Little Atoms Archives

Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong-and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story

What science has gotten so shamefully wrong about women, and the fight, by both female and male scientists, to rewrite what we thought we knew

For hundreds of years it was common sense: women were the inferior sex. Their bodies were weaker, their minds feebler, their role subservient. No less a scientist than Charles Darwin asserted that women were at a lower stage of evolution, and for decades, scientists—most of them male, of course—claimed to find evidence to support this. […Learn More]

Superior: The Return of Race Science

An astute and timely examination of the re-emergence of scientific research into racial differences.

Superior tells the disturbing story of the persistent thread of belief in biological racial differences in the world of science. […Learn More]

The Reality Bubble: How Science Reveals the Hidden Truths that Shape Our World

From one of the world’s most engaging science journalists, a groundbreaking and wonder-filled look at the hidden things that shape our lives in unexpected and sometimes dangerous ways.

Our naked eyes see only a thin sliver of reality.
[…Learn More]

Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World

FROM AN AWARD-WINNING SCIENCE JOURNALIST comes an urgent investigation of environmental migration—the most underreported, seismic consequence of our climate crisis that will force us to change where—and how—we live. […Learn More]

Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs

What if everything you think you know about addiction is wrong? Johann Hari’s journey into the heart of the war on drugs led him to ask this question–and to write the book that gave rise to his viral TED talk, viewed more than 62 million times, and inspired the feature film The United States vs. Billie Holiday and the documentary series The Fix. […Learn More]

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life

From Pulitzer Prize winner Ed Yong, a groundbreaking, wondrously informative, and vastly entertaining examination of the most significant revolution in biology since Darwin—a “microbe’s-eye view” of the world that reveals a marvelous, radically reconceived picture of life on earth. […Learn More]

The Family Chao: A Novel

The residents of Haven, Wisconsin, have dined on the Fine Chao restaurant’s delicious Americanized Chinese food for thirty-five years, content to ignore any unsavory whispers about the family owners. Whether or not Big Leo Chao is honest, or his wife, Winnie, is happy, their food tastes good and their three sons earned scholarships to respectable colleges. But when the brothers reunite in Haven, the Chao family’s secrets and simmering resentments erupt at last. […Learn More]

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the Problem of race in America, and what he called “Double Consciousness,” a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois’s words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans—the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers—Ailey carries Du Bois’s Problem on her shoulders. […Learn More]

Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues That Made History

In this timely and lively look at the act of toppling monuments, the popular historian and author of Blood and Sand explores the vital question of how a society remembers—and confronts—the past.

In 2020, history came tumbling down. From the US and the UK to Belgium, New Zealand, and Bangladesh, Black Lives Matter protesters defaced, and in some cases, hauled down statues of Confederate icons, slaveholders, and imperialists. […Learn More]

Pandora’s Jar: Women in the Greek Myths

The national bestselling author of A Thousand Ships returns with a fascinating, eye-opening take on the remarkable women at the heart of classical stories Greek mythology from Helen of Troy to Pandora and the Amazons to Medea.

The tellers of Greek myths—historically men—have routinely sidelined the female characters. When they do take a larger role, women are often portrayed as monstrous, vengeful or just plain evil—like Pandora, the woman of eternal scorn and damnation whose curiosity is tasked with causing all the world’s suffering and wickedness when she opened that forbidden box. But, as Natalie Haynes reveals, in ancient Greek myths there was no box. It was a jar . . . which is far more likely to tip over. […Learn More]