Science & Nature

... Read Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History Summary

... Read Carbon Democracy Summary

... Read Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude Summary

... Read Challenger Summary

William Cronon wrote a scholarly assessment of the ecological changes in the land wrought by the arrival of New England’s European settlers from about 1620 to 1800 called Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (1983). Cronon examines both the Native American and European land usage during the pre-colonial time period, including farming, hunting, fishing, and the commercial harvesting of the fruits of the land. In particular, Cronon explores the... Read Changes in the Land Summary

... Read Chaos: Making a New Science Summary

Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs is a 2015 work of investigative nonfiction by British-Swiss author Johann Hari. Hari explores the so-called international war on drugs by looking deeply into its historical roots, its legal and social implications, and the possibility for reform. He examines addiction and the consequences of past and present drug laws across nine continents and 30,000 miles. A major focus is the criminalization and... Read Chasing the Scream Summary

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Chew On This: Everything You Don’t Want To Know About Fast Food, co-written by Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson, aims to show young readers “the ripple effect near and far” of the fast food industry (199). Schlosser and Wilson go on to show that fast food can affect consumers on the immediate level of their own bodies and on the less obvious level of destroying indigenous food cultures.In the Introduction, Schlosser and Wilson describe the... Read Chew On This Summary

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Henry David Thoreau’s “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,” more commonly known as “Civil Disobedience,” originated as a Concord Lyceum lecture given in January 1848 as the Mexican-American War was winding down. The essay and its central thesis—that following one’s conscience trumps the need to follow the law—have profoundly impacted global history, political philosophy, and American thought, notably influencing both Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.The text was originally published in an 1849 essay... Read Civil Disobedience Summary

... Read Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives Summary

Following his best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997), geologist and anthropologist Jared Diamond published a companion book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, in 2006. Where Guns, Germs, and Steel described how various environments around the world helped or hindered human civilization, Collapse explains how environmental abuse ruined many past societies and how it threatens civilizations today. An updated edition, released in 2011 by Penguin Books, is the subject of this... Read Collapse Summary

... Read Come As You Are Summary

Atul Gawande’s Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science is a collection of essays that weaves narratives from Gawande’s personal experience as a surgical resident together with research, philosophy, and case studies in medicine. Published in 2002, Complications became a 2002 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction. Gawande, a Rhodes Scholar and MacArthur Fellow, is a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at... Read Complications Summary

... Read Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 Summary

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Consilience is the bringing together of facts and theories from many fields of study to create a coherent, unified system of knowledge. Consilience, published in 1998 by Harvard scientist Edward O. Wilson, argues that the grand quest to unite all human thought, begun during the post-Renaissance Enlightenment era, should continue today, centered on the intellectual power of the scientific method. Professor Wilson believes that science is the foremost method of organized thought ever developed, a... Read Consilience Summary

Written by Michael Frayn, Copenhagen is a two-act play based on a real-life meeting between physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg in 1941. Although based on real events, the play is nonlinear, as its three characters (Bohr, Heisenberg, and Bohr’s wife Margrethe) reunite after death to relive and better understand that fateful meeting. First performed in 1998, the play has won numerous awards, including a Tony Award for Best Play. The play was also adapted... Read Copenhagen Summary

... Read Cosmos Summary