Race to Save the Lord God Bird
A story sweeping 200 years of history including artists, specimen collectors, lumber barons, plume hunters, pioneering biologists, and the parts they all played in the Ivory-billed Woodpecker’s presum…
author: Phillip Hoose
Reading the Earth: Landforms in the Making
“The first comprehensive, plainly written, richly illustrated guide to landforms for general readers” states the back cover of this book. Set up much like a textbook, but with plenty of colorful photo…
author: Jerome Wyckoff
Nominated to be a Cornerstone by CML Staff
Reading the Forested Landscape – A Natural History of New England
A portrait of New England’s forests, tracing their evolution from pre-colonial days to the present. Each chapter addresses a form of forest disturbance common in New England (fire, logging, blight), …
author: Tom Wessels
Relativity – The Special and the General Theory: A Clear Explanation that Anyone Can Understand
An explanation of the Special and General Theories of Relativity by Einstein himself. He states that it is written for readers who are ?”nterested in the theory, but who are not conversant with the m…
author: Albert Einstein
Return to Wild America – A Yearlong Search for the Continent’s Natural Soul
Scott Weidensaul retraces Roger Tory Peterson’s and James Fisher’s coastline hugging journey of North America to document the changes that have taken place in wild America fifty years later. Written t…
author: Scott Weidensaul

Riddle of the Dinosaur
Updated theories about dinosaurs based on new evidence. Also a history of paleontologists search to unearth the natural history of the dinosaurs.Includes 34 black & white illustrations and 7 full-colo…
author: John Noble Wilford
Riemann Hypothesis: The Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics
The story of the search for the proof of the Riemann Hypothesis, for which the Clay Institute put up a $1 million prize in 2001, and of the mathematicians who have worked to solve it. Also a rare inti…
author: Karl Sabbagh
Right Hand, Left Hand: The Origins of Asymmetry in Brains, Bodies, Atoms and Cultures
A fascinating exploration of handedness in nature, humans and cultures; its origin and significance. Includes historical accounts and anecdotes and such musings as why mirrors reflect left-right but n…
author: Chris McManus
Nominated to be a Cornerstone by Lee Grodzins
Rising From the Plains
McPhee profiles David Love, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, and their travels together across Wyoming studying the rock in roadcuts of the interstate and the geologies these roadcuts repr…
author: John McPhee
Nominated to be a Cornerstone by LA Times science nominee 2000
River: A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS
An engaging scientific detective story into the origin of the AIDS epidemic.
author: Edward Hooper

Rock, Paper, Scissors – Game Theory in Everyday Life
Fisher takes the mathematical concepts of game theory and applies them to the problem of non-cooperation between people. From individual relationships to global warming, resource depletion, and confl…
author: Len Fisher
Rocket Boys: A Memoir
An entertaining memoir of Hicham’s hard-life boyhood in a West Virginia mining community and his struggle to find his place until one evening changed his life, and those of his friends, and led to his…
author: Homer H. Hickam, Jr.
Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA
Biography of Rosalind Franklin that brings to light her contribution to the discovery of the structure of DNA. Includes sixteen pages of black & white photographs.
author: Brenda Maddox
Rum Affair: A True Story of Botanical Fraud
Investigates the suspect botanical research of British botanist, John Heslop Harrison, on the Isle of Rum, Scotland and the 1940 hoax – his claim to have found a rare plant on the island. Includes se…
author: Karl Sabbagh