Our Only Home

June 1, 2020

A University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, Barrett (How Emotions Are Made) gives us Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain, explaining the origin, structure, and function of that blobby gray mass (50,0000-copy first printing). In This Is the Voice, New Yorker staffer Colapinto, author of the New York Times best-selling As Nature Made Him, explains how this most efficient means of communication defines humans individually and as a whole (75,000-copy first printing). The Dalai Lama's Our Only Home calls on politicians--and encourages the younger generation--to save our planet (50,000-copy first printing). Cambridge historian Falk's The Light Ages shows that the so-called Dark Ages were actually lit up by a keen scientific culture, as universities, eyeglasses, and mechanical clocks got their start. The Kolokotrones University Professor and chair of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard University, public health giant Farmer offers an account of the 2014 Ebola crisis that should be especially revealing for us today; as suggested by the title, Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds, there's sociopolitical context here (20,000-copy first printing). Fung follows up his internationally best-selling The Diabetes Code and The Obesity Code by discussing not just the origin and treatment of cancer but its prevention in The Cancer Code (100,000-copy first printing). Having explored the mental life of octopuses in Other Minds, Godfrey-Smith, a scuba-diving professor of the history and philosophy of science at the University of Sydney, now looks more deeply into animal consciousness in Metazoa. Barnard astrophysicist Levin, a PEN/Bingham Prize-winning novelist and director of sciences at the arts-and-sciences center Pioneer Works, has the wherewithal to provide a Black Hole Survival Guide explaining the cosmos.

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October 1, 2020
In their previous collaboration, An Appeal to the World (2017), the Dalai Lama and Alt sought to outline inner and outer paths to peace. Here, as our world continues to experience tumultuous changes, they address issues pertaining to the environment and global warming. Is this book reason for alarmism? No way! writes Alt early on, It is a declaration of love to the future. Through dialogue, which fills the body of this sanguine book, Alt poses questions on the state of the world's environmental crisis that the Dalai Lama answers with boundless wisdom. We need a revolution of compassion, he states. Environmental education must be given top priority," he continues. And most contemplatively, Today's environmental crisis is the crisis of our inner world. The Dalai Lama takes measure of the depth of awareness and commitment humankind must embrace to tackle climate change while expressing gratitude for young leaders like Greta Thunberg. With optimism at the core, this is a bright and encouraging environmental primer.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)