June 2026’s books: science, space, and hard truths

June 2026’s – From a forensic look at human evolution curated by Alice Roberts to new takes on hormones, climate and cognition, this June’s popular science books pull readers into the body, the planet—and the uneasy power struggles shaping modern life.

The trouble with June is that it arrives all at once: a stack of new popular science titles that refuse to sit politely on the shelf. One moment you’re trying to understand why a hypothalamus can turn a life into a long sequence of interrupted sleep. soaring weight and more surgery. The next. you’re staring down a climate proposition that sounds almost too good to be true—happier living paired with lower emissions. By the time you reach the books on emotion surveillance. drug reform and big-tech power. the month has stopped feeling like leisure.

And that’s the point. This lineup has a shared urgency: it keeps returning to systems that shape people—inside the body, across ecosystems, and through the technology that increasingly mediates everyday feeling.

Alice Roberts’ new book arrives as an answer to a familiar frustration: it’s hard to keep up with human evolution without a guided path. Curated and edited by the biological anthropologist. palaeopathologist. broadcaster. and professor of public engagement in science at the University of Birmingham (UK). the book is supported by an international team spanning archaeology. palaeontology. anthropology and cognitive science. Each chapter focuses on the evolution of a part of the body—including hands. lungs and the digestive system—building what Roberts and her team promise is a complex picture of origins and nature. It also takes aim at the questions people actually worry at on long trips: when did we invent clothes?. Why are human babies altricial (underdeveloped and highly dependent at birth)?. What happened to the other modern humans?. Are we the only animals to become self-aware?.

If Roberts meets evolution with diagrams and sophisticated text. Saira Hameed meets medicine with a different kind of map: the brain’s hormonal control room. Her book argues that “we are all hormonal. all the time. ” not as colloquial shorthand for feeling tired. moody or puffy. but as a clinical reality. Hameed. a consultant endocrinologist. describes the hypothalamus as “an implausible leader of the body’s hormones.” She says it governs processes people barely notice until something goes wrong—appetite. body weight. thirst. stress. sleep. growth. metabolism. puberty. reproduction and sex drive.

The book is built around clinical practice and features patients whose lives are interrupted by faulty signalling from any of the 50-plus hormones that run the human show. A sneak peek centres on a young boy whose life has been “shattered” by a brain tumour stuck onto the hypothalamus for a clean excision. His sleep is erratic. his weight is soaring. and the path forward involves “more operations and tweaking hormones” in order to approach a life that works. Hameed also includes stories of terrible exhaustion and crushing infertility. shaping a reading experience that feels—quietly but firmly—like the stakes are not theoretical.

Then there’s Rowan Hooper’s book, which turns outward. Hooper is New Scientist’s pod meister and a senior editor who has written his third book to “change all our minds.” His argument is a direct rebuttal to what he describes as the dangerous shallows of competition: he wants readers to shift toward the depth and intricacies of connection and togetherness. The book is framed around the symbioses that already structure life—lifetime partnerships between animals and plants. insects and fungi. fish and bacteria—and it promises an essential guide for a better future through stories of cooperation. Hooper ranges from the female wasp venturing deep inside a fig. to the relationship between corals and algae that sustain them. to symbiotic gut microbes that influence moods.

The goal is not only to tell fascinating stories. Hooper’s hope is to change how people see the world, their place in it, and their obligation to it—so a symbiotic future isn’t just a concept, but a plan. He even gives that imagined future a name: the symbiocene.

The same drive to make change stick surfaces in a more intimate climate pitch—one that dares you to believe that sustainability can also improve daily life. Psychologist Elizabeth Dunn and climate behaviour scientist Jiaying Zhao. both at the University of British Columbia (Canada). assemble propositions that sound almost too-good-to-be-true. Can you improve happiness and wellbeing while also reducing your carbon footprint?. What if the most effective ways to fight climate change made you happy?. Dunn and Zhao also ask readers to consider whether it’s possible to make ourselves and the planet happier at the same time.

Their reasoning is plain: if you like the changes you make. you’re more likely to stick with them—and spread them across friend and family networks. They’re also careful about the personal cost. You don’t have to become a vegan or give up flying. Their examples are concrete: sub chicken for beef, and take carry-on bags. Both, the book says, make a decent dent in emissions at a lower personal cost. It also urges readers to approach emissions strategically and thoughtfully. with the long-term in mind. and—above all—to “do something and do it joyfully.” Data scientist Hannah Ritchie. author of Not the End of the World. endorses that spirit by saying Dunn and Zhao “expertly show us that it is not” too good to be true.

Space, meanwhile, pulls the reader into a different kind of scale and a more personal kind of awe. Leroy Chiao—retired NASA astronaut. former International Space Station commander and veteran of four space missions—offers a life in orbit with details that aren’t meant to be abstract. Chiao most recently served as commander and NASA science officer of Expedition 10 aboard the International Space Station. spending 229 days in space. He’s described as one of the first

Asian-American astronauts. and his publishers say his “unique perspective from flying with fellow American. Japanese and Russian professionals” is a window into the questions that always follow space exploration: what is the new space race and who are the next generation of competitors?. What is NASA working on these days?. What feelings did Chiao experience looking out at Earth from space?. What does the future of space exploration look like?. And will humans ever make

it to Mars.

The book even frames a challenge for the reader: what would you ask over a three-course dinner?

But June’s science books don’t only zoom outward. They also examine the invisible machinery that tracks, predicts and sometimes manipulates human feeling. A book on emotion sensing—Governing Global Emotions by Jessica Pykett. professor of social and political geography and codirector of the Centre for Urban Wellbeing at the University of Birmingham (UK)—starts from the promise and the risk of data-driven emotion measurement. It points to facial emotion recognition. brain-computer interfaces. virtual reality. global emotion surveys and sentiment analysis as tools that seem to offer extraordinary new terrain. Emotion-sensing, the book suggests, could decode—and even augment and control—the essence of human experience.

The question Pykett raises is not whether technology can collect emotion data, but whether it can get emotions right. The book describes how technologies create emotional data. how smart cities use sensors to monitor residents’ feelings. and how global economies measure happiness. In an age of ever-increasing surveillance capitalism and the rise of neurocapitalism. it frames emotional measurement as a political and economic issue as much as a technical one.

Kojo Koram tackles a different kind of measurement—what counts as “good” and “bad” drugs as legal boundaries keep shifting. The Next Fix by law professor and investigative journalist Kojo Koram is billed as a guide to a new territory where “yesterday’s banned substances are today’s wellness aids or pharmaceutical miracles.” That frontier is complicated. the book says. by the argument that the so-called War on Drugs will simply be replaced by an approach based on the same old monopolies and exploitation that caused problems ranging from poverty to deforestation. pollution and loss of biodiversity. Koram tracks the tensions along the newly legalised frontier. exploring drug reform versus a chapter in capitalism that he describes as “a smooth transition from cartel barons to Wall Street oligopolies.”.

And if the worry here is who benefits. Baroness Beeban Kidron’s Users moves the spotlight to power and accountability in the digital age. Kidron. now a crossbench peer and campaigner in the UK’s House of Lords and once a film director (Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason). is promoting Users as an insider’s guide to how politicians and policymakers have sold democracy to Silicon Valley—and what people need to do to take it back. The publisher frames the book as a journey from the halls of Parliament and the UN to the White House and Silicon Valley. with encounters that include specialist police officers. bereaved parents. lobbyists and tech bros.

Through those scenes. the book says readers witness unchecked power by Big Tech—its ability to avoid rules and regulations. and its role in capturing governments meant to protect people. It argues the issue isn’t technology itself. but its use and abuse: tools built to connect people. the book says. are redeployed to divide. punish. distract and control. It also claims tech overlords end up owning everything while continuing to be held responsible for nothing. In February. Kidron told The Bookseller: “Users is my answer to the hundreds of people who have contacted me feeling uncomfortable. overwhelmed or simply angry about technology—asking. ‘What can we do?’ My greatest wish is that readers find something in it that inspires them to act—in their homes. communities and workplaces—and to demand more from those in power.”.

Other titles widen the net across science and cognition. Brian Clegg offers a biography-style refresher on the electron. starting from the term’s original use as a tentative name for the basic unit of electrical charge and tracing the electron’s increasing centrality to modern life through electricity. Roger Highfield. science director of The Science Museum (UK). praises it as “34 brisk. brilliantly crafted chapters. ” sweeping through centuries of discovery.

Janet L. Jones’ A Horse’s World brings cognitive science to a companion animal many researchers have largely overlooked. Publishers describe horses as ignored by cognitive science despite a bond between horse and rider that’s every bit as strong as other cross-species relationships. Jones is a neuroscientist and horse trainer who promises an equine version of An Immense World or Soul of an Octopus. based on her relationship with a horse called True North. Her account

claims it’s the first book of its kind to explore science of how horses think. feel. learn and connect with humans while exposing misconceptions that lead people to fault horses for “misbehaviours” that are normal prey-brain responses. She also says horses trade a human-style prefrontal cortex—capable of judgment. manipulation and complex strategic thinking—for powerful memory that supports excellent intelligence. The book notes that the first MRI scan of an equine brain was not completed until

2019. leaving a large gap in what is known about equine neurology and neural physiology. as well as how to build trust with an animal whose internal world differs from our own.

Louis Lefebvre’s new book, focusing on birds, aims to dispel lingering doubts about bird cognition. It explores how birds exhibit creativity. social learning and cultural transmission. delving into behaviours ranging from crows using cars as nutcracker tools to cockatoos crafting tools. Lefebvre blends decades of scientific research with anecdotes and derives an “innovation quotient” (like a human IQ) to measure and rank innovation across species. The book asks how a bird species spreads a new technique. why research on bird cognition is being used to train AI models and robots. and what makes some birds endlessly innovative while others repeat the same behaviours. Nicky Clayton. professor of comparative cognition at the University of Cambridge. describes it as “an amazing avian adventure… Like a profound magic effect. there are hidden gems on every page. tailored to both the general public and the in-depth expert.”.

And for readers looking for a deeply personal but science-shaped confrontation. Michael Handford’s book promises an examination of how communication shapes the cancer experience. Handford. an academic specialising in intercultural communication. received a stage 4 throat cancer diagnosis at age 42 while living and working in Japan and the UK. His publisher says the book “examines how communication – whether with doctors. loved ones. or oneself – can shape the cancer experience.” Handford even worked on devising his own metaphor for cancer. not caring for stereotypical “battle” metaphors.

Even without a single shared subject—evolution. hormones. climate. space. emotion sensing. drugs. Big Tech power. horses. birds and cancer—these books are connected by a common feeling: science is no longer remote. It’s in the daily systems we rely on. the data we build. the decisions that get made in rooms we rarely see. and the bodies that absorb the consequences.

By the time you reach the last pages, June’s best popular science books don’t just educate. They make you look again—at what’s happening inside us, across the planet, and around the machines now shaping how we live and how we feel.

popular science books June 2026 Alice Roberts human evolution hormones Saira Hameed symbiocene Rowan Hooper climate happiness Elizabeth Dunn Jiaying Zhao Leroy Chiao emotion sensing Governing Global Emotions Jessica Pykett The Next Fix Kojo Koram Users Beeban Kidron cognitive science horses A Horse’s World bird cognition Louis Lefebvre cancer communication Michael Handford