The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science by Andrea Wulf
Alexander von Humboldt was born in Berlin in 1769, the younger brother of Wilhelm von Humboldt who would become a Prussian minister but who is perhaps better remembered as a philosopher and linguist. The family was well-to-do and both brothers benefitted from an excellent education, although they lacked affection from their emotionally-distant widowed mother, but it was a legacy from her which would fund Alexander's first explorations. His first travels would be in Europe where he met and was influenced by people such as Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, who had travelled with Thomas Cook. But it was his travels in Latin America which would lay the foundations for his life's work. Full review...
The Hunt by Alastair Fothergill and Huw Cordey
My mother has long complained that nature programmes too often concentrate on the death and violence, or how it's all about the capture and killing of one animal by another. She's long had a point, but killer whales swanning by doing nothing, and lions sleeping off the heat without munching on a passing wildebeest's leg really don't cut it when it comes to providing popular TV content. I doubt she will be tuning in to the series this book accompanies, even if the volume very quickly testifies that it's not all about the capture – often the chase can be just as thrilling, and the result for the intended victim is favourable. Full review...
The Psychology of Overeating by Kima Cargill
As a nation, we are not the same as we used to be. We eat more, both as in more often and as in more of a serving size. And we eat worse. Processed foods. Sugary drinks. It’s not really news. As a result, our waistlines are larger, our blood pressure is higher, and our sugar levels are whoooosh. But it’s not just about the food. This book takes an in depth and incredibly interesting look at our lives as a whole, to show how the modern culture of consumerism shows up in every part of our day to day living and explains, to quite a significant degree, why many of us are overeating and why it is so hard to stop. Full review...
I Used To Know That: General Science by Marianne Taylor
This book got off to the right start in my mind because it comes in 3 key sections, each for one of 'my' sciences without a nod to any of the other '-ologies' (or pseudo sciences as they were often called at school). Marketed as stuff you forgot from school, this is a book from the same series that has already spawned I Used to Know That: History by Emma Marriott , I Used to Know That: Maths by Chris Waring and I Should Know That - Great Britain by Emma Marriott among others. Full review...
Why We Do the Things We Do: Psychology in a Nutshell by Joel Levy
Chalk and cheese; your left hand and your right; philosophy and psychology. All pairs have something closely resembling yet very different from the other, whether through colour and crumbliness, or physical form, or from being studies of the mind. The only thing is, one pair is alone. Your two hands formed at the same time, whereas chalk is the older, and philosophy predates psychology. The two were the same thing until recently, and we can perhaps point at a William James as the father of the split. I make this point because when I reviewed this volume's sister book I found no timeline or history evident. Here, however, we do get one – travelling quickly from the ideas of idiocy-cum-possession in our early history, through phrenology and mesmerism to the birth of psychology. The fact that we then immediately look at free will in much the same terms as the philosophers does shows how common the disciplines still are – and how vital to our understanding of ourselves both topics remain. Full review...
Why We Think the Things we Think: Philosophy in a Nutshell by Alain Stephen
Way back when, when I started back on adult education having finished my university life (I know, it's hard to believe sometimes, but bear with me) I was asked if I was going to do a philosophy A-level. No, I said – there was no point in studying something nobody can agree about. The introduction to this book raises much the same point – the solution to philosophical questions and study is only ever going to be more questions. It says that Kant thought the study of thought, or, more precisely, how ideas are formed was the highest science, although that sounds like the psychology that I did indeed study. Still, study it many people do do – and probably a far greater number would wish to read around it and find out what it might be like to sound as if you have studied it – hence books like this. Full review...
Out of the Woods: the armchair guide to trees by Will Cohu
Most people probably accept trees as, well, trees. They're there and they're green. Some are lighter, some darker. Some are taller and other go for width, but as for telling them apart there were few that I could identify until recently. I knew that the big tree at the bottom of next door's garden is a sycamore, but only because I heard someone say 'that sycamore is going to cause problems with the drains of the flats at the back'. I was OK on white horse chestnuts too, but only when the kids were collecting conkers, so I was rather pleased when Will Cohu's book landed on my desk and I opened it expecting to find lots of pictures with all the details which I probably wouldn't remember. Full review...
Cakes, Custard and Category Theory: Easy recipes for understanding complex maths by Eugenia Cheng
Eugenia Cheng is a professor of maths and a lover of cake. If you’re wondering how those two things could ever intersect, it’s quite easy. And the result, the middle of the Venn diagram, if you will, is this book which makes maths fun, meaningful and relatively easy to digest. Much like her recipes. Full review...
Oceans in 30 Seconds by Jen Green and Wesley Robins
Oceans in 30 Seconds is the latest book in the innovative series from Ivy Press, which aims to give an informative and entertaining overview of a given subject in bite-sized chunks. Each given subject has its own two-page spread, with a concise description on the left, covering all of the main points, and a colourful illustration on the right hand page, complete with extra snippets of information. Each chapter also has a handy 3-second sum up, which further condenses the main idea of the chapter into a single sentence. Full review...
Professor Stewart’s Incredible Numbers by Ian Stewart
Incredible Numbers starts off easily enough, with a really interesting look at numbers as seen by the earliest people, before moving on to a brief explanation of natural numbers, rational numbers, negative numbers and complex and prime numbers. Subsequent chapters revisit old friends such as Pythagoras’s theorem, the Fibonacci cube, negative numbers, pi and quadratic equations, and other lesser known concepts such as kissing numbers, imaginary numbers and the winsomely-named Sausage Conjecture. Full review...
13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do by Amy Morin
When Amy Morin was just 26 and working as a psychologist and therapist her husband died suddenly, but even whilst she was reeling from the shock she realised that there were things which she must not do. She knew that she must not develop a sense of entitlement, feel resentment or succumb to self-pity. That was ten years ago: since then Morin has remarried and worked with numerous patients using the principles which she applied to herself. She's found 13 common habits which hold us back in life and developed strategies to combat them. But the best thing which she makes clear is that mental strength is not about acting tough - for instance, if you've suffered a bereavement, you need to grieve - it's about having the mental wherewithal to overcome life's challenges. Full review...
Wheat Belly: The effortless health and weight-loss solution - no exercise, no calorie counting, no denial by Dr William Davis
Dr William Davis poses an interesting question: why is it that people who are leading an active life and eating a healthy diet are putting on weight despite all their best efforts? He has a simple and worrying answer: wheat, which he argues increases blood sugar more than table sugar. The problem isn't restricted to weight gain, either: there's evidence to suggest that wheat affects psychosis and autism too. In fact - the more that you read, the more you'll wonder if there's an organ in the body which isn't adversely affected by wheat. Full review...
The Knowledge by Lewis Dartnell
Post apocaplyptic depictions of earth are common place in Science Fiction - the wonderful (if hugely depressing) The Road by Cormac McCarthy, The MaddAdam trilogy by Margaret Atwood (although I believe Ms Atwood would be rather rankled to hear her books described as 'Science Fiction'), and the recent Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel are just a small drop in the very deep ocean of post apocalyptic books. Full review...
A Scientist in Wonderland: A Memoir of Searching for Truth and Finding Trouble by Edzard Ernst
Professor Edzard Ernst was born in Germany not long after the end of World War II and grew up with guilt about what had happened in the years before he was born as well as an insatiable curiosity - with the two not being entirely entirely unconnected. He also developed an attitude of speaking his mind - as an early challenge to his step-father about the death of six million Jews in the course of the war proved. In his teens he wasn't determined to become a doctor - he had a hankering to be a musician - despite the fact that it was the family business, so to speak, but came round to the idea and practiced in various countries before settling in Exeter as Professor of Complementary Medicine at the university. Full review...
Question Everything: 132 science questions - and their unexpected answers by New Scientist
For years now the New Scientist magazine has had a column whereby people submit questions they want the answer to, and it's up to correspondents from all walks of life to submit the answer and explain the solution. It's nothing new – the Guardian had it for years, then the Daily Mail probably had Britain's most popular variant, what with it being daily, but none were purely science-based such as that under perusal. It's a simple format for a book – not only does it create a fun kick-back at the close of an at-times hard-going science read, it generates a book full of fun and intriguing Q&As almost every year. Chances are that, by relying on the interests of their audience, the editors have allowed themselves to publish books that will appeal to many people who have never looked at their weekly edition – certainly they have been incredibly popular, and massively boosted the magazine's public recognition. And this volume will not be any different. Full review...
Encyclopedia Paranoiaca by Henry Beard and Christopher Cerf
We're screwed. Wherever we look, whatever we think of doing, there is a reason why we shouldn't be doing it, and people to back that reason up with scientific data. Take any aspect of your daily life – what you eat, how you work, how you rest even, what you touch – all have problems that could provoke a serious illness or worse. And outside that daily sphere there are economic disasters, nuclear meltdowns, errant AI scientists and passing comets that could turn our world upside down at the blink of an eye. Perhaps then you better read this book first – for it may well turn out to be your last… Full review...
Professor Stewart's Casebook of Mathematical Mysteries by Ian Stewart
Ah, those pesky number things. Not just Rogerson's Book of Numbers: The culture of numbers from 1001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World and how we have related to certain ones, but how they all relate to each other, and have provided mathematical scientists with thousands upon thousands of hours of thinking time. Just one problem in these pages has ended with not so much a checkable proof, but a third more data again than the entire Wikipedia project. Within this book are numbers far too big you would not even manage to write them out given the entire lifespan of the universe (and ones bigger than that) and problems wherein one must define as many integers as possible using merely 1s and mathematical symbols. Full review...
The Edge of the Sky by Roberto Trotta
Don't use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do. Apparently that's advice to budding journalists and writers, and I do try to follow the English translation of it, if not completely successfully. Someone who seems to have no trouble whatsoever in agreeing with the dictum is Roberto Trotta. This book is his survey of current astrophysics and cosmological science, but one that has to convey everything it intends to by using only the most common thousand words of the English language. So there is no Big Bang as such, planets have to be called Crazy Stars – and it's soon evident you can't even describe the book with the word thousand either. Full review...
Inventions in 30 Seconds by Dr Mike Goldsmith
My son is incredibly curious and is constantly bombarding me with questions about how things work or how things are made. It seems that the minute I have found the answer to one of his questions, another has formulated inside his head to replace it. I was delighted then, when Inventions in 30 Seconds arrived for me to review, as I saw it as a dose of much-needed respite from my endless research. Full review...
The Human Body in 30 Seconds by Anna Claybourne
Our body is an amazing machine, capable of performing a myriad of tasks simultaneously. Even when we are sleeping, our body is busy processing information, pumping blood, regulating temperature and filtering waste. When we are hurt, a host of repair systems jump into operation to sort out the damage. When we are invaded by a foreign body, our immune system works to repel the invaders. We are constantly making new discoveries about the wonderful way that our body works. Full review...
Standard Deviations by Gary Smith
Over the years I've regularly been infuriated by the way that seemingly intelligent people abuse statistics - or perhaps misuse them deliberately to deceive us. Politicians, journalists, academics all seem to fall into the trap with alarming regularity and I was tempted into reading this book by a quote from Ronald Coase (Nobel Prize-winning Economist) that 'If you torture data long enough, it will confess'. The author, Dr Gary Smith, taught at Yale for seven years and is now a professor at Pomona College in California. His book is aimed at the layman rather than the academic - does it hit the mark? Full review...
Mind Change by Susan Greenfield
The year is 2014. The digital age is upon us and Greenfield seeks to explore what the impact of its technologies might be.
Heralding from the discipline of neuroscience, Greenfield’s case, in short, is that the brain may be changing to meet the demands of the digital twenty-first century. Online mass-player games, digitally equipped classrooms, electronic readers and search-engines each challenge how the mind has traditionally socialised and learned. Full review...
The Cancer Chronicles: Unlocking Medicine's Deepest Mystery by George Johnson
George Johnson, a popular science writer more comfortable in the fields of physics and cosmology, started his journey into cancer when his wife, Nancy, was diagnosed with a rare uterine variety. He took it as an opportunity not just for personal soul-searching (why her? why now?), but also for a wide-ranging odyssey into current research about what causes cancer and how long it has been with us. Full review...
Psy-Q: You know your IQ - now test your psychological intelligence by Ben Ambridge
Psy-Q is a fun and interactive slice of 'Pop-Science' which delves into various psychology topics, with the aim of entertaining and enlightening the reader and debunking a few myths along the way. Most of the chapters are only a couple of pages long and include quizzes, personality profiles, experiments, optical illusions and the odd cheesy joke thrown in for good measure. The result is a readable, accessible and un-putdownable book that I managed to devour in an entire afternoon. Full review...
At the Edge of Uncertainty: 11 Discoveries Taking Science by Surprise by Michael Brooks
Eleven Discoveries are introduced and explored in Michael Brooks’ At the Edge of Uncertainty, spanning all from the expansion of epigenetics, the possibility of creating a hypercomputer, and the unveiling of the true nature of the universe. Some of the hypotheses currently being investigated by our contemporary scientific community are baffling enough in themselves: Is our universe a hologram of an extra-dimensional universe? Are the mechanisms governing photosynthesis and human olfaction in fact one and the same? Just how well-established are animal personalities and cultures, if such exist? Is a human ‘will to live’ something which can be attributed to discernible biological responses and systems? Is time an illusion? Full review...
Earth in 30 Seconds by Anita Ganeri
As a former cataloguer of children’s books there are names that are synonymous with juvenile non-fiction, in my time the author Anita Ganeri has graced my work table 112 times. She is a prolific author and her legacy continues in the form of ‘Earth in 30 Seconds’, part of a series of books for 7-11 year olds that explore scientific principles in easy bite size pieces. Full review...
The Lazarus Effect by Sam Parnia
As part of my job, I assess junior doctors who want to specialise in General Practice at the end of their two foundation years, and this assessment takes the form of role plays where they play a doctor and respond to cues from an actor playing a patient/relative/staff member while I take notes and score them against competencies. Last year one of the scenarios included explaining DNAR (do not attempt resuscitation) to a ‘relative’ and one rather memorable candidate said 'It doesn’t mean we let your mother die, but if she does die, we won’t bring her back to life the way we might another patient'. The answer did not score well on what I was assessing (communication skills) but it stuck with me and I still tell it as a tale from time to time, along with the story of the patient who tripped and fell on a, erm, personal massage device, had to have it surgically removed…and then asked for it back. It’s relevant here, though, because what that wannabe GP was saying is that he had the power to bring people back from the dead. And that’s what this book is all about. Full review...
The Science of Discworld IV: Judgement Day (Science of Discworld 4) by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen
The wizards of the Unseen University are custodians of Roundworld. It may be different from their own turtle-carried Discworld (it's round for a start!) but they're still rather fond of it. However, there's a problem: the Church of the Latter Day Omnians have taken a shine to it too and would like to claim it. A court case will decide the winner, a court case that will have a guest spectator. For Marjorie Daw (yes, like the nursery rhyme) has arrived from Roundworld just in time. What on Earth will happen next? Full review...