Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists: Invention, Discovery, & Exploration

Within the next five years, Kahn predicts, AI will disrupt almost every industry and enterprise. It will restructure the workforce, revamp education, revolutionize health care, and compel us to reimagine how we make art. But while this new technology has a bright future, it also casts a dark and fearful shadow. Kahn argues. that if not carefully designed and vigilantly regulated, AI will deepen income inequality, undermine democracy, and rewire our brains—unless we all take decisive action to prevent this from happening.
(Description from NoveList)

Carr unlocks the science behind the sleeping body, exploring the relationship between dreams and mental health, with a deep dive into the neuroscience behind some of the most interesting aspects of dreaming: nightmares, lucid dreams, and the cutting-edge field of dream engineering.
(Description from NoveList)

A riveting history of the American West told for the first time through the pioneering women who used the challenges of migration and settlement as opportunities to advocate for their rights, and transformed the country in the process. (Description from catalog)

Combines historical context with personal narratives of five women to reveal systemic failures in U.S. pregnancy care, highlighting widespread challenges and injustices, while advocating for empathy and solidarity amid a fractured reproductive landscape.
(Description from NoveList)

A firsthand, never-before-told account of the creation of OceanGate, the heartbreaking Titan tragedy and the supposed villain behind it all, Stockton Rush, as told by the only person who can: his cofounder and friend.
(Description from Amazon)

The story of a woman who overcame the limitations and expectations imposed by her social status and pushed forward an entirely new branch of science that we still use today.
(Description from catalog)

A biography of the pioneering public health activist and industrial medicine expert shows how she challenged the booming auto industry in the 1920s, exposing the dangers of leaded gasoline and advocating for worker safety and saving countless lives.
(Description from NoveList)

An account of the previously unheralded but pivotal contributions of NASA's African-American women mathematicians to America's space program describes how they were segregated from their white counterparts by Jim Crow laws in spite of their groundbreaking successes. (Description from NoveList)

A biography of the great astronomer and scientist, and an examination of the faith vs. science question, then and now, written by a noted astrophysicist and author. (Description from catalog.)

A prismatic look at the meeting of Marie Curie and Albert Einstein and the impact these two pillars of science had on the world of physics, which was in turmoil. (Description from catalog)

A definitive history of the race to unravel DNA's structure, by one of our most prominent medical historians. (Description from catalog)

The true story of the little-known mental-health pioneer who revolutionised how we see the defining problem of our era- anxiety. (Description from catalog.)

The vivid biography of two pioneering sisters who, together, became America's first female doctors and transformed New York's medical establishment by creating a hospital by and for women. (Description from catalog)

A sixtieth-anniversary tribute to Russia's history-making first space mission documents the story of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the program's repurposing of a nuclear ballistic missile, and the Cold War challenges that shrouded the mission in secrecy. (Description from catalog)

Set amid the tensions of the Cold War and the upheavals of the sixties, and filled with first-person, behind-the-scenes details, Shoot for the Moon is a gripping account of the dangers, the challenges, and the sheer determination that defined not only Apollo 11, but also the Mercury and Gemini missions that came before it. (Description from catalog)

After we first launched Americans into space but before we touched down on the moon’s surface, there was the Gemini program. It was no easy jump from manned missions in low-Earth orbit to a successful moon landing, and the ten-flight, twenty-month celestial story of the Gemini program is an extraordinary one.
(Description from NoveList)

Erling Kagge and his friend Borge Ousland became the first people to ever reach the North Pole without dogs, without depots and without motorized aids, skiing for 58 days from a drop off point on the ice edge of Canada’s northernmost island. Erling describes his record-making journey, probing the physical challenges and psychological motivations for embarking on such an epic expedition, the history of the territory’s exploration, its place in legend and art, and the thrilling adventures he experienced during the trek.
(Description from NoveList)

In July 1881, Lt. A.W. Greely and his crew of 24 scientists and explorers were bound for the last region unmarked on global maps. Their goal: Farthest North. What would follow was one of the most extraordinary and terrible voyages ever made. Labyrinth of Ice tells the true story of the heroic lives and deaths of these voyagers hell-bent on fame and fortune—at any cost—and how their journey changed the world. (Description from NoveList.)

Roger Dooley wasn’t looking for the San José. But an accidental discovery in the dusty stacks of a Spanish archive led him to the story of a lifetime, the tale of a great eighteenth-century treasure ship loaded with riches from the New World and destined for Spain.
(Description from NoveList)

Only a few hundred vessels have ever transited the Northwest Passage, stretching through Canada's north from Maine to Alaska - and fewer have completed the treacherous journey in a fiberglass-hulled boat like Polar Sun. Mark Synnott was determined to add his name to the list, and in doing so, also investigate a 175-year-old mystery - what happened to Sir John Franklin and his crew on the legendary HMS Erebus and HMS Terror.
(Description from NoveList)

In 1932, Roy Chapman Andrews, the president of the Explorers Club, told hundreds of female students at Barnard College that women and exploration could never mix. He obviously didn't know a thing about either...The Girl Explorers is the inspirational and untold story of the women who broke apart the stuffy men's club and founded the Society of Woman Geographers (SWG), and how some key members--including Blair Niles, Amelia Earhart, Gloria Hollister, and Anna Heyward Taylor-paved the way for women scientists by scaling mountains, exploring the seas, flying across the Atlantic, and recording the world through film, sculpture, and art. (Description from catalog)

From the decipherment of hieroglyphics in 1822 to the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon a hundred yearslater, the uncovering of Egypt's ancient past took place in an atmosphere of grand adventure and international rivalry. In A World Beneath the Sands, the acclaimed Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson chronicles the ruthless race between the British, French, Germans and Americans to lay claim to its mysteries and treasures. (Description from catalog.)

True Raiders is The Lost City of Z meets The Da Vinci Code, from critically acclaimed author Brad Ricca. This book tells the untold true story of Monty Parker, a British rogue nobleman who, after being dared to do so by Ava Astor, the so-called "most beautiful woman in the world," headed a secret 1909 expedition to find the fabled Ark of the Covenant. (Description from catalog)

This sweeping history of the Western Hemisphere from a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian re-examines the intertwined destinies of North and South America, challenging traditional narratives and revealing a complex and dynamic relationship shaped by conflict, cooperation and mutual influence.
(Description from NoveList)

Documents the true story of the nineteenth-century rediscovery of the Mayan civilization by American ambassador John Lloyd Stephens and British architect Frederick Catherwood, illuminating how their findings profoundly changed Western understandings about human history. (Description from catalog)

To celebrate America’s 250th anniversary, Walter Isaacson takes readers on a fascinating deep dive into the creation of one of history’s most powerful sentences: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
(Description from NoveList)

The explosive true saga of the legendary figure, Daniel Boone, and the bloody struggle for America's frontier by two bestselling authors at the height of their writing power--Bob Drury and Tom Clavin. (Description from catalog)

The Undiscovered Country strips away the layers of myth to reveal the true story of this first epoch of American history. From the forests of Pennsylvania and Kentucky to the snow-crested California Sierras, and from the harsh deserts of the Southwest to the buffalo range of the Great Plains, Paul Andrew Hutton masterfully chronicles a story that defined America and its people.
(Description from NoveList)

A comprehensive narrative history of Mt. Rushmore, written in light of recent political controversies, and a timely retrospective for the monument's 100th anniversary in 2025.
(Description from NoveList)

Michael Pollan traces the unmapped continent that is consciousness, bringing radically different perspectives--scientific, philosophical, literary, spiritual and psychedelic--to see what each can teach us about this central fact of life.
(Description from NoveList)

Matt Kaplan reveals cases past and present about scientists who have had to fight for their revolutionary ideas to be accepted. Some are familiar, like Galileo being threatened with torture and Nobel laureate Katalin Karikó being fired when on the brink of discovering how to wield mRNA-a finding that proved pivotal for the creation of the Covid-19 vaccine.
(Description from NoveList)