|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>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jonah Lehrer
|title=Proust Was a Neuroscientist
|rating=4
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=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, [[:Category:Eric R Kandel|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847677851</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John Lister-Kaye
|title=At the Water's Edge: A Walk in the Wild
|rating=3
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847674054</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ian Stewart
|title=Mathematics of Life
|rating=3.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846681987</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Anthony James
|title=The Happy Passion: A Personal View of Jacob Bronowski
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845402200</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sean Carroll
|title=From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1851687955</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Robert Rowland Smith
|title=Driving with Plato: The Meaning of Life's Milestones
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=''Driving with Plato'' is a companion book to [[Breakfast with Socrates by Robert Rowland Smith|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668305X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mark Stevenson
|title=An Optimist's Tour of the Future
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683564</amazonuk>
}}
{{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
|author=Sam Kean
|title=The Disappearing Spoon
|rating=4.5
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857520261</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Martin Cohen
|title=Mind Games: 31 Days to Rediscover Your Brain
|rating=4
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444337092</amazonuk>
}}
