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Our Spring 2026 catalog is here! Highlights include an avian enthusiast's close look at the marvelous engineering of birds, a moving photographic documentary of the Inner Passage, a darkly comedic journey into the science of aging, and a leading expert on race, class, and maternal health's unsettling exploration of the persistence of racism in reproductive healthcare in the US.

Our catalog is free to flip through online via Edelweiss, Issuu, or direct download to your device. Go to the link in our bio to start browsing!

Iris Moon PhD ’13 often finds that in picking up the broken pieces of the past, she is able to assemble them into wondrous and provocative new forms. At the link in the bio, read how she took this approach to her 2024 biography of famed ceramicist Josiah Wedgwood and in her role at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

My forthcoming book, Buried: The Toxic Truth About Our Soil and Groundwater is available for preorder!

Chandra LeGue, Senior Conservation advocate for Oregon Wild and the author of Oregon’s Ancient Forests: A Hiking Guide says of Buried:

“As a forest and public lands advocate, I spend a lot of time in the backcountry among trees, ferns, and wild creatures. I understand and appreciate how the organic soils, rock formations, and waterways that form the foundation of these forests are part of the interconnected ecosystem. It turns out I spend a lot less time thinking about the ground under my feet at home where I garden and take walks around my neighborhood. Buried helped me understand the interconnectedness of what our communities are literally built on, and the many natural and very unnatural compounds that surround and permeate us in our everyday lives—whether we live on a rural farm, in a suburban neighborhood, or a city apartment.”

Preorders are incredibly important for the success of a book and often act as drivers for publishers to spend time and money on promotion when the book is released. Ordering early is a tangible form of support!

You can find it everywhere books are sold online:

https://bookshop.org/p/books/buried-the-toxic-truth-about-our-soil-and-groundwater-ruby-mcconnell/d4db4b0fcfa0bb59?ean=9780262058698&next=t&next=t&affiliate=2238
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/839004/buried-by-ruby-mcconnell/

#nonfiction #newbooks #water #climate #pollution

"Reading uses some of the oldest circuitry in the human brain. For most of our evolutionary history, we were readers — just not of books. We read animal tracks in mud, storm patterns in clouds, danger signals in the rustle of leaves. Our ancestors who could decode these natural patterns survived; those who couldn’t often didn’t.

This ancient pattern-recognition system is what we access every time we open a book. Since written language only emerged about 5,000 years ago — recent in evolutionary terms — our brains haven’t had time to evolve dedicated reading circuits. Instead, we’ve repurposed the neural networks that once kept our ancestors alive in the wild. Neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene calls this the 'neuronal recycling hypothesis.'"

Link to Big Think's story in bio.

Great to see Marie Darrieussecq's "Sleepless: A Memoir of Insomnia," published by @semiotexte, in this roundup of books for insomniacs at @literaryhub.

"What I love best about this wry book is the feeling of kinship Darrieussecq fosters with her fellow insomniacs across time, especially that “champion of insomnia” Franz Kafka, whose diaries she keeps on her bedside table as a comfort, and Marcel Proust. I didn’t know Proust was an insomniac until I read Darrieussecq’s book – which spawned from a 2017 L’Observateur column – but given that his novels are some of the most famous studies in memory ever written, I should have guessed. After all, what is the insomniac doing in the middle of the night but going over the past again and again?"

(link to the complete list in bio)

Great to see Marie Darrieussecq's "Sleepless: A Memoir of Insomnia," published by @semiotexte, in this roundup of books for insomniacs at @literaryhub.

"What I love best about this wry book is the feeling of kinship Darrieussecq fosters with her fellow insomniacs across time, especially that “champion of insomnia” Franz Kafka, whose diaries she keeps on her bedside table as a comfort, and Marcel Proust. I didn’t know Proust was an insomniac until I read Darrieussecq’s book – which spawned from a 2017 L’Observateur column – but given that his novels are some of the most famous studies in memory ever written, I should have guessed. After all, what is the insomniac doing in the middle of the night but going over the past again and again?"

(link to the complete list in bio)

The tradition of monster-slaying in video games is nearly as old as video games themselves. From “Castlevania” to “Elden Ring,” players have long been cast as lone, courageous heroes, hacking and dodging their way through hordes of beasts — until the final boss rises up to make them quake.

But what if the hero doesn’t want to kill the monster? What if slaying monsters brings more shame upon the hero than glory?

As Jaroslav Švelch argues in an excerpt from his book “Player vs. Monsters,” a growing number of games have begun to complicate the fantasy of righteous monster-killing. Increasingly, players are asked to feel guilt, doubt, and even grief over the creatures they destroy. Killing becomes, in Švelch’s words, a “dreadful, melancholy affair, equally tragic for everyone involved.”

In “Shadow of the Colossus,” the sixteen bosses, or “colossi,” are largely peaceful until the player attacks them. When they’re defeated, they roar and writhe in pain as elegiac music swells. In “Undertale,” players can experiment with nonviolence — flirting with, negotiating with, and even pacifying monsters that express very human concerns.

Together, these games ask us to reconsider the assumption that monsters exist to be conquered. “Perhaps true malice,” writes Švelch, “resides not in the monsters themselves but in the systems that classify them as enemies and invite players to sacrifice them at the altar of stats, progress, and a fleeting sense of triumph.”

Read the excerpt at the link in bio.

“The Satie life contains so much murk; his music sparkles with riverine clarity.”

Erik Satie, born on this day in 1866. Follow the link in bio to read an excerpt from Ian Penman's masterful study of the French composer, "Erik Satie: Three Piece Suite" (published by @semiotexte).

In her richly illustrated book "Conjuring the Void," Lynn Gamwell approaches one of the universe’s most mesmerizing and enigmatic phenomena—black holes—through the lens of modern art. Locals: Join the author next week at the @MITMuseum!

📆 Tuesday, May 19th
🕓 6:00 PM
📍314 Main Street | Cambridge, MA, 02142

Copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing after the talk, courtesy of the @MITPressBookstore.

Tap the link in our bio to RSVP.

"A carefully crafted, profound critique of meditation and slowness in digital games, 'Zen and Slow Games' takes us on a journey to the boundaries of the medium, detaching playfulness from the pressures of winning and performing otherwise dominant in games and contemporary societies."
—Martin Roth, author of "Unboxing Japanese Videogames"

Head to the link in bio to order your copy or grab the #openaccess edition.

New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall asked @leahcstokes, a professor of environmental politics and the author of the forthcoming book "The Carbon Wave," how much Trump's fossil fuel handouts and attacks on cheap, clean power are costing the American people. So she sat down and did the math. This year alone, it's on pace to be $1508 per household.

"The big story here is corruption. Trump is doing the bidding of the fossil fuel industry and enriching his friends because they got him elected. I cannot fathom why else he's keeping open these old, dirty, expensive coal plants that were otherwise slated to close in places like Michigan. Someone is getting very rich off these decisions, and everyday Americans are paying the price."

Follow the link in bio to read the full story.

The human brain hasn't changed much since the Stone Age, let alone in the mere thirty years of the Screen Age. That's why, according to neurologist Richard Cytowic, our brains are so poorly equipped to resist the incursions of Big Tech.

Full of practical actions that we can start taking right away, "Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age" offers compelling evidence that we can change the way we use technology, resist its addictive power over us, and take back the control we have lost.

Link in bio to learn more and order.

“We women were right,” says Susana Carmona, a neuroscientist and director of the neuromaternal lab at Hospital Gregorio Marañón in Madrid. “We knew that something happens to our brains, or the way we perceive the world and the way we feel. Now, we have neuroimaging data that very powerfully demonstrates that motherhood changes you completely.”

Follow the link in bio to read the story, and look out for Susana's new book "A Mother's Brain" this October!