AP Environmental Science

A CDS Library Reading List

Choose a book from the list below.  

Descriptions, contents, and and/or reviews are included to help you make your decision.  

Look up your selection in the library's catalogue, get the call number, retrieve the book from the shelf, and check it out.

After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000-5000 BC    -    Mithen, Stephen J.

20,000 BC, the peak of the last ice age -- the atmosphere is heavy with dust; deserts and glaciers span vast regions; and people, if they survive at all, exist in small, mobile groups, facing the threat of extinction. But these people live on the brink of seismic change -- 10,000 years of climate shifts culminating in abrupt global warming that will usher in a fundamentally changed human world. After the Ice is the story of this momentous period -- one in which a seemingly minor alteration in temperature could presage anything from the spread of lush woodland to the coming of apocalyptic floods -- and one in which we find the origins of civilization itself. - from the publisher

Big Cotton: How a Humble Fiber Created Fortunes, Wrecked Civilizations, and Put America on the Map    -    Yafa, Stephen

Yafa lyrically tells a tale of slimy merchants, corrupt politicians and downtrodden farmers and workers upon whose backs huge fortunes were made. Coming from a Europe starved for cotton fabrics, Christopher Columbus exploited the American natives' mastery of the plant. The Puritans of New England entered into the slave trade to finance their insatiable need for cotton cloth. And in the American South an entire civilization was based on "King Cotton": a flourishing slaveholding civilization featuring ostentatious plantation houses stuffed with the goods of conspicuous consumption. The cruelty and reward, Yafa shows, continue to this day. Cotton farmers in Mali are impoverished due in large part to U.S. government subsidies to corporate agribusiness. But despite much fascinating information, the book disappoints. Yafa has jammed his narrative with too many wild characters, outrageous stories and goofy personal asides. Some may tire quickly of the details of warp and weft and the workings of the spinning jenny. Yet for all the flaws of the single-lensed view of history, Yafa tells a tale that covers a wide, dramatic swath. - Publisher's Weekly

.

The Big One: The Earthquake that Rocked Early America and Helped Create a Science    -    Page, Jake

In the Early 1800s a series of gargantuan earth tremors seized the American frontier. Tremendous roars and flashes of eerie light accompanied huge spouts of water and gas. Six-foot-high waterfalls appeared in the Mississippi River, thousands of trees exploded, and some 1,500 people -- in what was then a sparsely populated wilderness -- were killed. A region the size of Texas, centered in Missouri and Arkansas, was rent apart, and the tremors reached as far as Montreal. Forget the 1906 earthquake -- this set of quakes constituted the Big One. The United States would face certain catastrophe if such quakes occurred again. Could they? The answer lies in seismology, a science that is still coming to grips with the Big One. Jake Page and Charles Officer rely on compelling historical accounts and the latest scientific findings to tell a fascinating, long-forgotten story in which the naturalist John James Audubon, the Shawnee chief Tecumseh, scientists, and charlatans all play roles. Whether describing devastating earthquakes or a dire year in a young nation, The Big One offers astounding breadth and drama. - from the publisher.

.

The Blue Planet: A Natural History Of The Oceans -    Byatt, Andrew

Beautiful photographs and a text that attempts to be the "first complete and comprehensive portrait of the whole ocean system." Table of Contents : 1. The water planet -- 2. Life on the edge -- 3. Tropical seas -- 4. Temperate seas -- 5. Frozen seas -- 6. The open ocean -- 7. The deep.

Coal: A Human History    -    Freese, Barbara

Deleterious to health and beneficial to wealth, coal contains a tension that makes its story a compelling one. Freese is a former attorney general of Minnesota, who became interested in the flammable rock's history during her tenure. After a routine description of coal's geological formation, Freese invigorates her narrative with its combustion in England. Even in the 1500s, its noxiousness provoked denunciation, but with Britannia's forests all but consumed, it became everybody's heat source. Freese is quite succinct in describing coal's critical role in sparking the Industrial Revolution, whose side effects included a troglodytic existence for miners and suffocating fogs for Manchester and London. The author then covers America's seduction by coal, and presently China's, culminating with her advocating reduction of coal's primary pollutants, sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide, and its ultimate banishment as an energy source. Freese's combination of labor and technological history is fluid and evenhanded. - Booklist

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed    -    Diamond, Jared

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning, million-copy bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel (Call number: 303.4 DIA), Jared Diamond examined how and why Western civilizations developed the technologies and immunities that allowed them to dominate much of the world. Now in this brilliant companion volume, Diamond probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates? Diamond weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of fascinating historical-cultural narratives. Moving from the Polynesian cultures on Easter Island to the flourishing American civilizations of the Anasazi and the Maya and finally to the doomed Viking colony on Greenland, Diamond traces the fundamental pattern of catastrophe. Environmental damage, climate change, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of these societies, but other societies found solutions and persisted. Similar problems face us today and have already brought disaster to Rwanda and Haiti, even as China and Australia are trying to cope in innovative ways. Despite our own society's apparently inexhaustible wealth and unrivaled political power, ominous warning signs have begun to emerge even in ecologically robust areas like Montana. Brilliant, illuminating, and immensely absorbing, Collapse is destined to take its place as one of the essential books of our time, raising the urgent question: How can our world best avoid committing ecological suicide? - from the publisher

The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance    -    Garrett, Laurie

Medical journalist Garrett presents a history of epidemiology in a format that is educational, moving, and terrifying. She skillfully illustrates the role of ecology, politics, and economics in worldwide healthcare and uses numerous examples to emphasize the need for a global perspective in the management of disease. Yellow fever, malaria, ebola, lassa fever, AIDS, legionnaires' disease, toxic shock syndrome-she discusses in depth the search for the causes of these and many other diseases. The tranquil days following the discovery of antibiotics are gone as drug-resistant strains of disease-causing organisms continue to reappear. The message is clear: we must drop our complacency and learn from past epidemics or face the consequences. An extremely readable style and exhaustive notes make this fascinating reading for general readers and scholars alike. Highly recommended. - Library Journal

The Coming Storm:   Extreme Weather and our Terrifying Future    -    Reiss, Bob

If you think the world's weather catastrophes are becoming more frequent and more powerful, you're right. Ten of the last eleven years have been the hottest on record, filled with dozens of record-breaking hurricanes, floods, and droughts. Is this a coincidence, or is our civilization wreaking havoc on global weather? Journalist Bob Reiss shares America's growing fascination -- and concern -- with the phenomenon of extreme weather, a series of interlocking human stories that together create an ominous forecast for the twenty-first century. The Coming Storm presents a frightening, enlightening, and fascinating portrait of an ecosystem off track.--from the book jacket

Deadly Feasts: Tracking the Secrets of a Terrifying New Plague    -    Rhodes, Richard

"Cannibals dying in New Guinea, sheep dying in Europe, and a woman with a strange disease contracted after a cornea transplant.   Medical detectives pulled the facts together to discover a frightening new type of disease." (VOYA/October 1998)

Dinner at the New Gene Café: How Genetic Engineering is Changing What We Eat, How We Live, and the Global Politics of Food    -   Lambrecht, Bill

Amazon.com's Best of 2001: It may be true that we are what we eat. Now, with a flood of genetically modified foods overtaking the market, it is possible to eat what we are. But the prospect of genetic cannibalism is the least of the worries of food activists, and journalist Bill Lambrecht's Dinner at the New Gene Café follows both sides of the genetically modified organism (GMO) debate with vigor. He's been covering the story since the mid-1980s, interviewing agricultural officials, biotech industry executives, family farmers, and protesters to build a comprehensive understanding of the issues. Lambrecht's writing, clear and direct, explains the science and politics plainly enough that even those who flunked Biology or Poli Sci 101 can understand his arguments. He is equally skeptical of the claims of industry shills and activists, and often shakes his head in wonder at the incompetence of government agencies. From academic conferences to the Battle for Seattle, he's seen every aspect of the GMO wars, as they ignited in Europe and slowly spread across the world and eventually penetrated the U.S. Peppered with short essays on his own illegal home experiments with GMO seeds, Dinner at the New Gene Café offers readers insight into a growing question that will most likely define our menu choices for many years to come. - Amazon.com

Down To Earth : Nature's Role In American History    -    Steinburg, Theodore

"How the environment has played a key role in virtually every social, economic, and political development in American history. Ranging from the colonists' attempts to impose order on the land to the modern efforts to sell the wilderness as a consumer good, packaged in national parks and Alaskan cruises, Steinberg reminds readers that many critical episodes in our history were, in fact environmental events: plantation slavery, the California gold rush, and even the Cold War were all shaped by natural conditions and in turn reshaped the natural world." - from the book jacket

The Dying of the Trees:   The Pandemic in America's Forests    -    Little, Charles, E.

Caught as we are in a spell of denial and backlash, we're told that environmental concerns have been greatly exaggerated and we no longer need all those pesky laws and regulations. Not so fast says environmental journalist Little, everything is not okay--trees are dying all over the U.S. Little presents the terrible facts about such calamities as the extinction of the eastern dogwood, the toll acid rain has taken on trees from Vermont to North Carolina, and the human-caused plague killing California's ponderosa pine. He also explains how logging and fire prevention alter the composition of forests and lead to such fatal imbalances as the massive increases in regional populations of the tree-killing gypsy moth. Little traces the origins of all these forms of tree death to 150 years of full-throttle industrialization and then firmly reminds us that trees are essential to life on earth as we hope to live it. Sobering, responsible, and eloquent, this is an important book. - Booklist

The Earth's Biosphere : Evolution, Dynamics, And Change    -    Smil, Vaclav

Smil, in a presentation marked by balance and clarity, synthesizes the field of science dealing with the biosphere. It is an interdisciplinary one, combining organic chemistry, geology, solar physics, microbiology, zoology, and more. A superior, comprehensive survey. - Booklist.

El Niño: Unlocking the Secrets of the Master Weather-maker    -    Nash, J. Madelaine

Researchers and their research are Time reporter Nash's quarry in this overview of how El Nino's global ramifications came to be recognized. The seeming increase in the phenomenon's frequency and intensity, some maintain, is feedback from global warming. Proving that proposition means discovering evidence of past El Ninos, and that journey in time occupies much of Nash's general-interest introduction to El Nino. Booklist

Emerging Infections: Microbial Threats to Health in the United States    -    Lederberg, Joshua

Presents a historical perspective on infectious disease and discusses how "new" diseases such as HIV and AIDS arise and how "old" diseases such as tuberculosis resurge.   Considers the roles of human development and land use, international travel and commerce, microbial adaptation and change, and the breakdown of public health measures in changing patterns of infectious disease. - from the publisher

Endangered Oceans: Opposing Viewpoints

                  Essays from both sides of the issue.

The Fatal Harvest Reader: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture

Over 30 essays take an unprecedented look at our current ecologically destructive agricultural system and offer a compelling vision for an organic and environmentally safer way of producing the food we eat. - from the publisher

The Ghosts of Evolution:   Nonsensical Fruit, Missing Partners, and Other Ecological Anachronisms    -    Barlow, Connie

We can tell a lot about the kinds of animals that existed thousands of years ago by looking closely at the kinds of fruit that grow today. A quarter century ago, this idea was so radical that its originators had trouble even getting someone to publish their paper on the subject. This fascinating book chronicles the development of the theory and extends it by looking at new discoveries that help the experts learn how the world's ecosystems have evolved. Everywhere we look, Barlow says, we can find the ghosts of animals that evolved to eat certain fruits; the animals died off, but the fruits still grow, the only remaining part of a once-thriving ecosystem. -- from Booklist

Global Resources : Opposing Viewpoints

Essays from both sides of the issue.

Guns, Germs, and Steel : The Fates of Human Societies    -    Diamond, Jared

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth club of California's Gold Medal. In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books ) book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed religion --as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war --and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history. - from the publisher  

High Tech Harvest: Understanding Genetically Modified Food Plants    -    Lurquin, Paul F.

How food is manipulated at the most basic level, that of the DNA itself.   A   comprehensive and user-friendly description of the scientific origins, the development, and the applications of genetically modified plants throughout the world today.

High Tide : The Truth About Our Climate Crisis    -    Lynas, Mark

Telling the story of climate change through his personal experience and those of ordinary individuals is strategically brilliant. While Lynas includes the requisite barrage of numbers and statistics and notes to support his examples, the real-life stories -- the human and emotional content -- are what make High Tide a compelling and powerful read, albeit profoundly depressing. Clearly the unpleasantness is upon us. - The Washington Post  

Hurricane Watch: Forecasting the Deadliest Storms on Earth    -    Williams, Jack

A comprehensive, clearly written history of U.S. hurricane forecasting and a clear explanation of the science of hurricanes. Lay readers will grasp how hurricanes form, strengthen, and travel, and experts will take much from Sheets's personal accounts of Hurricane Andrew, the history of hurricane hunter aircraft in forecasting, and the explanation of how technological advances have greatly improved the science of hurricane forecasting

The Ice Chronicles:   The Quest to Understand Global Climate Change    -    Mayeweski, Paul J.

The Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 revealed amazing facts about the history of climate over the past 110,000 years: climate has dramatically flipped in the past, sometimes in only a decade's span, and that human influence is definitely impacting the contemporary climate.  

Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History    -    Larson, Eric

The greatest natural disaster in US history, the monster 1900 Galveston hurricane, resulted in over 6,000 deaths.   The storm and the failure to predict its approach is a thrilling and suspenseful story.

In The Wake of the Plague:   The Black Death & the World it Made    -    Cantor, Norman F.

The author claims that much of what we know about the Black Plague is wrong.   He chronicles the intellectual, artistic, and economic revolutions made possible by the destruction of the old order in 14th century Europe.

Killer Germs: Rogue Diseases of the Twenty-first Century    -    Moore, Pete

Table of Contents:   Contemporary complacency -- Lessons from history -- Bacteria and antibiotics -- Antibiotic resistance -- Dead disease -- AIDS -- And then you dissolve -- The viral good guys -- PR is for prions -- The mighty mosquito -- Engineering armageddon -- The risk of recesison.

Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded    -    Winchester, Simon

The New York Times calls this book "one of the best books ever written about the history and significance of a natural disaster: thrilling, comprehensive, literate, meticulously researched and scientifically accurate." The publisher's notes say "The legendary annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island of Krakatoa -- the name has since become a by-word for a cataclysmic disaster -- was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly 40,000 people. Beyond the purely physical horrors of an event which has only very recently become properly understood, the eruption changed the world in more ways than could possibly be imagined. Dust swirled round the world for years, causing temperatures to plummet and sunsets to turn vivid with lurid and unsettling displays of lght. The effects of the immense waves were felt as far away as France. Barometers in Bogota and Washington went haywire. Bodies were washed up in Zanzibar. The sound of island's destruction was heard in Australia and India and on islands thousands of miles away. Most significantly of all -- in view of today's new political climate -- the eruption helped to trigger in Java a wave of murderous anti-western militancy by fundamentalist Muslims, one of the first eruptions of Islamic killings anywhere. Simon Winchester's long experience in world wandering, history and geology give this fascinating and iconic event an entirely new life and perspective."

.

  The Last Monarch Butterfly: Conserving the Monarch Butterfly in a Brave New World    -    Schappert, Phil

Overview of both eastern and western monarch butterflies, including their life cycle and migratory patterns. The impact of natural disasters and increasing residential and industrial development on monarch butterfly populations is also discussed. - from the publisher

Life Under the Sun    -    Ensmiger, Peter A.

Fifteen essays about the effect of the sun on our lives and our world.   Essay titles:   Vision at the threshold; The five-percent solution to vision; A more delightful vision; A burning issue; A SAD tale; The purple disease; A novel method of weed control; Light and beer; Phycomyces, the fungus that sees; Dictyostelium, the amoeba and the slug; High hopes for hypericin; Turning on a butterfly; Blue moons and red tides; Photosynthesis and the Great Salt Lake; Too much of a good thing.

Listening To The Sea : The Politics of Improving Environmental Protection    -    Wilder, Robert Jay

Emphasizing cheaper, more effective, and more holistic ocean and coastal protection, the author begins with a historical survey of current regulations, then discusses existing policies for regulating the extraction of offshore oil, how to achieve better energy efficiency, and obstacles that confound efforts to integrate science and policy in decision making about the protection of ocean resources. - Book News.

The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History    -    Fagan, Brian M.

During the Little Ice Age approximately the 14th to the mid-19th centuries the climate of northern Europe turned volatile and markedly cooler. As Fagan (archaeology, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara) explains, while this did not directly cause major historical events, it catalyzed significant social, political, and economic changes throughout the region. Widespread reliance on subsistence farming meant that bad weather and shortened growing seasons led to food shortages, even famines. Hunger, in turn, along with disease, war, crime, and economic forces, provoked widespread sociopolitical upheaval, including the collapse of Norse settlements in Greenland, the French Revolution, and the Irish Famine. - Library Journal

The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization    -    Fagan, Brian M.

Anthropologist Fagan engagingly presents an abundance of geological and archaeological evidence supporting the idea that human civilization has been shaped by significant climate change to a greater extent than previously thought. Fagan cushions his scientific data with absorbing historical narrative. The "long summer" of the title is the Holocene warming trend of the last 15,000 years, which has coddled humanity throughout recorded history. While scientists have always known that cycles of cooling and warming within this era have affected humans, only in the last part of the 20th century did they have detailed ice and sediment cores to provide evidence for specific events. Fagan uses the new information to authoritatively walk readers through the major climatic changes in human history, including droughts that led to the formation of the first cities, rainfall increases connected to the spread of bubonic plague, and volcanic eruptions that triggered disastrous cooling trends. Although often repetitive, these examples serve to prove without a doubt that humans have been increasingly vulnerable to climate change ever since we left a nomadic lifestyle for an agriculture-based one. Part cautionary tale and part historical detective story, this book encourages readers to appreciate the increasingly clear links between great weather changes and human society, politics and survival. - Publisher's Weekly

A Matter of Degrees:   What Temperature Reveals About the Past and Future of Our Species, Planet, and Universe    -    Segrè, Gino

Length and mass are measurements we understand intuitively, but temperature is fleeting and elusive. Why is it so hard to measure compared with other fundamentals? Why do living things require such a narrow range of temperatures to go about their business? How cold is deep space, anyway? Physicist Gino Segre knows how to keep interest flowing along; even when he's explaining the intricacies of small-scale physics, he takes time to ground it in real life. His scope is wide--from the beginning (and ending) of the universe to the history of life on Earth, little falls outside his purview. Yet the book touches on so many subjects of immediate interest to 21st-century humans (high fevers, sports medicine, global warming, and the next scheduled Ice Age, to name a few) that it's compelling even to those who don't care about the Big Questions.   Amazon

The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation : From the Louisiana Purchase to Today    -    Ambrose, Stephen E.

The Mississippi River valley and the enormous region that drains into it form much of the American heartland. The history of this region is the history of much of our country, and its presence is prominent in much of our literature and culture. National Geographic's last book on this important area was published in 1971, and this update by popular historians Ambrose and Brinkley (who both traveled the river's 2,353 miles for the project) is a welcome addition to the literature on the region. This title is well illustrated in the tradition of National Geographic publications, and yet the text is informative and substantial enough to make this more than another coffee-table book. This work, which tells the river's story from the time of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase onward, promises to appeal to a wide range of readers. - Library Journal

Noise: The New Menace    -    Kavaler, Lucy

Discusses the harm that noise pollution does to man and his environment.

Of Moths and Men: The Untold Story of Science and the Peppered Moth    -    Hooper, Judith

Mutant moths and feuding scientists--this is the real story behind the most famous experiment in 20th-century evolutionary biology. A story of hubris and heartbreak, "Of Moths and Men" reveals as much about the internecine battles of science as it does about the mysteries of evolution. Ingram

Our Final Hour : A Scientist's Warning : How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind's Future in This Century on Earth and Beyond    -    Rees, Martin J.

British astrophysicist Rees has made it his mission to help the public to think big about the universe and our species' role within it. In his latest popular treatise, he offers an unflinchingly grim assessment of the risks associated with myriad scientific advances, from nuclear weapons to genetic engineering. Even readers aware of the negative impact humankind has had on the biosphere will find Rees' vision of the likelihood of a cataclysmic outcome of our nuclear, biological, and cyber pursuits shocking, and yet his arguments are so cogent and his intentions so good--he is making a dramatic case for scientific literacy--that his dire warning is more invigorating than debilitating. Rees' most arresting futuristic scenarios involve biotechnologies that will change the very essence of human nature, and he also offers some chilling observations regarding bioterror and bioerror, certain that one or the other will kill a million people by 2020. Chilling predictions of doom are interrupted by compelling insights into various scientific discoveries. Science, Rees reminds readers, has incalculable social, even cosmic, ramifications, and it must be conducted accordingly. - Booklist

Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creature    -    Zimmer, Carl

"A fantastic voyage into the secret parasite universe...the most successful life-forms on Earth.   Parasites have triggered the development of sex, shape ecosystems, and have driven the engine of evolution."

Pollution : Opposing Viewpoints

Contents: Garbage pollution is a serious problem / Garbage pollution has improved / -- Air pollution is a serious problem /   Air pollution is declining / Water pollution is a serious problem / Water pollution is declining Chemical pollutants are a serious threat to human health / Chemical pollutants are not a serious threat to human health / Exposure to dioxin leads to health problems / Exposure to dioxin does not lead to health problems / Organophosphate insecticides must be banned / Organophosphate insecticides should not be banned / Recycling conserves the environment / Recycling does not conserve the environment/ Recycling is economical / Recycling is uneconomical / Recycling sewage sludge into compost is safe and effective / Recycling sewage sludge into compost is a health hazard / Stricter regulations will reduce air pollution / regulations may be costly and ineffective / Pollution credits will reduce air pollution / Pollution credits will increase air pollution / Electric cars will reduce air pollution / Electric cars will not reduce air pollution / The states should manage the superfund program / The federal government should manage the superfund program / The states should enforce pollution laws / The federal government should enforce pollution laws / The legal system should regulate pollution / Businesses should be taxed on pollution / "Polluter pays" policies are unfair and ineffective

Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82    -    Fenn, Elizabeth

During the years when the Revolutionary War transformed thirteen former British colonies into a new nation, a horrifying epidemic of smallpox was transforming -- or ending -- the lives of tens of thousands of people across the American continent. This great pestilence easily surpassed the war in terms of deaths, yet because of our understandable preoccupation with the Revolution and its aftermath, it has remained virtually unknown to us. Elizabeth A. Fenn is the first historian to reveal how deeply Variola affected the outcome of the War of Independence, and why it caused a continental epidemic, affecting the lives of virtually everyone in North America from Florida to Alaska.

Salt:   A World History    -    Kurlansky, Mark

Salt, Kurlansky asserts, has "shaped civilization." Although now taken for granted, these square crystals are not only of practical use, but over the ages have symbolized fertility (it is, after all, the root of the word "salacious") and lasting covenants, and have been used in magical charms. Called a "divine substance" by Homer, salt is an essential part of the human body, was one of the first international commodities and was often used as currency throughout the developing world. Kurlansky traces the history of salt's influences from prehistoric China and ancient Africa (in Egypt they made mummies using salt) to Europe (in 12th-century Provence, France, salt merchants built "a system of solar evaporation ponds") and the Americas, through chapters with intriguing titles like "A Discourse on Salt, Cadavers and Pungent Sauces." The book is populated with characters as diverse as frozen-food giant Clarence Birdseye; Gandhi, who broke the British salt law that forbade salt production in India because it outdid the British salt trade; and New York City's sturgeon king, Barney Greengrass. Throughout his engaging, well-researched history, Kurlansky sprinkles witty asides and amusing anecdotes. A piquant blend of the historic, political, commercial, scientific and culinary, the book is sure to entertain as well as educate. - Publisher's Weekly

Smallpox: The Fight to Eradicate a Global Scourge    -   Koplow, David

Law professor Koplow's well-documented, readable book opens with a brief history of smallpox that includes coverage of such fascinating figures as Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Edward Jenner (who clinically identified the source of the viral disease), and D. A. Henderson, whose worldwide efforts led to virtual elimination of the malady. Thereafter, Koplow's description of viruses and basic scientific processes for working with their many varieties proves especially valuable to general readers, as does his examination of the uses, actual and potential, of smallpox in war and terrorism. His thorough examination of arguments for and against exterminating the disease contains pertinent scrutiny of public and military policy and the role of the World Health Organization. Possessed of considerable experience with national and international security matters, he doesn't approve of eradication. The final chapter of conclusions and recommendations should help keep the book off the shelf and circulating for some time, not least because it can be a valuable guide for post-9/11 discussions. - Booklist

T. Rex and the Crater of Doom    -    Alvarez, Walter

Alvarez, along with four other Berkeley scientists, found the geologic evidence that implicated a cosmic collision in the extinction of the dinosaurs. Imagining that cataclysm, Alvarez opens with the appearance of an approaching comet, growing brighter until it slams into the Yucatan Peninsula, exploding with energy equal to 10 thousand times the world's nuclear arsenal. Having locked in readers with that apocalyptic drama, Alvarez recounts how he can write such a scientifically accurate disaster script. It has two parts: the evaluation of a thin iridium-rich layer of clay found in Italy and the search for an impact crater. Lying between the Cretaceous-Tertiary (KT) boundary in rocks, the clay was mysterious in origin and its iridium source difficult to pin down: a supernova was theorized for a while. Alvarez then clearly describes tell-tale geologic clues that revealed the now-buried crater, rounding out a fascinating proof of a once ridiculed theory. - Booklist

The Secret Life of Dust: From the Cosmos to the Kitchen Counter, the Big Consequences of Little Things    -    Holmes, Hanna

Can the ordinary subject of dust lead to discussions on planetary evolution, allergies, lung disease, dinosaurs, and pollution? Holmes, a writer for the Discovery Channel Online and contributor to Outside, Sierra , and other magazines, enthusiastically shows that it can, covering these areas and others in her enjoyable new book. Holmes explores how dust has been crucial in the birth of planets, how it affects the earth's environment and weather, and how humans create it as well. Out to communicate straight facts and science, she considers technical points in language that is clear and comprehensible even for those lacking a science background. Who would have known so much can come from so little? - Library Journal

The Terrible Gift: The Brave New World of Genetic Medicine    -    Carlson, Rick J.

A provocative, cautionary exploration of the onrushing revolution in health care: its science-fiction benefits, its hidden dangers, and the disturbing choices it will force us all to make. The mapping of the human genome and other biological breakthroughs will have startling practical implications for every one of us. Some fruits of the new genetic medicine will be unmixed blessings; others imply a chilling redefinition of what it means to be human. And all will impose enormous costs on society. Social and economic inequality will worsen as the medical haves outperform, outcompete, and outlive the have-nots. The profit imperative will foster ever-costlier biological upgrades in place of safer, simpler, natural alternatives. Through patents and commercialization of research, a handful of corporations will come to control huge swaths of the human genome. And health care costs will continue to grow. The Terrible Gift is an essential primer to the crucial choices we already face as both citizens and consumers of health care. - from the publisher

Tinkering with Eden: A Natural History of Exotics in America    -    Todd, Kim

How the introduction of non-native plants and animals, such as starlings, pigeons, or reindeer to the American continent has had catastophic or beneficial effects.

Tornado Alley:   Monster Storms of the Great Plains    -    Bluetein, Harold

A professor of meteorology at the University of Oklahoma, Bluestein lives in the heart of Tornado Alley, an area extending from northern Texas to central Nebraska that claims the highest reported rate of tornado occurrence in the world. In his first book written for a general audience, he explains what is known about the genesis of tornadoes and their parent storms--not much--and presents a personal history of modern severe-storm research. Bluestein is a storm chaser, someone who pursues severe thunderstorms in an attempt to find (and study) tornadoes. It sounds like a dangerous occupation, but his accounts of chases are characterized mostly by good-natured complaints about malfunctioning automobiles and uncooperative weather gods. The book includes more than 100 of Bluestein's photographs of storm clouds and vortexes, which are not only spectacularly beautiful but also clarify the technical descriptions of severe-storm phenomena. - Library Journal

Travels with the Fossil Hunters

Twelve stories of expeditions to remote parts of the world in search of diverse fossils such as dinosaurs and human ancestors.   Paleontologists relate the problems and curiosities they encounter while working in extreme field conditions: dodging bullets in West Africa or rabid dogs in Pakistan, surviving yak-butter tea in Tibet or raw fish in China.

Viruses, Plagues & History    -    Oldstone, Michael

"Oldstone focuses his tale on a few of the most famous viruses humanity has battled....such as smallpox, polio, and measles....Oldstone then describes the fascinating viruses that have captured headlines in more recent years: Ebola and other hemorrhagic fevers...the Hantavirus...mad cow disease...and AIDS."   (Book jacket)

.

Weather: A Visual Guide    -    Buckley, Bruce

A comprehensive academic resource with information and glorious color photographs on virtually every aspect of weather. Although written by three different meteorologists, the text flows seamlessly from one topic to another. Grouped in broad subject areas, spreads cover what makes weather, weather extremes, watching the weather, and current and changing global climate. The thoroughly labeled photos show seemingly every type of weather on every continent and the Earth from outer space. Clear, colorful graphics clarify concepts that cannot be shown in photographs, such as the energy cycle or types of lightning. Approximately three-fourths of this volume is devoted to these outstanding images. The print is small, providing more information than one might expect. The content goes beyond simple weather to include a discussion of climate and its effect on the flora and fauna of a region. An excellent resource. - School Library Journal

When Plague Strikes: The Black Death, Smallpox, AIDS    -    Giblin, James C.

The devastating spread of three epidemic diseases, and the many responses they have evoked, are ably and insightfully covered in this illuminating book. Discussing the bubonic plague that killed about half the population of 14th-century Europe and smallpox epidemics that ravaged, among other sites, ancient China and the Americas during the Age of Exploration, Giblin (Chimney Sweeps) sets the stage for the final section, devoted to AIDS. The parallels between contemporaneous attitudes toward victims of the Black Death or smallpox and the hostility often shown to people with AIDS or HIV emerge clearly, but are not overemphasized. After giving an overview of medieval (and obviously erroneous) explanations for the spread of the Black Death, for example, Giblin reports on the often callous treatment of the sick and?chillingly?on the persecution of those who were blamed for it (e.g., the Jews of Germany). His lessons that ignorance and fear lead to cruelty establish the tone for the AIDS section, where he skillfully outlines the reactions of politicians, health officials and gay activists to the gradual discovery of the AIDS virus. - Publisher's Weekly

When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tale of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution    -    Davis, Devra

Epidemiologist Davis documents the struggle to force the auto, oil, coal, and chemical industries to come to terms with the environmental consequences of their unregulated release of toxic substances into our air and water-in particular high cancer rates, heart and lung diseases, infertility, brain damage, and death. She sets the stage by describing the perpetual health problems and deaths in her home town of Donora, PA, caused by toxins from coal, steel, and zinc processing. Her accounts of the devastating black smog that blanketed the town for several days in 1948 and other black smogs in Liege, London, and Los Angeles reveal the global nature of the problem. This is an expos on how industrial polluters deceived the public, belittled scientists and academics, and pressured government agencies to stifle regulations. Davis acknowledges that today's environmental regulations are a tribute to those who fought the polluters and demanded change, but the battle continues. - Library Journal