Science & Technology Audiobooks

Catriona MacGregor understands how easy it is to become exhausted by your schedule, your to-do list, and the gazillion emails in your inbox-and it's also easy to forget there's a world of renewal just outside your door, and a host of plants and animals available to help you find your way back to your peace, your joy, your roots. Indeed, she says, the planet itself resonates with your most peaceful nature, and regaining a connection with the natural world is the surest way to rediscover the truest part of yourself.

Catriona Macgregor (Author), Michael Toms (Narrator)

Audiobook

Creating the World We Really Want

Frances Moore Lappé defines the pivotal issue of our time - none of us wishes for children to die of hunger, or for global warming to continue, yet every day it happens. Now, after more than three decades of helping us understand what it takes to live in harmony with the rest of the world, she's identified the reasons we haven't fixed all the problems - yet.

Frances Moore Lappé (Author), Michael Toms (Narrator)

Audiobook

Love Is the Best Medicine

A book guaranteed to touch anyone who has ever had a beloved pet… From instant New York Times bestseller, Dr. Nick Trout comes another touching and heartfelt story from the front lines of veterinary medicine the story of two dogs who forever changed the way he thought about life, death, fate and love. Helen is an older cocker spaniel found neglected and abandoned in a restaurant parking lot one rainy night. Despite her mangy condition and terrible smell, Ben and Eileen fall in love with the pitiful creature and decide to take her in. But just as Helen is rescued from a sad life on the streets and enveloped in a loving home with all the creature comforts an old dog could ask for, a tumor is discovered and she's given a devastating prognosis. All Ben and Eileen want is for Helen to beat the odds and survive for one more summer so that she can have one chance to swim in the ocean on the family's annual trip to Prince Edward Island. In short, they want a miracle. Meanwhile, fourteen-month-old miniature pinscher Cleo keeps breaking one leg after another which devastates her poor owner, Sandi. While Cleo is visiting Sandi's daughter, Sonja, in Bermuda, she succumbs to yet another fracture. Distraught that the injury happened on her watch, Sonja makes a plan to fly Cleo to Boston to get the specialist care she needs before Sandi even finds out. Enter Dr. Trout who presides over what should be a fairly routine surgery. What happens next forever links two families, their dogs and a beloved veterinarian and teaches them all a lesson about grace that resonates to this day. Love is the Best Medicine immerses you in the true life drama of beloved pets whose lives hang in the balance. Every page underscores the profound bond we have with the animals in our lives and the incredible responsibility Nick carries as their healer. Certainly Dr. Trout has an impressive array of fancy equipment, training and skills at his disposable, but his most important tool (as he persuasively illustrates here) is a fundamental belief in the power of hope, humility, and grace. Wry, charming, and intensely affecting, Love is the Best Medicine is a one of a kind story only the winsome Dr. Trout could deliver and is destined to become a favorite for animal lovers. From the Hardcover edition.

Dr. Nick Trout, Nicholas Trout, Nick Trout (Author), Jonathan Cowley (Narrator)

Audiobook

Trust the Dog: Rebuilding Lives Through Teamwork with Man's Best Friend

Gerri Hirshey (Author), Kirby Heyborne (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York

Drama unfolds case by case as the heroes of The Poisoner's Handbook-chief medical examiner Charles Norris and toxicologist Alexander Gettler-investigate a family mysteriously stricken bald, Barnum and Bailey's Famous Blue Man, factory workers with crumbling bones, a diner serving poisoned pies, and many others. Each case presents a deadly new puzzle and Norris and Gettler work with a creativity that rivals that of the most imaginative murderer, creating revolutionary experiments to tease out even the wiliest compounds from human tissue. Yet in the tricky game of toxins, even science can't always be trusted, as proven when one of Gettler's experiments erroneously sets free a suburban housewife later nicknamed "America's Lucretia Borgia" to continue her nefarious work.

Deborah Blum (Author), Coleen Marlo (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Male Brain

From the author of the groundbreaking New York Times bestseller The Female Brain, here is the eagerly awaited follow-up book that demystifies the puzzling male brain. Dr. Louann Brizendine, the founder of the first clinic in the country to study gender differences in brain, behavior, and hormones, turns her attention to the male brain, showing how, through every phase of life, the 'male reality' is fundamentally different from the female one. Exploring the latest breakthroughs in male psychology and neurology with her trademark accessibility and candor, she reveals that the male brain: *is a lean, mean, problem-solving machine. Faced with a personal problem, a man will use his analytical brain structures, not his emotional ones, to find a solution. *thrives under competition, instinctively plays rough and is obsessed with rank and hierarchy. *has an area for sexual pursuit that is 2.5 times larger than the female brain, consuming him with sexual fantasies about female body parts. *experiences such a massive increase in testosterone at puberty that he perceive others' faces to be more aggressive. The Male Brain finally overturns the stereotypes. Impeccably researched and at the cutting edge of scientific knowledge, this is a book that every man, and especially every woman bedeviled by a man, will need to own. Praise for The Female Brain: 'Louann Brizendine has done a great favor for every man who wants to understand the puzzling women in his life. A breezy and enlightening guide to women and a must-read for men.' Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence From the Hardcover edition.

Louann Brizendine, Louann Brizendine, M.D., M.D. Louann Brizendine (Author), Kimberly Farr (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Story of Stuff

We have a problem with Stuff. With just 5 percent of the world's population, we're consuming 30 percent of the world's resources and creating 30 percent of the world's waste. If everyone consumed at U.S. rates, we would need three to five planets! This alarming fact drove Annie Leonard to create the Internet film sensation The Story of Stuff, which has been viewed over 10 million times by people around the world. In her sweeping, groundbreaking book of the same name, Leonard tracks the life of the Stuff we use every day where our cotton T-shirts, laptop computers, and aluminum cans come from, how they are produced, distributed, and consumed, and where they go when we throw them out. Like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, The Story of Stuff is a landmark book that will change the way people think and the way they live. Leonard's message is startlingly clear: we have too much Stuff, and too much of it is toxic. Outlining the five stages of our consumption-driven economy from extraction through production, distribution, consumption, and disposal she vividly illuminates its frightening repercussions. Visiting garbage dumps and factories around the world, Leonard reveals the true story behind our possessions why it's cheaper to replace a broken TV than to fix it; how the promotion of "perceived obsolescence" encourages us to toss out everything from shoes to cell phones while they're still in perfect shape; and how factory workers in Haiti, mine workers in Congo, and everyone who lives and works within this system pay for our cheap goods with their health, safety, and quality of life. Meanwhile we, as consumers, are compromising our health and well-being, whether it's through neurotoxins in our pillows or lead leaching into our kids' food from their lunchboxes and all this Stuff isn't even making us happier! We work hard so we can buy Stuff that we quickly throw out, and then we want new Stuff so we work harder and have no time to enjoy all our Stuff. . . . With staggering revelations about the economy, the environment, and cultures around the world, alongside stories from her own life and work, Leonard demonstrates that the drive for a "growth at all costs" economy fuels a cycle of production, consumption, and disposal that is killing us. It is a system in crisis, but Annie Leonard shows us that this is not the way things have to be. It's within our power to stop the environmental damage, social injustice, and health hazards caused by polluting production and excessive consumption, and Leonard shows us how. Expansive, galvanizing, and sobering yet optimistic, The Story of Stuff transforms how we think about our lives and our relationship to the planet.

Annie Leonard (Author), Annie Leonard (Narrator)

Audiobook

Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans

Brian Fagan, Brian M. Fagan (Author), James Langton (Narrator)

Audiobook

This Playful Universe

Stephan Martin tells us that ninety-six percent of the universe is dark matter we can't see and don't understand. He sat down with leading physicists, spiritual leaders, and cultural creatives to get their insights on what we do know-and what we believe. In this riveting conversation he shares insights from every perspective-the questions that arise from the creativity of the universe itself.

Stephan Martin (Author), Michael Toms (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells taken without her knowledge became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first immortal human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they'd weigh more than 50 million metric tons as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb's effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave. Now 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 cells. Henrietta's family did not learn of her immortality until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family past and present is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of. Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family especially Henrietta's daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother's cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn't her children afford health insurance? Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.

Rebecca Skloot (Author), Bahni Turpin, Cassandra Campbell (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Essential Engineer

From the acclaimed author of The Pencil and To Engineer Is Human, The Essential Engineer is an eye-opening exploration of the ways in which science and engineering must work together to address our world's most pressing issues, from dealing with climate change and the prevention of natural disasters to the development of efficient automobiles and the search for renewable energy sources. While the scientist may identify problems, it falls to the engineer to solve them. It is the inherent practicality of engineering, which takes into account structural, economic, environmental, and other factors that science often does not consider, that makes engineering vital to answering our most urgent concerns. Henry Petroski takes us inside the research, development, and debates surrounding the most critical challenges of our time, exploring the feasibility of biofuels, the progress of battery-operated cars, and the question of nuclear power. He gives us an in-depth investigation of the various options for renewable energy-among them solar, wind, tidal, and ethanol-explaining the benefits and risks of each. Will windmills soon populate our landscape the way they did in previous centuries? Will synthetic trees, said to be more efficient at absorbing harmful carbon dioxide than real trees, soon dot our prairies? Will we construct a "sunshade" in outer space to protect ourselves from dangerous rays? In many cases, the technology already exists. What's needed is not so much invention as engineering. Just as the great achievements of centuries past-the steamship, the airplane, the moon landing-once seemed beyond reach, the solutions to the twenty-first century's problems await only a similar coordination of science and engineering. Eloquently reasoned and written, The Essential Engineer identifies and illuminates these problems-and, above all, sets out a course for putting ideas into action.

Henry Petroski (Author), Mark Deakins (Narrator)

Audiobook

From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time

Sean Carroll (Author), Erik Synnestvedt (Narrator)

Audiobook