February’s batch of popular science books leans into big‑picture questions about the universe, the climate and our own bodies, framed as winter‑reading picks in New Scientist’s roundup of the month’s best new titles. Space scientist Maggie Aderin’s memoir “Starchild” anchors the list, weaving her work on satellites and the moon together with the story of raising a daughter and finding wonder in the night sky.
Set against January’s offerings, where Daisy Fancourt’s “Art Cure” argued that concerts, galleries and even muddy festivals can act as medicine, and Deborah Cohen’s “Bad Influence” dissected how wellness influencers and online “experts” hijack our health decisions, the through‑line is how culture and the internet are quietly rewiring behavior long before we get to the doctor’s office.
A third thread comes from a new GLP‑1‑focused title that follows drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy from lab bench to stock market, showing how weight‑loss injections are colliding with economics, politics and our ideas about what an “obesity cure” would even mean.
Taken together, this run of books makes 2026 feel like a year when “science reading” is really about tracing how art, algorithms and appetite‑suppressing medications are reshaping everyday choices in the background, from what we watch to what we eat and who we trust.
