Showing results by publisher "Simon & Schuster Audio" in Science & Engineering

They call themselves "sensitives". Over 50 million Americans endure a mysterious environmental illness that renders them allergic to chemicals. Innocuous staples from deodorant to garbage bags wreak havoc on sensitives. For them, the enemy is modernity itself. No one is born with EI. It often starts with a single toxic exposure. Then, the symptoms hit: extreme fatigue, brain fog, muscle aches, inability to tolerate certain foods. With over 85,000 chemicals in the environment, danger lurks around every corner.

Humans have landed men on the moon, programmed cars to drive themselves, and put the knowledge of our entire civilization in your back pocket. But no one - from MIT nerds to Army Corps engineers - has ever built a robot that can lay bricks as well as a mason. Unlike the controlled conditions of a factory line, where robots are now ubiquitous, no two construction sites are alike, and a day’s work involves countless variables - bricks that range in size and quality, temperamental mortar mixes, uneven terrain, fickle weather, and moody foremen.

Living in West Berlin in the 1960s often felt like living in a zoo, everyone packed together behind a wall, with the world always watching. On the other side of the Iron Curtain, the East Berlin zoo was spacious and lush, a socialist utopia where everything was perfectly planned...and then rarely successfully finished. Berlin’s two zoos quickly became symbols of the divided city’s two halves. So no one was terribly surprised when the head zookeepers on either side started an animal arms race - rather than stockpiling nuclear warheads, competing to have the most pandas and hippos.

In this groundbreaking guide to maximizing the restorative and regenerative benefits of light, psychologist Karl Ryberg explains how to use different types of light - sun, fire, and even artificial lighting - in order to create ultimate health and a happy mind.

The acclaimed author of Pandora’s Lunchbox and former New York Times reporter takes an enlightening, engaging, deep dive into the world of alternative medicine and the surprising science that explains why it may work.

In this gripping memoir of a young man, a wolf, and their parallel lives and ultimate collision, Bryce Andrews describes life on the remote, windswept Sun Ranch in Southwest Montana. The Sun's 20,000 acres of rangeland occupy a still-wild corner of Southwest Montana - a high valley surrounded by mountain ranges and steep creeks with portentous names like Grizzly, Dead Man, and Bad Luck.

"Our Choice gathers in one place all of the most effective solutions that are available now and that, together, will solve this crisis. It is meant to depoliticize the issue as much as possible and inspire readers to take action - not only on an individual basis but as participants in the political processes by which every country, and the world as a whole, makes the choice that now confronts us." (Al Gore, from the Introduction)

In August 1995, twenty-six passengers and a crew of three board a commuter plane in Atlanta headed for Gulfport, Mississippi. Shortly after takeoff they hear an explosion, and some see a mangled engine lodged against the wing. From that moment, nine minutes and twenty seconds elapse until the crippled plane crashes in a west Georgia hayfield. Gary Pomerantz takes listeners deep into the hearts and minds of the people aboard, each of whom prepares in his or her own way for what may come.

In a penetrating exploration of American hero worship, Hansen addresses the complex legacy of the First Man, as an astronaut and as an individual. In First Man, the personal, technological, epic, and iconic blend to form the portrait of a great but reluctant hero who will forever be known as history's most famous space traveler.

In this extraordinary narrative, Alan Tennant recounts his all-out effort to radio-track the transcontinental migration of the peregrine falcon, an investigation no one before him had ever taken to such lengths.

Part hilarious farce, part biting gender commentary, Amram blends Cosmo and science to highlight absurdities with a machine-gun of laugh-inducing lines that leave nothing and no one unscathed. Subjects include: this Spring's ten most glamorous ways to die; tips for hosting your own big bang; what religion is right for your body type; and the most pressing issue facing women today: kale!!! Be prepared to laugh about anything in this outrageous satirical gem.

Wildfires, hurricanes, and heat waves make headlines. But what is happening in Debra Hendrickson’s clinic tells another story of this strange and unsettling time. Hendrickson is a pediatrician in Reno, Nevada—the fastest warming city in the United States, where ash falls like snow during summer wildfires. In The Air They Breathe, Dr. Hendrickson recounts patients she’s seen who were harmed by worsening smoke, smog, and pollen.

The future is now. Artificial "machine" intelligence is playing an ever-greater role in our society. We are already using cruise control in our cars and automatic checkout at the drugstore and are unable to live without our smartphones. The discussion around AI is largely polarized; people think either machines will solve all problems for everyone or they will lead us down a dark, dystopian path into total human irrelevance. Regardless of what you believe, the idea that we might bring forth intelligent creation can be intrinsically frightening.

Climate change is here. From the millions displaced by the floods in Pakistan to California and Canadian towns incinerated by wildfires, we are experiencing the anguish that climate change causes. Fossil fuels are making the planet unlivable, and they are deadly. We know that we must cut emissions if we are going to limit the catastrophes, but is that enough? In Into the Clear Blue Sky, climate scientist and chair of the Global Carbon Project Rob Jackson explains that we need to redefine our goals.

Celebrated storyteller and historian Edward Dolnick leads us through a compelling true adventure as the paleontologists of the first half of the 19th century puzzled their way through the fossil record to create the story of dinosaurs we know today. The tale begins with Mary Anning, a poor, uneducated woman who had a sixth sense for finding fossils buried deep inside cliffs; and moves to a brilliant, eccentric geologist named William Buckland.

We are living in a golden age in astronomy and in the search for life the universe. Over the last few decades, space exploration has shown that not only are there habitable environments within our solar system, but there are millions of exoplanets within our galaxy that could support life. We are on the cusp of breakthroughs that will revolutionize our understanding of our place in the cosmos in. In The Secret Life of the Universe, astrobiologist and the director of the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute Nathalie A. Cabrol takes us to the frontiers of the search for life.

Well before COVID-19 swept across the United States and the chairman of Tyson Foods infamously declared that the food supply chain was dangerously vulnerable, America’s meat industry was reaching a breaking point. Years of consolidation, price-fixing, and power grabs by elite industry insiders have harmed consumers and caused environmental destruction. Americans have no idea where their meat comes from. And while that’s hurting us, it’s also making others rich.

Anyone who loves fishing - on a lake, pond, river, or ocean - is guaranteed to love Jimmy Houston's insightful, instructive, and laugh-out-loud funny tips and tales. Whether he's fishing with sports or political celebrities or his children, Jimmy proves there's no story like a fish story, and here are his best-packed with all the know - how that has made his name a legend.

In building a railroad, there is only one decisive spot - the end of the track. Nothing like this great work had ever been seen in the world when the last spike, a golden one, was driven in Promontory Peak, Utah, in 1869, as the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific tracks were joined. Ambrose writes with power and eloquence about the brave men - the famous and the unheralded, ordinary men doing the extraordinary - who accomplished the spectacular feat that made the continent into a nation.

Lab Girl meets Why Fish Don’t Exist in this brilliant, fascinating memoir about a young scientist’s experience studying penguins in Antarctica—a firsthand account of the beauty and brutality of this remote climate, the direct effects of climate change on animals, and the challenges of fieldwork.