The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

  • Leonard Mlodinow
Pantheon (2015) 9780141980997 | ISBN: 978-0-1419-8099-7

Like Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens (Harvill Secker, 2014; see Nature 512, 369; 2014), this is an audacious encapsulation of our species' trek from savannah to city. But physicist Leonard Mlodinow dwells less on our aggression than on our curiosity. As he traces the human brain's evolution over millions of years, the birth of science over hundreds, and the modern physics revolution over tens, a tale of hope and glory emerges, from the “leap in existential consciousness” at the Neolithic site of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey to twentieth-century atomic epiphanies.

The Weather Experiment: The Pioneers who Sought to see the Future

  • Peter Moore
Chatto and Windus (2015) 9780701187996 | ISBN: 978-0-7011-8799-6

Prepare for turbulence in this history of Britain's seminal contribution to weather forecasting. Peter Moore reveals how the lack of early warning exacerbated the impact of events such as the Great Storm of 1703 — which blew cattle over hedges and spun windmills so fast that they burst into flames. The nineteenth-century arrival of Francis Beaufort (who quantified wind) and chemist Luke Howard (who classified clouds) was a turning point. But the star was 'Darwin's captain' Robert FitzRoy, who founded the UK forecasting system, but killed himself before he saw his vision realized.

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics

  • Richard H. Thaler
Allen Lane (2015) 9781846144035 | ISBN: 978-1-8461-4403-5

In Nudge (Yale University Press, 2008), co-authored with Cass Sunstein, behavioural-economics pioneer Richard Thaler revealed how human irrationality shapes markets. Here he relates the evolution of those ideas by way of eureka moments and buzzy collaborations. Puzzling over behaviours that failed to fit established economic models, he became galvanized by the work of psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky on heuristics and biases. As Thaler's story of research into self-control and other neglected topics unfolds, his tussles with traditional economists inject plenty of zing.

The Narrow Edge: A Tiny Bird, an Ancient Crab, and an Epic Journey

  • Deborah Cramer
Yale University Press (2015) 9780300185195 | ISBN: 978-0-3001-8519-5

The red knot (Calidris canutus rufa) is a migratory marathoner. The sandpiper flies nearly 30,000 kilometres per year, from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic and back, stopping on the US East Coast to feast on horseshoe-crab eggs — but on the wing for up to 6,000 kilometres at a time. With the bird's food sources and habitats now threatened, writer Deborah Cramer travels with some of the dedicated researchers working along its flyway. An eloquent interweaving of history, field practice and keen personal observation.

The Lost World of the Old Ones: Discoveries in the Ancient Southwest

  • David Roberts
W. W. Norton (2015) 9780393241624 | ISBN: 978-0-3932-4162-4

An enigmatic civilization — the Ancestral Puebloans, or Old Ones — once flourished in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah. When its peoples disappeared in AD 1300, they left behind stunning rock art and dwellings sited like swallows' nests on sheer canyon walls. David Roberts braids his own daredevil discoveries of remote sites into the stories of Southwestern archaeologists and ranchers who are as gripped by this lost culture of “genius climbers” as he is.