==Popular science==
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{{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
|summary=Maths is a wonderful thing. ...Wait, don't run away. It really is. The way numbers interact with each other, the way counting systems developed, how mathematical breakthroughs are coming from the world of crochet, and how people can mentally calculate the 13th root of a 200 digit number in almost less time than it takes to read it out loud. There's all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff going on in Numberland.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0747597162</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Richard Fortey
|title=The Hidden Landscape
|rating=4
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=The purpose of this book is to explore the connection between the landscape and the geology underlying it, which in one of his many vivid similes Fortey compares the surface personality with the workings of the unconscious mind beneath. He starts by describing a journey he once made from Paddington Station to Haverford West, a market town in Pembrokeshire and with it a passage back into the plutonic depths of geological aeons, indicated by the large 60cm monster trilobites that have been found in the Cambrian rocks near St David's. Fortey describes the magnificence of the Cathedral constructed from the local purple sandstone and mottled with moisture-loving lichens. He contrasts this with the anonymous character of a nearby brightly-coloured service station, anonymous and synthetic, an invader cheaply built and out of context.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847920713</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alexandra Horowitz
|title=Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know
|rating=5
|genre=Pets
|summary=I've long been aware that our two dogs have methods of communication which are far more subtle than anything a mere human can muster. They sense exactly how we are feeling – a slight change in the atmosphere and they will be alert. The reactions to a frown or a smile, laughter or tears are all different and they're capable of communicating with us in ways which have no need of words. For a while I thought it was our dogs who were special (well, ''obviously'' they are…) but I've noticed other dogs communicating with each other and with humans and the more that I see the more that I wonder why they are referred to as 'dumb animals'.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184737347X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Philip Ball
|title=The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can't Do without it
|rating=4
|genre=Popular Science
|summary='We need to talk about music, but it is hard. Very few people can do it.' So says Philip Ball after 400 pages of talking about music. Very few readers who make it that far will disagree with his conclusion, but most will have gained some enlightenment about how music works and why we enjoy it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847920888</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Derrick Niederman
|title=Number Freak: A Mathematical Compendium from 1 to 200
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=This is a book that definitely does what it says on the tin. Our author has the capacity to grab each number between one and two hundred, and wring it for all its worth - all the special status it might have in our culture (more easy with seven than, say, 187), all the special properties it might possess (perfect, triangular, prime), and as many other things mathematicians and so on would find of interest. Luckily there is enough here to make the book well worth a browse for us who would not deem themselves number buffs.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>071563710X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kees van Deemter
|title=Not Exactly - In Praise Of Vagueness
|rating=3.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=How warm is a warm day? Or rather, given the weather at the moment, how chilly is a chilly day? Is it better to know I want a small helping of peas, or to know that I want 82 peas? There are times when vagueness is more useful than being specific. Kees van Deemter makes this point, sharing many examples from a number of fields, including maths, philosophy, linguistics and AI.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0199545901</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Druin Burch
|title=Taking the Medicine
|rating=5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=In 1898, Burch points out that a new drug was developed and marketed for the treatment of tuberculosis by Bayer & Co. TB is such an ancient enemy of man that there is apparently evidence of an earlier strain to be found in Egyptian mummies. The German firm had discovered a chemical that seemed to work well, and patients and indeed their own staff, who were tested seemed to respond well - it was named Heroin - and its addictive effects were at first missed.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951506</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Roger Scruton
|title=I Drink Therefore I Am
|rating=3.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=Roger Scruton is a conservative philosopher and composer, best known for his work on philosophy and music, but who shares Plato's belief that 'nothing more excellent or valuable than wine was ever granted by the gods to man' and in this book seeks to combine his two interests of philosophy and the fruits of the vine.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847065082</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Keith Laidler
|title=Animals
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=''Animals'' is described as a visual guide to the animal kingdom, but please don't think of it as a picture book as it's far more than that. Don't think of it as a coffee table book either – despite the fact that its size – midway between A2 and A3 – might tempt you to think that way. It's a journey through the complex diversity of the animal kingdom based on sound scientific principles.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184916004X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Bill Butterworth
|title=Reversing Global Warming For Profit
|rating=3.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=There aren't many climate change deniers left, are there? We all know it's there. We all know, too, that the world's population growth is on a collision course with the dwindling of its resources. The world's going to get hotter, its weather more extreme. Fossil fuels are going to run out. More and more people will compete for fewer and fewer of civilisation's luxuries. We're all worried.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312810</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Richard Wrangham
|title=Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|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>
}}
