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Tags: biology

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  The Selfish Gene

  by Richard Dawkins

  Richard Dawkins' brilliant reformulation of the theory of natural selection has the rare distinction of having provoked as much excitement and interest outside the scientific community as within it. His theories have helped change the whole nature of the study of social biology, and have forced thousands of readers to rethink their beliefs about life. In his internationally bestselling, now classic volume, The... (more)
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  The Origin of Species

  By Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life

  by Charles Darwin

  Also printed as: On the Origin of SpeciesThis is the book that revolutionized the natural sciences and every literary, philosophical and religious thinker who followed. Darwin's theory of evolution and the descent of man remains as controversial and influential today as when it was published over a century ago.
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  The Greatest Show on Earth

  The Evidence for Evolution

  by Richard Dawkins

  In a brilliant follow-up to his blockbuster The God Delusion, Dawkins lays out the evidence for evolution. It is the definitive book that in a systematic and logical form with examples proves that evolution does take place and denounces the delusion called intelligent design.
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  A Short History of Nearly Everything

  by Bill Bryson

  One of the world’s most beloved and bestselling writers takes his ultimate journey -- into the most intriguing and intractable questions that science seeks to answer. In A Walk in the Woods , Bill Bryson trekked the Appalachian Trail --- well, most of it. In In A Sunburned Country , he confronted some of the most lethal wildlife Australia has to offer. Now, in his biggest book, he confronts his greatest... (more)
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  The God Delusion

  by Richard Dawkins

  Also published in German as "Geschichte vom Ursprung des Lebens"A preeminent scientist -- and the world's most prominent atheist -- asserts the irrationality of belief in God and the grievous harm religion has inflicted on society, from the Crusades to 9/11. With rigor and wit, Dawkins examines God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed tyrant of the Old Testament to the more benign (but still... (more)
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  The Blind Watchmaker

  Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design

  by Richard Dawkins

  Patiently and lucidly, this Los Angeles Times Book Award and Royal Society of Literature Heinemann Prize winner identifies the aspects of the theory of evolution that people find hard to believe and removes the barriers to credibility one by one. "As readable and vigorous a defense of Darwinism as has been published since 1859."--The Economist.
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  The Ancestor's Tale

  A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution

  by Richard Dawkins

  also published in German as "Geschichte vom Ursprung des Lebens"With unparalleled wit, clarity, and intelligence, Richard Dawkins, one of the world's most renowned evolutionary biologists, has introduced countless readers to the wonders of science in works such as The Selfish Gene. Now, in The Ancestor's Tale, Dawkins offers a masterwork: an exhilarating reverse tour through evolution, from present-day... (more)
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  Stiff

  The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

  by Mary Roach

  An oddly compelling, often hilarious forensic exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem.For two thousand years, cadavers some willingly, some unwittingly have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. They've tested France's first guillotines, ridden the NASA Space Shuttle, been crucified in a Parisian laboratory to test the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin... (more)
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  Jurassic Park: Book 1

  Jurassic Park

  by Michael Crichton

  On a remote jungle island, genetic engineers have created a dinosaur game park. An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has discovered. Now one of mankind's most thrilling fantasies has come true and the first dinosaurs that the Earth has seen in the time of man emerge. But, as always, there is a dark side to the fantasy and after a catastrophe destroys the park's... (more)
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  Guns, Germs, and Steel

  The Fates of Human Societies

  by Jared Diamond

  In this groundbreaking work, evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history by revealing the environmental factors actually responsible for history’s broadest patterns. It is a story that spans 13,000 years of human history, beginning when Stone Age hunter-gatherers constituted the entire human population. Guns, Germs, and Steel is a world history that really is... (more)
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  Genome

  The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters

  by Matt Ridley

  The genome's been mapped. But what does it mean? Arguably the most significant scientific discovery of the new century, the mapping of the twenty-three pairs of chromosomes that make up the human genome raises almost as many questions as it answers. Questions that will profoundly impact the way we think about disease, about longevity, and about free will, questions that will affect the rest of your life. Genome... (more)
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  The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

  by Rebecca Skloot

  Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia — a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings and voodoo — to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her... (more)
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  Your Inner Fish

  A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body

  by Neil Shubin

  Why do we look the way we do? What does the human hand have in common with the wing of a fly? Are breasts, sweat glands, and scales connected in some way? To better understand the inner workings of our bodies and to trace the origins of many of today's most common diseases, we have to turn to unexpected sources: worms, flies, and even fish. Neil Shubin, a leading paleontologist and professor of anatomy who... (more)
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  Bonk

  The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

  by Mary Roach

  The best-selling author of Stiff turns her outrageous curiosity and infectious wit on the most alluring scientific subject of all: sex. The study of sexual physiology—what happens, and why, and how to make it happen better—has been a paying career or a diverting sideline for scientists as far-ranging as Leonardo da Vinci and James... (more)
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  Leviathan: Book 1

  Leviathan

  by Scott Westerfeld

  It is the cusp of World War I, and all the European powers are arming up. The Austro-Hungarians and Germans have their Clankers, steam-driven iron machines loaded with guns and ammunition. The British Darwinists employ fabricated animals as their weaponry. Their Leviathan is a whale airship, and the most masterful beast in the British fleet.Aleksandar Ferdinand, prince of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is on... (more)
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  The Andromeda Strain

  by Michael Crichton

  Five prominent biophysicists give the United States government an urgent warning by: sterilization procedures for returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere. Two years later, Project Scoop sends seventeen satellites into the fringes of space in order to 'collect organisms and dust for study.' Then a probe satellite falls to the earth,... (more)
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  The Double Helix

  A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA

  by James D. Watson

  By identifying the structure of DNA, the molecule of life, Francis Crick and James Watson revolutionized biochemistry and won themselves a Nobel Prize. At the time, Watson was only twenty-four, a young scientist hungry to make his mark. His uncompromisingly honest account of the heady days of their thrilling sprint against other world-class researchers to solve one of science's greatest mysteries gives a... (more)
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  Silent Spring

  Our Ravaged Environment and the Man-Made Pollution

  by Rachel Carson

  First published by Houghton Mifflin in 1962, Silent Spring alerted a large audience to the environmental and human dangers of indiscriminate use of pesticides, spurring revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. &quot;Silent Spring became a runaway bestseller, with international reverberations . . . <It is> well crafted, fearless and succinct . . . Even if she had not inspired... (more)
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  Peeps: Book 1

  Peeps

  by Scott Westerfeld

  A year ago, Cal Thompson was a college freshman more interested in meeting girls and partying than in attending biology class. Now, after a fateful encounter with a mysterious woman named Morgan, biology has become, literally, Cal’s life. Cal was infected by a parasite that has a truly horrifying effect on its host. Cal himself is a carrier, unchanged by the parasite, but he’s infected the girlfriends he’s... (more)
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  The Red Queen

  Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature

  by Matt Ridley

  Referring to Lewis Carroll's Red Queen from Through the Looking-Glass, a character who has to keep running to stay in the same place, Matt Ridley demonstrates why sex is humanity's best strategy for outwitting its constantly mutating internal predators. The Red Queen answers dozens of other riddles of human nature and culture — including why men propose marriage, the method behind our maddening notions of beauty... (more)