Washoe County Library System

Picture yourself in the Cretaceous period. It’s a sunny afternoon in the Hell Creek of ancient Montana 66 million years ago. A Triceratops horridus ambles along the edge of the forest. In a matter of hours, everything here will be wiped away. Lush verdure will be replaced with fire. Tyrannosaurus rex will be toppled from their throne, along with every other species of non-avian dinosaur no matter their size, diet, or disposition. They just don’t...

"Over the last half-billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. Adapting from her New York Times-bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning adult nonfiction, Elizabeth Kolbert explores the Anthropocene...

The author of Stiff and Bonk explores the irresistibly strange universe of space travel and life without gravity. Space is a world devoid of the things we need to live and thrive: air, gravity, hot showers, fresh produce, privacy, beer. Space exploration is in some ways an exploration of what it means to be human. How much can a person give up? How much weirdness can they take? What happens to you when you can't walk for a year? have sex? smell flowers?...

"In this astonishing book from the author of the bestselling memoir The Good Good Pig, Sy Montgomery explores the emotional and physical world of the octopus--a surprisingly complex, intelligent, and spirited creature--and the remarkable connections it makes with humans. Sy Montgomery's popular 2011 Orion magazine piece, "Deep Intellect," about her friendship with a sensitive, sweet-natured octopus named Athena and the grief she felt at her death,...

In Cheats and Deceits, Martin Stevens describes the remarkable range of adaptations in nature, and considers how they have evolved and increasingly been perfected as part of an arms race between predator and prey or host and parasite. He explores both classic and recent research of naturalists and biologists, showing how scientists find ways of testing the impact of particular behaviors and colorings on the animals it is meant to fool. Drawing on...

Shows how unprecedented advances in our understanding of life have equipped us with the ability to create entirely new life-forms like goats that produce spider silk in their milk, bacteria that excrete diesel and genetic codes that identify and destroy cancer cells. This new synthetic biology is poised to offer radical new solutions to the crises of food shortage, pandemic disease and climate change.

"The renowned Nobel Prize-winning scientist's elegant and concise explanation of the fundamental ideas in biology and their uses today. Hailed by Philip Pullman as "a great communicator" who is also "as distinguished a scientist as there could be," Paul Nurse writes with delight at life's richness and a sense of the urgent role of biology in our time. With What Is Life? he delivers a brief but powerful work of popular science in the vein of Carlo...

"Giraffes have long necks. Polar bears have thick fur and large feet. Octopuses change colors. All of these are adaptations. Adaptations help living things survive. Whether it's hiding from predators, the ability to catch prey, or traits that increase reproduction, adaptations are important"--

"Some animals hide to hunt for food, and others hide to avoid becoming dinner. It's easy to see why a disappearing act is important for many reasons. From octopus to polar bear, and from the praying mantis to the hawk, discover how and why many animals cleverly use camouflage."--

An exploration of Earth's natural systems discusses how they influence each other, what happens when the system gets out of sync, and whether lifeforms can communicate across species boundaries.