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2019 - Most Popular Nonfiction
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Description
"One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one--homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us? Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book that begins about 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition."--
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
Why did Eurasians conquer, displace, or decimate Native Americans, Australians, and Africans, instead of the reverse? In this groundbreaking book, evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history by revealing the environmental factors actually responsible for history's broadest patterns. Here, at last, is a world history that really is a history of all the world's peoples, a unified narrative of human...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Explores the concept of land ownership and how it has shaped history, examining how people fight over, steward, and occasionally share land, and what humanity's proprietary relationship with land means for the future.
"Land examines in depth how we determine where the land lies, how we acquire it, how we steward it, how and why we fight over it, and, finally, how we can, and on occasion do, come to share it. Ultimately, Winchester confronts the...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Focusing on the human relationship with plants, the author uses botany to explore four basic human desires -- sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control -- through portraits of four plants that embody them: the apple, tulip, marijuana, and potato. Every school child learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers; the bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers' genes far and wide. In...
Author
Publisher
Bright Matter Books
Pub. Date
[2022]
Language
English
Description
This illustrated book for middle-grade readers looks at the early history of humankind. Even though we'll never outrun a hungry lion or outswim an angry shark, humans are pretty impressive--and we're the most dominant species on the planet. So how exactly did we become "unstoppable"? From learning to make fire and using the stars as guides to cooking meals in microwaves and landing on the moon, prepare to uncover the secrets and superpowers of how...
Author
Language
English
Description
"Humans have subdued 75 percent of the land surface, concocted a wizardry of industrial and medical marvels, strung lights all across the darkness. We tinker with nature at every opportunity; we garden the planet with our preferred species of plants and animals, many of them invasive; and we have even altered the climate, threatening our own extinction. Yet we reckon with our own destructive capabilities in extraordinary acts of hope-filled creativity...
Publisher
A & E Television Networks
Pub. Date
[2012]
Language
English
Description
From the producers of America: The Story of Us comes the epic tale of the rise of civilization. Mankind: The Story of All of Us, a 12-hour series, spans the first flourishing of life in Mesopotamia through the discovery of America, capturing the danger, action, struggle, heroism, and adrenaline using groundbreaking techniques.
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Significant beyond tragic oil spills and hurricanes, the Gulf has historically been one of the world's most bounteous marine environments, supporting human life for millennia. Based on the premise that nature lies at the center of human existence, Davis takes readers on a compelling and, at times, wrenching journey from the Florida Keys to the Texas Rio Grande, along marshy shorelines and majestic estuarine bays, both beautiful and life-giving, though...
Pub. Date
2013
Language
English
Description
Over 60,000 years ago, the first modern humans left their African homeland and entered Europe, then a bleak and inhospitable continent in the grip of the Ice Age. But when they arrived, they were not alone: the stocky, powerfully built Neanderthals had already been living there for hundreds of thousands of years. So what happened when the first modern humans encountered the Neanderthals? Did they make love or war?
11) Big history
Publisher
DK Publishing
Language
English
Description
Why does the universe work the way it does? Why are stars so big? Why are humans so small? What does it mean to be human? Big History blends geology, biology, physics, anthropology, sociology, and so much more to tell one coherent story, taking us right back to our origins and exploring how a unique series of events led to and then impacted human existence: how everything came to be, where we fit in, and even where we are going. Graphics, artworks,...
Author
Publisher
Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
Pub. Date
c2017.
Language
English
Description
"Over the past century humankind has managed to do the impossible and rein in famine, plague, and war. This may seem hard to accept, but, as Harari explains in his trademark style--thorough, yet riveting--famine, plague and war have been transformed from incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces of nature into manageable challenges. For the first time ever, more people die from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old...
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
"The average American spends ninety percent of their time indoors, and children are no exception. Today, kids can spend up to seven hours per day looking at screens. Not only does this phenomenon have consequences for our kids' physical and mental health, it calls into question their ability to understand and engage with anything beyond the built environment. We can talk about environmental stewardship, but until more people make meaningful contact...
Author
Pub. Date
2012.
Language
English
Formats
Description
In The Great Divide, acclaimed author and historian Peter Watson explores the development of humankind between the Old World and the New, and offers a groundbreaking new understanding of human history.
By 15,000 BC, humans had migrated from northeastern Asia across the frozen Bering land bridge to the Americas. When the last Ice Agecame to an end, the Bering Strait refilled with water, dividing America from Eurasia. This division continued
Author
Publisher
Princeton University Press
Pub. Date
[2022].
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
Since the dawn of human history, birds have stirred our imagination, inspiring and challenging our ideas about science, faith, art, and philosophy. We have worshipped birds as gods, hunted them for sustenance, adorned ourselves with their feathers, studied their wings to engineer flight, and, more recently, attempted to protect them. In Birds and Us, award-winning writer and ornithologist Tim Birkhead takes us on a dazzling epic journey through our...
Author
Pub. Date
2021.
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
"A wide-ranging take on why humans have a troubled relationship with being an animal, and why we need a better one Human are the most inquisitive, emotional, imaginative, aggressive, and baffling animals on the planet. But we are also an animal that does not think it is an animal. How well do we really know ourselves? How to Be Animal tells a remarkable story of what it means to be human and argues that at the heart of our existence is a profound...
Author
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Pub. Date
©2015.
Language
English
Description
By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean is nothing less than the story of how humans first started building the globalized world we know today. Set on a huge continental stage, from Europe to China, it is a tale covering over 10,000 years, from the origins of farming around 9000 BC to the expansion of the Mongols in the thirteenth century AD. An unashamedly 'big history', it charts the development of European, Near Eastern, and Chinese civilizations and the...
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