New Science Books from Perpich Library

September 23, 2024

The Perpich Library has added several new science books the past few years. Many of them are visually stunning and really fascinating to page through. This is a selection of the newest and best titles added to the collection.

All items on this list are available at the Perpich library. Click on titles for more information.

1. Birds of Minnesota Field Guide by Stan Tekiela
Learn to identify birds in Minnesota, and make bird-watching even more enjoyable. With Stan Tekiela’s famous field guide, bird identification is simple and informative. There’s no need to look through dozens of photos of birds that don’t live in your area. This book features 123 species of Minnesota birds organized by color for ease of use.

2. Birds of the World: The Art of Elizabeth Gould by Andrea Hart & Ann Datta
For all of her short life, Elizabeth Gould’s artistic career was appreciated through the lens of her husband, ornithologist John Gould, with whom she embarked on a series of ambitious projects to document and illustrate the birds of the world. This marvelous volume offers a new and timely tribute to Elizabeth’s reputation and skill. It opens with an introduction to her life and achievements that reflects the latest scholarship. Following is a geographically-organized collection of full-color plates depicting birds from nineteenth-century Europe, South and Central America, Africa, Asia, and Australia including previously unpublished original artworks.

3. Book of Earth: A Guide to Ochre, Pigment, and Raw Color by Heidi Gustafson
Art meets science in Book of Earth, artist and ochre specialist Heidi Gustafson’s guide to creating color with Earth’s extraordinary pigments, exploring their fascinating uses today and throughout history and culture. Part anthropological study, part art book, and part how-to, Book of Earth is an immersive introduction into the world of ochre, a naturally occurring mineral used to make pigment.

4. Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer
A series of linked personal essays that will lead general readers and scientists alike to an understanding of how mosses live and how their lives are intertwined with the lives of countless other beings, from salmon and hummingbirds to redwoods and rednecks. Kimmerer clearly and artfully explains the biology of mosses, while at the same time reflecting on what these fascinating organisms have to teach us.

5. How to Teach Nature Journaling: Curiosity, Wonder, Attention by John Muir Laws & Emilie Lygren
The first-ever comprehensive book devoted to helping educators use nature journaling as an inspiring teaching tool to engage young people with wild places. It puts together curriculum plans, advice, and in-the-field experience so that educators of all stripes can leap into journaling with their students. The approaches are designed to work in a range of ecosystems and settings, and are suitable for classroom teachers, outdoor educators, camp counselors, and homeschooling parents.

6. An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong
The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every kind of animal, including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world. In An Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us.

7. Oceanology: The Secrets of the Sea Revealed by DK
An informative and utterly beautiful introduction to marine life and the ocean environment, Oceanology brings the riches of the underwater world onto the printed page. Astounding photography reveals an abundance of life, from microscopic plankton to great whales, seaweed to starfish. Published in association with the Smithsonian Institution, the book explores every corner of the oceans, from coral reefs and mangrove swamps to deep ocean trenches.

8. Plant: Exploring the Botanical World by Phaidon Editors
This fresh and visually stunning survey celebrates the extraordinary beauty and diversity of plants. It combines photographs and cutting-edge micrograph scans with watercolors, drawings, and prints to bring this universally popular and captivating subject vividly to life. Carefully selected by an international panel of experts and arranged in a uniquely structured sequence to highlight thought-provoking contrasts and similarities, this stunning compilation of botanically-themed images includes iconic work by celebrated artists, photographers, scientists, and botanical illustrators, as well as rare and previously unpublished images.

9. The Science of the Earth: The Secrets of Our Planet Revealed by DK
An informative, visually arresting introduction to planet Earth. The core of the book features large, detailed photographs of single objects, many of them small enough to be held in the hand, that each speaks volumes about an aspect of Earth’s environments and how they work.

10. The Wondrous Workings of Planet Earth: Understanding Our World and Its Ecosystems by Rachel Ignotofsky
Making earth science accessible and entertaining through art, maps, and infographics, The Wondrous Workings of Planet Earth explains how our planet works—and how we can protect it—from its diverse ecosystems and their inhabitants, to the levels of ecology, the importance of biodiversity, the cycles of nature, and more. Science- and nature-loving readers of all ages will delight in this utterly charming guide to our amazing home.

All items on this list are available at the Perpich Library.

Title descriptions are provided by Amazon and/or the publisher.