Joe Posnanski is getting pretty good at this whole sports countdown thing.

The award-winning sportswriter’s previous books have profiled significant ballplayers (“The Baseball 100”) and ticked off 50 of the biggest occasions in the history of our national pastime (“Why We Love Baseball.”)

Posnanski is back with a new sport and total. In “Why We Love Football: A History in 100 Moments,” the former Sports Illustrated scribe pens a thoroughly enjoyable look back at the players and plays that have come to define America’s most popular sport.

Sure, one could argue with what was included and what was not, the order, etc. But at the end of the day, the book is a love letter to football — a poignant, informative and at times hilarious look at what makes the gridiron game such a part of the national fabric.

There are no- brainers in there — the 1972 “Immaculate Reception” that lifted the Pittsburgh Steelers over the Oakland Raiders to their first playoff victory and Bart Starr’s title-winning quarterback keeper during the 1967 NFL Championship “Ice Bowl” game against Dallas at Lambeau Field — but “Why We Love Football” is at its best when it explores the off-the-beaten-path moments in the game’s long history as well as the intersection of football and pop culture.

For football fans, the book is an absolute must-read. But it should be accessible to the football- averse, too, with its brilliant writing and research that unearths gems and perspectives that bring the game and its characters to life. Readers will find themselves laughing out loud at times.

“Football matters because, at its best, the game illustrates life at its most exuberant and most passionate and most emotionally heightened,” Posnanski writes.

“Why We Love Football” proves that statement by reminding us all what makes it the No. 1 sport in the land. — Mike Householder, Associated Press

From Suzanne Simard to Ed Yong, science journalists and researchers have probed the myriad ways plants and animals communicate: chemical signals amid old-growth redwoods, interplay between insects and their gut bacteria. But intra- species speech remains a discipline still unsure of itself. Are dolphin whistles a form of verbal exchange? Do hyrax “notes” constitute a vocabulary?

Arik Kershenbaum, a zoologist at Girton College, University of Cambridge, poses these issues in his breezy, provocative “Why Animals Talk,” lending sonic analysis and a musician’s ear to the study of animal communication.

In his opening, Kershenbaum asserts that “animals make a lot of noise, and that means they invest an awful lot of time and energy into being noisy. Evolution is economical — a behavior that wastes energy is something that should put you at a disadvantage in the long term.” Those screeches, hisses and yelps must confer Darwinian benefits, Kershenbaum argues. He focuses on parrots, wolves, dolphins, hyraxes, gibbons, chimpanzees and homo sapiens.

Kershenbaum’s infectious zeal for the wonders of the biosphere set him apart as a 21st century Dr. Dolittle. “Why Animals Talk” fleshes out the author’s arguments with charts and graphs; fortunately, they don’t divert the book’s flow. Kershenbaum’s single misstep is his tone: he eschews an academic voice for a more conversational one, yielding the academic lectern for a kind of grade school circle time.

Despite our vaunted intelligence, we may be just another blip on this third rock from the sun. Kershenbaum seeks profundity among simple questions; and more often than not he’s able to find connection to a cosmos far beyond the scope of our brains. His book’s a trove of riches for animal lovers who sift through it with a proper grace and humility. — Hamilton Cain, Minnesota Star Tribune