Science & Nature

Mathematics

A Divine Language : Learning Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus at the Edge of Old Age

by Alec Wilkinson

available in July, paperback, Picador Decades after struggling to understand math as a boy, Alec Wilkinson decides to embark on a journey to learn it as a middle-aged man. What begins as a personal challenge—and it is challenging—soon transforms into something greater than a belabored effort to learn math. Despite his incompetence, Wilkinson encounters a universe of unexpected questions in his pursuit of mathematical knowledge and quickly becomes fascinated; soon, his exercise in personal growth (and torture) morphs into an intellectually expansive exploration. Part memoir, part metaphysical travel book, and part journey in self-improvement, A Divine Language is one man’s second attempt at understanding the numbers in front of him and the world beyond.

Life Sciences

In Light-Years There’s No Hurry: Cosmic Perspective on Everyday Life

by Marjolijn van Heemstra, translated by Jonathan Reeder available

in June, hardcover, W.W. Norton

One stifling summer night, van Heemstra lay awake, feeling anxious and alienated. Amid the suffocating stream of daily obligations, the clamor of notifications and increasingly dismal headlines, she longed for a renewed sense of meaning and connection. Then she learned about the overview effect—a permanent shift in consciousness many astronauts experience when beholding Earth from outside the atmosphere. Compared with the complexity of the universe, daily life on Earth begins to seem more manageable, while understanding the improbability of our collective existence. The grand rhythms of light-years and eons become a source of restoration and relief—a comforting, necessary reminder to slow down and zoom out.

Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence

by James Bridle

available in June, paperback,

Picador

What does it mean to be intelligent? Is it something unique to humans or shared with other beings—beings of flesh, wood, stone, and silicon? The last few years have seen rapid advances in “artificial” intelligence. But rather than a friend or companion, AI increasingly appears to be something stranger than we ever imagined, an alien invention that threatens to decenter and supplant us. At the same time, we’re only just becoming aware of the other intelligences that have been with us all along, even if we’ve failed to recognize or acknowledge them. These others—the animals, plants, and natural systems that surround us—are slowly revealing their complexity, agency, and knowledge, just as the technologies we’ve built to sustain ourselves are threatening to cause their extinction and ours. What can we learn from them, and how can we change ourselves, our technologies, our societies, and our politics to live better and more equitably with one another and the nonhuman world?

How to Live in a Chaotic Climate : 10 Steps to Reconnect With Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our Planet

by Laura Schmidt, Aimee Lewis Reau, Chelsie Rivera

available in August, paperback, Shambhala

Eco-distress is real. How to Live in a Chaotic Climate is here to help you rediscover meaning, joy, and connection as the tumult around us increases. Based on the Good Grief Network’s acclaimed 10 Steps to Resilience and Empowerment in a Chaotic Climate program, this book unpacks the social, political, and spiritual nuances of the climate emergency, step by step.

The Parrot and the Igloo: Climate and the Science of Denial

by David Lipsky

available in July, hardcover, W.W. Norton

In 1956, the New York Times prophesied that once global warming really kicked in, we could see parrots in the Antarctic. In 2010, when science deniers had control of the climate story, Senator James Inhofe and his family built an igloo on the Washington Mall. In The Parrot and the Igloo, best-selling author David Lipsky tells the astonishing story of how we moved from one extreme (the correct one) to the other. Featuring an indelible cast of heroes and villains, mavericks and swindlers, it delivers a real-life tragicomedy—one that captures the extraordinary dance of science, money, and the American character.

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