Science Recent Picks

January 2010

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Some featured items are linked via a book cover to enable you to read more reviews.

Earwig's Tail by May R. Berenbaum.
"Throughout the Middle Ages, enormously popular bestiaries presented people with descriptions of rare and unusual animals, typically paired with a moral or religious lesson. The real and the imaginary blended seamlessly in these books - at the time, the existence of a rhinoceros was as credible as a unicorn or dragon. Although audiences now scoff at the impossibility of mythological beasts, there remains an extraordinary willingness to suspend skepticism and believe wild stories about nature, particularly about insects and their relatives in the Phylum Arthropoda. In "The Earwig's Tail", entomologist May Berenbaum and illustrator Jay Hosler draw on the powerful cultural symbols of these antiquated books to create a beautiful and witty bestiary of the insect world. Berenbaum's compendium of tales is an alphabetical tour of modern myths that humorously illuminates aerodynamically unsound bees, ear-boring earwigs, and libido-enhancing Spanish flies. She tracks down the germ of scientific truth that inspires each insect urban legend and shares some wild biological lessons, which, because of the amazing nature of the insect world, can be more fantastic than even the mythic misperceptions." (Amazon.co.uk)

Dark Matters: Unifying Matter, Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Universal Grid by Dr. Percy Seymour.
"One of the most important unsolved problems of current physics, astronomy, and cosmology is the nature of dark matter and dark energy. These two invisible components of the universe seem to control the behavior of galaxies and the accelerating expansion of the universe, but we do not know what they are." (Amazon)

Summer World: A Season of Bounty, by Bernd Heinrich.
"In Summer World: A Season of Bounty, Bernd Heinrich brings us the same bottomless reserve of wonder and reverence for the teeming animal life of backwoods New England that he brought us in Winter World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survival. Now he is focusing on the animal kingdom in the extremes of the warmer months, with all its feeding, nesting, fighting, and mating." (Amazon)

The Roots of Civilisation: Plants That Changed the World, by John Newton.
"They feed us, shelter us, clothe us, cure us and clean the air that we breathe. The Roots of Civilisation takes a closer look at these plants that most of us just take for granted, but which have changed the world, for better and for worse. The story of these plants is also the story of human survival and ingenuity, the invention of agriculture, the greed of men and their rulers, and the founding of trade routes and empires. Advances in science and medicine are charted and there are the new frontiers such as genetic modification and the plants grown by NASA in outer space. The Roots of Civilisation looks not only at the better known world-changers like opium, tobacco, cotton and the orchid, but also at the humbler flora that have quietly but profoundly shaped human civilisation. Key points: The Roots of Civilisation will appeal to gardeners and lovers of general, and garden, history; with superb production values and lavish illustrations, this will make a beautiful gift; the content covers a wider range of plants than many other publications in this area, which often focus on single plants or on a small number of glamour plants." (Amazon)

Field Guide to Indian Mammals, by Vivek Menon.
"India has a rich mammal fauna including elephants, rhinos and the much sought-after Tiger, but there are many other species to be found there, many of them more conspicuous than the elusive Tiger. This book is the first comprehensive field guide to all the 400 species of mammals in India. Most are illustrated with superb colour photographs or illustrations, and are accompanied by an authoritative text from one of India's top biologists. The text pinpoints key characteristics of the species concerned, and gives useful distributional and habitat information. Maps are included for each species, and footprints too where relevant." (Amazon)

Invisible Kingdom from the Tips of Our Fingers to the Tops of Our Trash, Inside the Curious World of Microbes, by Idan Ben-Barak.
"Starred Review. Ben-Barak (Small Wonders) writes with verve, enthusiasm and humor about critters that most people find frightening, repugnant, and worthy of mass slaughter via antibiotic hand sanitizer; in this illuminating book, Ben-Barak assures us that without them, "we'll all be dead within days, if not hours." Sure, they cause horrible diseases and turn food rotten, but microbes also clean up waste (including radioactive contamination, chemicals and plastics) and play an important role in digestion (humans have ten times more microbials than human cells). Flexing degrees in both microbiology and medical science, Australian-based scientist Ben-Barak covers a lot of territory, beginning with the origins of single-celled life, 3.8 billion years ago. Connecting the mechanisms of asexual reproduction used by single-celled bacteria to human sexual reproduction, he explains lucidly the mechanics of DNA and RNA, as well as the rapid mutation rate of new strains of germs, diseases and genuinely useful microbes used for thousands of years to make bread, beer, wine and yogurt, and more recently in the manufacturing of hormones. Wonderfully informative and entertaining, Ben-Barak's latest is a brilliant read for both general readers and science buffs." (Publishers Weekly)

The Philosopher's Stone, by Joseph P. Farrell (Author), and American scientists and what they portend. (Editor).
"Prolific author Joseph P. Farrell, who commands a growing and devoted audience on Coast to Coast AM, Erskine Overnight, and other programs, initiates his Feral House association with The Philosopher's Stone, in which he demonstrates the connections of modern physics and ancient alchemy by investigating monatomic gold, the work of Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kozyrev, and the fuel for the mysterious Nazi "Bell" device, Serum 525." (Amazon)

The History of Science: A Beginner's Guide, by Sean F. Johnston.
"From GMOs to WMD, science is controversial and unavoidable. This book charts its progress since prehistory and reveals its role in shaping our future. Drawing on intellectual history, philosophy, and social studies, Johnston offers a unique appraisal of both the history of science and the nature of the evolving discipline. Science has become a driving force of the modern world. Based on its changeable past, where might it take us in the twenty-first century?" (Amazon)

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