A July book rush confronts death, AI, and volcanoes

July 2026 – From the philosophy of friendship and the science of volcanoes to new debates about data power, ethical AI, and forensic justice, July’s popular science releases arrive with a single shared pulse: the real-world stakes of being human—and being judged by machin

On a hot month in London. popular science has a particular kind of heat of its own: life. being alive and death. messy human feelings and sensory experience. and the anxiety of an AI future that keeps pushing closer. It’s a lineup that doesn’t just ask what science knows. It asks what it means to be the one living inside the questions.

Philosophy. for one. takes on a relationship most of us never think to measure—friendship—and asks whether something simulated can ever replace it. University of Minnesota philosophy professor Valerie Tiberius argues the human case through a definition of the ideal friendship: an enjoyable. close relationship built on shared activities between people who care for each other for their own sake. Her book lands at the same time as other AI-focused writing that frames machine thinking as a threat to something essential. Shannon Vallor. author of *The AI Mirror: How to reclaim our humanity in an age of machine thinking*. says Tiberius’s book “provides a nuanced philosophical survey of the possibilities for human-AI relationships by highlighting their considerable risks and benefits.”.

Death. meanwhile. is treated less like a final chapter and more like a complicated landscape—one that medicine. morals. and history all keep revising. Timor Mortis. literally “fear of death. ” arrives as public concern grows about the quality of end-of-life care for everyone we care about. including ourselves. Public health doctor Richard Coker probes death’s complexities from biological, psychological, moral and historical perspectives. Coker’s career spans both work and teaching: he is. latterly. a professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. and earlier worked with people who had TB or HIV/AIDS.

If death forces us to look inward, volcanoes pull our gaze outward—toward prediction, energy, and the limits of preparedness. Geology professor Tamie Jovanelly’s *Volcanoes* is part of Oxford University Press’s What Everyone Needs to Know series. which covers everything from gender to robots. Jovanelly. with over 20 years of global research experience in volcanism. climate change. water systems and natural hazards. tackles questions many people only whisper to themselves: Where do we find volcanoes?. Can we predict when and where they will erupt?. Can we harness their energy?.

The book brings hard numbers into that big backdrop. There are 1,350 active volcanoes on Earth, with between 50 and 70 erupting annually, and climate change is part of the mix. Jovanelly also supplies GPS coordinates for locating volcanoes. high-definition photographs for identifying volcanic minerals and rocks. and an appendix featuring 100 of the world’s most active volcanoes.

There’s an odd kind of reassurance in learning how the ground works. and in July’s titles that reassurance is mirrored by pharmacology’s promise of clarity about the drugs people already rely on. Pairing comfortably with a May feature—Nick Barber’s *How to Take Drugs: A new approach to medication for better results and fewer side effects*—July’s *How to Take Drugs* companion thread is bigger in scale. and more historical. Rod Flower. emeritus professor of biochemical pharmacology

at Queen Mary University of London with a major interest in inflammation and anti-inflammatories. takes readers through the fast evolution of drug use: from healing plants and herbs to a global market just under $2 trillion. and the rise of pharmacology as a discipline. Flower also shows how drugs really work in detail. including the process of medicine development and what makes scientists think their therapies will work as advertised.

The sheer volume of prescriptions in the UK makes the stakes plain. In the UK. 1 billion-plus prescriptions are written every year. and over five billion are written in the US—numbers that leave little room for confusion about what people are taking. July’s popular science books keep returning to a familiar question: what knowledge do we actually need. and what do we miss when the explanation is too thin?.

That tension becomes sharper in books about data and decision-making—where explanation can be power. and power can be hidden in plain sight. *Data Empire* is described by its publishers as “groundbreaking and provocative.” The book traces data as power back millennia to the first clay tablets of Mesopotamia. through knotted strings keeping account to the algorithmic modern state. Its purpose sounds familiar in a way that lands uncomfortably close to today: helping states govern people and helping institutions decide who appears on the official record and who doesn’t.

Roopika Risam—working from multiple perspectives including a digital humanities and social engagement professorship at Dartmouth College. New Hampshire—frames the modern problem in terms of reach and extraction. Hyperconnected, personally extractive tech shapes the future needs the way an earlier kind of accounting shaped empire. The endorsements add to the sense that Risam is aiming for a wide lens: Lewis Dartnell. author of *The Knowledge: How to rebuild our world from scratch*. calls the book “Breathtaking in its scope. ” while Jaron Lanier describes it as the “new history of mankind demanded by our times… This book asks what we will do about data now that we have no choice but to do something.”.

For some readers, that broad lens might feel heavy. Ian Bogost’s *The Small Stuff* takes a different tack. arguing that in an era of excess consumption. enforced efficiency. and fear of missing out. the fight may be against subtle disappearance—of small pleasures. small tasks. and moments that keep people grounded and human. Bogost’s book. pitched by its publishers as uncovering how modern conveniences not only fail to deliver on their promises but also rob us of small. satisfying tasks and moments. points to day-to-day examples: digital tickets and automated taps. The answer isn’t sentimental. It’s a reinvestment in interactions with the material world and “more labour-creating devices. ” with small pleasures instead of flat giant screens.

Even nature, in this July wave, is presented as a negotiation between humans and systems. Dan Werb’s *Our Wild Familiars* puts a spotlight on synanthropes—wild creatures that live alongside humans—using a Greek noun built from “with” (syn) and “man” (anthropos). It ranges from brown rats, raccoons, and urban foxes to house flies and cockroaches, dandelions and kudzu vines. It also turns to more exotic neighbors, including the tiger quoll and the collared delma.

Werb goes beyond listing the familiar and the odd. The book examines the everyday roles these wild animals play in human lives—from annoyance caused by houseflies and urban foxes. to replacing lids in raccoon country. and watching out for disease vectors from brown rats and others. It also positions these animals in a more urgent future frame. describing them as “arbiters of our planet’s future” and “a key influence on the continuing evolution of our species.” The reason is not mystery but environmental pressure: environmental destruction means urban habitats increase. and their numbers can soar. The recommendation is direct: learn how to live in harmony with them rather than resisting them.

The book even clarifies what some readers may not picture. The collared delma is a tiny legless lizard, while the tiger quoll is a metre-long carnivore—a cross between a cat and a rat.

Forensic science is where the theme of being judged—by evidence. by institutions. and increasingly by automated systems—comes closest to the modern panic around AI. Forensic anthropologist Sue Black has a new book out this month, the third in a trilogy. With 40 years of experience working on evidence used in criminal cases. Black uses landmark cases to unpick what went wrong. where justice was served. what we should fight to preserve. and what happens when AI and other forms of automation enter court.

The book grounds its questions in progress. It points to major advances such as DNA fingerprinting and Black’s own vein-pattern identification work. But it also keeps a focus on failure. Cases like that of Andrew Malkinson—wrongly convicted and jailed for 17 years—serve as a stark reminder of the cost when things go wrong.

The concern is not abstract either; Black raises a series of practical. procedural anxieties about how automation could reshape legal reality. “Are we prepared for AI to redact police files before they are sent to the CPS?. Are we ready to accept instant interview translations?. If they are incorrect, who will correct them?. Who will notice?. We will certainly all care,” she writes.

Ethics responds to that fear with its own insistence on language and future-building. Ethicist Eleanor Drage’s book subtitle is “How to stop catastrophising and build an ethical future. ” and her approach argues for a whole new language and fresh ideas to determine what AI is and how it should be used. Her additions to the debate are not cosmetic: feminism, reparative justice, and climate politics are all brought into the conversation. Early endorsements frame the mood as both grounded and urgent. Broadcaster Sandi Toksvig calls it “A wise and purpose-driven book to steer us out of AI doom,” and N. Katherine Hayles. author of *From Bacteria to AI*. says Drage dismantles “prophecies of both apocalypse and transcendence” to show how people can achieve liveable futures with AI.

Underneath all these threads—friendship. death. volcanoes. drugs. data. small pleasures. urban wildlife. courtroom evidence—one question keeps moving through the lineup like a pulse. What does it mean to be human when the surrounding world is increasingly structured by systems we didn’t design?. That question becomes explicit in another July release, *Alive*. Researcher and natural philosopher Melanie Challenger probes the latest discoveries in biology and physics to reveal what the publicists describe as “a radical truth: to be alive is first and foremost a way of being a body.”.

The book’s promise is that it will restore “agency, purpose and meaning to organisms in an age of artificial intelligence and biodiversity loss.”

In a single month’s reading list. July 2026 popular science books bring together the questions people often save for late night—what we owe each other. how we face the end. how we understand risk. and what we should insist on when machines start to handle the parts of life that once belonged to humans.

popular science books July 2026 AI ethics forensic science Sue Black Andrew Malkinson volcanoes pharmacology data power Roopika Risam synanthropes Dan Werb Valerie Tiberius Richard Coker