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Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World

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Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World by Matt Parker
Format: Book, eBook
Who it’s for: Adults

What do you get when you cross a stand-up comedian with a math enthusiast? You get Matt Parker, and his chuckle-inducing book Humble Pi. Math typically works quietly behind the scenes of life, ensuring that your internet works, your train runs smoothly on its tracks, and the calendar marches steadily onward…until, suddenly, it doesn’t.

Parker reveals the math mistakes behind some of the world’s most spectacular failures, from a bridge collapse to a stock market meltdown to an election debacle. For an entertaining tour through humanity’s mathematical stumbling blocks, find it in the catalog.

The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World

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The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World by Charles C. Mann
Format: Book
Who it’s for: Adults

How should we feed and provide power to the growing world population? Many debates about this question come down to two conflicting beliefs. We all need to cut back or else everyone will suffer when we hit our ecological limits! says one side. No, we need MORE people doing MORE innovating, and technology will let us overcome all problems! counters the other.

People who espouse the former sentiment, Charles Mann argues, might be called “Prophets”, warning of doom unless we change our ways. The latter, techno-optimist point of view is held by “Wizards”, contending that the magic wand of technology will cause any apparent limits to evaporate.

In The Wizard and the Prophet, Mann examines the lives of two twentieth-century scientists whom you may never have heard of, but whose opposing views came to dominate our current discussions of pressing environmental and humanitarian problems. He uncovers the development of William Vogt’s prophetic beliefs and Norman Borlaug’s wizardly notions, then demonstrates how their philosophical descendants approach some of the conundrums facing humanity: sufficient food, adequate water, energy generation, and climate change.

Find it in the catalog, check it out, then supply yourself with both a dictionary and an open mind as you read this book. Mann will introduce you to both some new words (perfervid, anyone?) and some new thoughts about the key issues of our time.

Roll With It

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Roll With It by Jamie Sumner
Format: Book, Audiobook
Who it’s for: Kids

Ellie has big dreams—she doesn’t just want to be a good baker for a twelve-year-old, she wants to be a great baker, period. Sure, she’s got her challenges—like the aide who has to follow her around the whole school day—but with good news from her doctor, things are looking up.

Then Ellie and her mom have to move so they can help take care of her grandpa, whose dementia is getting worse. Now she’s the new kid at a tiny school, and the only one who uses a wheelchair. Ellie thinks she just might reach her breaking point—until the oddball neighbor kids become, unexpectedly, her friends. Find it in the catalog.

This is Your Brain on Birth Control: The Surprising Science of Women, Hormones, and the Law of Unintended Consequences

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This is Your Brain on Birth Control: The Surprising Science of Women, Hormones, and the Law of Unintended Consequences by Sarah E. Hill
Format: Book
Who it’s for: Adults and Teens

Will your moods go up—or down—once you’re on the pill?

Does using hormonal birth control change your ability to remember events in your life?

Can being on the pill influence who you choose to marry?

Scientists have found the answers, but the vast majority of women have no idea that they should even be asking these questions. This is Your Brain on Birth Control aims to change that situation. Sarah Hill, a psychologist (and birth-control user) explains how a seemingly simple decision about which method of pregnancy prevention to use can affect far more of your life than you’d ever suspect.

This book is no anti-birth-control polemic, though. Hill argues that the best path forward is not the restriction of access, but the spread of information. Women, once adequately informed, can make the best decisions for themselves about this matter of critical importance to women’s (and, it turns out, men’s) lives.

This is Your Brain on Birth Control feels like a conversation with your witty best friend who happens to have a PhD. If you’ve ever used hormonal birth control, plan to use it in the future, or are close to someone who does, you just might want to find it in the catalog.

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big Questions from Tiny Mortals about Death

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Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big Questions from Tiny Mortals about Death by Caitlin Doughty
Formats: Book, eBook
Who it’s for: Adults and Teens

Ever wonder what happens to people’s bodies after they die? Well, so do most kids…and the kids aren’t shy about asking those questions out loud!

Caitlin Doughty, founder of The Order of the Good Death and the Ask a Mortician web series, isn’t shy about answering them either. Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? contains her candid and witty replies to questions ranging from the practical (What would happen if you died on a plane?) to the ultimate practical joke (What would happen if you swallowed a bag of popcorn before you died and were cremated?)

To learn the answer to whether your eyeballs look like tasty morsels to your favorite furry companion after you die, find it in the catalog.

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements

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The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements by Sam Kean
Format: Book
Who it’s for: Adults and Kids (young readers’ edition)

How has beautiful-but-deadly mercury helped us discover the sites where Lewis and Clark camped?

Why is the strong nuclear force like a Tyrannosaurus rex?

What quip by his friend Albert prompted Niels Bohr to reply, “Einstein! Stop telling God what to do”?

The Disappearing Spoon embarks on a journey through the periodic table—but a periodic table far removed from the boring version taught in so many high school chemistry classes. Sam Kean wields a sly sense of humor and a keen eye for human absurdities as he explores forgotten history, quirky science, and the strangeness of the universe.

The author has also published a young readers’ edition aimed at middle school students, to ensure that kids can get in the fun as well.

Oh—and that evanescent spoon? Mold it out of gallium (melting point 85 degrees F), give it to your friends for stirring their hot beverages, and savor their consternation as it disintegrates in their cups.

Better living through chemistry, indeed.

Find both editions in the catalog.