Best Sci-Tech Books 2005: Hot Ice, Cool Birds
By Gregg Sapp -- Library Journal, 3/1/2006
What is “hot” in popular science publishing can be curious and unexpected, but it is always revealing. For example, global warming has been in newspaper headlines recently; so, what has been a frequent topic in the 38 best science books of 2005? Ice! Marla Cone's Silent Snow and William L. Fox's Terra Antarctica are set poles apart, but both find evidence of human-caused environmental change.
Sometimes the old becomes new again. In the last five years, at least four biographies of Robert Oppenheimer and half a dozen histories of the Manhattan Project have been published. And 2005 was no exception, with Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin's American Prometheus and Jennet Conant's 109 East Palace.
Despite limited sales potential, math books like Mario Livio's The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved experienced a sudden boost in popularity. On the other hand, “bird books” remain popular, year to year, with Tim Gallagher's discovery of The Grail Bird making headlines.
Anthropology
de Waal, Frans. Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are. Riverhead: Putnam. 288p. photogs. bibliog. index. ISBN 1-57322-312-3. $24.95.Human behaviors bear the genetic imprint of distant evolutionary relatives, from which chimpanzees and bonobos also evolved. By observing the very different temperaments of these two primates, de Waal explains similarly bipolar traits in humans from an evolutionary perspective. (LJ 10/1/05) Russell, Sharman Apt. Hunger: An Unnatural History. Basic Bks: Perseus. 262p. ISBN 0-465-07163-5. $23.95.
“You are what you eat” and, as science writer Russell notes, what you don't eat. For some, hunger is a purifying ritual. For many others throughout history, though, hunger is the result of natural or political disasters, and famine is an often-overlooked menace even today. (LJ 9/15/05)
Astronomy
Johnson, George. Miss Leavitt's Stars: The Untold Story of the Forgotten Woman Who Discovered How To Measure the Universe. Atlas Bks., dist. by Norton. (Great Discoveries). 162p. bibliog. index. ISBN 0-393-05128-5. $22.95.As issues related to gender and science spark controversy, some of the contributions women have made to science are finally being acknowledged. Leavitt's observations gave astronomers one of the first glimpses into how large the universe really is. (LJ 5/15/05) Sobel, Dava. The Planets. Viking. 269p. bibliog. index. ISBN 0-670-03446-0. $24.95.
Sobel's lyrical prose evokes why, in a universe full of countless other galaxies, the familiar planets—our sibling wanderers in space—remain an inspiration and a source of mystery. (LJ 8/05)
Biography
Bird, Kai & Martin J. Sherwin. American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Knopf. 721p. photogs. bibliog. index. ISBN 0-375-41202-6. $35.Of several recent books about Oppenheimer, this well-researched and balanced volume is currently the best comprehensive biography for scholars and lay readers alike. (LJ 4/15/05) Moore, Wendy. The Knife Man: The Extraordinary Life and Times of John Hunter, Father of Modern Surgery. Broadway. 341p. index. ISBN 0-7679-1652-2. $26.
The iconoclastic Hunter emerged in 18th-century London as one of the first scientific physicians in an era of superstition, but his surgical techniques were widely regarded as brutal. (web review LJ 9/6/05)
Biology
Carroll, Sean B. Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo and the Making of the Animal Kingdom. Norton. 350p. illus. bibliog. index. ISBN 0-393-06016-0. $25.95.Carroll, a pioneer in the field of evolutionary developmental biology, describes how a small number of “toolkit genes” can account for the morphological diversity of species. (LJ 3/1/05) Hazen, Robert M. Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origin. Joseph Henry: National Academy. 324p. illus. bibliog. index. ISBN 0-309-09432-1. $27.95.
Theories of emergence opened new vistas of understanding of how complex phenomena arise from simple physical interactions. Scientist Hazen takes an integrative approach to demonstrating how life itself may have emerged from nonlife, owing to the self-organizing properties in nature. (LJ 8/05)
Computer Science
Kurzweil, Ray. The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. Viking. 672p. ISBN 0-670-03384-7. $29.95.At the point of singularity, human and machine intelligence merge, superseding biological constraints and liberating us to live predominantly in virtual reality. What this would mean and why it is even desirable are the subjects of Kurzweil's daring speculations.
Earth Science
Bowen, Mark. Thin Ice: Unlocking the Secrets of Climate in the World's Highest Mountains. Holt. 480p. photogs. bibliog. index. ISBN 0-8050-6443-5. $30.Science writer Bowen accepted climatologist Lonnie Thompson's invitation to tag along on expeditions to sample ice cores from mountain glaciers. The results show a globally warming climate and such a rapid retreat of alpine ice that the famed snows of Kilimanjaro may disappear within 15 years. (LJ 10/1/05)
Ecology
Burdick, Alan. Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion. Farrar. 325p. ISBN 0-374-21973-7. $25.What is the ecological impact of globalization? All over the planet, alien species are supplanting native ones. Nature writer and National Book Award nominee Burdick asks, are invading species not the fittest to survive, and what does that imply about the meaning of nature? (LJ 5/1/05) Royte, Elizabeth. Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash. Little, Brown. 311p. index. ISBN 0-316-73826-3. $24.95.
Use it up and throw it away…but garbage doesn't just disappear. “Ecological citizen” Royte follows trash from her house, along the collection routes, to the various disposal facilities. Ironically, she finds many waste disposal practices to be wasteful. (LJ 7/05)
Health sciences
Crister, Greg. Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs Are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies. Houghton. 308p. index. ISBN 0-618-39313-7. $24.95.Not feeling well? For many Americans, the first instinct is to take a pill. The result is a healthcare system where culture, medicine, and capitalism collide, which may be good for “Big Pharma” but not for what ails the rest of us. (LJ 8/05) Kaufman, Sharon R. …And a Time To Die: How American Hospitals Shape the End of Life. Scribner. 400p. bibliog. index. ISBN 0-7432-6476-2. $27.
The will to live can conflict with the acceptance of mortality, and, today, this drama is increasingly played out in hospitals. Through her observations and interactions with dying patients and their families, Kaufman studies how to die well. (LJ 3/1/05) Miller, G. Wayne. The Xeno Chronicles: Two Years on the Frontier of Medicine Inside Harvard's Transplant Research Lab. PublicAffairs: Perseus. 234p. index. ISBN 1-58648-242-4. $26.
Before xenotransplantation (i.e., transplanting animal organs into sick humans) can be viable, much biomedical research needs to be done, not to mention addressing the ethical issues raised. Still, Dr. ­David Sachs of the Harvard Medical School persists with this investigation, driven by the knowledge that thousands of lives could be saved. (LJ 7/05)
History of Science
Conant, Jennet. 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos. S. & S. 424p. bibliog. index. ISBN 0-7432-5007-9. $26.95.Nobody knew Robert Oppenheimer quite like his secretary, Dorothy McKibben. By telling this story from McKibben's point of view, Conant, herself the granddaughter of one of the Manhattan Project's key figures, provides a human narrative that works at several levels. (LJ 6/1/05) Conner, Clifford D. A People's History of Science: Miners, Midwives, and “Low Mechaniks.” Nation. 554p. ISBN 1-56025-748-2. pap. $17.95.
Science history is often told as a chronology of geniuses and revolutionary discoveries. However, necessity being the mother of invention, former history teacher Conner emphasizes the practical skills and know-how of everyday people as driving the engine of science. (LJ 10/1/05)
Mathematics
Burger, Edward & Michael Starbird. Coincidences, Chaos, and All That Math Jazz: Making Light of Weighty Ideas. Norton. 276p. illus. index. ISBN 0-393-05945-6. $24.95.Too many books aimed at curing mathophobics subtly patronize their readers. Burger and Starbird treat mathematics as being about ideas, not equations; thinking, not calculating.
God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History. Running Pr. 1160p. ed. by Stephen Hawking. ISBN 0-7624-1922-9. $29.95.
Physicist Hawking profiles 17 major figures in the history of mathematics, from Euclid to Turing, and offers 31 excerpts of their landmark writings. (LJ 10/15/05) Livio, Mario. The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved: How Mathematical Genius Discovered the Language of Symmetry. S. & S. 253p. illus. index. ISBN 0-7432-5820-7. $26.95.
Why mathematics works so well at describing nature's symmetries is a mystery, but its applications hint at an underlying unity. As his group theory developed, Evariste Galois, the key figure in this book, would have been pleased by his legacy. (LJ 7/05) Poundstone, William. Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street. Hill & Wang: Farrar. 386p. bibliog. index. ISBN 0-8090-4637-7. $27.
From the thinkers at Bell Laboratories came a mathematical system for maximizing benefits and minimizing risks in the stock market. How it has been applied, by whom, and what happens when mathematics and money collide are the subjects of this rollicking narrative.
Natural History
Campbell, David. Land of Ghosts: The Braided Lives of People and the Forest of Far Western Amazonia. Houghton. 260p. bibliog. index. ISBN 0-395-71284-X. $25.Soon, botanist Campbell fears, the only inhabitants of this still-wild but endangered land deep in Amazonia will be ghosts. With a motley group of companions, he ventures upriver to explore the exotic biodiversity that thrives just beyond encroaching civilization. Cone, Marla. Silent Snow: The Slow Poisoning of the Arctic. Grove. 246p. bibliog. index. ISBN 0-8021-1797-X. $24.
Landscapes of pristine snow and glinting ice belie the underlying toxic contamination that has penetrated the North Pole. That is the “arctic paradox” described by environmental journalist Cone, who received a prestigious Pew Fellowship to report on it firsthand. (LJ 4/1/05) Fox, William L. Terra Antarctica: Looking into the Emptiest Continent. Trinity Univ. 312p. photogs. bibliog. index. ISBN 1-595340-15-7. $35.
Few people will ever set foot on the glacial southernmost continent. Thus, it is through the words and images of visiting artists, such as Fox, that they can visualize the forbidding but fragile landscape. (LJ 9/15/05) Weidensaul, Scott. Return to Wild America: A Yearlong Search for the Continent's Soul. North Point: Farrar. 394p. illus. bibliog. index. ISBN 0-86547-688-8. $26.
Weidensaul retraces the 30,000-mile route of the epic 1953 journey across North America described in Roger Tory Peterson and James Fisher's classic book, Wild America, discovering a continent that remains surprisingly untamed 50 years later. (LJ 9/1/05)
Paleontology
Norell, Mark (text) & Mick Ellison (illus.). Unearthing the Dragon: The Great Feathered Dinosaur Discovery. Pi Pr: Pearson Education. 224p. illus. index. ISBN 0-13-186266-9. $30.Some dinosaurs were even more birdlike than many paleontologists expected. This companion book to an American Museum of Natural History exhibit discusses the scientific debates following discovery of feathered dinosaur fossils in China, with illuminating asides about Chinese culture, politics, and scientific endeavor. (LJ 7/05)
Philosophy of Science
Ruse, Michael. The Evolution-Creation Struggle. Harvard Univ. 327p. index. ISBN 0-674-01687-4. $25.95.The two sides in this debate are often perceived as so polarized that compromise seems impossible. Ruse's intelligent and timely historical analysis finds surprising philosophical commonalities. True believers in both camps may be closer to each other than either thinks. (LJ 5/1/05)
Physical Sciences
Kakalios, James. The Physics of Superheroes. Gotham: Penguin Group (USA). 265p. illus. index. ISBN 1-59240-146-5. $26.Even Einstein could have learned a thing or two from Superman. Kakalios demonstrates how comic-book superheroes can serve as “what-if” constructions for studying physics. (LJ 10/1/05) Randall, Lisa. Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions. Ecco: HarperCollins. 499p. illus. index. ISBN 0-06-053108-8. $27.95.
Multiple dimensionality is one of the most counterintuitive possibilities of modern theoretical physics. Randall's research in particle physics and cosmology has been influential, and here she shares those ideas with a broader audience. (LJ 9/1/05)
Psychology
Gazzaniga, Michael. The Ethical Brain. Dana, dist. by Univ. of Chicago. 201p. index. ISBN 1-932594-01-9. $25.New research into how the brain works and the neurology of thought and perception bring novel perspective to both modern and age-old ethical dilemmas. A brain scientist who has served on the President's Council on Bioethics, Gazzaniga proposes a science/philosophy he calls “neuroethics.”
Science—General
Diamond, Jared. Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail or Succeed. Viking. 575p. photogs. index. ISBN 0-670-03337-5. $29.95.World history demonstrates that even great and thriving societies can collapse when there is a disconnect between inputs and outputs. Pulitzer Prize winner Diamond examines the causes of societal failure as trading off the future for the present. (LJ 2/15/05) Penrose, Roger. The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe. Knopf. 1120p. illus. bibliog. index. ISBN 0-679-45443-8. $40.
Reflecting a lifetime's accumulation of sophisticated ideas and representing a major intellectual achievement, this far-ranging book by one of the most original scientific theorists expounds upon the mathematical underpinnings of physics, from a holistic perspective. (LJ 2/15/05)
Technology
Gershenfeld, Neil. Fab: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop—from Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication. Basic Bks: Perseus. 278p. illus. index. ISBN 0-465-02745-8. $26.Personal fabricating machines can put everybody in the business of customized manufacturing. Already, MIT professor Gershenfeld has pioneered “fab labs,” where people control their own tools of industry and have created some amazing things. (LJ 4/1/05) Lasica, J.D. Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation. Wiley. 308p. index. ISBN 0-471-68334-5. $25.95.
Technology as an agent of liberating information comes into direct conflict with for-profit information providers, most notably in the entertainment industry. Underground “darknets” form to facilitate sharing digital material, even while commercial forces attempt to lock it up. (LJ 5/1/05)
Zoology
Couturier, Lisa. The Hopes of Snakes and Other Tales from the Urban Landscape. Beacon, dist by Houghton. 168p. ISBN 0-8070-8564-2. $23.Urban wildlife are pests, almost by definition, for they intrude upon human habitations and steal their resources. Or, is it the other way around? Couturier's essays on city creatures in New York and Washington make readers wonder. (LJ 2/1/05) Croke, Vicki Constantine. The Lady and the Panda. Random. 400p. photogs. index. ISBN 0-375-50783-3. $25.95.
An adventure with a purpose and a moral, this account tells of a young Depression-era socialite's accidental and perhaps naïve mission to capture a live panda in China and bring it back to America. (LJ 7/05) Gallagher, Tim. The Grail Bird: Hot on the Trail of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. Houghton. 272p. photogs. index. ISBN 0-618-45693-7. $25.
As concerns rise over species extinction, it is always encouraging to learn that one thought to be extinct still lives. For birder Gallagher, the discovery of this mythic woodpecker was a transcendent moment following decades of searching. (LJ 6/15/05) Rothenberg, David. Why Birds Sing: A Journey into the Mystery of Bird Song. Basic. 358p. index. ISBN 0-465-07135-X. $26.
Musician and philosopher Rothenberg speculates, “The more I grapple with this wonderful field of bird song biology and ethology, the more it seems closer to artistic elegance than objective certainty.” His words compel readers to go outside and listen. (LJ 3/1/05)
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| Author Information |
| Gregg Sapp is Head of the Science Library, State University of New York at Albany, and a longtime LJ reviewer |
