|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444732633</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alasdair Wickham
|title=The Black Book of Modern Myths: True Stories of the Unexplained
|rating=3
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=A collection of 'Modern Myths' from around the world, Wickham's Black Book covers a wide range of phenomenon, from ghosts to liminal creatures, poltergeists to demons. As an aficionado of all things paranormal, this should have been right up my street. However, I found myself struggling to get into it, and putting it down for something else on more than one occasion.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099533626</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alain Badiou with Nicholas Truong
|title=In Praise of Love
|rating=3.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary='Love encompasses the experience of the possible transition from the pure randomness of chance to a state that has universal value. Starting out from something that is simply an encounter, a trifle, you learn that you can experience the world on the basis of difference and not only in terms of identity.' In other words, when eyes look and worlds collide, the process of alteration that follows, is love. 'It is absolutely true that love can bend our bodies and prompt the sharpest torment. Love, as we can observe day in and day out, is not a long, quiet river.' But it is not designed to be that way - just as a record is a lump of plastic before music has been carved on it, love is just a transaction if all the chance has been ironed out of it - as perhaps by an Internet match site questionnaire.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687799</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Neil deGrasse Tyson
|title=Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier
|rating=3.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=A year or so ago there was a big hoopla about being able to see the International Space Station pass overhead where I live, so I dutifully clambered on to the roof. And indeed it was actually very warming to know I was seeing something manmade, from 250 miles away. As for the chance to see it, its speed of 17,000mph means it orbits the planet every 92 and a half minutes. It gets about. But some of the warmth of seeing it, as well as the achievements that led up to it, and the politics of NASA's five decades - and some of the Newtonian physics involved in it - are all in this volume.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393082105</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Daniel Everett
|title=Language: The Cultural Tool
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=Daniel Everett previously worked as a missionary in far flung corners of the world– a fact that isn’t surprising given the number of references to faith that crop up over the pages. This new book, however, is about two much more appealing (to me) subjects: language and travel. If [[:Category:Bill Bryson|Bill Bryson]] is a travel writer with an interest in linguistics, then Daniel Everett is a linguist with an interest in travel. It’s not quite the ‘read it by a pool’ sort of book that Bryson might release but is somewhere between a formalised every day read and a text book with a big dollop of informality stirred in. The travel stories – jaunts to Brazil, Mexico and beyond – are great, and while you might think they’re taking things a bit off track (albeit in a rather pleasant way) sooner or later the linguistic point will become clear.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846682673</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jeffrey Masson
|title=Dogs Never Lie About Love: Why Your Dog Will Always Love You More Than Anyone Else
|rating=3.5
|genre=Pets
|summary=Readers come to books for strange reasons but I don't think that I've ever before picked up a book, looked at the title and being intrigued not by what was suggested but by how anyone could think differently. 'Dogs Never Lie About Love' is a statement of the obvious to me. I've lived with and around dogs for most of my life and I know that dogs are incapable of pretence. I've never met a dog I couldn't trust: if it doesn't like me, it will tell me so straight away. It will not attempt to trick me. I only wish that I could say the same about most of the humans I encounter.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099740613</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Antonio Damasio
|title=Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=What makes us, us? How is awareness of one's own being created in the human mind? What makes ''me'' who got up this morning ''me'' that went to bed last night, and the same ''me'' that got up on most mornings in the preceding forty-odd years? How is it that we see, remember and understand things, other humans and the world in general? And who is doing the understanding? How is it that we are conscious of our own experiences, and how is it that we are conscious of ourselves being conscious?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099498022</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John D Barrow
|title=The Book Of Universes
|rating=4
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=The idea of a 'multiverse' - multiple universes existing alongside each other - is something science fiction and fantasy fans are fairly au fait with. Parallel realities in which you made a different decision at a pivotal moment and, as a consequence, have evolved in entirely different ways, have been fodder for authors, scriptwriters and 'what if' musings for some time, but recently, scientists - specifically cosmologists - have been taking increasingly seriously.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099539861</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Nicholas Mee
|title=Higgs Force
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=Nicholas Mee, was a Senior Wrangler at Trinity College, Cambridge and having taken his PhD in Theoretical Particle Physics by submitting his thesis on ''Supersymmetric Quantum Mechanics and Geometry'', he is uniquely qualified to explain the mysteries of the Higgs force. He is also a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. Whereas other texts rapidly resort to references to erudite constructs like 'non-zero expectation values', 'zz Dibosons' and 'Bose-Einstein statistics', Dr Mee provides an accurate account of the Geneva experiments with the Large Hadron Collider, provides his readers with some insight into the character of eminent physicists, and furnishes a lucid account of current theories. Included is an exposition of the discovery of elements by Sir Humphry Davy to recent experiments to discover Peter Higg's elusive particle.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718892755</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ian Stewart
|title=17 Equations That Changed The World
|rating=4
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=''17 Equations That Changed the World'' takes us through the history of mathematics, from Pythagoras through Einstein's theory of relativy and chaos theory. It highlights the most influently equations, clearly explains them, and establishes the full ranges of breakthroughs they led to.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685311</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Taggart Siegel and Jon Betz (editors)
|title=Queen of the Sun
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=I kept bees for 5 or 6 years and read many books about the subject, all of the 'how to..' or 'the science of… variety. But this book is a revelation as it genuinely tries to celebrate bees, capturing the real 'feel' of beekeeping - I wish I had come across this much sooner. For Siegel and Betz have collected a series of short articles, poems and essays not about the technique and science of the craft, but about the purpose and 'soul' behind it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905570341</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Keith Skene
|title=Escape from Bubbleworld
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=Before you stifle the inward groan that comes from the thought of another book assaulting population growth, western greed and reckless exploitation of the environment, take time to read the first chapter of Keith Skene's 'Escape to Bubbleworld'. Because this is as entertaining and amusing book as you are likely to read on the subject, while at the same time taking us into to some deep science and fascinating exploration of what turns out to be less certain certainties. For Skene’s writing has two attributes which I can almost guarantee will keep even the non-scientific reading.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956250122</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Malouf
|title=The Happy Life: The Search for Contentment in the Modern World
|rating=4
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=There's something quite uplifting about the physical brevity of David Malouf's 'The Happy Life' which is subtitled 'The Search for Contentment in the Modern World'. It suggests that it is easy to find, when of course, the whole point of the book is that despite, or perhaps because of, scientific and technological advances that have taken away many of the causes of true unhappiness in the world, it remains elusive for most. Who can say that they are truly happy? The book runs to less than 100 pages if you take out the Notes section, and the typeface is large. It is, by any reckoning a slim offering.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701187115</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Marcus Chown
|title=Solar System
|rating=5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=With beautiful photographs of the wonders of the solar system, this is a gorgeous coffee table book for anyone with even a passing interest in astronomy. Marcus Chown's descriptions are in-depth enough to warrant considered reading, but if you're after a simple and casual flick through, you'll still find plenty to appeal.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571277713</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mark Forsyth
|title=The Etymologicon
|rating=5
|genre=Trivia
|summary=I like words. Words are awesome. End of. But I also like trivia. I like knowing things that perhaps other people don’t, and helpfully passing on this knowledge to them. So a book about word-related trivia is just a win-win, and this one is so good I think we’ll have to call it a win-win-win.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848313071</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Simon Barnes
|title=Birdwatching With Your Eyes Closed: an introduction to birdsong
|rating=4
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=
One of my best-ever auditory memories is waking up in a tent to a dawn chorus, sung in the middle of Ireland in spring. It was a high-decibel effort and seemed to involve hundreds of birds. I'm ashamed to say that I couldn't begin to identify the multitude of species I heard that morning. So I suppose I chose this book expecting it to be a field guide that could at long last help me get a handle on birdsong. But it isn't yet another handbook, but a much more interesting book than that, which I thought would make a great present for a new birdwatcher.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907595473</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Steve Backshall
|title=Predators
|rating=4
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
|summary=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?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444004174</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sam Leith
|title=You Talkin' To Me?: Rhetoric from Aristotle to Obama
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683157</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Gordon Grice
|title=The Book of Deadly Animals
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670919675</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Thomas Byrne and Tom Cassidy
|title=How to Save the World with Salad Dressing
|rating=3
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1851688552</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Gary Hayden
|title=You Kant Make it Up!: Strange Ideas from History's Greatest Philosophers
|rating=3.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1851688455</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Stephen H Segal
|title=Geek Wisdom
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1594745277</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mick O'Hare
|title=Why Are Orangutans Orange?
|rating=3.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=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 [[Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze? by Mick O'Hare|Penguins]], [[Do Polar Bears Get Lonely? by Mick O'Hare|Polar Bears]], [[How To Make A Tornado by Mick O'Hare|Tornadoes]], [[Why Can't Elephants Jump? by Mick O'Hare|Elephants]] and [[How To Fossilise Your Hamster by Mick O'Hare|Hamsters]]. Now it's time for the orangutan to find out why he's orange.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685079</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Crystal
|title=The Story Of English In 100 Words
|rating=5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684277</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Niall McCrae
|title=The Moon and Madness
|rating=4
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845402146</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John L Locke
|title=Duels and Duets: Why Men and Women Talk So Differently
|rating=4
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0521887135</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Steven Connor
|title=Paraphernalia: The Curious Lives of Magical Things
|rating=4
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=...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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846682703</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Michael Brooks
|title=Free Radicals
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684056</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Andrew Wheen
|title=Dot-Dash To Dot.Com
|rating=4
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441967591</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Stephanie Pain
|title=Farmer Buckley's Exploding Trousers
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685087</amazonuk>
}}
amazonuk>0099539861