As summer wanes, we’re entering curl-up-with-a-good-book-in-a-cozy-nook season. All the better if it’s a nice, meaty title that gives your grey matter something to chew over. These books, hitting shelves soon, promise to provide just such stimulation, comfort, and challenge.
Tyrant Lizard Queen: The Love, Life, and Terror of Earth’s Greatest Carnivore by Riley Black Recently, researchers have produced a plethora of insight into T. rex—the dinosaur species that stands alone as the spokesreptile of that once mighty branch of Earth’s tree of life. This year alone, we’ve learned why T. rexes had tiny arms, that they had body temperatures similar to humans (97 Fahrenheit), the walking speed of at least one adult T. rex (about 3.5 to 4.5 miles-per-hour), and that the massive beasts took from 35-40 years to grow to full, adult size. What a perfect time for award-winning science writer Riley Black to lead an evidence-based hike through the life of fictitious T. rex, Snaggletooth.
In Tyrant Lizard Queen, Black follows Snaggletooth as she hatches, survives, plays, sleeps, mates, and nests in Cretaceous North America. Sign me up for this walk in the woods. Why We Ask Why: The Science of Explanation and the Human Drive to Understand by Tania Lombrozo Anyone who’s spent time with a toddler or a scientist knows that “whys” come fast and furious.
One might argue that “Why?” is the singular question that separates humans from our fellow Earthlings. Princeton University psychologist Tania Lombrozo has tackled big questions on Nautilus before—how to attain existential comfort without religion and the diceyness of “playing God.” In her latest book, Why We Ask Why, she takes on the mother of all questions, asking why humans so often ask “Why?” With scientific and philosophical insight aplenty, this one seems like quite the read to wrap our questioning minds around. The Taste of Rain in Buenos Aires by William Dowd We at Nautilus have been waiting for this one for a few years.
Our very own Kristen French talked with MIT-trained poet and science writer William Dowd in 2023 about his audacious project to recapture the wonder of reading—stolen from him through a condition called binocular vision disorder—by trying to seed his own dreams. With the help of an experimental dream inception device called Dormio, Dowd used unfamiliar poetry to try and influence the content of his nightly vision quests. The Taste of Rain in Buenos Aires details the results of this yearlong experiment.
Each of Dowd’s 20 guided dreams metamorphoses into a prose poem on the page. 42 Tales from Life: A Modern Bestiary by Richard Dawkins Fifty years after the publication of his most famous book, The Selfish Gene, famed evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins adds to his impressive bibliography with what seems to be a less-loaded topic. In 42 Tales from Life, Dawkins presents a celebration of the evolution of animals where the protagonists are life’s extraordinary adaptations—the most intriguing physical traits and behaviors in Earth’s menagerie, as shaped by the creative process. The 42 vignettes are accompanied by the breathtaking art of Ernst Haekel, the 19th-century polymath whose botanical and zoological artwork has delighted viewers (including Dawkins) for decades.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
