Why has the "War on Cancer" languished, focusing mainly on finding and treating the disease and downplaying the need to control and combat cancer's basic causes -- tobacco, the workplace, radiation, and the general environment? This war has targeted the wrong enemies with the wrong weapons, failing to address well-known cancer causes.As epidemiologist Devra Davis shows in this superbly researched expose, this is no accident. The War on Cancer has followed the commercial in...

Freakonomics lived on the New York Times bestseller list for an astonishing two years. Now authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with more iconoclastic insights and observations in SuperFreakonomics—the long awaited follow-up to their New York Times Notable blockbuster. Based on revolutionary research and original studies, SuperFreakonomics promises to once again challenge our view of human behavior and the way the world real...

The eureka moments behind discoveries from penicillin to Pap smears: “A character-rich account of the role of chance in scientific research . . . Illuminating.” —Kirkus ReviewsWhat do penicillin, chemotherapy drugs, X-rays, Valium, the Pap smear, and Viagra have in common? They were each discovered accidentally, stumbled upon in the search for something else.In the 1990s, Pfizer had high hopes for a new drug that would boost blood flow to the heart...

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The riveting true story of a small town ravaged by industrial pollution, “every bit as important—and as well written—as A Civil Action and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” (The Star-Ledger)“A new classic of science reporting.”—The New York Times“A gripping, page-turning environmental thriller.”—NPR“Unstoppable...

In The Demon Under the Microscope, Thomas Hager chronicles the dramatic history of sulfa, the first antibiotic and the drug that shaped modern medicine.The Nazis discovered it. The Allies won the war with it. It conquered diseases, changed laws, and single-handedly launched the era of antibiotics. Sulfa saved millions of lives—among them those of Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr.—but its real effects are even more far reaching. Sulfa chan...

When the woman he loved was diagnosed with a metastatic cancer, science writer George Johnson embarked on a journey to learn everything he could about the disease and the people who dedicate their lives to understanding and combating it. What he discovered is a revolution under way—an explosion of new ideas about what cancer really is and where it comes from. In a provocative and intellectually vibrant exploration, he takes us on an adventure through the history and recent advances of canc...

**A 2012 New York Times Notable BookA 2013 Los Angeles Times Book Award Winner in the Science & Technology categoryAn engaging narrative about an incredible, life-giving organ and its imperiled modern fate.**Did you know that breast milk contains substances similar to cannabis? Or that it’s sold on the Internet for 262 times the price of oil? Feted and fetishized, the breast is an evolutionary masterpiece. But in the modern world, the breast is chan...

An investigation of the massive agribusiness company, from a winner of the Rachel Carson Prize: "Well supported by wide-ranging scientific evidence." — Kirkus ReviewsThe result of a remarkable three-year-long investigation that took award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin across four continents, The World According to Monsanto tells the little-known yet shocking story of this agribusiness giant—the ...

The Skeptical Environmentalist challenges widely held beliefs that the environmental situation is getting worse and worse. The author, himself a former member of Greenpeace, is critical of the way in which many environmental organisations make selective and misleading use of the scientific evidence. Using the best available statistical information from internationally recognised research institutes, Bjørn Lomborg systematically examines a range of major environmental problems that feature ...

Sandra Steingraber, biologist, poet, and survivor of cancer in her twenties, brings all three perspectives to bear on the most important health and human rights issue of our time: the growing body of evidence linking cancer to environmental contaminations. Her scrupulously researched scientific analysis ranges from the alarming worldwide patterns of cancer incidence to the sabotage wrought by cancer-promoting substances on the intricate workings of human cells. In a gripping personal narra...

What happens when ideas presented as science lead us in the wrong direction?History is filled with brilliant ideas that gave rise to disaster, and this book explores the most fascinating—and significant—missteps: from opium's heyday as the pain reliever of choice to recognition of opioids as a major cause of death in the U.S.; from the rise of trans fats as the golden ingredient for tastier, cheaper food to the heart disease epidemic that followed; and from the cries to ban DDT for ...

**NATIONAL BESTSELLERA powerfully engaging, scrupulously researched, and deeply empathetic narrative of the history of Alzheimer’s disease, how it affects us, and the search for a cure.**Afflicting nearly half of all people over the age of 85, Alzheimer’s disease kills nearly 100,000 Americans a year as it insidiously robs them of their memory and wreaks havoc on the lives of their loved ones. It was once minimized and misunderstood as forgetfulness in the elderly, but Alzh...