Science Recent Picks

February 2011

The title-underlined links will take you directly to our catalogue.
Some featured items are linked via a book cover to enable you to read more reviews.

The grand design / by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow.
"When and how did the universe begin? Why are we here? What is the nature of reality? Is the apparent ‘grand design’ of our universe evidence for a benevolent creator who set things in motion? Or does science offer another explanation? In The Grand Design, the most recent scientific thinking about the mysteries of the universe is presented in language marked by both brilliance and simplicity. The Grand Design explains the latest thoughts about model-dependent realism (the idea that there is no one version of reality), and about the multiverse concept of reality in which there are many universes. There are new ideas about the top-down theory of cosmology (the idea that there is no one history of the universe, but that every possible history exists). It concludes with a riveting assessment of m-theory, and discusses whether it is the unified theory Einstein spent a lifetime searching for." (Amazon.co.uk)

The 50 most extreme places in our solar system / David Baker and Todd Ratcliff.
"The extreme events that we hear about daily - hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions - are extreme in purely human terms, in the devastation they do. But this book moves our understanding of the extreme into extraterrestrial dimensions and gives us an awe-inspiring sense of what our solar system at its utmost can do. Martian dust devils taller than Mount Everest. A hurricane that lasts over 340 years. Volcanoes with 'lava' colder than Antarctica. Hail made of diamonds. Here, as the authors say, the 'WOW' factor is restored to our understanding of scientific discovery, as we witness the grandeur and the weirdness that inspire researchers to dig deeper and go ever farther into the mysteries of the universe." (Amazon.co.uk)

Fixing the sky : the checkered history of weather and climate control / James Rodger Fleming.
"As alarm over global warming spreads, a radical idea is gaining momentum. Forget cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, some scientists argue. Instead, bounce sunlight back into space by pumping reflective nanoparticles into the atmosphere. Launch mirrors into orbit around the Earth. Make clouds thicker and brighter to create a "planetary thermostat."These ideas might sound like science fiction, but in fact they are part of a very old story. For more than a century, scientists, soldiers, and charlatans have tried to manipulate weather and climate, and like them, today's climate engineers wildly exaggerate what is possible. Scarcely considering the political, military, and ethical implications of managing the world's climate, these individuals hatch schemes with potential consequences that far outweigh anything their predecessors might have faced.Showing what can happen when fixing the sky becomes a dangerous experiment in pseudoscience, James Rodger Fleming traces the tragicomic history of the rainmakers, rain fakers, weather warriors, and climate engineers who have been both full of ideas and full of themselves." (Amazon.co.uk)

From eternity to here : the quest for the ultimate theory of time / Sean Carroll.
"No one is better equipped to take readers on a rollercoaster ride through time, space, and the origins of the universe than Caltech theoretical physicist Carroll, cofounder of Cosmic Variance, one of the top science blog sites. We're not thinking small here, Carroll announces with glee before launching into his topic. Time is a medium we move through and a way to sequence events. But the Arrow of Time' is also the only feature of the universe with one irreversible direction: time goes forward. This fact plays an important role in the second law of thermodynamics: the entropy (disorderliness) of an isolated system either remains constant or increases with time. This has implications for our understanding of the Big Bang origins of the universe. We may not be able to travel back in time, but we can find ways to peer back across it and see clues to how the universe evolved, thanks to such discoveries as quantum mechanics and relativity theory. Carroll writes with verve and infectious enthusiasm, reminding readers that science is a journey in which getting there is, without question, much of the fun." (From Publishers Weekly)

Mr. Jefferson and the giant moose : natural history in early America / Lee Alan Dugatkin.
"In the years after the Revolutionary War, the fledging republic of America was viewed by many Europeans as a degenerate backwater, populated by subspecies weak and feeble. Chief among these naysayers was the French count and world-renowned naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon, who wrote that the flora and fauna of America (natives included) were inferior to European specimens. Thomas Jefferson - U.S. president and ardent naturalist - spent years countering the French conception of American degeneracy. His "Notes on Virginia" systematically and scientifically dismantled Buffon's case through a series of tables and equally compelling writing on the nature of his home state. But the book did little to counter the arrogance of the French and hardly satisfied Jefferson's quest to demonstrate that his young nation was every bit the equal of a well-established Europe." (Amazon.co.uk)

Citizens of the sea : wonderous creatures from the census of marine life / Nancy Knowlton.
"Written in an accessible and easygoing style, "Citizens of the Sea" describes the ocean and its incredible biodiversity using the theme of champions - mixing obvious categories (like the largest, the smallest, and the deepest-dwelling creatures) with less obvious ones, such as the most social (killer whales and snapping shrimp), the best farmers (damselfish), and the most imitated (bath sponges). The book features dozens of stunning Census of Marine Life photos, images, maps, and other visualisations to help tell each mini-story. The champions are loosely organized in groups according to criteria such as size and shape, habitat and ecology, behaviour, and human connections. The book's themes cross a vast range: the various ocean realms (poles, deep sea, shore, and open ocean), types of organisms (vertebrates, invertebrates, plankton, plants, and bacteria), and modes of scientific discovery (remotely operated vehicles, DNA barcoding, and tagging)." (Amazon.co.uk)

Map of a nation : a biography of the Ordnance Survey / Rachel Hewitt.
""Map of a Nation" tells the story of the creation of the Ordnance Survey map - the first complete, accurate, affordable map of the British Isles. The OS is a much beloved British institution, and "Map of a Nation" is, amazingly, the first popular history to tell the story of the map and the men who dreamt and delivered it from its inception in 1791, right through to the OS MasterMap of the present day: a vast digital database. The Ordnance Survey's history is one of political revolutions, rebellions, and regional unions that altered the shape and identity of the United Kingdom over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It's also a deliciously readable account of one of the great untold British adventure stories, featuring intrepid individuals lugging brass theodolites up mountains to make the country visible to itself for the first time." (Amazon.co.uk)

Boffinology : the real stories behind our greatest scientific discoveries / Justin Pollard.
"The history of science is often seen as a story of advancement but nothing could be further from the truth. Science, it is true, has progressed, but rarely in the direction intended and seldom for the reasons given. This has a lot to do with the people responsible.
Meet Thales, credited as ‘the father of science’, whose only real claim to fame is that he often fell into ditches, discover how Archimedes never said Eureka and hated baths anyway and how the most lucrative ancient Greek invention was not democracy but the slot machine.
Justin Pollard also fills us in on Issac Newton who liked to disguise himself and lurk in London's less salubrious pubs, how eleven people claimed to have invented the steam engine and why the first website was twelve foot across and made of wood." (Amazon.co.uk)

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