Naomi Oreskes Book order

The bestselling authors of Merchants of Doubt offer a profound, startling history of one of America’s most tenacious—and destructive—false ideas: the “magic of the marketplace.”

A story about a witch named Lazar who takes her pet pig, Crikky, to a farm to meet some animals. At the farm they meet some chickens, a sheep, a horse, a dog, and another pig.

"Mars and its secrets have fascinated and mystified humans since ancient times. Its vivid color and visibility to the naked eye, its geologic kinship with Earth, its potential as our best hope for settlement-Mars embodies everything that inspires us about space and space exploration. In this book, National Air and Space Museum Curator Matthew Shindell captures the majesty of the red planet and the work done by people on Earth to explore it. He connects our current period of human exploration of Mars to the work done through the centuries and across cultures by asking how the quest to understand Mars has shaped our knowledge of ourselves, our own planet, our solar system, and beyond. For the Love of Mars reveals why Mars has piqued scientists' interest for centuries. It brings to light how difficult and sometimes flawed martian discoveries could be for earth-bound planetary explorers and, by focusing on the human stories behind the telescopes and behind the robots we have come to know and love, shows how Mars exploration became more sophisticated through the years in ways that helped expand knowledge about other facets of space and the universe. A must read for everyone curious about Curiosity and the Red Planet"-- Provided by publisher

Focusing on environmental assessments related to issues such as acid rain, ozone depletion, and sea level rise, the authors examine the decision-making processes of experts in shaping scientific understanding of climate change. The book delves into how scientists form their judgments, the influence of organizational structures on these assessments, and the construction of expertise within the field. By analyzing these dynamics, it sheds light on the critical role that expert evaluations play in guiding government environmental policies and actions.

"Do doctors really know what they are talking about when they tell us vaccines are safe? Should we take climate experts at their word when they warn us about the perils of global warming? Why should we trust science when our own politicians don't? In this landmark book, Naomi Oreskes offers a bold and compelling defense of science, revealing why the social character of scientific knowledge is its greatest strength--and the greatest reason we can trust it. Tracing the history and philosophy of science from the late nineteenth century to today, Oreskes explains that, contrary to popular belief, there is no single scientific method. Rather, the trustworthiness of scientific claims derives from the social process by which they are rigorously vetted. This process is not perfect -- nothing ever is when humans are involved--but she draws vital lessons from cases where scientists got it wrong. Oreskes shows how consensus is a crucial indicator of when a scientific matter has been settled, and when the knowledge produced is likely to be trustworthy."-- Provided by publisher

"Harold C. Urey (1893-1981) was one of the most famous American chemists of the twentieth century. After winning the Nobel Prize in 1934 for the discovery of deuterium and heavy water, he participated in the Manhattan Project and NASA's lunar exploration program, and along the way helped found the fields of isotope geochemistry and cosmochemistry. He also tried to be a voice of moral authority during the Cold War, and to give Americans a reason to feel inspired to meet the challenges and anxieties of Cold War life. In this first biography, Matthew Shindell follows Urey as he moves through American science and culture in the twentieth century, drawing out the resources available to him and his generation of scientists. Shindell uses Urey's movement from farm boy to scientific celebrity to explore the changes in the American social and scientific landscape that made this trajectory possible"-- Provided by publisher

Investigations of how the global Cold War shaped national scientific and technological practices in fields from biomedicine to rocket science

In 2393, a historian of the Second People's Republic of China reviews the "Penumbral Age" (1988-2093), when politicians, corporations, and scientists ignored the statistical significance of climate disaster. Carbon dioxide warming the planet, deadly summer heat and fires, and the collapse of the West Antarctica Ice Sheet lead to a second Black Death and "the Great Collapse" of the Western world

The U.S. scientific community has long led the world in research on such areas as public health, environmental science, and issues affecting quality of life. Our scientists have produced landmark studies on the dangers of DDT, tobacco smoke, acid rain, and global warming. But at the same time, a small yet potent subset of this community leads the world in vehement denial of these dangers. Merchants of Doubt tells the story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades. Remarkably, the same individuals surface repeatedly - some of the same figures who have claimed that the science of global warming is "not settled" denied the truth of studies linking smoking to lung cancer, coal smoke to acid rain, and CFCs to the ozone hole. "Doubt is our product," wrote one tobacco executive. These 'experts' supplied it. Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, historians of science, roll back the rug on this dark corner of the American scientific community, showing how ideology and corporate interests, aided by a too-compliant media, have skewed public understanding of some of the most pressing issues of our era.