The Science of the Earth: The Secrets of Our Planet Revealed (DK Secret World Encyclopedias)

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Introducing The Science of Earth – an informative, visually arresting introduction to planet Earth. Michael Lewis’s taut and brilliant nonfiction thriller pits a band of medical visionaries against the wall of ignorance that was the official response of the Trump administration to the outbreak of COVID-19. Buy Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, by Suzanne Simard Hernandez grew up in Los Angeles, the child of immigrants pushed from their ancestral lands. Her Zapotec mother is from Oaxaca, Mexico, and her Maya Ch’orti’ father is from El Salvador. As Hernandez earned graduate degrees in environmental sciences in the United States, professors routinely belittled the Indigenous knowledge and perspectives she brought. Through Fresh Banana Leaves, Hernandez directly delivers Indigenous lessons that are missing from Western education and environmentalism. The surprising and illuminating look at how Tolkien's love of science and natural history shaped the creation of his Middle Earth, from its flora and fauna to its landscapes. When Newton discovered the law of gravity, he unified the rules governing the heavens and the Earth. Since then, physicists have been placing new forces into ever-grander theories. Buy Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law, by Mary Roach

Increasingly environmental scientists, palaeoceanographers and geologists are collecting quantitative records of environmental changes (time-series) from sediments, ice cores, cave calcite, corals and trees. This book explains how to analyse these records, using straightforward explanations and diagrams rather than formal mathematical derivations. All the main cyclostratigraphic methods are covered including spectral analysis, cross-spectral analysis, filtering, complex demodulation, wavelet and singular spectrum analysis. Practical problems of time-series analysis, including those of distortions of environmental signals during stratigraphic encoding, are considered in detail. Recent research into various types of tidal and climatic cycles is summarised. The book ends with an extensive reference section, and an appendix listing sources of computer algorithms. This book provides the ideal reference for all those using time-series analysis to study the nature and history of climatic and tidal cycles. It is suitable for senior undergraduate and graduate courses in environmental science, palaeoceanography and geology. Explore the Earth’s natural riches with this beautiful book that brings every corner of the planet, from core to atmosphere, to life!A virtuosic debut from a gifted violinist searching for a new mode of artistic becoming. Buy Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes Through Indigenous Science by Jessica Hernandez Sweating may be one of our weirdest biological functions, but it’s also one of our most vital and least understood. In The Joy of Sweat, Sarah Everts delves into its role in the body—and in human history. Buy The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything, by Michio Kaku Explore the Earth's natural riches with this beautiful book that brings every corner of the planet, from core to atmosphere, to life! In the former camp was a man named Barnum Brown, who yearned to escape his humble origins in Kansas farm country. With sponsorship from curator Henry Fairfield Osborn of the American Museum of Natural History, Brown scoured the hills of Wyoming and Montana with, as Randall puts it, “a magical ability to unearth a specimen, like someone who can sit down and complete a jigsaw puzzle without first needing to find the edges.” Brown’s unassuming diligence contrasts with Osborn’s rigid—and skewed—vision of the natural world: Osborn saw the history of the Earth as a kind of morality tale, in which good prevails over evil, intelligence trumps brute strength (witness the extinction of the dinosaurs), and people of Anglo-Saxon descent inevitably rose to the top. The Monster’s Bones deftly weaves paleontology and adventure—and shows how “objective” science can be shaped by the personalities and ideologies of its practitioners.

Perhaps no aspect of our anatomy is both more fascinating and misunderstood than the vagina—down to the very common usage of what that word means. A vagina isn’t the whole of a woman’s reproductive anatomy. Instead, the vagina is a muscular canal that’s part of many people’s reproductive systems, of varying genders, whether they were born with it or had it surgically constructed. Nuance exists in this territory that is so often overwhelmed by a tangle of science, myth and cultural perceptions, and journalist Rachel E. Gross has composed an enthralling, sensitive book that’s relevant to everyone no matter what your personal topography looks like. Native to Southeast Asia, banana trees were brought to the Americas by European colonists in the 1500s. The fruits adapted and flourished, nourishing Indigenous communities who have protected the plants and incorporated them into traditional dishes. To environmental scientist Jessica Hernandez, the transplanted fruits symbolize the resistance of Indigenous people, like her family; however their landscapes change, they find ways to adapt and nourish themselves. Did you know that bubbles of ancient air trapped inside the Antarctic ice core can reveal how Earth’s climate has changed over time? Or that a piece of pumice thrown several miles into the air by a volcano helps to explain what happens when tectonic plates collide? Well, now you do! Learn all about our weird and wonderful planet with The Science of Earth. Our planet’s epic story possesses power, poetry and a lot of important details, so my five books span genres. Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology and John Grotzinger and Tom Jordan’s Understanding Earth are elegant, accessible textbooks written almost two centuries apart. Andy Knoll’s Life on a Young Planet and David Beerling’s The Emerald Planet celebrate the 4-billion-year co-evolution of Earth and life from the perspective of paleontology. Finally, John McPhee’s rhapsodic Annals of the Former World provides a poetic tribute to our dynamic home and the geologists who devote their lives to its study.Many of the most fascinating parts of the natural world are beyond reach. This beautiful, informative book brings them up-close and within our grasp. This is an informative, visually arresting introduction to planet Earth. The core of the book features large, detailed photographs of single objects, many of them small enough to be held in the hand, that each speak volumes about an aspect of Earth's environments and how they work. For example, bubbles of ancient air trapped inside an Antarctic ice core reveal how Earth's climate has changed over time. A piece of pumice thrown several miles into the air by a volcano helps to explain what happens when tectonic plates collide.