Popular science
Predators by Steve Backshall
Many readers would probably know that on the simple count of humans they helped to dispatch, mosquitoes may be the most deadly animals ever. But did you know that if you take into account the success rate of hunts, diversity and spread, ladybirds are more successful predators than tigers? Full review...
You Talkin' To Me?: Rhetoric from Aristotle to Obama by Sam Leith
Over the years I've trained myself (fairly successfully) not to judge a book by its cover. I've added 'not judging a book by its title' to the training, but what do you do when your first impressions of a book - the title and the cover - scream 'trivia'? Well, I put this one to one side on the basis that it really wasn't likely to be a book which would interest me. Picking it up and looking at the contents was almost accidental - and then I discovered that this book is a gold mine. Full review...
The Book of Deadly Animals by Gordon Grice
Animals and humans have long mixed, even though the one has almost always proven capable of being lethal to the other. Many scientists in the past decided animals killing humans were aberrant, and that the real animal knew it was second best to humans, having been saved in the Ark, and respected our dominion over them. Even now, it seems, there are opinions that creatures attacking mankind are somehow rogue and need destroying. But where is the wrong in an animal behaving as its nature compels it? Similarly, the human wandering around the wilderness, or even the idiot woman feeding a black bear her own toddler's honey-dripping hand (true story - what the bear thought of the taste of honeyed fingers we don't know) is just the same in reverse - humans behaving as only humans can. Full review...
How to Save the World with Salad Dressing by Thomas Byrne and Tom Cassidy
The world is under threat from a manic Bond-type baddie. You, my friendly reader, are the only person with the smarts enough to save it. You'd better not be one of my less intelligent friends, because according to this book one needs a lot of physics-inclined lateral thinking to carry out the dangerous tasks ahead. You'll need to know about gravity and other forces, buoyancy, friction, acceleration and more to get through the puzzles here. Full review...
You Kant Make it Up!: Strange Ideas from History's Greatest Philosophers by Gary Hayden
In You Kant Make it Up, journalist and philosopher Gary Hayden takes his readers through some of the biggest and most important ideas right from the very beginnings of philosophical thought up to the philosophy of the modern day. He gives a brief explanation and discussion of each idea, and shows how through the ages philosophers have argued pretty much everything you could think of, much of which seems bizarre to the modern thinker. Full review...
Geek Wisdom by Stephen H Segal
I am by no means a fully fledged geek, but on the Big Bang scale I'm probably more of a Leonard than a Penny. I was weaned on Star Trek , chose Hitchhiker’s Guide... as my reading aloud piece for a Year 7 exam, and think it would be more than a little fun to take a trip to Comic Con. At the same time, there are gaping holes in my knowledge. My first celeb crush might have been Blake’s 7’s Villa but I've never seen a Batman film, never read a comic book, never quite understood what all the Star Wars fuss was about. If Sci Fi is a religion, then this is the book that can fill me in one the stories, the parables, the rules, as it were, of geekdom. I had to have it. Full review...
Why Are Orangutans Orange? by Mick O'Hare
Another year has passed, and once again we're treated to another offering from New Scientist's Last Word column. We've been here before, with Penguins, Polar Bears, Tornadoes, Elephants and Hamsters. Now it's time for the orangutan to find out why he's orange. Full review...
The Story Of English In 100 Words by David Crystal
Crystal is a god when it comes to language. I’ve known that since I was quoting him during English A Level, since my university studies, since my TEFL days when students ask 'Why?' and you need an answer other than 'Because'. This is his new book, but you don’t need a degree in linguistics to find it fascinating, and in addition to the intriguing revelations and chummy writing style, it looks just lovely and would make a fab Christmas present. Full review...
The Moon and Madness by Niall McCrae
A book entitled The Moon and Madness has the potential to be a pile of New Age hokum. This learned and academic treatise by Niall McCrae is very far from hokum, and there is not a whiff of New Age hanging over it. We probably all have an old folklore image in our minds of lunatics in the asylum howling at the full moon. Of course, the very word 'lunatic' has its origins in the moon. McCrae tries to separate myth and fact in this fascinating book. Full review...
Duels and Duets: Why Men and Women Talk So Differently by John L Locke
Locke's subtitle Why Men and Women Talk So Differently might lead you to think that this is just another self-help Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus tome. It's not. Rather than focussing upon what we all know from experience – that men and women do not communicate very well because of some fundamental difference in their respective approach to verbal expression – the New York City University Professor of Linguistics sets out to explain WHY that might be. Full review...
Paraphernalia: The Curious Lives of Magical Things by Steven Connor
...In which our author considers the smaller, less noticeable items in our lives. He finds such objects as sticky tape, combs and keys magical, because "we can do whatever we like to things, but magical things are things that we allow and expect to do things back to us. Magical things all do more, and mean more than they might be supposed to." Principally these are the little flotsam that wash up on our desks, the handy things we keep in our pockets and about our person, and never think about - wave about, flick about, fiddle with, but never think about. Full review...
Free Radicals by Michael Brooks
We often have an image of scientists as quietly plodding away, with small breakthrough after small breakthrough. When the big breakthroughs come, they downplay things, and insist upon logical and level-headed caution. It's all very mild-mannered and polite. ...Or is it? The history of science is splattered with radicals, who'll do anything for success. There are those who mercilessly put down their rivals, those who use drugs to stimulate their breakthroughs, those who put themselves in harm's way in the pursuit of truth, and those who just plain go about things their own way, regardless of what anyone else says. Full review...
Dot-Dash To Dot.Com by Andrew Wheen
You know exactly what you're getting when you read the summary of Andrew Wheen's Dot-Dash To Dot.Com. How Modern Telecommunications Evolved from the Telegraph to the Internet sums it up perfectly. This is a history of technology and the people involved in creating that technology. It serves as a primer for anyone with an interest or need to know about telecommunications. Full review...
Farmer Buckley's Exploding Trousers by Stephanie Pain
The history of science is filled with many miraculous discoveries. ...It's also filled with exploding trousers, self-experimentation, a coachman's leg that becomes a museum piece and gas-powered radios. Farmer Buckley's Exploding Trousers regales us with fifty odd events on the way to scientific discovery. Part popular science book, part trivia, each article is a treat to read, either as a fun-sized nugget, or when reading from cover to cover. Full review...
Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer
In Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare wrote,'Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, wherin he puts alms for oblivion'. This fully accords with the discoveries of modern brain science. Proust in his famous novel, 'In Search of Lost Time' anticipates such discoveries by neuroscientists, such as Rachel Hertz, that smell and taste are the only senses that connect directly to the hippocampus. Thus the taste of a petit madeleine evokes a rediscovery by Proust of Combray and a flow of associations - it is the part of the brain in which long term memory is centred. Lehrer in ' Proust was a Neuroscientist' weaves an intriguing argument about the relationship between recent neuroscientific discoveries and the novels of George Eliot, Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf. A scientist, who has researched with Nobel Prize-winning, Eric Kandel, has a taste for philosophy; Lehrer intends to heal the rift between what C.P.Snow termed the 'Two Cultures'. He wishes to accord respect to the truths and the intuitive discoveries, especially of modernist writers and painters. Full review...
At the Water's Edge: A Walk in the Wild by John Lister-Kaye
This is a book that readers feel strongly about, and one with which I must confess to having a love/hate relationship! I loved the detailed observation, the sharing of knowledge that Lister-Kaye has built from a lifetime of close study of the countryside. He delights in and pays as much attention to the structure of a spider's web as to the rarest of meetings with a Scottish wildcat. Full review...
Mathematics of Life by Ian Stewart
Mathematics and biology don't traditionally mix. As science develops, the boundaries between maths and physics, physics and chemistry and chemistry and biology have become more and more blurred. As it is now, biology requires many mathematical techniques, and it's fair to assume that major biological breakthroughs over the next hundred years will also have a strong basis in maths too. Ian Stewart looks at the major steps forward in the history of biology, and the areas where maths is at the forefront of development. Full review...
The Happy Passion: A Personal View of Jacob Bronowski by Anthony James
Jacob Bronowski was a scientific administrator, poet, philosopher, dramatist, radio and TV personality, best remembered for the series 'The Ascent of Man'. This short book, about 90 pages long, is partly biographical sketch, partly – in fact largely – an overview of his major published works, occupying about two-thirds of the book. In the author's words, it is intended as a personal view of Bronowski as a philosopher. Full review...
From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time by Sean Carroll
The Prologue sets out what this book is about. It's about ' ... the nature of time, the beginning of the universe, and the underlying structure of physical reality.' OK? Bring on those questions. Yes, it's a weighty tome in terms of size and subject matter, but I would certainly describe the front cover as reader-friendly, so therefore should have broad appeal. I love the title of this book, lots of thought has been put into it and it certainly grabbed my attention - and I'm no scientist. The classic movie from the classic book ... I also loved Carroll's language - 'The Elegant Universe' and 'a preposterous universe' These are phrases to make you stop and think. And I certainly did. Full review...
Driving with Plato: The Meaning of Life's Milestones by Robert Rowland Smith
Driving with Plato is a companion book to Breakfast with Socrates, in which former Oxford Fellow Robert Roland Smith took various elements of a 'typical' day and provided insight into what a collection of thinkers might have to offer to make these mundane routines more interesting. Here, in the company of a similarly eclectic range of writers and thinkers, he considers the key aspects of a life, from birth, through school and riding a bike, to your first kiss, losing your virginity, having a family before a mid-life crisis, leading to divorce, old age and death. Montaigne said that to philosophise was to learn how to die, and here Roland Smith ensures that we think about each stage leading up to that moment. Full review...
An Optimist's Tour of the Future by Mark Stevenson
In 1968, the film '2001 A Space Odyssey' had an optimistic view of the future we would soon be living in. In terms of technological advancement we're not quite there yet, even though that date has a decade since passed, so maybe it's time for a revised view of what is to come. Enter Mark Stevenson, a stand up comic slash scientist. It's perhaps not the most familiar of combinations, but take the best bits of each and the result is this wonderful book that combines humour and fun with proper nitty, gritty, science stuff. Full review...
Sleights of Mind by Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde
I have a passing interest in both magic and neuroscience. Not only am I quite the hit with the ladies, but I was also very keen to read Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals About Our Brains. Husband and wife team Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde work at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Arizona, and as a way of promoting their field of visual neuroscience, developed the Illusion of the Year contest. From this, they slipped into the world of magic, investigating, discussing and researching the neuroscience of magic with James Randi, Mac King, Teller (of Penn and...) and Johnny Thompson. Full review...
The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean
If the disappearing spoon of the title doesn't pique your interest, the subtitle is bound to get your juices flowing: and Other True Tales of Madness, Love and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements. As far as popular science books goes, it's got all the umm... right elements (sorry, sorry, sorry). We're taken on a tour through the periodic table, hearing exciting tales of scientific discovery and marvel. Full review...
Mind Games: 31 Days to Rediscover Your Brain by Martin Cohen
The sub-title of Martin Cohen's latest book, Mind Games, promises, rather optimistically in my case I felt, '31 days to rediscover your brain'. It is rather presumptuous of him to assume that I had discovered it in the first place, but I appreciate his confidence. Full review...
We Need To Talk About Kelvin by Marcus Chown
Sporting the best title for a popular science book this side of Alex Bellos' Here's Looking At Euclid, Marcus Chown shows us what everyday things tell us about the universe. You'll find out how your reflection in a window shows the randomness of the universe, how the abundance of iron shows a 4.5bn degree furnace exists in space, and how most of the world's astronomers are wrong about what the darkness of night shows us. Full review...
Why Can't Elephants Jump? by Mick O'Hare
Well? Why can't elephants jump? And while you're pondering that, think about why James Bond wanted his martini shaken, not stirred. Why is frozen milk yellow? Does eating bogeys do you any harm? What's the hole for in a ballpoint pen? How long a line could you draw with a single pencil? For answers to all these questions, and so many more, then do yourself a favour and pick up the latest collection from the New Scientist's Last Word column.
Mick O'Hare was also kind enough to be interviewed by Bookbag. Full review...
The Way of the Panda: The Curious History of China's Political Animal by Henry Nicholls
The book cover alone, with its panda hugging a tree, says 'buy me', 'read me.' A good start. The sections are divided into no-nonsense headings: Extraction, Abstraction and Protection. Maps and Prologue give a flavour of what's to come. The inside front cover states boldly that 'Giant pandas have been causing a stir ever since their formal scientific discovery just over 140 years ago.' I think it safe to say that many of us would probably say automatically, without thinking, that the panda has immense appeal. But is it only because of the beautifully marked eyes which give the animal a cuddly, teddy bear look? Full review...
Why Women Have Sex: Understanding Sexual Motivation from Adventure to Revenge (and Everything in Between) by Cindy M Meston and David Buss
Many many years ago, a man who was far too young to be the fusty, dusty RE teacher he was shaping to be, asked my best friend and I why we were each having sex with our girlfriends. Even aged fifteen I thought something along the lines of 'well, if he doesn't know by now, he never will', and listed that it was great fun, a very enjoyable sensation, showed an appetite for the relationship, and that sex proved the ultimate in bonding - how much closer, to be blunt, could you be to someone than actually inside them? I'll come clean now and admit said girlfriend was not real, but several have been since, and I have had heaps of fun finding out how - and perhaps why - women have sex. I was never to know, until now, there are 237 reasons for it. Full review...
Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in Space by Mary Roach
Space is big. Really big. And it's a long way away, too. I mean, I'm having enough trouble deciding what to pack for a year in Africa. I'd be hopeless if I were off to Mars. But then, no-one's written a book on what to stick in your suitcase for Sierra Leone. And Mary Roach has written a book on what to take to the red planet...
Except, this is so much more than a shopping list. This is the definitive inside scoop for anyone who has ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes in a world that is, well, out of this world. Full review...
Swimming with Piranhas at Feeding Time: My Life Doing Dumb Stuff with Animals by Richard Conniff
This isn't quite the book it seems. From the subtitle, I inferred a memoir or autobiography. Instead Richard Conniff has chosen twenty-three of his journal articles to reprint from a clutch of prestigious magazines, including National Geographic and Smithsonian. Taken together, they illustrate his wide range of interests in the animal world. While this glimpse of some of the most peculiar creatures on the planet makes for fascinating reading, it's definitely not a book to be galloped through in a single sitting. Full review...
Seasons of Life: The Biological Rhythms That Living Things Need to Thrive and Survive by Russell Foster and Leon Kreitzman
"Seasons of Life" aims to present a rounded picture of the way seasonality affects human life as well as the rest of nature. Covering everything from Seasonal Affective Disorder to the potential for animals to adapt to climate change, this book would be an interesting read for anyone with an enquiring mind and an interest in the natural world. Full review...
Selected: Why some people lead, why others follow, and why it matters by Mark van Vugt and Anjana Ahuja
Selected is based on the psychology of leadership. Some of us may ask the perfectly reasonable question 'Does it matter who leads and who follows?' Well, apparently it not only matters but it matters greatly. And the co-authors go to great lengths to tell us why. The useful prologue informs us that the whole area of leadership can be traced back in time, by no less than several million years. Vugt and Ahuja explain that the rather innocent (and even a bit airy-fairy to some) word 'leader' is evolved from various academic disciplines. Including the more obvious psychology, there is also biology and anthropology in the mix. Heady stuff. And yes, I did want to read on. Full review...
On Balance by Adam Phillips
Essential for a tightrope walker, prized as an intellectual objective, balance is generally considered something to which we can aspire. We praise someone who makes a balanced decision, we envy people who have a 'good work/life balance' we offer an opinion 'on balance' to demonstrate that we have considered various arguments and options. Full review...
Must-Have: The Hidden Instincts Behind Everything We Buy by Geoffrey Miller
If no one can tell the difference, why shell out $30 000 for a real Rolex when a 'mere' $1200 will get you a virtually identical replica?
Why do luxury manufacturers such as BMW spend money advertising in mass media whose typical readership most likely won't ever be able to afford their products?
And just why is the i in iPod so important? Full review...