live more harmoniously and sustainably on our fragile planet.
There are lots of great books about music in human evolution, but this one conjures up such beautiful images and makes such a strong argument that it’s still my favourite.
The human species is over 230,000 years old, and we’ve probably been using singing as a form of social bonding for that whole time, and previous hominid species probably were as well. The book makes the point really well that singing is something we take for granted, but is really quite a remarkable human evolutionary adaptation.
The propensity to make music is the most mysterious, wonderful, and neglected feature of humankind: this is where Steven Mithen began, drawing together strands from archaeology, anthropology, psychology, neuroscience--and, of course, musicology--to explain why we are so compelled to make and hear music. But music could not be explained without addressing language, and could not be accounted for without understanding the evolution of the human body and mind. Thus Mithen arrived at the wildly ambitious project that unfolds in this book: an exploration of music as a fundamental aspect of the human condition, encoded into the human genome during the…
After a long career in other forms of writing including but not limited to journalism, TV writing, nonfiction book authoring, I began writing contemporary romance novels two years ago and I haven’t gotten off the couch or closed my laptop since then. I write sweet, spicy books about quirky heroines and the men who can’t live without them. When I’m not writing, I’m perfecting the right ratio of coffee to milk, hustling my 2 rescue dogs around the neighborhood, or running up a hill in search of a view.
All of the women in Penny Reid’s Knitting in the City series are spitfires, but I have a soft spot for Janie and her habit of rattling off encyclopedic facts at inopportune times and solving problems in her head as a way of avoiding too much reality. Grumbly, protective Quinn is her perfect match and readers are especially lucky because their romance unfolds over not one, but two novels.
*AAR top 100 romances of all time* New York Times Bestselling Author Penny Reid’s debut novel
There are three things you need to know about Janie Morris: 1) She is incapable of engaging in a conversation without volunteering TMTI (Too Much Trivial Information), especially when she is unnerved, 2) No one unnerves her more than Quinn Sullivan, and 3) She doesn't know how to knit.
After losing her boyfriend, apartment, and job in the same day, Janie Morris can't help wondering what new torment fate has in store. To her utter mortification, Quinn Sullivan—aka Sir McHotpants—witnesses it all then keeps…
I first read Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene in 1980. It blew me away and precipitated my transformation from bee breeder into evolutionary geneticist. Later, I realised almost all evolutionary biologists of my generation were similarly drawn to their careers by Dawkins’ book. Why? People like Dawkins have the astonishing ability to transform complex theories into engaging narratives, to ferret out weird and wonderful examples from nature, and to exploit them for their explanatory power. My "best books" all have this in common. Big ideas about evolution and genetics illustrated by examples. I think they are the best kind of ‘pop science’ in that they are written for lay people, yet they inspire professionals.
This is probably the weirdest book I ever read. Certainly, the weirdest sciencey book.
It’s a dialogue between a palaeontologist and a novelist. The scientist, Arsuaga, sets up little excursions and events for Millás and himself around Madrid, and Millás writes about them. Each excursion illustrates some point about human evolution and behaviour.
As their relationship deepens, so do the tensions, as the scientist and the novelist don’t always see eye to eye. Arsuaga seems to delight in tormenting Millás by dragging him to places where he doesn’t initially get the point: pickup joints, childcare centres, and trains. They both love eating and drinking (so do I), and much of the discussion takes place over extended lunches. Sometimes, the food itself explains a point.
Prehistory is all around us. We just need to know where to look.
Juan Jose Millas has always felt like he doesn't quite fit into human society. Sometimes he wonders if he is even a Homo sapiens at all. Perhaps he is a Neanderthal who somehow survived? So he turns to Juan Luis Arsuaga, one of the world's leading palaeontologists and a super-smart sapiens, to explain why we are the way we are and where we come from.
Over the course of many months the two visit different places, many of them common…
I have a passion for becoming a better human being and helping others to do the same. I spent 28 years in parish ministry attempting to remind people of the call of Jesus and the needs of the human heart. I left ministry and operated a private practice as a registered psychotherapist for almost 20 years. I am now retired and an author of three books. I'm still working at the task of becoming a better human being and helping others to do the same. The books I have recommended in my book list are all examples of people with similar mindsets.
Vampires exist! A funny, irreverent, and insightful book about predatory personalities, the people out there in your life and mine who prey on our emotions and suck us dry.
A comprehensive study of the various forms of personality disorders in down-to-earth, non-psychological language. It will help you avoid these destructive people in your life and force you to take a good, long look in the mirror at your own emotion-sucking tendencies.
"If I'd had a copy of this book when I started therapy, I might have saved myself a lot of time and money. Bernstein provides a field guide to the various types of Emotional Vampires and advises readers how to protect themselves from being victims of these predatory personalities." - Diane White, "The Boston Globe". Emotional Vampires: They're out there ...masquerading as ordinary people. They may lurk in your office, your family, your circle of friends; perhaps they even share your bed. Chances are, you know all too many of them. Bright, talented, and charismatic, they win your trust, your…
