Nonfiction Science

The Microsoft mogul on the positive power of intelligence and creativity.

In this simple question-and-answer audio program with immersive sound design, follow our intrepid babies on an adventure into the their own backyard. Discover the varieties of insects that can be found around the world—their sizes, shapes, and colors. Plus, learn how many species remain for young entomologists to discover in this simple text written in question-and-answer format. Nerdy Babies is a series that the very littlest nerds will want to return to again and again. Stay curious. There’s more to learn about everything!

Whether they're scrambling up trees or scampering across lawns, squirrels are fun animals to watch! Beginning audiences can learn about these furry backyard visitors through low-level text in this engaging title.

This audiobook reveals the secret lives of salt marshes. Along the coasts, where ocean tides mix salt water with fresh water, nature has created salt marshes - soggy places full of natural wonders. For years, salt marshes were maligned, drained, or filled in. Now salt marshes are valued as the home of fascinating wildlife, including more than twenty different species of birds. Ornithologist and photographer Doug Wechsler takes the reader on a down-and-muddy tour of the year-round activity in these wonderlands.

This essay comes from the NPR series This I Believe, which features brief personal reflections from both famous and unknown Americans. The pieces that make up the series compel listeners to rethink not only what and how they have arrived at their beliefs, but also the extent to which they share them with others.

This self-help book is based on actionable life and philosophy. It encourages one to be a flexible learner. Do you fear failure? Enough where you will not even try? Do you believe in predestination or Karma? Imagine you are the best blacksmith in town, circa 1890 and you see your first horseless carriage. Will you try something new, or will the fear of failure stop you from trying? Will you stay a blacksmith? If you want to be more, click to buy.

Find out what an African elephant has in common with a wildebeest. Learn what sets an African elephant apart from a snow leopard. Listeners will compare and contrast key traits of African elephants - their appearance, behavior, habitat, and life cycle - to traits of other mammals. Through gathering information about similarities and differences, listeners will make connections and draw conclusions about what makes this animal a mammal and how mammals are alike and different from each other.

Whenever the subject of Lincoln is brought up, it usually produces a mixed response ranging from adoration to excoriation. Back in 1931 when Lincoln the Man appeared, there were few willing to publicly judge Lincoln on the basis of anything less than hagiographic platitudes. That all changed when the famous poet and writer Edgar Lee Masters published Lincoln the Man. This book is less a biography and more of an analysis of Lincoln’s thinking process and political evolution from backwoods lawyer to president of the United States.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia under Yeltsin and Putin implemented a political system of "imitation democracy," marked by "a huge disparity between formal constitutional principles and the reality of authoritarian rule." How did this system take shape, how else might it have developed, and what are the prospects for re-envisioning it more democratically in the future? These questions animate Dmitrii Furman's Imitation Democracy, a welcome antidote to books that blandly decry Putin as an omnipotent dictator without considering his platforms, constituencies, and sources of power.

As Viv Groskop knows from personal experience, everything that has ever happened to a person has already happened in the Russian classics: from not being sure what to do with your life (Anna Karenina) to being hopelessly in love with someone who doesn't love you back (Turgenev's A Month in the Country). In this sort of literary self-help memoir, Groskop mines these and other works, as well as the lives of their celebrated creators and her own experiences as a student of Russian, to answer the question, "How should you live your life?"

Meet rufa red knot B95. Scientists call him the Moonbird because, in the course of his astoundingly long lifetime, this robin-sized shorebird has flown the distance to the moon - and halfway back! Each February he joins a flock that lifts off from Tierra del Fuego, headed for breeding grounds in the Canadian Arctic, 9,000 miles away. Late in the summer, he begins the return journey. B95 can fly for days, but eventually he must descend to refuel and rest. However, recent changes at stopover sites along his migratory circuit - changes caused mostly by human activity - have reduced the food available and made it harder for the birds to reach.

This essay comes from the NPR series This I Believe, which features brief personal reflections from both famous and unknown Americans. The pieces that make up the series compel listeners to rethink not only what and how they have arrived at their beliefs, but also the extent to which they share them with others.

If a classmate sends threatening emails to you, do you know what to do? Don’t worry if you don’t. This book is here to help! Learn tech-savvy ways to keep bullies out of your technology - without taking away all the fun!

On the trail of Soviet infiltrator Agent Blériot, Svetlana Lokhova takes the reader on a thrilling journey through Stalin’s most audacious intelligence operation. On a sunny September day in 1931, a Soviet spy walked down the gangplank of the luxury transatlantic liner SS Europa and into New York. Attracting no attention, Stanislav Shumovsky had completed his journey from Moscow to enrol at a top American university. He was concealed in a group of 65 Soviet students heading to prestigious academic institutions. But he was after far more than an excellent education.

This beginner's guide offers a first glimpse into the natural world of amphibians. In this addition to the acclaimed About series, educator and author Cathryn Sill uses simple, easy-to-understand language to teach children what amphibians are, how they look, how they move, what they eat, and where they live.

In this timely and incisive book, Sergei Medvedev argues that Russia's war in Ukraine was not merely a whim of Putin's obsession: rather, it was the result of two decades of authoritarian degradation and post-imperial ressentiment, a culmination of Putin's regime and of Russia's entire imperial history.

At least as far back as the ancient myth of Icarus, humans longed to fly - but it wasn't until December 17, 1903, on the windy dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, that the dream finally came true. And it was all thanks to Orville and Wilbur Wright, two former bicycle mechanics who built their first toy plane - a rubber-band powered rotary - when they were just children.

No one thought much of young Thomas Alva Edison. He couldn’t focus at school and caused trouble around the house. But where others saw a distracted and mischievous boy, his mother saw imagination and curiosity. At only seven years old, Al, as he was called as a young child, was educated by his mother at home, who understood his potential could be unlocked with non-conventional learning, allowing him freedom to explore, dream, and be inquisitive.

If you have a curious mind and like to make new discoveries, then I’m sure you like to conduct experiments. Experiments help scientists gather new information and learn interesting facts about what they are studying. Kids will love this fun audiobook about conducting experiments—of course, with adult supervision.

Comment le dentifrice agit-il sur nos dents, les effets du café sur notre cerveau, l'incroyable chimie des odeurs corporelles, les molécules du stress, pourquoi dit-on "brûler ses graisses"... La chimie est partout et personne ne vous l'avait dit ! Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim, jeune chimiste passionnée, nous invite, le temps d'une journée, à parcourir le laboratoire de chimie qu'est notre vie, jusqu'à notre propre microbiome, un écosystème encore plus fort que le microbiote.