Best Science Books of 2024

"For readers of Kolbert's Under a White Sky and Merlin Sheldrake's Entangled Life, to all those who love science books about the brain The effects of climate change on our brains are a public health crisis that has gone largely unreported. Based on six years of research, award-winning journalist and trained neuroscientist Clayton Page Aldern synthesizes the emerging neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics of climate change and brain health. A masterpiece of deeply reported, superb literary journalism, this book shows readers how a changing environment is changing us, today, from the inside out. Aldern calls it the weight of nature. Newly named mental conditions include: climate grief, ecoanxiety, environmental melancholia, pre-traumatic stress disorder. High-schoolers are preparing for a chaotic climate with the same combination of urgency, fear, and resignation they reserve for active-shooter drills. But mostly, as Aldern richly details, we don't realize what global warming is doing to our brains. More heat means it is harder to think straight and solve problems. It influences serotonin release, which in turn increases the chance of impulsive violence. Air pollution from wildfires and smokestacks affects everything from sleeplessness to baseball umpires' error rates. Immigration judges are more likely to reject asylum applications on hotter days. And these kinds of effects are not easily medicated, since certain drugs we might look to just aren't as effective at higher temperatures. Heatwaves and hurricanes can wear on memory, language, and pain systems. Wildfires seed PTSD. And climate-fueled ecosystem changes extend the reach of brain-disease carriers like the mosquitos of cerebral-malaria fame, brain-eating amoebae, and the bats that brought us the mental fog of long Covid. From farms in the San Joaquin Valley and public schools across the US to communities in Norway's arctic, Micronesian islands, and the French Alps, this is a disturbing, unprecedented portrait of a global crisis we thought we understood"-- Provided by publisher.

There are approximately 25,000 "city killer" asteroids in near-Earth orbit--and most are yet to be found. Small enough to evade detection, they are capable of large-scale destruction, and represent our greatest cosmic threat. But in September 2022, against all odds, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission deliberately crashed a spacecraft into a carefully selected city killer, altering the asteroid's orbit and proving that we stand a chance against them.

Part searing indictment of our healthcare system, part generational family memoir, part call to action, a physician and thought leader on bias and racism in healthcare recounts her journey to finally seizing her own power as a health equity advocate against the backdrop of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.

"Far from being a lifeless ornament in the sky, the Moon holds the answers to some of science's central questions. Silent, dry, and barren, Earth's 4.34-billion-year-old companion is essential to life on earth. Its gravity stabilized the Earth's orbit, and, as it once guided evolution, its tide stirring up nutrients that fostered complex life, it now influences everything from animal migrations and reproduction to the movements of plants' leaves. More than 30,000 years before humans invented writing, they used the Moon's waxing and waning to track the passage of time, and, in a tectonic shift for human consciousness, used it to plan for the future. Unsurprisingly, the Moon was a primary feature of the first religions, written language, and philosophy. But our relationship to the Moon became more concrete when Apollo landed on it in 1969 in a moment of scientific and political triumph. And both engineering and politics promise to shape our relationship with it in the near future. Scientists advocate for a return to the moon to do research; governments and billionaires want to return to turn a profit from its mineral resources. Who gets to decide how we use a celestial body that, Boyle argues, belongs to everyone and no one? How can we learn to protect this beautiful, spectral thing that we all share?"-- Provided by publisher.

"At its simplest, Bayes's theorem describes the probability of an event, based on prior knowledge of conditions that might be related to the event. But Tom Chivers lays out how it affects every aspect of our lives. He explains why highly accurate screening tests can lead to false positives and how a failure to account for it in court has put innocent people in jail. But its influence goes far beyond practical applications. A cornerstone in rational thought, Bayesian principles are used in modeling and forecasting....And many argue that Bayes' theorem is not just a useful tool, but a description of almost anything -- that it is the underlying architecture of rationality...Fusing biography, razor-sharp science writing, and intellectual history, Everything is Predictable is an entertaining tour of Bayes' theorem and its impact on modern life, showing how a single compelling idea can have far-reaching consequences" -- Book jacket.

"An eye-opening account of the inexplicable phenomena that science has only recently glimpsed, and that could transform our understanding of the fundamental nature of reality"-- Provided by publisher.

"In the spirit of Sid Mukherjee's Emperor of All Maladies, a medical history that is both a collective narrative of women's bodies and a call to action for a new conversation around personal health, self-improvement, and the future of healthcare for everyone"-- Provided by publisher.

"In this thrilling memoir of a life spent exploring the most incredible places on Earth--from the Great African Seaforest to the crocodile lairs of the Okavango Delta--Craig Foster reveals how we can attend to the earthly beauty around us and deepen our love for all living things, whether we make our homes in the country, the city, or anywhere in between. Foster explores his struggles to remain present to life when a disconnection from nature and the demands of his professional life begin to deaden his senses. And his own reliance on nature's rejuvenating spiritual power is put to the test when catastrophe strikes close to home. Foster's lyrical, riveting Amphibious Soul draws on his decades of daily ocean dives, wisdom from Indigenous teachers, and leading-edge science"-- Provided by publisher.

After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s, with rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rising sharply. The author lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time, and then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this rewiring of childhood has interfered with children's social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.

"The bestselling author of Lost Connections and Stolen Focus offers a revelatory look at the new drugs transforming weight loss as we know it-from his personal experience on Ozempic to our ability to heal our society's dysfunctional relationship with food, weight, and our bodies"-- Provided by publisher.

"From the New York Times bestselling author of Midnight in Chernobyl comes the definitive, dramatic, minute-by-minute story of the Challenger disaster based on fascinating new archival research and in-depth reporting-a riveting history that reads like a thriller"-- Provided by publisher

"Weaving his own moving family story with this sweeping history of cancer research, Lawrence Ingrassia delivers an intimate, gripping tale that sits at the intersection of memoir and medical thriller"-- Provided by publisher.

"The notion of a living world is one of humanity's oldest beliefs. Though scorned by scientists in the sixties and seventies, the facts supporting this concept have now become tenets of modern Earth system science, a relatively young field that studies the living and nonliving components of the planet as an integrated whole. Life did not evolve passively in response to its environment, as scientists have long assumed. Instead, it evolved with Earth, shaping its climate and terrain at every scale, one part in a great orchestra, in which non-living elements-the air, rocks, and water-are the instruments that life, in its multitudes, has emerged to play. Jabr transports the reader to some of the world's most extraordinary places--an underwater kelp forest on the coast of California, a vertiginous tower above the Amazon rainforest, and a former gold mine two miles below the Earth's surface--to explain how these symbiotic relationships evolved. He shows us how plants and other photosynthetic organisms help maintain the right level of atmospheric oxygen to support complex life. We see how microorganisms participate in many geological processes, producing new minerals and converting rock from one state to another; some scientists think they played a crucial role in forming the continents. In these pages we learn that large mammals maintain grasslands and prevent permafrost from melting; coral reefs and shellfish store huge amounts of carbon, buffer ocean acidity, improve water quality, and defend shorelines from severe weather; and so much more"-- Provided by publisher.

"Sometimes the bravest thing we can do while facing an existential crisis is imagine life on the other side. This provocative and joyous book maps an inspiring landscape of possible climate futures. Through clear-eyed essays and vibrant conversations, infused with data, poetry, and art, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson guides us through solutions and possibilities at the nexus of science, policy, culture, and justice. Visionary farmers and financers, architects and advocates help us conjure a flourishing future, one worth the effort it will take-from all of us, with whatever we have to offer-to create. If you haven't yet been able to picture a transformed and replenished world-or see yourself, your loved ones, and your community in it- this book is for you. If you haven't yet found your role in shaping this new world, or you're not sure how we can actually get there, this book is for you. With grace, humor, and humanity, Ayana invites readers to ask and answer this ultimate question, together: What if we get it right?"-- Provided by publisher.

"On September 11, 1999, humanity made a monumental discovery in the vastness of space. Scientists uncovered an asteroid of immense scientific importance--a colossal celestial entity. As massive as an aircraft carrier and towering as high as the iconic Empire State Building, this cosmic titan was later named Bennu. Remarkable for much more than its size, Bennu belonged to a rare breed of asteroids capable of revealing the essence of life itself. But just as Bennu became a beacon of promise, researchers identified a grave danger. Hurtling through space, it threatens to collide with our planet on September 24, 2182. Leading the expedition was Dr. Dante Lauretta, the Principal Investigator of NASA's audacious OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Return Mission. Tasked with unraveling Bennu's mysteries, his team embarked on a daring quest to retrieve a precious sample from the asteroid's surface - one that held the potential to not only unlock the secrets of life's origins but also to avert an unprecedented catastrophe. A tale of destiny and danger, The Asteroid Hunter chronicles the high-stakes mission firsthand, narrated by Dr. Lauretta. It offers readers an intimate glimpse into the riveting exploits of the mission and Dr. Lauretta's wild, winding personal journey to Bennu and back. Peeling back the curtain on the wonders of the cosmos, this enthralling account promises a rare glimpse into the tightly woven fabric of scientific exploration, where technical precision converges with humanity's profound curiosity and indominable spirit"-- Provided by publisher.

"Neuroscientist and New York Times bestselling author of This Is Your Brain on Music Daniel J. Levitin reveals how the deep connections between music and the human brain can be harnessed for healing. Music is perhaps one of humanity's oldest medicines as well as its most universal: from China to the Ottoman Empire, Europe to Africa and pre-colonial South America, cultures have developed rich traditions for using sound and rhythm to ease suffering, spur healing, and calm the mind. Despite this history, musical therapy has long been considered the remit of ancient practice and alternative medicine, if not outright quackery and pseudoscience. In the last decade, however, an overwhelming body of scientific evidence has emerged that persuasively argues music can offer profoundly effective treatment for a whole host of ailments, from Alzheimer's to PTSD, depression, pain, and cognitive injury. It is, in short, one of the most potent and remarkably promising new therapies available today. A work of dazzling ideas, cutting-edge research, and joyful celebration of the human mind, I Heard There Was a Secret Chord explores the critical role music has played in human evolution, illuminating how the story of the human brain is inseparable from the creative enterprise of music that has bound cultures together throughout history. Music insinuates itself into our earliest memories; it is intimately connected to our emotional regulation and cognition; its shared rhythms and sounds are essential to our social behaviors. As neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin demonstrates in this mind-expanding follow-up to This Is Your Brain on Music--which revolutionized our understanding of the neuroscience of song--medical researchers are now finding that these same deep connections can be harnessed to create profound benefits for those both young and old."-- Provided by publisher.

A compelling global exploration of nature and survival as seen via a dozen species of trees that represent the challenges facing our planet, and the ways that scientists are working urgently to save our forests and our future. The world today is undergoing the most rapid environmental transformation in human history--from climate change to deforestation. Scientists, ethnobotanists, indigenous peoples, and collectives of all kinds are closely studying trees and their biology to understand how and why trees function individually and collectively in the ways they do. In Twelve Trees, Daniel Lewis, curator and historian at one of the world's most renowned research libraries, travels the world to learn about these trees in their habitats. Lewis takes us on a sweeping journey to plant breeding labs, botanical gardens, research facilities, deep inside museum collections, to the tops of tall trees, underwater, and around the Earth, journeying into the deserts of the American west and the deep jungles of Peru, to offer a globe-spanning perspective on the crucial impact trees have on our entire planet. When a once-common tree goes extinct in the wild but survives in a botanical garden, what happens next? How can scientists reconstruct lost genomes and habitats? How does a tree store thousands of gallons of water, or offer up perfectly preserved insects from millions of years ago, or root itself in muddy swamps and remain standing? How does a 5,000-year-old tree manage to live, and what can we learn from it? And how can science account for the survival of one species at the expense of others? To study the science of trees is to study not just the present, but the story of the world, its past, and its future.

"When he signed up for a psychedelic retreat run by a mysterious Argentine woman deep in Brazil's rainforest in early 2018, Ernesto Londoño, a veteran New York Times journalist, was so depressed he had come close to jumping off his terrace weeks earlier. His nine-day visit to Spirit Vine Ayahuasca Retreat Center included four nighttime ceremonies during which participants imbibed a vomit-inducing plant-based brew that contained DMT, a powerful mind-altering compound. The ayahuasca trips provided Londoño an instant reprieve from his depression and became the genesis of his personal transformation that anchors this sweeping journalistic exploration of the booming field of medicinal psychedelics. Londoño introduces readers to a dazzling array of psychedelic enthusiasts who are upending our understanding of trauma and healing. They include Indigenous elders who regard psychedelics as portals to the spirit world; religious leaders who use mind-bending substances as sacraments; war veterans suffering from PTSD who credit psychedelics with changing their lives; and clinicians trying to resurrect a promising field of medicine hastily abandoned in the 1970s as the United States declared a War on Drugs. Londoño's riveting personal narrative pulls the reader through a deeply researched and brilliantly reported account of a game-changing industry on the rise. Trippy is the definitive book of psychedelics and mental health today and Londoño's in-depth and nuanced look at this shifting landscape will be pivotal in guiding policymakers and readers as they make sense of the perils, limitations and promise of turning to psychedelics in the pursuit of healing"-- Provided by publisher.

"From Wharton professor and author of the popular One Useful Thing Substack newsletter Ethan Mollick comes the definitive playbook for working, learning, and living in the new age of AI. The release of generative AI--from LLMs like ChatGPT to image generators like DALL-E-marks a new era. We have invented technologies that boost our physical capabilities and others that automate complex tasks, but never, until now, have we created a technology that can boost our intelligence--with an impact on work and life that researchers project will be greater than that of steam power or the internet. Mollick urges us not to turn away from AI, and instead to invite AI tools to the table. He demonstrates how AI can amplify our own capacities, acting in roles from brainstorming partner to cowriter to tutor to coach, and assesses its surprising, positive impact on business and organizations. Marshalling original research from workers and teams who are leading the rest of us in embracing and leveraging AI, Mollick cuts through the hype to make a frank and eye-opening case for the real value of AI tools. Moreover, Mollick argues that the long-term impact of AI will be different from what we expect, advantaging English majors and art history experts more than coders, and impacting knowledge workers more than blue-collar workers. Co-Intelligence shows what it means for individuals and for society to think together with smart machines, and why it's imperative that we all master that skill. Co-Intelligence challenges us to utilize AI's power without losing our identity, learn from it without being misled, and harness its gifts to create a better human future. Thought-provoking, optimistic, and lucid, Co-Intelligence reveals the promise and power of generative AI."-- Provided by publisher.

"This book reveals new science and remarkable discoveries about the octopus, one of nature's most elusive and intelligent animals"-- Provided by publisher.

"Memory is far more than a record of the past. In this groundbreaking tour of the mind and brain, one of the world's top memory researchers reveals the powerful role memory plays in nearly every aspect of our lives, from recalling faces and names, to learning, decision-making, trauma and healing. A new understanding of memory is emerging from the latest scientific research. In Why We Remember, pioneering neuroscientist and psychologist Charan Ranganath radically reframes the way we think about the everyday act of remembering. Combining accessible language with cutting-edge research, he reveals the surprising ways our brains record the past and how we use that information to understand who we are in the present, and to imagine and plan for the future. Memory, Dr. Ranganath shows, is a highly transformative force that shapes how we experience the world in often invisible and sometimes destructive ways. Knowing this can help us with daily remembering tasks, like finding our keys, and with the challenge of memory loss as we age. What's more, when we work with the brain's ability to learn and reinterpret past events, we can heal trauma, shed our biases, learn faster, and grow in self-awareness. Including fascinating studies and examples from pop culture, and drawing on Ranganath's life as a scientist, father, and child of immigrants, Why We Remember is a captivating read that unveils the hidden role memory plays throughout our lives. When we understand its power-- and its quirks--we can cut through the clutter and remember the things we want to remember. We can make freer choices and plan a happier future"-- Provided by publisher.

In this bold, radically hopeful book, a data scientist, drawing on the latest research, practical guidance and eye-opening graphics, gives us the tools for understanding our current environmental crisis and making lifestyle changes that actually have an impact.

"A book exploring the emerging science on plant intelligence, uncovering plants' complex and unimaginable capabilities and calling into question what we consider to be conscious agents in the natural world"-- Provided by publisher.

"The acclaimed Pulitzer Prize finalist and #1 New York Times bestselling author of Galileo's Daughter crafts a luminous chronicle of the most famous woman in the history of science, and the untold story of the many remarkable young women trained in her laboratory who were launched into stellar scientific careers of their own. "Even now, nearly a century after her death, Marie Curie remains the only female scientist most people can name," writes Dava Sobel at the opening of her shining portrait of the sole Nobel laureate decorated in two separate fields of science-Physics in 1903 with her husband Pierre and Chemistry by herself in 1911. And yet, Sobel makes clear, as brilliant as she was in the laboratory, Marie Curie was equally memorable outside it. Grieving Pierre's untimely death in 1906, she took his place as professor of physics at the Sorbonne; devotedly raised two brilliant daughters; drove a van she outfitted with X-ray equipment to the front lines of World War I; befriended Albert Einstein and other luminaries of twentieth-century physics; won support from two US presidents; and inspired generations of young women the world over to pursue science as a way of life. As Sobel did so memorably in her portrait of Galileo through the prism of his daughter, she approaches Marie Curie from a unique angle, narrating her remarkable life of discovery and fame alongside the women who became her legacy-from France's Marguerite Perey, who discovered the element francium, and Norway's Ellen Gleditsch, to Mme. Curie's elder daughter, Irène, winner of the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. For decades the only woman in the room at international scientific gatherings that probed new theories about the interior of the atom, Marie Curie traveled far and wide, despite constant illness, to share the secrets of radioactivity, a term she coined. Her two triumphant tours of the United States won her admirers for her modesty even as she was mobbed at every stop; her daughters, in Ève's later recollection, "discovered all at once what the retiring woman with whom they had always lived meant to the world." With the consummate skill that made bestsellers of Longitude and Galileo's Daughter, and the appreciation for women in science at the heart of her most recent The Glass Universe, Dava Sobel has crafted a radiant biography and a masterpiece of storytelling, illuminating the life and enduring influence of one of the most consequential figures of our time"-- Provided by publisher.

"Earth is not well. The promise of starting life anew somewhere far, far away--no climate change, no war, no Twitter--beckons, and settling the stars finally seems within our grasp. Or is it? Critically acclaimed, bestselling authors Kelly and Zach Weinersmith set out to write the essential guide to a glorious future of space settlements, but after years of research, they aren't so sure it's a good idea. Space technologies and space business are progressing fast, but we lack the knowledge needed to have space kids, build space farms, and create space nations in a way that doesn't spark conflict back home. In a world hurtling toward human expansion into space, A City on Mars investigates whether the dream of new worlds won't create nightmares, both for settlers and the people they leave behind. In the process, the Weinersmiths answer every question about space you've ever wondered about, and many you've never considered: Can you make babies in space? Should corporations govern space settlements? What about space war? Are we headed for a housing crisis on the Moon's Peaks of Eternal Light--and what happens if you're left in the Craters of Eternal Darkness? Why do astronauts love taco sauce? Speaking of meals, what's the legal status of space cannibalism? With deep expertise, a winning sense of humor, and art from the beloved creator of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, the Weinersmiths investigate perhaps the biggest questions humanity will ever ask itself--whether and how to become multiplanetary. Get in, we're going to Mars"-- Provided by publisher.