By Sherry Seethaler
Financial Times Press, $19.99
Why do crickets chirp? Why do stars die? Why can’t the wind wall of a hurricane be zapped with lasers, disrupting the airflow and degrading these monsters to just simple passing storms? In this book, divided in single-sitting chunks, the author answers a grab bag of questions about the natural world in clear, carefully researched prose. If you are still wondering why we can’t just zap hurricanes with lasers, this book might be for you. —Shelby Gonzalez