Washoe County Library System

Illuminates the scientific factors that shape the hidden patterns of a day and challenge scheduled activities, drawing on research in the disciplines of psychology, biology, and economics to share practical advice and anecdotes for promoting a richer, more engaged life.

Not so long ago we timed our lives by the movement of the sun. These days our time arrives atomically and insistently, and our lives are propelled by the notion that we will never have enough of the one thing we crave the most. How have we come to be dominated by something so arbitrary? The compelling stories in this book explore our obsessions with time. Timekeepers is a vivid exploration of the ways we have perceived, contained and saved time over...

Timefulness reveals how knowing the rhythms of Earths deep past and conceiving of time as a geologist does can give us the perspective we need for a more sustainable future. Marcia Bjornerud shows how geologists chart the planets past, explaining how we can determine the pace of solid Earth processes such as mountain building and erosion and comparing them with the more unstable rhythms of the oceans and atmosphere. These overlapping rates of change...

"Apes can do a lot of things that we can, too: they can use tools, tell bigger from smaller, and even say hello. But one thing they can't do is say "see you tomorrow." That's not just because they don't speak English, but because they are unable to imagine reencountering another ape in the future. Humans, of course, can. As Thomas Suddendorf, Jon Redshaw, and Adam Bulley reveal, that represents a truly earth-shattering capacity. In The Invention of...

The epic story of the planet’s oldest trees and the making of the modern world Humans have always revered long-lived trees. But as historian Jared Farmer reveals in Elderflora, our veneration took a modern turn in the eighteenth century, when naturalists embarked on a quest to locate and precisely date the oldest living things on earth. The new science of tree time prompted travelers to visit ancient specimens and conservationists...