Showing titles in Biology

Brought to you by Penguin. Hidden inflammation lies behind many modern diseases. Shilpa Ravella, an expert in nutrition and the gut, explains why our immune systems are turning against us and what we might do about it. 'Controlling Inflammation is the key to good health and this beautifully...

A bold, provocative exploration of the tension between our evolutionary history and our modern woes and what we can do about it. We are living through the most prosperous age in all of human history, yet we are listless, divided and miserable. Wealth and comfort are unparalleled, but our political landscape is unmoored, and rates of suicide, loneliness and chronic illness continue to skyrocket.

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 new technology that she helped create - to make heritable changes in human embryos.

When Charles Darwin finished The Origin of Species, he thought that he had explained every clue, but one. Though his theory could explain many facts, Darwin knew that there was a significant event in the history of life that his theory did not explain. During this event, the Cambrian explosion...

Over the past 20 years, Evolutionary Biologist Herman Pontzer has conducted ground-breaking studies across a range of settings, including pioneering fieldwork with Hadza hunter-gatherers in northern Tanzania. This book draws on his eye-opening research to show how, contrary to received wisdom, exercise does not increase our metabolism. Instead, we burn calories within a very narrow range: nearly 3,000 calories per day, no matter our activity level.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Blueprint, written and read by Robert Plomin. The blueprint for our individuality lies in the 1 percent of DNA that differs between people. Our intellectual capacity, our introversion or extraversion, our vulnerability to mental illness, even whether we are a morning person - all of these aspects of our personality are profoundly shaped by our inherited DNA differences. 

The extraordinary story of the Nazi-era scientific genius who discovered how cancer cells eat—and what it means for how we should. The Nobel laureate Otto Warburg—a cousin of the famous finance Warburgs—was widely regarded in his day as one of the most important biochemists of the...

We like to think of ourselves as highly evolved creatures. But if we are evolution's greatest creation, why are we so badly designed? We have retinas that face backward, the stump of a tail, and way too many bones in our wrists. We must find vitamins and nutrients in our diets that other animals simply make for themselves. Millions of us can't reproduce successfully without help from modern science. We have nerves that take bizarre paths, muscles that attach to nothing, and lymph nodes that do more harm than good. And that's just the beginning of the story.

You may be familiar with the idea of our body's biome - the bacterial fauna that populates our gut and can so profoundly affect our health. In We Are Electric we cross the next frontier of scientific understanding: discover your body's electrome.

A lifetime of adventures with bats around the world reveals why these special and imperiled creatures should be protected rather than feared. 

Sea turtles are the ancient mariners of our planet. Long before human sailors braved the open seas, these gentle reptiles were already navigating the vast blue expanse with a precision that continues to astound scientists today. For more than 100 million years, sea turtles have survived continental shifts, ice ages, and mass extinctions. They are living fossils whose epic migrations link the distant past with our uncertain present, journeys written in sand, salt, and instinct.

Coyote America is both an environmental and a deep natural history of the coyote. It traces both the five-million-year-long biological story of an animal that has become the "wolf" in our backyards and its cultural evolution from a preeminent spot in Native American religions to the hapless foil of the Road Runner. A deeply American tale, the story of the coyote in the American West and beyond is a sort of Manifest Destiny in reverse.

Your body is teeming with tens of trillions of microbes. It's an entire world, a colony full of life. In other words, you contain multitudes. These microscopic companions sculpt our organs, protect us from diseases, guide our behaviour and bombard us with their genes. They also hold the key to understanding all life on earth. In I Contain Multitudes, Ed Yong opens our eyes and invites us to marvel at ourselves and other animals in a new light, less as individuals and more as thriving ecosystems.

Brought to you by Penguin. The myth-busting science behind our modern attitudes to exercise: what our bodies really need, why it matters, and its effects on health and wellbeing. In industrialized nations, our sedentary lifestyles have contributed to skyrocketing rates of obesity and diseases...

BBC R4 Book of the Week ‘Brilliant’ Guardian ‘Fascinating and often delightful’ The Times What if intelligent life on Earth evolved not once, but twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter? In Other Minds, Peter...

WINNER OF THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD 2011 WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2011 ‘Profound, eloquent and searching’ SUNDAY TIMES ‘Essential reading’ INDEPENDENT ‘Masterly’ GUARDIAN ‘Extraordinary’ NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW Riveting, audacious and now more urgent...

Most of us are aware of the hive mind—the power of bees as an amazing collective. But do we know how uniquely intelligent bees are as individuals? In The Mind of a Bee, Lars Chittka draws from decades of research, including his own pioneering work, to argue that bees have remarkable cognitive abilities. He shows that they are profoundly smart, have distinct personalities, can recognize flowers and human faces, exhibit basic emotions, count, use simple tools, solve problems, and learn by observing others. They may even possess consciousness. 

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER 'Refreshingly clear' Sunday Times 'A hugely enjoyable slice of popular science' Daily Mail __________ A journey into the astonishing nature and true science of longevity. Molecular biologist Nicklas Brendborg takes...

A harrowing memoir of one woman's extraordinary effort to save her husband's life—and the discovery of a forgotten cure that has the potential to save millions more. Epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee and her husband, psychologist Tom Patterson, were vacationing in Egypt when Tom came down...

In this groundbreaking addition to his New York Times bestselling Plant Paradox series, Steven R.Gundry, MD offers a definitive guide to the gut biome and its control over its home—us!—revealing the unimaginably complex and intelligent ecosystem controlling our health and teaching us how to...