The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World

  • Carl Safina
Henry Holt 416 pp. $32 (2011)

Beginning his journey in a kayak on the waters outside his Long Island beach house in New York, ocean conservationist Carl Safina witnesses the migrations of living things across the globe. Travelling from pole to pole and across the tropics during the four seasons, he brings back tales of environmental change in our seas. Although the news isn't good — reef ecosystems are being destroyed by fishing, and penguins and migrating shorebirds are starving as their food webs unravel — he remains struck by nature's beauty and versatility.

A Century of Eugenics in America: From the Indiana Experiment to the Human Genome Era (Bioethics and the Humanities)

Edited by:
  • Paul A. Lombardo
Edited by Indiana University Press 268 pp. $24.95 (2011)

As a nation with lofty ambitions, the United States has had a mixed relationship with eugenics. The first country to prohibit procreation by criminals and 'idiots' — in the state of Indiana in 1907 — today it embraces the Human Genome Project and the possibility of genetic enhancement. Law professor Paul Lombardo examines US legislation and attitudes to human selection in the past century, and the likelihood of such pressures arising again in modern genetics.

Engaging the Public with Climate Change: Behaviour Change and Communication

Edited by:
  • Lorraine Whitmarsh,
  • Saffron O'Neill &
  • Irene Lorenzoni
Edited by Earthscan 288 pp. $84.95 (2011)

Communicating climate science is difficult and politically fraught. A volume edited by scientists from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, UK, examines what works, what doesn't and why. It highlights best practice from around the world using a collection of case studies from academics and practitioners, who share their advice on how to get the climate message to the public and how to promote behaviour change.

The Truth About Grief: The Myth of Its Five Stages and the New Science of Loss

  • Ruth Davis Konigsberg
Simon & Schuster 272 pp. $26 (2011)

Grief is often described, after psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, as following five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Journalist Ruth Davis Konigsberg takes issue with this sequence and proposes a broader assessment. She points out that grieving includes positive emotions, and that we have a capacity for resilience to loss. Drawing on scientific research, she examines how people cope with grief, concluding that although psychotherapy offers support, it does not alleviate the distress experienced.

The Great White Bear: A Natural and Unnatural History of the Polar Bear

  • Kieran Mulvaney
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 272 pp. $26 (2011)

Polar bears are as fascinating as they are striking. Born in snowdrifts, they have white fur yet black skin; they struggle to keep cool in the Arctic climate; they are massive yet pad silently on the ice; and they can wander thousands of miles in a year. Through a blend of fact, cultural history and personal experience, writer Kieran Mulvaney celebrates the paradoxical charm of polar bears, and highlights their uncertain fate as a consequence of hunting and receding sea ice.