Cosmogenesis

June 1, 2022

Award-winning Danish author/critic Andersen tells The LEGO Story, plumbing company archives and interviewing third-generation Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen to discover how his family turned those cute interlocking plastic rectangles into international toy stars (75,000-copy first printing). With The Last Campaign, Pulitzer Prize finalist Brands chronicles the battle between Apache leader, warrior, and medicine man Geronimo and U.S. general William Tecumseh Sherman that would determine the shape of the United States and the fate of Indigenous peoples beyond the Mississippi River. The New York Times best-selling Brinkley chronicles the Silent Spring Revolution of the Sixties, when environmental activists pushed first for legislation aimed at protecting the wilderness, then expanded to fighting the pollutants despoiling Earth and risking public health (200,000-copy first printing). Pulitzer Prize finalist Conover (Newjack) takes us to Cheap Land Colorado, chronicling an off-the-grid community in San Luis Valley where he lived on and off for four years so that he could get close to people who traded security for freedom or had nothing left to lose. A senior writer at the Wall Street Journal, Hilsenrath tracks the career of U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen (35,000-copy first printing). Soros Fellow and chair of the Freelance Taskforce for the National Association of Black Journalists, Hubbard argues that hip-hop ignores or demeans Black women in Ride-or-Die (30,000-copy first printing). In Number One Is Walking, Martin recaps his remarkable acting career in a graphic memoir featuring the artwork of New Yorker cartoonist Harry Bliss (300,000-copy first printing). With The World Record Book of Racist Stories, comedian Ruffin and big sister Lamar join forces to repeat the success of their New York Times best-selling You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey, detailing the absurdist aspects of everyday racism (75,000-copy first printing). In Control, geneticist Rutherford (A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived) revisits the rise of eugenics from its origins in Victorian England to its awful apotheosis in Nazi Germany and its ongoing legacy today. What's the impact on our psyches of knowing that the universe originated 14 billion years ago and is still expanding? Ask Swimme, author of Cosmogenesis and host and cocreator of PBS's Journey of the Universe. Wrongly accused of drug dealing in New Jersey and sentenced to a life behind bars, Wright (Marked for Life) studied law in the prison library, helped overturn the convictions of numerous fellow inmates, then won his own release and now practices law in the same courtroom where he was convicted (125,000-copy first printing).

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2022
An evolutionary cosmologist analyzes the profound entanglements between the history of the universe and our understanding of that history. Blending autobiography and science writing, Swimme, a professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies and co-creator and host of the PBS series Journey of the Universe, explores the concept of cosmogenesis, which describes the origin and evolution of the universe from primordial soup to human intelligence. The author's breakthrough came when he realized that "I was evolving, that I was as much a development of the universe as were stars and galaxies. If I wanted to tell the story of the expanding universe and how it developed through time, I needed to include the story of my long struggle out of the structures of existence I had been born into." Taking this idea further, he ponders a statement famously uttered by Freeman Dyson, repeated in conversation with the author: "The universe--in some sense--must have known we were coming....The universe knew." Swimme likens this idea to a human embryo "knowing" how to create a human nervous system endowed with an intelligence capable of performing incredible feats. In writing that is clear and free from complex jargon, the author argues that this integrated cosmological self is an overlooked aspect in scientific communities and that a "radically new vision of the universe" is needed to account for the fact that "we ourselves are constructions of the universe's process." While the concepts he explores are fascinating, his reliance on the minute details of his life--what he calls "time-developmental experiences"--at times bogs down the trajectory of his argument even as he invites readers to participate in a mutual "transformation" as part of the "living universe." Yet the overall message of the power of storytelling leaves readers with a new appreciation for how we view the universe's history and ourselves within it. An invigorating perspective on how science and spirituality inform the history of human experience.

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