==Popular science==
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{{newreview
|author=Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde
|title=Sleights of Mind
|rating=3.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=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 [http://illusioncontest.neuralcorrelate.com/ 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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683890</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|summary=Humans are cooking apes. According to Richard Wrangham, mastery of fire and cooking of the food that resulted from it was at the root of human evolutionary development and ultimate success. Various factors have been proposed as the crucial stimulus which led to the appearance of the first recognisably human creatures: leaving aside divine intervention (be it from God, extra-terrestrials or future humans travelling in time), the candidates for what made our ancestral apes stand straighter and start growing brains range from socialised hunting to chattering about kinship to eating seafood.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846682851</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alexandra Bruce
|title=2012: Science or Superstition
|rating=3.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=The fuss about 2012 has not started just recently. The first book to feature the story was from a Yale professor, in 1966. We've also had prog rock bands named after Popol Vuh, the Maya creation myth. But as the crunch date of December 21st, 2012 - the winter solstice that year - nears, it's becoming a very big story indeed. Even though it sounds absurd - the end of a 5,125-year long cycle of the Maya calendar, which started on August 13th, 3114BCE - or was judged to start then, when they came across this concept a couple of thousand years into that period. Surely they couldn't predict the future from their 'primitive' state with such accuracy?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1934708283</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Stephen Baker
|title=They've Got Your Number
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=If you are in the slightest bit paranoid, worry that ''Big Brother'' is always watching or like to believe that you are not a number, but a free man (or woman), then this may not be the book for you, as it will do nothing to dispel any of those worries. If, on the other hand, you think 'the mathematical modelling of humanity' sounds like one of the sexiest things ever, and are chomping at the bit to learn more about it, then you might well be interested in what Business Week journalist Baker has to say.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099507021</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Dr Aaron Carroll and Dr Rachel Vreeman
|title=Don't Swallow Your Gum
|rating=5
|genre=Lifestyle
|summary='''BANG'''. That's the sound of copious urban myths being shot down. '''BANG'''. That's the sound of the old wives slamming the door, as their tales get revealed as baseless. '''CLICK'''. That's the noise lots of ill-informed websites make as they get closed down. All noises come due to this brilliant book.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141043369</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Robert Rowland Smith
|title=Breakfast with Socrates
|rating=4
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=In ''Breakfast with Socrates'', subtitled A Philosophy of Everyday Life, former Oxford Fellow Robert Roland Smith takes various elements of a 'typical' day and provides insight into what an eclectic collection of thinkers might have to offer to make these mundane routines more interesting. After all, as Socrates declared 'the unexamined life is not worth living'.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846682371</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=James Hannam
|title=God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science
|rating=5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=Everybody knows that the Medieval people thought the world was flat and that it wasn't until Columbus proved otherwise that they found out it was a sphere. Everybody knows that the inquisition burned people at the stake for their scientific ideas and that Copernicus lived in perpetual fear of persecution. Everyone knows that the Pope banned human dissection and the number zero, and everybody is wrong.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848310706</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sally Kindberg and Tracey Turner
|title=The Comic Strip History of Space
|rating=5
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
|summary=Sally Kindberg and Tracey Turner treated us to a [[The Comic Strip History of the World by Sally Kindberg and Tracey Turner|Comic Strip History of the World]], and have now turned their attention to space. They explain to children everything from the origins of the universe, to what ancient civilisations thought of the stars, through astronomers discovering the truth about planets, right up to current space missions.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0747594325</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ian Stewart
|title=Professor Stewart's Hoard of Mathematical Treasures
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=Ian Stewart has been collecting mathematical curiosities, puzzles and stories since he was 14. He published his ''Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities'' in 2008, and hot on its success, he's sharing this second volume with us.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846682924</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mick O'Hare
|title=How To Make A Tornado
|rating=4
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=Another year, another must-read book from the New Scientist. We've been here before with [[Do Polar Bears Get Lonely? by Mick O'Hare|polar bears]], [[Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze? by Mick O'Hare|penguins]] and [[How To Fossilise Your Hamster by Mick O'Hare|hamsters]]. Now it's time to turn our attention to how to make a tornado, and all the other crazy experiments that scientists have done over the years.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846682878</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Eva Hoffman
|title=Time (Big Ideas)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=''Time'' is one of ''Big Ideas'' series of books aiming to revisit the greatest notions and concepts and to provide them with a modern summary and understanding. The series strives to cause people to think and debate, to re-evaluate and doubt. Another ''Big Ideas'' books deal with topics such as ''Democracy'', ''Identity'' and ''Bodies''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846680387</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw
|title=Why Does E Equal mc Squared?
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=Why does E=mc² and why should we care? Two questions that every intelligent person should be able to answer, but I'll bet that 95% couldn't. Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw explain this most famous of equations to the layperson in such a way that they won't need anything more complicated than Pythagoras' theorem to understand it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0306817586</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tadg Farrington
|title=The Average Life of the Average Person
|rating=5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=Back in school, we would often bemoan the idea of 'average', saying that like being 'normal', if there were such a thing, who would even want to be it? There could be nothing worse, we thought, than being average. Except...there is by definition a whole lot worse than 'average' – the exact same amount that is better than average, in fact. And that was the problem.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224086235</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Richard D Ryder
|title=Nelson, Hitler and Diana
|rating=4
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=Was Horatio Nelson, a navy officer of great renown, forever thrusting himself into the limelight, doing it because his mother passed away when he was nine? Was Hitler overly affected by his father dying in a time of paternal disapproval, and a kind of Oedipal reaction to being the man in the house making him suffer when she herself died? And can Diana, Princess of Wales' parents' divorce lead to a claim she was a sufferer of borderline personality disorder?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845401662</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Evalyn Gates
|title=Einstein's Telescope: The Hunt for Dark Matter and Dark Energy in the Universe
|rating=4
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=Subtitled ''The Hunt for Dark Matter and Dark Energy in the Universe'' Gates' introduction to astro-physics and cosmology is everything that you would expect of such a book. Gates' tries '''so''' hard to be readable, and mostly succeeds, but at the same time, the subject matter is well-nigh incomprehensible. Or maybe, that's just me.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393062384</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Stuart Sutherland
|title=Irrationality
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=The belief that humans are, essentially, rational dates to the Greek antiquity, and although intellectual and philosophical fashions changed throughout the epochs, the capacity to reason and behave in a rational manner is often considered to be a defining characteristics of mature humanity. Irrational behaviours have been seen as an evidence of psychiatric or otherwise pathology.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905177070</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Brian Dunning
|title=Skeptoid 2: More Critical Analysis of Pop Phenomena
|rating=4
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=Brian Dunning is the author responsible for a series of weekly podcasts debunking and analysing a variety of dubious, pseudo-scientific, un-scientific and downright loony ideas, claims and myths common or persistent in the pop (and not so pop) culture. ''Skeptoid 2'' is essentially a written version of those podcasts, a collection of fifty pieces of which many can be also read or listened to at his [http://skeptoid.com/ website].
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1440422850</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Dan Gardner
|title=Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=Picture a world terrorised by just two words. A civilised, healthy, wealthy world no less, in thrall to and under threat from two words. Not what those two words represent even, just the actual small phrase. It sounds ridiculous, but when I say those two words – ''bird flu'' – and you've stopped laughing, you may well remember how the panic started, the non-existent worry was the biggest concern of the western media for some time, and then it went away again.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0753515539</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Iain McCalman
|title=Darwin's Armada: Four Voyagers to the Southern Oceans and Their Battle for the Theory of Evolution
|rating=3.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=A look at Darwin's journey on The Beagle, as well as journeys by Joseph Hooker, Thomas Huxley and Alfred Wallace. Darwin's Armada provides a broad overview that strikes a different tone to other books in a crowded market. Casual readers who usually steer clear of non-fiction will enjoy it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184737266X</amazonuk>
}}
