Wild Ideas

Elin Kelsey

The creative problem-solving strategies of various animals, in breathtaking illustrated dioramas:

Africa in My Blood: An Autobiography in Letters

Jane Goodall

Young Jane Goodall’s exuberant letters home from Africa when she first arrived half a century ago – the fulfillment of her childhood dream:

The Invention of Clouds: How an Amateur Meteorologist Forged the Language of the Skies

Richard Hamblyn

“Most pioneers are at the mercy of doubt at the beginning, whether of their worth, of their theories, or of the whole enigmatic field in which they labour.”

How a humble young amateur scientist classified the skies and inspired Goethe’s beautiful poems about the clouds:

Biophilia

Christopher Marley

Biophilia – artist Christopher Marley’s gorgeous mosaics of Earth’s most colorful creatures:

How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog

Chad Orzel

The central mystery of quantum mechanics, animated:

On Science, Necessity and the Love of God: Essays

Simone Weil

7 decades ago, Simone Weil – one of the most luminous and underappreciated minds humanity ever produced – wrote beautifully about science and our spiritual values, and she could’ve written it today:

The Blue Whale

Jenni Desmond

A wonderful children’s book about our planet’s largest and immensely fascinating creature, which can grow by nine pounds an hour and never really sleeps:

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer

Sydney Padua

How Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage invented the world’s first computer – an illustrated adventure in footnotes and genius:

On the Move: A Life

Oliver Sacks

Oliver Sacks’s autobiography of love, lunacy, and a life fully lived is a life-changing read – I mean this with my whole heart:

Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel

Rebecca Goldstein

“The distinction between the past, the present, and the future is only an illusion, albeit a persistent one.”

Einstein, Gödel, and how relativity rattled our experience of time – utterly mind-bending read:

The Antarctic Book of Cooking and Cleaning: A Polar Journey

Wendy Trusler and Carol Devine

“Food is life, food is culture. It shaped old expeditions and shaped ours, and we’re going to use it to tell you this story.”

The extraordinary edible record of two women explorers’ redemptive journey to the end of the world:

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman (Helix Books)

Richard P. Feynman

“The size of the universe is very impressive, with us on a tiny particle whirling around the sun, among a hundred thousand million suns in this galaxy, itself among a billion galaxies… Man is a latecomer in a vast evolving drama; can the rest be but a scaffolding for his creation?”

Richard Feynman on the eternal friction between science and religion:

Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses

Robin Wall Kimmerer

“Life [exists] only because of a myriad of synchronicities that bring us to this particular place at this particular moment. In return for such a gift, the only sane response is to glitter in reply.”

What moss teaches us about the glory of life – the most beautiful thing I’ve read in ages:

Bright Sky, Starry City

Uma Krishnaswami

An illustrated love letter to our communion with the cosmos, doubly wonderful for celebrating women in science:

The Amazing Discoveries of Ibn Sina

Fatima Sharafeddine

The illustrated story of Persian polymath Ibn Sina and how he shaped the course of medicine and changed our understanding of the human body: