A chill is in the air (at least for us dwellers of the Northern Latitudes), the days have shortened, and good books beckon us to calm corners and states of contemplative repose. In this season of reading, we can choose to unplug from the short-attention-span algorithms to dig into titles that engage our senses and sustain our focus. Here are some of the books that we’re excited to crack into this month.
The Man Who Broke Reality: Niels Bohr and the Making of Modern Physics by Philip Ball
A longtime friend of Nautilus, science writer Philip Ball tackles the life and work a giant of modern physics, Danish Nobel laureate Niels Bohr. Sometimes overshadowed in popular culture by the standard figures of the atomic age—Oppenheimer and Einstein among them—Bohr steps into the blinding light, thanks to Ball’s adroit pen. After all, before humankind could succeed in splitting the atom, it first needed a model of the nucleus at its core. Constructing that model was but one of Bohr’s seminal contributions. He also seeded the field of quantum mechanics, which continues to blow apart our understanding of how physics operates in the universe.
Everything You Need to Know: How Philosophy Can Set You Free by Matthew Stewart
We could all use a bit more philosophy in our lives. Especially as we navigate these perilous times, when tyranny and greed threaten to undo the very freedoms philosophers have helped codify and secure over millennia. In a world where contemplation and cogitation seem to be in short supply, immersing oneself in the history of philosophy can act as a reminder that grappling with life’s deeper questions is a timeless human pursuit that can serve as an anchor in turbulent times. Philosopher Matthew Stewart plays guide, reshuffling the deck of thinkers (ancient and otherwise), and offering his take on the philosophical pantheon.
Queens of Code: Inspiring True Stories from NSA’s Computing Women by Eileen Buckholtz
I love a book that clues me in to a reality that my own biases, those embedded in our culture, or both have obscured from my attention. That seems to be exactly what author and computer scientist Eilleen Buckholtz delivers with her history of 25 forgotten women technologists who worked, in secret, for decades at the National Security Agency. Herself a 30+ year veteran of the NSA, Buckholtz’s untold stories add to a growing body of literature that dispels the myth that technology is a man’s game. That body of work includes Hidden Figures, which highlighted the contributions of women scientists at NASA, and Code Girls, which exposed the crucial roles of thousands of women played in breaking enemy codes during World War II.
United Nature by Andrew Zuckerman
Nature might be “red in tooth and claw,” as Alfred, Lord Tennyson penned in his 1850 elegiac poem. But beyond all that savage red, it is often an utter feast for the eyes. It is just such a sumptuous repast that photographer Andrew Zuckerman promises to serve up in his latest book. Centered on the interconnectedness of the natural world—in which humans are an integral part, not mere outside observers—the 250 images on display here are designed to inspire tender awe. I know I could use the reminder.
The Telephone: A New History by James Gleick
History is rarely as tidy as the stories we tell about it. Such is the case with the invention of the telephone. Schoolchildren may still learn the straight-line story that Alexander Graham Bell invented the first “speaking telegraph” in 1876, demonstrating the marvel by transmitting that first and famous phrase (“Mr. Watson—come here—I want to see you”—to an assistant in the next room.) But the genesis of the telephone was marked by intrigue, fraud, and bribery. From those messy origins to the current day, when each of us carries a supercomputer masquerading as a phone in our pockets, James Gleick untangles one of the most transformative inventions of the modern era. This one looks riveting and revelatory, which should be no surprise to anyone who’s read Gleick before.
The Flying Death: Poison, Plunder, and the Quest for a Miracle Medicine in the Amazon by Matt O’Hara
Another look to science’s past leads us down a river deep in the Ecuadorian Amazon in the 1930s. There we meet Richard Gill, an American amateur botanist and explorer who had traveled far in search of a drug to treat his multiple sclerosis. Seeking curare, a family of plant-derived poisons used by Indigenous people in Central and South America to immobilize and kill prey, Gill had more than just a personalized cure in mind. He also sought to bring back samples of the compound, along with copious notes about its preparation, to pharmaceutical companies back home. The quest would eventually result in a revolution in surgical anesthesia and a Nobel Prize. Historian Matt O’Hara spins these details into an engaging tale that explores the entanglement of scientific exploration and exploitation.
Trigger Words: How Political Language Has Made America Less Inclusive (And How to Bring Us Back Together) by Omekongo Dibinga
Words have incredible power to shape ideas, to inflict pain, and to heal. Nowhere is this truer than in the arena of politics. In divisive times, words matter, and poet, academic, and community activist Omekongo Dibinga examines how today’s landscape of political rhetoric has become so charged and dangerous. He also offers a way out of this maelstrom of fear and recrimination: more thoughtfully approaching our shared social vocabulary.
The Revolutionary Origins of Language by Chris Knight and Jerome Lewis
From a pair of University College London anthropologists, Chris Knight and Jerome Lewis, comes this treatise on the central role of speech in the arc of human history. We may owe our relative longevity and success as a species to the human proclivity for talking, laughing, and singing, specifically as practiced by women. Throughout our evolution, female speech and expression has helped bend our story away from the male yen for violence and towards more cohesive collectives, they argue. This more peaceable kingdom was, in turn, fertile ground for language to bloom.
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