Are plants intelligent? Can they solve problems, communicate, and navigate their surroundings? Or are they passive, incapable of independent action or social behavior? Philosophers and scientists have pondered these questions since ancient Greece, most often concluding that plants are unthinking and inert: they are too silent, too sedentary -- just too different from us. Yet discoveries over the past fifty years have challenged these ideas, shedding new light on the extraordinary capabilit...

Are plants intelligent? Can they solve problems, communicate, and navigate their surroundings? Or are they passive, incapable of independent action or social behavior? Philosophers and scientists have pondered these questions since ancient Greece, most often concluding that plants are unthinking and inert: they are too silent, too sedentary—just too different from us. Yet discoveries over the past fifty years have challenged these ideas, shedding new light on the extraordinary capabilities...

A cutting-edge science book in the style of ‘Fermat’s Last Theorem’ and ‘Chaos’ from an exciting and accessible voice in popular science writing.Bio-inspiration is a form of engineering but not in the conventional sense. Extending beyond our established and preconceived notions, scientists, architects and engineers are looking at imitating nature by manufacturing 'wet' materials such as spider silk or the surface of the gecko's foot.The amazing power of the gecko's foot has...

In one hundred years, or even fifty, the Arctic will look dramatically different than it does today. As polar ice retreats and animals and plants migrate northward, the arctic landscape is morphing into something new and very different from what it once was. While these changes may seem remote, they will have a profound impact on a host of global issues, from international politics to animal migrations. In Future Arctic, journalist and explorer Edward Struzik offers a clear-eyed l...

An essay collection highlighting guiding principles, containing 30 works from the contemporary Philadelphia radio series, and 30 from the 1950s original.This I Believe is an international project engaging people in writing, sharing, and discussing the core values that guide their daily lives. And it all started in Philadelphia more than seven decades ago with a local radio series that became an international sensation.This book features thirty essa...

The most interesting writers we know, all asking and answering the same question: why can’t we stop watching cat videos?Fourteen writers, all addressing not just our fascination with cat videos, but also how we decide what is good or bad art, or art at all; how taste develops, how that can change, and why we love or hate something. It’s about people and technology and just what it is about cats that makes them the internet’s cutest despots.

**FINALIST FOR THE GOTHAM BOOK PRIZE • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Eye-opening essays about searching for peace in the cacophony of birds and discovering a world of meaning in small moments—from award-winning actor Lili Taylor.“By turns introspective, inquisitive, and funny, the book is a love letter to nature and the solace it can provide.”—The New Yorker**A NEW YORKER AND LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF THE YEARMost people don’t ...

"[An] intriguing philosophical journey into a critical issue within evolutionary theory that for too long has remained unresolved." —Wall Street JournalMatt Ridley is one of our finest science writers. This book is a treat for bird lovers and evolutionary biologists alike.” —Richard Dawkins, author of The Genetic Book of The Dead and The God DelusionThe New York Times bestselling ...

“Bold and ingenious” stories about the dark heart of America by the acclaimed Whiting Award–winning author (The New York Times Book Review).**“Feverish, psychotropic, bold, mesmerizing, painful, Fox Tooth Heart is full of stories about people living on the margins of society, characters born into dark circumstances, or . . . driven there by their own obsessions and addictions” (Huffington Post)—murderers, loners, addicts, neurotics and o...

"In Learning to Die in the Anthropocene, Roy Scranton draws on his experiences in Iraq to confront the grim realities of climate change. The result is a fierce and provocative book."--Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History"Roy Scranton's Learning to Die in the Anthropocene presents, without extraneous bullshit, what we must do to survive on Earth. It's a powerful, useful, and ultimat...

"Tim Wise is one of the great public moralists in America today. In his bracing new book, Under the Affluence, he brilliantly engages the roots and ramifications of radical inequality in our nation, carefully detailing the heartless war against the poor and the swooning addiction to the rich that exposes the moral sickness at the heart of our culture. Wise's stirring analysis of our predicament is more than a disinterested social scientific treatise; this book is a valiant call to...

A boy and his grandfather hunt for a stolen horse in this novel "evoking William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy" ( Booklist).Longlisted for the American Library Association's Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in FictionIn the summer of 1995, Jim Falls, a Korean War vet, struggles to raise his sixteen-year-old mixed-race grandson, Quentin, on a farm in southern Indiana. In July, they receive a mysterious gift—a beautiful quarter horse—whic...