Book Review: ‘What I Learned from the Trees’ by Lauren Bowman

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Updated 09 June 2024
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Book Review: ‘What I Learned from the Trees’ by Lauren Bowman

Published in 2021, “What I Learned from Trees” by Lauren Bowman is a beautiful meditation on the lessons humans can learn from nature.

The poetry collection explores the author’s rooted connection with the trees that surround her home. Bowman combines descriptions of the trees she is used to seeing every day with her insightful reflections on the human experience. 

This book is about various species of trees, each with unique lessons to teach people. From the strength and resilience of the oak to the delicate cherry blossom, the author finds wisdom and inspiration in the patterns of the trees. Bowman’s description of each tree’s physical characteristics and ecosystem is engaging and thought-provoking.

One of the collection’s strengths is Bowman’s ability to apply lessons from nature to the human experience. For example, she describes the oak tree’s ability to stand against storms metaphorically to encourage readers to gain inner strength when faced with challenging moments in life.

Another example is the cherry blossom’s short flowering period, which she thinks reflects the essence of one’s life, and how precious moments should be valued. In other words, Bowman invites readers to see trees not only as beautiful part of nature but also as teachers with insights that develops the reader’s personal understanding of life.

Bowman’s appreciation of nature is evident through her narration. Her words are filled with a sense of wonder and humility, reminding readers of their place in the larger structure of life. This perspective is especially important today due to people’s connection to nature is declining in urban spaces. She motivates people to observe, reflect, appreciate, learn, and adapt.

Overall, “What I Learned from Trees” is a call to slow down and think. Bowman’s writing style and deep insights make this book interesting and is recommended for readers searching to develop a genuine appreciation for nature and the power and effect it brings to human life.


Book Review: ‘When Breath Becomes Air’

Updated 17 July 2025
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Book Review: ‘When Breath Becomes Air’

  • Kalanithi, an American neurosurgeon, talks about his own journey from being a physician to becoming a patient himself facing premature mortality

Published a year after the author’s death aged 37 in 2015, “When Breath Becomes Air” is an autobiography about the life and struggle with terminal lung cancer of Dr. Paul Kalanithi.

In the book, Kalanithi, an American neurosurgeon at Stanford University, talks about his own journey from being a physician providing treatment to his patients to becoming a patient himself facing premature mortality.

The narrative moves from talking about how Kalanithi saved lives to confronting the end of his own, reflecting on what makes life worth living in the face of death.

Despite his diagnosis, Kalanithi continued working as a physician and even became a father, explaining to his readers how he embraced life fully until the very end.

Unfortunately, the book had to be completed by his wife after his passing, and serves as a moving meditation on legacy, purpose, and the human experience.

Among the book’s strengths are its authenticity and depth of emotions, touching on everything from the day-to-day experiences of physicians to Kalanithi’s own love of literature — originally, he had studied English at university. A fitting tribute, then, that his own work would go on to become a New York Times’ bestseller.

Neurosurgery, though, was in his words an “unforgiving call to perfection” which not even his diagnosis could check. “Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when,” he wrote. “After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when.”

The book garnered praise upon publication, winning the Goodreads Choice Award for Memoir and Autobiography in 2016. Its run on the NYT’s bestseller list lasted an impressive 68 weeks.

Writing in the Guardian, Alice O’Keefe suggested: “The power of this book lies in its eloquent insistence that we are all confronting our mortality every day, whether we know it or not. The real question we face, Kalanithi writes, is not how long, but rather how, we will live — and the answer does not appear in any medical textbook.”
 


What We Are Reading Today: ‘An Introduction to General Relativity and Cosmology’

Updated 17 July 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘An Introduction to General Relativity and Cosmology’

Author: Steven A. Balbus

General relativity has entered a new phase of its development as technical advances have led to the direct detection of gravitational radiation from the merging of single pairs of stellar-sized black holes. The exquisite sensitivity of pulsar signal timing measurements has also been exploited to reveal the presence of a background of gravitational waves, most likely arising from the mergers of supermassive black holes thought to be present at the center of most galaxies. This book demonstrates how general relativity is central to understanding these and other observations. 


What We Are Reading Today: ‘How to Change a Memory’ by Steve Ramirez

Updated 16 July 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘How to Change a Memory’ by Steve Ramirez

As a graduate student at MIT, Steve Ramirez successfully created false memories in the lab. Now, as a neuroscientist working at the frontiers of brain science, he foresees a future where we can replace our negative memories with positive ones.

In “How to Change a Memory,” Ramirez draws on his own memories—of friendship, family, loss, and recovery—to reveal how memory can be turned on and off like a switch, edited, and even constructed from nothing.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘In The Brain, In Theory’

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Updated 16 July 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘In The Brain, In Theory’

  • Engineering is the use of knowledge to solve technical problems, to build an artifact with a plan

Author: ROMAIN BRETTE 

“In The Brain, In Theory,” Romain Brette argues that the brain is not a “biological computer” because living organisms are not engineered.

Engineering is the use of knowledge to solve technical problems, to build an artifact with a plan. Brette reviews the main theoretical frameworks for thinking about the brain, including computation, neural representations, information, and prediction, and finds them poorly suited to the study of biological cognition.

He proposes understanding the brain as a self-organized, developing community of living entities rather than an optimized assembly of machine components. 

 


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Physics of the Tropical Atmosphere and Tropical Cyclones’

Updated 13 July 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘Physics of the Tropical Atmosphere and Tropical Cyclones’

Author: Kerry Emanuel

“Physics of the Tropical Atmosphere and Tropical Cyclones” provides readers with a firm grounding in the observations, theory, and modeling of tropical weather systems and tropical cyclones.

How and why do tropical cyclones form? What physics underpins their genesis, intensification, structure, and power?

This authoritative and accessible book tackles these and other questions, providing a unifying framework for understanding most tropical weather systems.