The Popular Science Reading Collection at KPU Library includes the best new popular science books published in the fields of biology, chemistry, physics, agriculture/horticulture, psychology, health, and environmental studies. Selections are based on reviews from several leading newspapers and media outlets, including the Guardian, New York Times, and the Globe and Mail, as well as awards lists and readers' recommendations.
Books are available at various campus libraries. Click the covers below to place a hold on your pick, and we will send it to any KPU campus for you to pick up. All you need is a KPU card!
Want to suggest a title for our popular science collection?
Please contact me with the details of your suggestion by using the email below my picture on the left. I'll do my best to add it to our collection.
Happy reading!
~Celia
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "A masterpiece of science writing." -Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass "Rich, vital, and full of surprises. Read it!" -Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Under a White Sky and The Sixth Extinction. Award-winning Atlantic staff writer Zoë Schlanger delivers a groundbreaking work of popular science that probes the hidden world of the plant kingdom...see more.
In this compelling call for collaboration, author Grenz, an Indigenous ecologist of Nlaka'pamux mixed ancestry, shares her personal journey toward ecological healing in the Pacific Northwest. Having spent nearly two decades trying to repair the ecosystems of coastal British Columbia without much success, she sought a better way....see more.
From a renowned biologist and best-selling author, a whole new way of looking at living organisms: reading them as documents describing ancient worlds A Financial Times Best Book of 2024: Science * Named Science Book of the Year by Times (UK) * A Guardian Best Ideas Book of 2024...see more.
Award-winning environmentalist, author, and journalist Bill McKibben selects twenty science and nature essays that represent the best examples of the form published in the previous year. "This was the most anomalous year (so far) in human history," guest editor Bill McKibben writes, "the year in which the relationship between people and planet showed its most dramatic signs yet of unraveling."...see more.
What's to be done when only three spotted owls are left in Canada's wild? When wolves eat endangered caribou, cormorants kill rare trees, and housing developments threaten a tiny frog? Environmental journalist Sarah Cox has witnessed what happens when we drive species to the brink of extinction...see more.
"Wade Davis is a true wayfinder, and these essays offer new insight into his visionary approach to culture, landscape, and the planet he loves as fiercely as any writer working today."--John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather A timely and eclectic collection from one of the foremost thinkers of our time, "a powerful, penetrating and immensely knowledgeable writer" (The Guardian)...see more.
How can we make society more resilient to outbreaks and avoid forcing the poor and working class to bear the brunt of their harm? When an epidemic outbreak occurs, the most physical and financial harm historically falls upon the people who can least afford it: the economically and socially marginalized...see more.
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
'A deep, dazzling and indispensable guide to the most important task of all: the restoration of the living planet' - GEORGE MONBIOT
The enormity of climate change and biodiversity loss can leave us feeling overwhelmed. How can an individual ever make a difference? Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell know firsthand how spectacularly nature can bounce back if you give it the chance...see more.
An epic, extraordinary account of scientific rivalry and obsession in the quest to survey all of life on Earth--a competition with continued repercussions for Western views of race. In the eighteenth century, two men--exact contemporaries and polar opposites--dedicated their lives to the same daunting task: identifying and describing all life on Earth...see more.
As the author of the international bestsellers The Walker's Guide and How to Read Water, Tristan Gooley knows how to uncover the phenomena worth looking for. He has been instructing people in the art of reading trees for two decades and this book includes signs that will not be found in any other book in the world...see more.
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...see more.
An ache, a pain, a mysterious lump, a strange sensation in some part of your body, the feeling that something is not right... These could be symptoms of illness. But they could also be the symptoms of hypochondria, an enigmatic condition that might be physiological or psychological or both. In this landmark book, Caroline Crampton tells the story of hypochondria, beginning in the age of Hippocrates and taking us right through to the wellness industry today...see more.
How the very fact of being human makes us vulnerable to pandemics-and gives us the power to save ourselves. The COVID-19 pandemic won't be our last-because what makes us vulnerable to pandemics also makes us human. That is the uncomfortable but all-too-timely message of The Human Disease...See more.
"Female bodies aren't just male bodies with 'extra stuff' (fat, breasts, uteri)," Bohannon writes. She employs evolutionary biology, gynecology, and paleoanthropology in constructing this history of how the female Homo sapiens body became the marvel it currently is. Nudged along by evolution to become remarkably resilient and amazingly adaptable, women have a compelling case for being the stronger sex...see more.
NAMED A TOP-TEN BEST BOOK OF 2023 BY SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
A "fascinating" exploration (Elizabeth Kolbert) of how ecosystems are sculpted and sustained by animals eating, pooping, and dying--and how these fundamental functions could help save us from climate catastrophe...see more.
"Utterly fascinating." --Bill Bryson "An incredible journey." --Siddhartha Mukherjee
A groundbreaking exploration of the science of longevity and mortality--from Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist Venki Ramakrishnan...see more.
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD "A riveting feat of science writing that recasts that most familiar of celestial objects into something eerily extraordinary, pivotal to our history, and awesome in the original sense of the word."--Ed Yong
Many of us know that the Moon pulls on our oceans, driving the tides, but did you know that it smells like gunpowder? Or that it was essential to the development of science and religion?...see more.
Longlisted for the American Library Association's 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction
Exploring the most transformative breakthroughs in biology since the discovery of the double helix, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist unveils the RNA age. For over half a century, DNA has dominated science and the popular imagination as the "secret of life." But over the last several decades, a quiet revolution has taken place...see more.
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice "On the Move explains how we got here and where we're headed. It's crucial guide to the world we are creating." --Elizabeth Kolbert
A vivid, journalistic account of how climate change will make American life as we know it unfeasible...see more.
Shortlisted for the Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize How an iconic bird's final days exposed the reality of human-caused extinction The great auk is one of the most tragic and documented examples of extinction...see more.
"A riveting story of what it means to be human in a world changed by artificial intelligence, revealing the perils and inequities of our growing reliance on automated decision-making...see more.
"A rich and rewarding history of one of the most astounding ideas in physics and astronomy" (Marcia Bartusiak) - that the universe we know isn't the only one...see more.
Fusing biography, razor-sharp science communication and intellectual history, Everything Is Predictable is a captivating tour of Bayes' theorem and its impact on modern life. From medical testing to artificial intelligence, Tom Chivers shows how a single compelling idea can have far-reaching consequences...see more.
A NATIONAL BESTSELLER In this inspiring culmination of Diana Beresford-Kroeger's life's work as a botanist, biochemist, biologist and poet of the global forest, she delivers a challenge to us all to dig deeper into the science of forests and the ways they will save us from climate breakdown...see more.
Beautifully illustrated and scientifically informed, a celebration of the astonishing diversity of sexual behavior and biology found in nature....see more.
