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Author: JOAN MALOOF
“Treepedia” is an entertaining and fact-filled illustrated compendium of tree lore.
Featuring nearly 100 entries—on topics ranging from tree ecology and conservation to the role of trees in religion, literature, art, and movies—this enticing collection is a celebration of all things arboreal.
In this charming book, Joan Maloof explains the difference between a cedar and a cypress, and reveals where to find the most remarkable trees on the planet.
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.
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.
In “The Seed Detective,” Adam Alexander shares his own stories of seed hunting, with the origin stories behind many of our everyday vegetable heroes.
Taking us on a journey that began when we left the life of the hunter-gatherer to become farmers, he tells tales of globalization, political intrigue, colonization and serendipity – describing how these vegetables and their travels have become embedded in our food cultures.
Author: John Mullan
To mark 250 years since the birth of one of the most famous women authors in English literature, John Mullan’s “What Matters in Jane Austen? Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved” has been reissued.
First published in 2012, the book is a kind of literary scavenger hunt, with Mullan as guide — witty, knowing and visibly delighted by the patterns and puzzles he uncovers.
We go on the journey with him, uncovering the meanings embedded in the seemingly minor, but not minute, details of Austen’s fiction.
The Lord Northcliffe professor of modern English literature at University College London, Mullan is a leading authority on Austen. He has edited “Sense and Sensibility” and “Emma” for Oxford World’s Classics and has published widely on 18th- and 19th-century literature.
In this work he poses 20 questions such as: “Why is the weather important?” “How much money is enough?” “Why is Darcy so rude?” and “What do the characters call each other?”
That last question forms one of the book’s most interesting chapters for me. It’s about the seemingly stealthy and subtle ways in which the characters address others by a name and the power of not saying their name at all.
In Austen’s world, names are never casual. A shift from a formal title to a first name can signal a change in status, desire or familiarity. A name can be a quiet form of rebellion or a coded expression of closeness or longing. It matters whether someone is “Miss Bennet” or “Elizabeth,” whether a man dares to use her given name directly and whether that liberty is permitted or returned.
Again and again, Mullan shows us how much Austen could signal with the smallest of choices. What seems like a passing detail is likely loaded with meaning.
This new edition, with a fresh preface, is a fitting tribute to Austen’s longevity. Rather than framing her novels as relics to admire, Mullan treats them as living texts full of sly codes and sharp decisions.
It offers fans of Austen’s work something they crave: evidence. A deep dive into the text itself.
By the end, the title becomes clear, not just because Mullan asked the right questions but because, through his close reading and sharp observations, we begin to get answers.
To Austen, who died in 1817, everything mattered: names, clothes, weather, silence. And more than two centuries later, her world — precise, constrained, emotionally charged — still has plenty to show and tell.
Author: Mark Tuitert
Olympic champion speed skater Mark Tuitert merges ancient philosophy with modern resilience in “The Stoic Mindset,” published in 2024.
The guide transcends typical self-help tropes, offering strategies to transform adversity into strength through the principles of Stoicism.
This ancient philosophy provides a tool kit for staying calm, focused, and strong in the face of life’s chaos. Emerging in Ancient Greece and later popularized in Rome, it is less about dusty theories and more about how to live well.
Tuitert’s narrative begins with his own crucible: the pressure-cooker world of elite athletics, where injuries and setbacks threatened his career. His discovery of Stoicism became his mental armor. The book meticulously unpacks core tenets, focusing on actionable responses, reframing obstacles as opportunities, and cultivating “amor fati” (love of fate).
What resonates most is Tuitert’s rejection of passive acceptance. Instead, he advocates active resilience, using journaling, mindfulness, and preemptive adversity training to fortify mental agility.
His chapter on failure dissects how embracing vulnerability fuels growth, illustrated by his comeback from a career-threatening injury to clinch gold at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.
Tuitert’s prose is refreshingly pragmatic. He avoids academic jargon, grounding Seneca and Marcus Aurelius’ wisdom in relatable anecdotes — from navigating corporate burnout to parenting challenges. His emphasis on practice over theory stands out as well.
Some may criticize the athletic parallels as niche, but Tuitert universalizes them deftly.
While examining Tuitert’s practical Stoicism, I happened to contrast his Olympic-forged resilience with Nietzsche’s fiery critique of Stoic detachment, revealing how one stabilizes storms while the other ignites revolutions.
I found that Tuitert seeks mastery through emotional discipline, whereas Nietzsche champions vitality through embracing chaos.
In an era of digital overload and anxiety, “The Stoic Mindset” is a tactical manifesto for clarity.
Tuitert’s genius lies in making a 2,000-year-old philosophy feel urgently contemporary, proving that true victory is not avoiding storms but learning to dance in the rain.
