The Five Best Reads of this Fall

Your Life: An Owner’s Guide, by Michael R. Slavit, Ph.D.

This book is just what the doctor ordered!  It’s very readable, and it hits home on major life issues as well as nitty-gritty issues.  It starts with helping you sort out your life in terms of your values and goals.  Then it helps you with issues like motivation and getting out of slumps, or depression.  Then it gets right down to issues like managing your money, keeping up with exercise, avoiding clutter, and entertaining in your home.  This guy is down-to-Earth (like me), and knows what he’s talking about. Available on Amazon.  Get it.

The Survival of the Sickest, by Sharon Moalem, M.D., Ph.D.

Another doc, but this one is on the cutting edge of research into health, evolution and environment.  This book will stand you on your ear about how we human beings have evolved in concert with all the other living things on the planet.  You’ll be amazed at what you learn about how certain inherited diseases once helped out ancestors to survive climate changes and plague.  Mile-deep ice cores from Greenland show that, in the past, climate changes have been much more rapid than scientists had previously guessed.  Great book.  Extremely enlightening.  it’s available on audiotape, too.

How I Killed Pluto, and Why it Deserved it, by Michael Brown. 

You’ve probably heard about how Pluto, which used to be called one of the nine planets, has been “down-graded” to a dwarf planet.  What you may not have heard is that far out beyond the orbit of Neptune, Pluto is joined by 8 or 9 other objects just as big.  The Solar System has gotten bigger, not smaller.   This book is not suspenseful, but it sure gives you a peek at what a dedicated scientist goes through to make discoveries – discoveries that may capture the imagination of the next generation of school kids.

Climate Change: Picturing the Science, by Gavin Schmidt.

When you read about retreating glaciers, sinking villages on the Arctic tundra, and drying lakes, there won’t be any doubt in your mind about climate change.  This book is extremely well illustrated .  You’ll enjoy it.

When the Mississippi Ran Backwards, by Jay Feldman. 

You’ve heard of the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906.  But you probably didn’t know that the most devastating series of earthquakes in American history rocked Missouri for 3 months in 1811-1812.  This book has so much history in it!   It tells of the noble character of the Shawnee leader Tecumseh, the daring and successful steamboat trip to New Orleans by the inventor Nicholas Roosevelt, and lots more.  This book will inform and amaze you.