Superlative

Journalist Matthew D. LaPlante presents a collection of nature's "outliers," or extraordinary animals and plants that could have the power to change our lives through research and scientific insights.

Matthew D. LaPlante is an associate professor of journalism at Utah State University, where he teaches news reporting, narrative non-fiction writing, and crisis reporting. He has reported from more than a dozen nations, including Iraq, Cuba, Ethiopia and El Salvador, and his work has appeared in Washington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, CNN.com, and numerous other publications. Matthew is the cowriter of several books on the intersection of scientific discovery and society, and he is currently working with Harvard geneticist David Sinclair on a book about human longevity. Superlative is his first solo book.

Contents Introduction Nature's Best Ambassadors Chapter I All Things Great and Tall: How the World's Biggest Life-Forms Are Saving Human Lives
Chapter II All the Small Things: Why Little Organisms Have Such a Big Impact on Our World
Chapter III The Old Dominion: How Our Biological Elders are Offering Us New Knowledge
Chapter IV Fast Times: Why the Quickest Animals Probably Aren't the Ones You Think
Chapter V Aural Sects: How Superlative Sound Drives Life as We Know It
Chapter VI The Tough Get Going: How the World's Strongest Organisms Might Lift Us to the Heavens
Chapter VII Deadly Serious: Why the World's Most Efficient Killers Are Such Effective Lifesavers
Chapter VIII Smarter All the Time: Why the Most Intelligent Life-Forms Ain't Us
Conclusion The Next Superlative Discovery Is Yours
Acknowledgments Notes About the Author