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When Arnold wishes he had more information for his family tree, Ms. Frizzle revs up the Magic School Bus and the class zooms back to prehistoric times. First stop: 3.5 billion years ago! There aren't any people around to ask for directions. Luckily Ms. Frizzle has a plan, and the class is right there to watch simple cells become sponges and then fish and dinosaurs, then mammals and early primates and, eventually, modern humans. It's the longest class...
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"A terrific book, witty and lucid, and brimming with provocative conjectures." (Wall Street Journal) from the author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller Genome
Brilliantly written, The Red Queen compels us to rethink everything from the persistence of sexism to the endurance of romantic love.
Referring to Lewis Carroll's Red Queen from Through the Looking-Glass, a character who has to keep running
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In his bestselling The Moral Animal, Robert Wright applied the principles of evolutionary biology to the study of the human mind. Now Wright attempts something even more ambitious: explaining the direction of evolution and human history–and discerning where history will lead us next.
In Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Wright asserts that, ever since the primordial ooze, life has followed a basic pattern. Organisms and human...
In Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Wright asserts that, ever since the primordial ooze, life has followed a basic pattern. Organisms and human...
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For too long, scientists have focused on the dark side of our biological heritage: our capacity for aggression, cruelty, prejudice, and self-interest. But natural selection has given us a suite of beneficial social features, including our capacity for love, friendship, cooperation, and learning. Beneath all our inventions -- our tools, farms, machines, cities, nations -- we carry with us innate proclivities to make a good society. In Blueprint, Nicholas...
8) The violinist's thumb: and other lost tales of love, war, and genius, as written by our genetic code
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"In The Disappearing Spoon, bestselling author Sam Kean unlocked the mysteries of the periodic table. In THE VIOLINIST'S THUMB, he explores the wonders of the magical building block of life: DNA. There are genes to explain crazy cat ladies, why other people have no fingerprints, and why some people survive nuclear bombs. Genes illuminate everything from JFK's bronze skin (it wasn't a tan) to Einstein's genius. They prove that Neanderthals and humans...
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The author, a Stanford biologist reveals the surprising origins of the world's most deadly viruses, and how we can overcome catastrophic pandemics. He discussses the complex interactions between humans and viruses, and the threat from viruses that jump from species to species. He tells the story of how viruses and human beings have evolved side by side through history; how deadly viruses like HIV, swine flu, and bird flu almost wiped us out in the...
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"Brian Hare, dog researcher, evolutionary anthropologist, and founder of the Duke Canine Cognition Center, and Vanessa Woods offer revolutionary new insights into dog intelligence and the interior lives of our smartest pets. In the past decade, we have learned more about how dogs think than in the last century. Breakthroughs in cognitive science, pioneered by Brian Hare have proven dogs have a kind of genius for getting along with people that is unique...
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Before the universe was formed, before time and space existed, there was ... nothing. But then ... BANG! Stars caught fire and burned so long that they exploded, flinging stardust everywhere. And the ash of those stars turned into planets. Into our Earth. And into us. The author takes readers from the trillionth of a second when our universe was born to the singularities that became each one of us, while illustrations capture the void before the Big...
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In this landmark book of popular science, Daniel E. Lieberman—chair of the department of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and a leader in the field—gives us a lucid and engaging account of how the human body evolved over millions of years, even as it shows how the increasing disparity between the jumble of adaptations in our Stone Age bodies and advancements in the modern world is occasioning this paradox: greater longevity...
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"The watchmaker belongs to the eighteenth-century theologian William Paley, who made one of the most famous creationist arguments: Just as a watch is too complicated and too functional to have sprung into existence by accident, so too must all living things, with their far greater complexity, be purposefully designed. It was Charles Darwin's brilliant discovery that put the lie to these arguments. But only Richard Dawkins could have written this eloquent...
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"This pioneering account sets out to understand the structure of the human brain -- the place where mind meets matter. Until recently, the left hemisphere of our brain has been seen as the 'rational' side, the superior partner to the right. But is this distinction true? Drawing on a vast body of experimental research, Iain McGilchrist argues that while our left brain makes for a wonderful servant, it is a very poor master. As he shows, it is the right...