Newest Popular Science Reviews
Popular science
The Lotus Quest by Mark Griffiths
Mark Griffiths is one of Britain's leading plant experts. I know this because his brief biog in the front of The Lotus Quest tells me so; just as it tells me that he is the editor of The New Royal Horticultural Society Dictionary of Gardening 'the largest work on horticulture ever published'. His prior works list includes five other plant book credits, three of them for the RHS. I shall take all of this on trust, since attempts to find out more about the author and his background through the usual internet search mechanisms has failed miserably. He remains as elusive as the sacred flower that is the subject of this latest work: the lotus. Full review...
Science: Sorted! Evolution, Nature and Stuff by Glenn Murphy
Ever wanted to know about evolution, nature and stuff? Unsurprisingly, this is the book for you. If you're interested in space, black holes and stuff, then Glenn Murphy has also written a sister book in the Science: Sorted! series packed full of all the information you'd want to know. It's all written with the fabulous quality that made Why is Snot Green? such a must-read. Full review...
Alex's Adventures In Numberland by Alex Bellos
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. Full review...
The Hidden Landscape by Richard Fortey
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. Full review...
Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know by Alexandra Horowitz
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'. Full review...
The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can't Do without it by Philip Ball
'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. Full review...
Number Freak: A Mathematical Compendium from 1 to 200 by Derrick Niederman
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. Full review...
Not Exactly - In Praise Of Vagueness by Kees van Deemter
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. Full review...
Taking the Medicine by Druin Burch
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. Full review...
I Drink Therefore I Am by Roger Scruton
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. Full review...
Animals by Keith Laidler
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. Full review...
Reversing Global Warming For Profit by Bill Butterworth
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. Full review...
Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham
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. Full review...
2012: Science or Superstition by Alexandra Bruce
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? Full review...
They've Got Your Number by Stephen Baker
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. Full review...
Don't Swallow Your Gum by Dr Aaron Carroll and Dr Rachel Vreeman
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. Full review...
Breakfast with Socrates by Robert Rowland Smith
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'. Full review...
God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science by James Hannam
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. Full review...
The Comic Strip History of Space by Sally Kindberg and Tracey Turner
Sally Kindberg and Tracey Turner treated us to a 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. Full review...
Professor Stewart's Hoard of Mathematical Treasures by Ian Stewart
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. Full review...
How To Make A Tornado by Mick O'Hare
Another year, another must-read book from the New Scientist. We've been here before with polar bears, penguins and 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. Full review...
Time (Big Ideas) by Eva Hoffman
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. Full review...
Why Does E Equal mc Squared? by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw
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. Full review...
The Average Life of the Average Person by Tadg Farrington
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. Full review...
Nelson, Hitler and Diana by Richard D Ryder
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? Full review...
Einstein's Telescope: The Hunt for Dark Matter and Dark Energy in the Universe by Evalyn Gates
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. Full review...
Irrationality by Stuart Sutherland
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. Full review...
Skeptoid 2: More Critical Analysis of Pop Phenomena by Brian Dunning
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 website. Full review...
Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear by Dan Gardner
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. Full review...
Darwin's Armada: Four Voyagers to the Southern Oceans and Their Battle for the Theory of Evolution by Iain McCalman
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. Full review...
Why Evolution is True by Jerry A Coyne
This book should not be needed. The theory of evolution has huge explanatory and predictive powers and it is also, philosophically, a wonderful one to behold: it shows a unity of all living things and our human connection to them all; through the billions of years and millions of generations, from the first bacteria to the human beings capable of understanding the story of life as it unfolded on this planet, the story told by the evolution theory is an exhilarating one; possibly the greatest story ever told by science. Full review...
Shapes by Philip Ball
Shapes is one volume of a new trilogy born out of the author's 1999 book 'The Self-Made Tapestry: Pattern Formation in Nature', in which he surveyed a range of contemporary scientific investigation into the extent of nature's patterning with examples taken from areas such as plant growth, minerals, shells, desert sands, lightning, galaxies and atoms. This book has been restructured into the stand-alone volumes Shapes, Flow and Branches, with new material added. Full review...
Darwin: A Life in Science by John Gribbin and Michael White
This straightforward and likeable biography of Charles Darwin charts the evolution of his theories of evolution, while providing solid insights into the man in the context of his upbringing, education and family life. Importantly, it makes you want to read On the Origin of the Species, acting as a primer for the ideas introduced in that famous volume.
Darwin: A Life in Science is pitched beautifully for the reader of popular science, yet gives plenty of signposts enabling future study. It also gives a very believable picture of Darwin, based on convincing evidence and without falling into florid psychological speculation. Full review...
Science: A Four Thousand Year History by Patricia Fara
From Ancient Babylon to the present day, Patricia Fara presents a definitive history of science. It's wide-ranging enough to cover simply everything you could hope it would, whilst being in-depth enough so that you gain a sufficient understanding of the science and the people involved. It serves as a simple reference guide for the layperson - it's riddled with information, whilst also being perfectly readable as a 'biography of science'. If you ever wanted to know anything about the history of science, this is the book for you. Patricia Fara was also kind enough to be interviewed by Bookbag. Full review...
The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favourite Planet by Neil deGrasse Tyson
As director of the Hayden Planetarium, Neil deGrasse Tyson grouped the celestial bodies by type, rather than listing them under the arbitrary heading of 'planets'. This put Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars together in one group, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune together in another, and left poor little Pluto out in the cold. His aim was for people to gain a greater understanding, rather than just knowing the names. The result was widespread outrage amongst newspapers, schoolchildren and the public at large. It was a scientifically-sound position, and ultimately fuelled the International Astronomical Union to define what was and wasn't a planet. The Pluto Files is a fascinating, educational and hilarious journey from Pluto's discovery, through its rise in public consciousness (by way of Disney), to the controversy about its planetary status, its ultimate downgrading, and the public's response to it. Full review...
The Georgian Star: How William and Caroline Herschel Revolutionized Our Understanding of the Cosmos by Michael D Lemonick
No-one can ever look at the night skies above our heads as Galileo did. The light pollution covering so much of our planet makes it impossible to see nearly as much as he might. Conversely, he would have adored living in a time such as ours – with the technology to show him so much he couldn't see, so much he daren't dream of. Sitting happily between those two extremes was William Herschel. Full review...
Gang Leader For A Day by Sudhir Venkatesh
If you've ever wondered why young people join gangs, and what it's like to bring up a family surrounded by armed drug dealers, you'll find Gang Leader For The Day fascinating. Sociology student Sudhir Venkatesh wanted to learn by observing the poor, baulking at the abstract, mathematical research methods used by his professors in the University of Chicago. In 1989, armed with a clipboard and a questionnaire, he visited the Robert Taylor Homes, a notorious housing project. Instead of neatly answering his carefully-prepared questions - 'How does it feel to be black and poor?' by selecting from 'very bad, somewhat bad, neither bad nor good, somewhat good, very good', he finds himself held hostage overnight by members of the Black Kings, a crack-dealing gang, at the behest of its charismatic local leader, J.T. Full review...
13 Things That Don't Make Sense by Michael Brooks
Did you know 96% of the cosmos is unaccounted for? That the Pioneer probes seem to be violating the laws of physics? That we might have already found life on Mars? That aliens might have made contact with us? Oh, and why do we die? Why do we have sex? (Hopefully not in that order). Do we really have free will? 13 Things That Don't Make Sense might not make complete sense of all these, but it'll certainly fascinate you as it explains these and other questions. Full review...
Darwin's Sacred Cause: Race, Slavery and the Quest for Human Origins by Adrian Desmond and James Moore
This probably won't be the only time you are told through 2009 that it would have been Charles Darwin's 200th birthday this year, and that it is 150 years since On The Origin of Species first appeared. This book however declares that second anniversary to be slightly of less importance, when you factor in the biggest section of his evolutionary thinking Darwin left out of that book – that of human evolution. Full review...
Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You by Marcus Chown
Classical physics, for the most, was concerned with (and reasonably good at explaining) medium-scale phenomena: and still now, as when they were discovered, Newton's laws allow us to quite accurately predict behaviour of roughly human-scale objects. Newton's laws and classical physics in general, fail when dealing with extremes of the largest and the smallest, the fastest and the slowest. Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You, subtitled A Guide to the Universe actually presents two revolutionary theories of modern physics: Quantum Mechanics which deals with the tiniest, atomic and sub-atomic scales and Einstein's general relativity which deals with the largest, cosmological scale. Full review...
