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• Notes on Book Notes
  * To create a Book Note, or add your own notes to an existing Book Note, you must have an account at Science Besieged. If you don't have an a… * Book Note pages have titles made up of
  4 KB (595 words) - 21:08, 21 May 2008

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• Main Page
  … wiki is currently home to three: the Science-Book Challenge, Science Book Notes, and Science Time-Capsules. |align="center" | <font size=+2><b>Take the [[Science Book Challenge 2011]]!</b></font>
  3 KB (411 words) - 15:36, 23 December 2010
• Crease: The Great Equations
  …erg''. New York : W.W.Norton & Company, 2008. 315 pages; illustrated; with notes and index. …ics revolution of the twentieth century, in Britain or elsewhere. Schama's book omits any references to the contributions made by British scientists and e…
  8 KB (1368 words) - 03:39, 11 September 2009
• Outline
  …'', where we keep the content for the Science-Book Challenge, Science Book Notes, and Time Capsules. The more general [http://scienticity.net Scienticity w… * [[Scienticity:About | About the Scienticity Project]]
  3 KB (351 words) - 20:10, 5 September 2009
• Beard: The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey
  …f paleontological history, travelogue, and serious science. Throughout the book the author describes his discoveries and how they shed light on the histor… …earch in the U.S. to his more current research in China. At the end of the book, he provides us with his hypothesis for the primate "family tree", or more…
  2 KB (354 words) - 23:50, 14 April 2009
• Shubin: Your Inner Fish
  …use, etc. ''Your Inner Fish'', by Neil Shubin, is an excellent little book about evolution. Shubin is an anatomist and paleontologist whose team discovered… …ll feel that there were no transitional fossils because so much of this is about the transitional creatures.
  1 KB (222 words) - 01:29, 15 April 2009
• Levitt: Freakonomics (2)
  …economist at the University of Chicago. Dubner was also researching a book about the psychology of money. …Levitt they decided their styles would allow them to work together on this book. They began with an "Exploratory Note, Preface to this Revised and Expand…
  2 KB (316 words) - 20:49, 14 April 2009
• Evolution and the Vatican
  … ''The Origin of Species'' in 1859, during the pontificate of Pius IX. The book was included in the 1948 edition of the ''Index Librorum Prohibitorum'' (t… …al statement is not so much hostile to science as it is trying to be clear about the boundaries between science and theology; the assertions that reason an…
  25 KB (3967 words) - 03:09, 2 April 2009
• Recommended Books
  * Henry Petroski, ''The book on the bookshelf'' (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999). [[Category:Book Notes]]
  3 KB (389 words) - 03:16, 2 April 2009
• Book-note ratings
  …commendation=5}}We use five categories to indicate our satisfaction with a book, listing them in a table with 1 to 5 Ars checkerboards to indicate level o… …ience and make them clear to the reader? How fundamental is science to the book's ''gestalt''?
  3 KB (446 words) - 05:41, 5 June 2006
• Short: The World Through Maps
  It is rare for a large-format picture book to exhibit depth of information and understanding in its text, but this on… For an excerpt from the book, see our Time Capsule [[Surveying the American West]], which combines the …
  1 KB (154 words) - 01:29, 15 April 2009
• Petroski: Success Through Failure
  [[Category: Book Notes]][[Category: Top-Rated Books]]
  2 KB (369 words) - 01:02, 15 April 2009
• Mooney: The Republican War on Science
  …book, and it's a subject close to our heart here at Ars Hermeneutica; this book can be read as a partial justification for our creation. …ages listing the interviews he used as sources; the additional 60 pages of notes to reference sources are not padded and provide a valuable resource. He ha…
  3 KB (500 words) - 00:57, 15 April 2009
• Sobel: The Illustrated Longitude
  [[Category: Book Notes]]
  2 KB (344 words) - 01:31, 15 April 2009
• Sacks: Uncle Tungsten
  [[Category: Book Notes]][[Category: Top-Rated Books]]
  731 B (107 words) - 01:25, 15 April 2009
• Notes on Book Notes
  * To create a Book Note, or add your own notes to an existing Book Note, you must have an account at Science Besieged. If you don't have an a… * Book Note pages have titles made up of
  4 KB (595 words) - 21:08, 21 May 2008
• Robinson: Lost Languages
  …her Education Supplement, London. His writing is engaging, his enthusiasm about his subject is obvious, and his presentation generally well-reasoned and l… I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, although the size of the physical book wa a bit awkward for casual reading, and the chosen typeface for the text …
  2 KB (309 words) - 01:22, 15 April 2009
• Squyres: Roving Mars
  …cientist to do good science in a highly political environment. I found the book particularly compelling because of my intimate knowledge of the NASA fundi… [[Category: Book Notes]][[Category: Top-Rated Books]]
  1 KB (155 words) - 01:31, 15 April 2009
• Dawkins: The Ancestor's Tale
  The first impression this book makes is one of mass: it is a massive volume and filled with weighty mater… …ries are typically a few pages long and relatively self contained. So, the book can easily be read in small pieces over a long time period and yet the ind…
  1 KB (235 words) - 00:04, 15 April 2009
• Rhodes: The Making of the Atomic Bomb
  …the book from a friend, and it came to me already marked it with dozens of notes stuck all over it. [[Category: Book Notes]][[Category: Top-Rated Books]]
  4 KB (758 words) - 01:17, 15 April 2009
• Jardine: Ingenious Pursuits
  I wanted to like this book more. Jardine is a specialist in Renaissance History and puts all the righ… [[Category: Book Notes]]
  5 KB (799 words) - 00:34, 15 April 2009
• Ferguson: Tycho and Kepler
  … a musician. In recent years, however, she has devoted herself to writing about science and science issues. …nce writers take note: it is possible to write interesting, engaging prose about scientific ideas and history and not do violence to the basic scientific c…
  3 KB (462 words) - 00:12, 15 April 2009
• Blaise: Time Lord
  …The only thing I could find to fault about the book was that there were no notes or references in the back, a disappointment because his writing pointed ou… [[Category: Book Notes]][[Category: Top-Rated Books]][[Category: JNS]]
  2 KB (365 words) - 23:51, 14 April 2009
• Ehrman: Misquoting Jesus
  …veristy of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. This is perhaps the first popular book on "textual criticism", the method by which scholars attempt to reconstruc… [[Category: Book Notes]][[Category: Top-Rated Books]][[Category: SJB]]
  1 KB (193 words) - 00:09, 15 April 2009
• Garfield: Mauve
  …m Perkin accidentally invented a color that took the world by storm. This book is the story of that accident and its consequences. Garfield tells his story with verve and imagination. This is definitely a book worth reading.
  963 B (135 words) - 00:14, 15 April 2009
• Rappole: Birds of the Mid-Atlantic Region
  This resource book contains a color-tab index for bird groups and a driving locator for 74 bi… …ed that he had found a new bird species in Burma. Perhaps there is another book in the future!
  1 KB (159 words) - 21:01, 14 April 2009
• Gleick: Isaac Newton
  …t lofty rhetorical style on the poetic side, and sustain it throughout the book. It's a difficult voice to maintain, but he did it well and it suited the … …per appreciation of Newton than one might expect from a surprisingly short book.
  2 KB (352 words) - 00:15, 15 April 2009
• Bondeson: Buried Alive
  I found this book fascinating and informative and generally easy to read, but it is the sort… …g the book on the last page. These are puzzlements not about the book, but about the human behavior it describes.
  3 KB (574 words) - 23:53, 14 April 2009
• Brown: Angels and Demons
  …yal of science, despite its claims to the contrary at the beginning of the book. Early in the book we're introduced to an "ambigram", text written in such a manner that it l…
  2 KB (375 words) - 23:54, 14 April 2009
• Lynch: The Highest Tide
  …n Olympia, Washington, the site of his first novel. Although fiction, this book has science besieged worthiness. He has won national journalism awards and… [[Category: Book Notes]]
  1 KB (169 words) - 00:50, 15 April 2009
• Angel: The Tale of the Scale
  …uminating blend that one could imagine from this simple description of the book's theme. Angel at the start was neither an inventor nor a mechanical engin… This is the very rare sort of book that we press into many different friends' hands saying "Here, you should …
  2 KB (293 words) - 23:39, 14 April 2009
• Kurlansky: Salt
  …power. There are sketches and maps to guide the reader along. You can read about the rest of the world, but let me tell you that the USA is presently the l… …with much salt, but in Cuzco, Peru I visited salt flats and having learned about the life of salt miners/farmers, I pay a little more attention. I learned …
  1 KB (184 words) - 00:38, 15 April 2009
• Moffett: The Three-Pound Enigma
  While the subtitle may seem a bit daunting, the book is very amusing, not at all difficult to get one's mind around, and well w… [[Category: Book Notes]][[Category: Top-Rated Books]]
  1 KB (189 words) - 00:55, 15 April 2009
• Burke: Connections
  …emained an eye-opener that seems fresh and relevant with each airing. This book was the volume written by Burke as a companion to the series. While it ech… …aring all the connections he finds in history, as though the covers of his book can barely contain all the interesting stories he wants to tell.
  5 KB (834 words) - 23:56, 14 April 2009
• Manhein: Trail of Bones
  In this, her second book, she regales us with various cases on which she has worked. These cases r… [[Category: Book Notes]]
  1 KB (161 words) - 00:52, 15 April 2009
• Butcher: Jules Verne
  [[Category: Book Notes]][[Category: Top-Rated Books]][[Category: SJB]]
  1 KB (215 words) - 23:56, 14 April 2009
• Burger: Flowers
  …look at various types of science and math textbooks at yard sales and used book stores, thinking that maybe this one will teach them stuff they would like… …e evolutionary race to survive. Flowering plants have become very creative about sex, too.
  3 KB (459 words) - 23:55, 14 April 2009
• Roach: Stiff
  This book answers a question that you may not have realized you had: What happens to… …h tests, to discover the effects of military weapons on the body, to learn about decay after death for use in forensics, and a number of other ways, becaus…
  2 KB (342 words) - 01:21, 15 April 2009
• Levitt: Freakonomics
  …Why doesn't capital punishment deter criminals? What do on-line daters lie about? Which is more dangerous: a gun or a swimming pool? [[Category: Book Notes]][[Category: Top-Rated Books]]
  1 KB (230 words) - 00:43, 15 April 2009
• Ball: The Ingredients
  …e theme of the book is: "What is stuff made of?" While he writes primarily about the chemical elements, Ball is willing to broaden his scope and consider t… …in his preface, the author announces his intention to avoid organizing his book in the accustomed way according to the periodic table of the elements. To …
  5 KB (779 words) - 23:48, 14 April 2009
• Gould: The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox
  This book, which takes the alleged war between science and the humanities as its top… …ould's collections of essays, I can't recommend wasting any time with this book.
  6 KB (978 words) - 00:16, 15 April 2009
• Ball: Stories of the Invisible
  … lives – figuratively and literally – as a way to enlighten indirectly about molecular chemistry. He takes a particular interest in the big molecules t… …at avoids silly metaphors for scientific concepts, and I can recommend the book highly.
  2 KB (390 words) - 23:48, 14 April 2009
• Diamond: Collapse
  …on about how societies choose to fail or succeed head on, spending most of book examining in detail societies both modern and ancient, mostly those that h… …g detail, while still keeping his focus on the main theme. The bulk of the book is detailed societal case histories, with the last 15% devoted to summing …
  4 KB (642 words) - 00:08, 15 April 2009
• Quammen: The Reluctant Mr. Darwin
  …it is Charles Darwin, his activities, and his attitudes in relation to his book ''The Origin of Species'' that are the focus of Quammen's writing. …he idea of natural selection and then how did he finally publish his ideas about it despite his own misgivings. There's more, too: what were his misgivings…
  4 KB (568 words) - 01:16, 15 April 2009
• Dennett: Darwin's Dangerous Idea
  …some of the following discussion about both is shared between the two book notes. …t chapter, which was a very satisfactory and streamlined conclusion to the book, and realized that most of the chapter would seem incomprehensible without…
  7 KB (1109 words) - 00:07, 15 April 2009
• Dawkins: The Blind Watchmaker
  …much of the following discussion about both is shared between the two book notes. I have one other minor complaint about Dawkins, a feeling that I once noted in reading Stephen Jay Gould: that hi…
  5 KB (789 words) - 21:35, 25 May 2009
• Euclid, the Crow
  === Notes === …d The Crow? The Puzzling Case File on the World's Smartest Bird", from his book ''Natural Acts : A Sidelong View of Science and Nature'' (New York : Schoc…
  3 KB (496 words) - 02:47, 1 April 2009
• Ball: Bright Earth
  …to see? – but is, in truth, less ridiculous than it sounds. He's talking about color as we humans perceive it and use it. …colors that were available but most thought they were capturing some truth about color in nature and how humans view light and dark.
  11 KB (1801 words) - 23:47, 14 April 2009
• Ridley: The Red Queen
  …hat complicated cocktail we call "human behavior" is what this book is all about. It means following a path that meanders through a big garden; not surpris… Ridley avows at the beginning of the book that he is an <i>adaptationist</i>, one of those adherents of the Darwinia…
  9 KB (1456 words) - 01:19, 15 April 2009
• Manguel: A History of Reading
  …anguel, ''A History of Reading''. New York : Viking, 1996. 372 pages, with notes and index. …ingers of the same glove, it shouldn't surprise anyone to find here a book about reading amidst books on science and technology.
  10 KB (1641 words) - 00:50, 15 April 2009
• Lewin: Complexity
  …of those rare books that I did not bother to finish, abandoning my reading about halfway through. "Unhappily" because it had been recommended by a friend, … … subject of the book is the emerging (at the time) "science of complexity" about which the author was (at the time) breathlessly excited. "Complexity" – …
  3 KB (464 words) - 00:43, 15 April 2009
• The Invention of Eyeglasses
  Alberto Manguel, in ''A History of Reading'', wrote{{ref|am01}} about the earliest known references to the invention of eyeglasses: === Notes ===
  3 KB (550 words) - 03:26, 18 November 2009
• Monmonier: Air Apparent
  …Weather''. Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 1999. 309 pages with notes. This book is an appreciation and short-course in weather mapping, or weather cartogr…
  7 KB (990 words) - 00:55, 15 April 2009
• Sullivan: Rats
  …s Most Unwanted Inhabitants.'' New York : Bloomsbury, 2004. 242 pages with notes (no index). …bad book or a very good book. Fortunately, it turned out to be a very good book that I'm happy to have read. I agree, the title sounds a bit clinical, but…
  7 KB (1160 words) - 01:34, 15 April 2009
• Barron: Piano
  In this marvelously written and researched book, the author traces the making of a Steinway concert grand piano from the b… …ghtful blend of reportage, background information and human interest, this book is well worth reading for the music lover as well as anyone interested in …
  910 B (132 words) - 23:49, 14 April 2009
• Ball: Critical Mass
  …s to Another''. New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004. 520 pages with notes and index. … condensed-matter physics, one can safely predict that my reaction to this book then will be anything but tepid: either I would love it or hate it.
  9 KB (1368 words) - 23:48, 14 April 2009
• Allen: Vaccine
  …reatest Lifesaver.'' New York : W.W. Norton & Company, 2007.523 pages with notes and index. This is a rich and stimulating book. The story of vaccines and vaccination, from the earliest use by Edward Je…
  11 KB (1768 words) - 23:38, 14 April 2009
• Baker: Double Fold
  …and the Assault on Paper''. New York : Random House, 2001. 370 pages, with notes, references, and index. …utions – including the Library of Congress -- when in the 1950s they set about destroying their archives of newspapers published on newsprint. Bound volu…
  14 KB (2158 words) - 23:47, 14 April 2009
• Finlay: Jewels
  …istory.'' New York : Ballentine Books, 2006. 472 pages, with color plates, notes, bibliography, and index. Rambling through the history, romance, and folklore of gems, this book is a collection of what we might think of as biographical sketches of seve…
  9 KB (1493 words) - 00:12, 15 April 2009
• Lightman: A Sense of the Mysterious
  …riginally published between 1984 and 2003. Three of the essays are lengthy book reviews that end up as biographical sketches of Albert Einstein, Richard F… I learned many things about science from Kip [Thorne, Lightman's thesis advisor at Cal Tech]. One of t…
  6 KB (902 words) - 00:48, 15 April 2009
• Shermer: Science Friction
  …ts the Unknown.'' New York : Henry Holt and Company, 2005. 296 pages, with notes and index. …eath", a personal essay on existential questions that meshes with thoughts about his mother's death.
  6 KB (1045 words) - 01:28, 15 April 2009
• Burke: Circles
  …and very energetic production in the late 70s of the television series and book [[Burke:_Connections|Connections]]. It's a hard act to follow. …Burke's earlier book, [[Burke:_Connections|Connections]]. However, in this book the connections seem less causal in an historic way and more like linguist…
  7 KB (1142 words) - 23:55, 14 April 2009
• Forbes: The Gecko's Foot
  …ials from Nature''. New York : W.W. Norton & Company, 2005. 272 pages with notes, further reading, and index. This book is about what Forbes calls the "new science" of "biometrics", sometimes also called…
  5 KB (760 words) - 00:14, 15 April 2009
• Quammen: The Boilerplate Rhino
  For background, here's the blurb from the back cover of the book: …s dream: a monthly column for ''Outside'' magazine in which he could write about anything that interested him in the natural world. His column was called "…
  8 KB (1328 words) - 01:16, 15 April 2009
• Lienhard: How Invention Begins
  … of New Machines.'' Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2006. 277 pages with notes and index. This is an admirable book, of the sort I easily admire and would like to have written myself, if onl…
  4 KB (675 words) - 00:46, 15 April 2009
• Pollan: The Omnivore's Dilemma
  This is a large book, clearly written, for our education and awareness. "What you eat is insepa… [[Category: Book Notes]]
  1 KB (226 words) - 01:14, 15 April 2009
• Abbott: What A Way To Go
  What an odd little book this is. Odd but informative and, not surprisingly, as difficult to turn a… … Executioner Always Chops Twice." It seems that for readers who enjoy this book there's plenty of follow-on reading available.
  4 KB (645 words) - 23:36, 14 April 2009
• Roach: Spook
  I have previously read and noted a book by Mary Roach, [[Roach: Stiff|Stiff]]. That one was concerned with what ha… … of comic timing, has improved or become more sophisticated since her last book. This time I had very few groans, many more chuckles and raised eyebrows f…
  4 KB (705 words) - 01:21, 15 April 2009
• Pinker: The Stuff Of Thought
  … as a Window into Human Nature''. New York : Viking, 2007. 499 pages, with notes, references, and index. …nguage in general. I think most people who enjoy language would enjoy this book and learn something useful from it at the same time.
  7 KB (1178 words) - 01:02, 15 April 2009
• McCredie: Balance
  …ew York : Little, Brown and Company, 2007. viii + 296 pages with appendix, notes, index. …or Smithsonian Magazine, as well as other publications. This is his first book.
  3 KB (429 words) - 00:53, 15 April 2009
• Pollan: The Omnivore's Dilemma (2)
  … have anything light (for some value of "light") to read. (Maybe something about ''Stumbling''... some day.) …ne's perspective to respectful and grateful participant in the food chain. About his hunter-gatherer meal, he writes:
  6 KB (997 words) - 01:15, 15 April 2009
• Kinsey: Sexual Behavior in the Human Male
  …erest in, certain famous results color our impression of what the book was about. So much "common knowledge" has accumulated around this work that it is re… …an easily seem daunting. Therefore it comes as some relief early on in the book to discover that Kinesy's narrative voice is quite readable and that the m…
  10 KB (1638 words) - 00:37, 15 April 2009
• Science-Book Challenge 2008
  …ook Challenge is easy: read three science books this year and then tell us about them and share your report with others. … will help us help other science-book readers by sharing their own science-book reading experiences.
  14 KB (2044 words) - 04:52, 9 January 2009
• Jackson: Unspun
  …'s a book that I thought deserved a more catchy opening than "I liked this book", but that seems to sum up my reaction pretty well. The subject of the book is "spin", presenting factual information with omissions, hyperbole, preva…
  2 KB (249 words) - 00:33, 15 April 2009
• Bloom: Out There
  …e-forms exist in the universe); and the Air Force's notorious Project Blue Book (the Air Force was given the project because they were the only organizati… …r considers the case in some depth. (Note that the publication date of the book is close on the heels of the working-group investigation.)
  2 KB (380 words) - 23:51, 14 April 2009
• Raymo: Walking Zero
  …g to read; plus, the subtitle is an accurate statement of the theme of the book. …ng cast of characters and, as promised, ideas that shaped the way we think about our place in the universe. The list of chapter titles gives a good sense o…
  6 KB (996 words) - 01:16, 15 April 2009
• Carroll: Endless Forms Most Beautiful
  …ations in living beings is wholly naïve – mine certainly was. Carroll's book changed that significantly for the better, and clarified a number of other… The key to answering such questions [about why different animals ''look'' different] is to realize that every animal …
  7 KB (1172 words) - 23:59, 14 April 2009
• Jeffreys: Aspirin
  …e Story of a Wonder Drug</i>. New York : Bloomsbury, 2004. 335 pages, with notes, bibliography, and index. This book is more in the nature of a pop-journalistic history than an analytical, sc…
  5 KB (859 words) - 00:34, 15 April 2009
• Le Couteur: Napoleon's Buttons
  I must confess that I started out with a condescending attitude about this book. "How 17 molecules changed history" sounded histrionic to me, so I was pre… …ipline of science that the average person would find daunting to approach. About the only stretch of poetic license was for the title: did Napoleon lose Ru…
  8 KB (1283 words) - 00:40, 15 April 2009
• Diamond: The Third Chimpanzee
  …ns as a third species of chimpanzee. This is Diamond's basic theme for the book: how do humans differ from chimpanzees. It's a broad theme and he doesn't … In some ways this book essays in broad strokes the themes that Diamond would take up in much more…
  10 KB (1644 words) - 16:24, 13 September 2009
• Hecht: Doubt, a History
  …ly Dickenson''. New York : HarperSanFrancisco, 2003. xxi + 551 pages, with notes, bibliography, and index. …religion, or something other than actually about "doubt". But it really is about "doubt": what it is, how it manifests, its history as an idea, doubters in…
  6 KB (1003 words) - 00:21, 15 April 2009
• Dennett: Breaking the Spell
  …enomenon</i>. New York : Viking Penguin, 2006. 448 pages, with appendices, notes, bibliography, and index. …. However, you can guess from the beginning that he's not going to end the book with a sudden religious conversion experience.
  11 KB (1821 words) - 00:06, 15 April 2009
• Vogel: Cat's Paws and Catapults
  …re and People</i>. New York : W.W. Norton & Company, 1998. 382 pages, with notes, references, and index. Illustrated with graphs, diagrams, drawings, and p… I was a bit distrustful of this book, judging entirely by its cover. The title seemed almost frivolous to me, a…
  11 KB (1794 words) - 01:40, 15 April 2009
• Pollan: The Botany of Desire
  This book is about the complex relationship between people and plants. The premise is that pl… [[Category: Book Notes]][[Category: Top-Rated Books]]
  1 KB (208 words) - 01:05, 15 April 2009
• Dennett: Freedom Evolves
  … Dennett, ''Freedom Evolves''. New York : Viking, 2003. xiii + 347 pages, "notes on sources and further reading", bibliography, and index. …'s about. Here is the first paragraph of the first page of the text of the book:
  4 KB (740 words) - 00:07, 15 April 2009
• Wilson: The Creation
  …''. New York : W.W.Norton & Company, 2006. 175 pages, with "References and Notes". …ction of species from the Earth, to join him in a search for common ground about "The Creation"—whether it is God's or Nature's—and accept the proposit…
  6 KB (913 words) - 01:45, 15 April 2009
• Robinson: The Story of Measurement
  …are all interesting and informative topics. Making it a coffee-table sized book with copious color illustrations and short, digestible articles on its wid… …popular science, and this author unfortunately was not up to the task. The book appears to have been prepared without help of adequate science-editorial a…
  6 KB (993 words) - 01:23, 15 April 2009
• Lienhard: Inventing Modern
  …'. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2003. 292+ix pages, illustrated, with notes and index. …on Begins | ''How Invention Begins'']], which was a masterpiece of insight about invention, engineering, and society, so I had high expectations. My expect…
  8 KB (1244 words) - 00:47, 15 April 2009
• Huler: Defining The Wind
  …New York : Crown Publishers, 2004. 290 pages, illustrated, with appendix, "notes on sources", and index. …hat to happen with a book whose title sounds so dull? But overlook the bit about "The Beaufort Scale" and take your clue from the word "Poetry". Huler has …
  8 KB (1407 words) - 00:25, 15 April 2009
• Hayes: The Anatomist
  …ose unfamiliar with Gray's ''Anatomy'', it is the quintessential reference book for medical students. In its 20th printing, this tome sits alongside other… …or Hayes feels his whole life has led him to writing, "a book about a book about anatomy." He cites two childhood favorite activities. First, his two best …
  3 KB (419 words) - 23:44, 14 April 2009
• Angier: The Canon
  …a reader. Before his demise, bless his soul, I used to love talking to him about books. One of his favorite authors, Patrick O'Brian, wrote 23 books in the… … textbook titled ''Ionic and Non-Ionic Surfactants.'' When asked about the book, he said he read it when unable to sleep.
  3 KB (443 words) - 23:43, 14 April 2009
• Atkins: The Periodic Kingdom
  …n fact, I don't think he had his proposed audience clearly in mind and the book suffers markedly for it. …one is trying to keep in mind all the interesting facts that he introduces about elements or groups of elements, it hardly helps that one must also keep in…
  5 KB (775 words) - 23:46, 14 April 2009
• Tudge: The Time Before History
  … that scale, it's more like yesterday? He proposes to see what can be said about human history before there was history, at least written history. …. Instead, Tudge has written a leisurely,wide-ranging, and thorough survey about the evolutionary history of human-kind.
  4 KB (697 words) - 01:36, 15 April 2009
• Watson: Ideas
  …o Freud''. New York : HarperCollinsPublishers, 2005. xix + 822 pages with "Notes and References" and index. This is a big, impressive book. The size is not really surprising for a book that promises to survey the entire history of ideas from prehistory to the…
  17 KB (2936 words) - 01:41, 15 April 2009
• Tyson: Death by Black Hole
  … seconds of the universe to light to stardust to more. This is the kind of book that will give you endless cocktail conversation starters: …a few of these questions (but to really understand it, you should read the book).
  8 KB (1293 words) - 01:38, 15 April 2009
• Rhazes and Avicenna
  Peter Watson, in his book ''Ideas'', discussed{{ref|pw01}} the contributions of two Islamic doctors,… …pox and measles. His other great book was ''Al-Hawi'' (''The Comprehensive Book''), a twenty-three-volume encyclopaedia of Greek, pre-Islamic Arab, Indian…
  3 KB (467 words) - 01:02, 10 May 2008
• The Latin Transmitters
  …and for books in western civilazation -- a "near-death" experience for the book, to use his phrase. Some of Classical Greek knowledge survived largely thr… …e were seven-- and not nine -- partly because of the biblical text, in the Book of Wisdom: 'Wisdom hath builded herself an house, she hath hewn out seven …
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• Larson: Isaac's Storm
  …Hurricane in History''. New York : Crown Publishers, 1999. 323 pages, with notes, sources, and index; illustrated with two maps. In the introduction to his notes, author Larson wrote:
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• Winchester: The Map That Changed The World
  …serves wider recognition, which Simon Winchester adopts as the goal of his book. He makes a good job of it, too. Winchester's book is a very deft blending of the fortunes and misfortunes of Smith's career,…
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• Pollan: In Defense of Food
  The first part of the book is about nutritionism, or the idea that we can reduce foods down to their [[Category: Book Notes]][[Category: Top-Rated Books]]
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• Dawkins: Climbing Mount Improbable
  …enamored of them. Dawkins and I evidently see differing amounts of insight about reality in his computer models. We would agree that models and simulations… At the beginning of the book Dawkins spends a great deal of time trying to develop a very precise idea …
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• Bird: American Prometheus
  …obert Oppenheimer.'' New York : Vintage Books, 2005. xiii + 721 pages with notes, bibliography, and index. … events swirling around him. To learn about Oppenheimer's life is to learn about the development of the atomic bomb, modern physics, the Manhattan Project,…
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• Watson: The Double Helix
  …erstand that last sentence. One of the most refreshing aspects of Watson's book is that he clearly admits his own scientific weaknesses, something that co… …ong assumptions found themselves standing on their heads while I read this book. I would've thought that a scientist who managed to crack the genetic code…
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• Arthur: Creatures of Accident
  … creatures. And, there is that question that so many still find perplexing about evolution through natural selection: how could it come to produce such com… …ost Beautiful | Sean Carroll's ''Endless Forms Most Beautiful'']]. Neither book suffers for it, though, because they have very different goals.
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• Lembke: Despicable Species
  …216 pages, illustrations by Joe Nutt; appendix : "The Despicable Ratings"; notes, "For the Bookworm : A Reading Guide"; no index. …he decided to compile a list (see the appendix in the book) and then write about the most despicable, doing her best to answer Nash's implied question.
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• Johnson: Miss Leavitt's Stars
  This is a brief biography. A small book to ease myself into science reading, I had thought. I was impressed with t… …er studies of photographic plates of star clusters, and as the author says about her final work, the North Pole Sequence, "PhDs have been awarded for less"…
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• Trout: Tell Me Where It Hurts
  [[Category: Book Notes]][[Category: Top-Rated Books]]
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• Simon: Dark Light
  If Thomas Edison is one of your heroes, you might change your mind about him as a person as you read this work. I certainly did. This is a fascinating book, full of clever insight, compelling characters, interesting data and somet…
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• Mullane: Riding Rockets
  …'m just as happy that I didn't become one, but I'm quite happy to read all about it. This was a really good book!
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• Boslaugh: When Computers Went to Sea
  This is a book about the history of the US Navy's secret Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS) prog… …ies and the Navy went to extraordinary lengths to avoid revealing anything about it, resulting in a number of entertaining stories. Early radar techs had t…
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• Thomas: The Lives of a Cell
  …logy Watcher''. New York : Penguin Books, 1978. 153 pages, with "reference notes" (no index). …. Their tone seemed to me to be that of one scientist talking with another about subjects that are not a particular specialty of either.
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• Schwartz: In Pursuit of the Gene
  …A''. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press 2008. xiii + 370 pages, with notes and index; illustrated. This book is a history of the '''idea''' of the gene. That characteristics could be …
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• Marcus: Kluge
  Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company, 20081. 211 pages, including notes, references and index. …niversity and director of the NYU Infant language Learning Center. In this book, he investigates how the brain works: sometimes well, sometimes not so wel…
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• LeVay: When Science Goes Wrong
  …er title would have been ''When Scientists Go Bad'', since these are tales about mistakes, bad judgment, or just plain stupid ideas on the part of scientis… …thwhile activities that humans can engage in. The events described in this book are no more the story of science than plane crashes are the story of aviat…
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• Angier: The Canon (2)
  I picked this book because it was described as a science primer for adults who weren’t payi… …stant attempts at lame humor thing I’ve noticed in more than one science book, which gets old very quickly.
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• Kendall: The Man Who Made Lists
  …ns. He earned a good income from the ''Thesaurus''. Put this book on your book list as it is an interesting biography. [[Category: Book Notes]][[Category: Top-Rated Books]]
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• Koff: The Bone Woman
  … would have more of a science feel to it, and also have a bunch of history about the two genocides. …about her nightmares, and about seeing people in the bones. She also talks about the genocides themselves, from an observational point of view (i.e., she d…
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• Orlean: The Orchid Thief
  … a weird movie, and I’m not a huge fan of weird movies. Fortunately, the book is a straight-forward, non-fiction, journalistic account of Florida, orchi… …out Florida, about orchid hunters in the nineteenth century, and of course about orchids themselves.
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• Ridley: The Red Queen (2)
  …g to read ''The Red Queen'' for quite a while. I read his book ''Genome'' about three years ago, and it impressed me so much ''The Red Queen'' had been on… …sents the theories in a ‘this might not be true’ manner that makes the book less vulnerable to age. And what theories would those be? Well, they’re …
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• Flannery: In Code
  …efficiency, and security. Living in Cork, Ireland with her family, she was about 16 at the time. …edly what led to the book contract under which Sarah wrote this remarkable book.
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• Aczel: The Mystery of the Aleph
  …''. New York : Four Walls Eight Windows, 2000. 258 pages, with references, notes, and index. …bout G Cantor". It seems not out of place among the idiosyncrasies of this book.
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• Livio: The Golden Ratio
  …ll of nature infused with the Golden Ratio, and doesn't that say something about how we were visited by aliens in ancient times? …dy) and culminated in the publication (after Zeising's death) of a massive book, ''Der Goldne Schnitt'' (The golden section), in 1884. In these works, Zei…
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• Johnson: The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments
  …ul Experiments''. New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2008. xiv + 192 pages, with "notes and bibliography" and index; illustrated. … Experiments". Besides, there's no question that the ten he chose to write about are, indeed, beautiful experiments.
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• Alley: The Two-Mile Time Machine
  …tten, and accessible book that sheds a great deal of light on what we know about climate change in the history of the Earth. I expect all readers will not … …tence of abrupt climate changes casts a very different light on the debate about global warming, so we will examine the greenhouse arguments under this new…
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• Rosenblum: Chocolate
  … clear-headed, analytical approach to investigating rumors and allegations about "child slave labor" in Ivory Coast, a subject that has garnered its share … The book reads like a series of closely connected essays on the subject of ''Theobr…
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• Sobel: The Planets
  …ition, the beautiful cover is your first hint that this is not just a book about the facts. This book was written before Pluto's demotion from planet to minor planet status, bu…
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• Smolin: The Trouble with Physics
  I don't know enough about physics to critique the thesis of this book, but I was impressed with the arguments put forth by Smolin. I learned a l… …t to understand just from reading a few chapters what string theory is all about. (I have ''The Elegant Universe'' here to read later, which is the story o…
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• Lebans: The Quirks and Quarks Guide to Space
  … Lebans, ''The Quirks & Quarks Guide to Space : 42 Questions (and Answers) about Life, the Universe, and Everything''. Toronto, Ontario : CBC Radio One/McC… …eries, in everyday language and with humor. I was very excited to see this book released, and it is going to have a prominent place on my desk at school. …
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• Rhodes: Arsenals of Folly
  …the Nuclear Arms Race''. New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2007. 386 pages, with notes, bibliography, and index; 24 pages of black and white photographs. …d it was "folly", the same "folly" Richard Rhodes uses in the title of his book.
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• Rigden: Hydrogen
  …t''. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2002. vii + 280 pages, with notes and index. Illustrated with photographs, charts, and line drawings. …rved as the incubator, laboratory, and critical test case for all theories about atoms.
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• Roston: The Carbon Age
  …on's Greatest Threat''. New York : Walker & Company, 2008. 308 pages, with notes, bibliography, and index; illustrated. …ston as a "journalist and science writer", and says that this is his first book. He's done a very good job with it, and I mention his professional identif…
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• Kurlansky: The Big Oyster
  …ed by a quirky idea, and what could be more quirky, I thought, than a book about the history of oysters ''and'' New York City? Could even Mark Kurlansky, c… …we learn very quickly, and we know right away what the book is going to be about (even if we find it hard to believe).
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• Huff: How to Lie with Statistics
  …standing is the goal of author Huff. As he says in the introduction to his book: In other words, the purpose of his book is
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• Segre: Faust in Copenhagen
  I will start by saying I am in no way a scientist, and yet I loved this book. '''LOVED IT!!''' …iny at the library, and because it reminded me of how much I enjoy reading about physics.
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• Science-Book Challenge 2009
  …Challenge.]] <center><b>Read a book for science literacy!<br>The [[Science Book Challenge 2010 |2010 Challenge]] is now open;<br> please join us there.</b… …Book Challenge is easy: read three science books in 2009, then tell others about the books you've read and help spread science literacy.
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• Devlin: The Numbers Behind NUMB3RS
  …ics of probabilities, percentages, and algebra will make understanding the book much easier. …the mathematical explanations beyond my understanding, I still enjoyed the book because I learned the basics of the math system. Even if I don't understan…
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• Christie: The Curse of Akkad
  This book covers the Ice Ages, Volcanoes, Droughts, El Ninos, and the Medieval Warm … This book is aimed at 10-12 year olds but I would say more like 12-16. It would be o…
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• Wells: Barbarians to Angels
  This is a book well worth the trouble to find. The author, professor of anthropology at … I recommend this book highly especially for its readable style and historical content.
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• Crumpacker: Perfect Figures
  … going to blame Ms.&nbsp;Crumpacker for that, either. She's written well a book I enjoyed reading to the end, but was a bit perplexed by because it's expo… …thin each chapter the author develops the ideas and presents the narrative about each number idea in a stream-of-consciousness way that almost relies more …
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• Wiseman: Quirkology
  …ology'' is ''exactly'' what I'm interested in. I love studying and reading about the details of our lives. I like to find out why we do the things we do an… For example, in this book I learned:
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• Buckley: The Hungry Scientist Handbook
  … of the instructions. There are a couple of "mini" projects throughout the book and those are the only ones I could probably do. …at you can eat when it's done, then this book would be a four-checkerboard book. It wasn't what I was expecting though and was too advanced for me which i…
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• Bodanis: E=mc2
  …e people involved in all its varied parts. For example, when he is talking about "c", he explains how the concept of the speed of light was developed, and … … clear writer who also has a feel for the telling anecdote. I adore gossip about the figures involved in all these discoveries. Bodanis includes here the s…
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• Bainbridge: The X in Sex
  …idn’t focus on the chromosomes. But this book, ''The X in Sex'', is only about how the X and Y chromosomes came to be and how they affect people. I had h… …e book has very long chapters, which usually drives me insane in a science book, but there are lots of subsections that provide natural breathing points. …
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• Walker: Snowball Earth
  …I’m not going to go into all of the details (because I had to return the book to the library), but the eventual thawing could have caused an important … …ively readable: I read it all in a single sitting (it’s not a super-long book), wanting to find out what all of these interesting people were doing. I…
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• Walker: The Wisdom of the Bones
  …is professional career researching the ancestors of ''Homo sapiens''. This book, written in 1996, is centered around his discovery of an almost-complete s… …haracter sketches of other scientists on a similar question. And while the book is full of well-told anecdotes and well-explained science, its greatest st…
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• DeBlieu: Wind
  …bout "science books" in general. While there’s definitely science in the book, there isn’t much technical writing, and there’s a lot of discussion o… Well, I should probably stop now before I end up quoting the entire book for you. But DeBlieu looks at the wind from every angle--religious, histor…
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• Safina: Song for the Blue Ocean
  …f. (While reading this next paragraph, remember that I ended up giving the book four checkerboards.) … out with positive things. It’s so gut-wrenching, I often had to put the book down to try to get over the feeling of powerlessness. Plus, quite frankly …
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• Glover: The Shipwreck that Saved Jamestown
  …nd the work. Over the year much was salvaged from the ''Sea Venture''. The book contains many helpful portraits, illustrations, and maps. …names, associated with the Virginia colonies, are sprinkled throughout the book. No records were left by the women.
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• Chornook: Walking with Wolf
  At first, this book was hard to follow--it has so many people and places, many with unfamiliar… The narration of the book jumps back and forth between Kay and Wolf--and this was confusing in the b…
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• Wellstead: The Ferret and Ferreting Guide
  …female ferrets able to breed], I thought I really ought to learn something about these liquid fur creatures. I'm no expert in this field and was not that … …tic author for his subject. He writes to impart information, starting the book off with an introduction to the beast and its origins as far as they are k…
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• McCarty: What Really Sank the Titanic
  …shipyards. Materials were purchased from all over the United Kingdom. This book doesn't dwell on the tragic loss of life. …the visibility in the Atlantic was poor. Other ships were sending messages about ice (icebergs) in the area, but the wireless operator ignored them because…
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• Le Couteur: Napoleon's Buttons (2)
  …d to get this home from the library and start reading! Unfortunately, the book doesn’t live up to its premise. …me difference in analytical levels made me feel off-kilter for most of the book, which frustrated me tremendously.
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• Strogatz: Sync
  …ny biological and nonliving processes have a tendency to synchronize. This book is packed with information and examples, yet it is still very engaging and… … to simplify things in order to understand it. Although the topics in this book are very complex, Strogatz made them understandable for the average reader…
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• Wilson: Lewis Carroll in Numberland
  …r married, but was very devoted to his siblings and their children.) This book discusses the man from all those points of view, and it does so very nicel… …f illustrations, puzzles, stories and excerpts from Dodgson’s works, the book brings to life a brilliant mind, a quirky personality, an interesting, mul…
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• Orlean: The Orchid Thief (2)
  I have been curious about this book ever since seeing "Adaptation", a crazy nutty awesome movie (one of my ver… …r the movie. It makes the movie hilarious! But it is not the movie in book form. And if you don’t get that, forget it. (I’m wasting my time,…
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• Kaku: Physics of the Impossible
  This book gives a great overview of wide variety of concepts. I learned about parallel universes, nanobots, space elevators, rail guns, AI, dark energy … [[Category: Book Notes]][[Category: Top-Rated Books]]
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• Everett: Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes
  …, Literatures and Cultures at Illinois State University. He has written a book that is the story of his young family's stay with the Piraha, a small grou… This book is also an anthropological study of life among the Piraha and the other gr…
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• Lehrer: Proust Was a Neuroscientist
  Jonah Lehrer, ''Proust Was a Neuroscientist''. Boston : Mariner Book/Houghton Mifflin Co., 2008. x + 242 pages; illustrated. …rgery lab for several years and obviously loves science. While reading the book, I kept thinking "Renaissance Man" to myself; Lehrer wants to explore how …
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• Plait: Death from fhe Skies
  Goofy and fun but full of facts! ''Death from the Skies!'' is about all the ways the universe can kill you: asteroids, black holes, the sun, a… … And, lest you get too worried, his last chapter is a nice summary of the book, including a table denoting the real likelihood
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• Heinrich: Ravens in Winter
  …fessor of Zoology at the University of Vermont and has written other books about insects, owls, marathon running and ecology. The book provides a great look at the social behavior of ravens and other birds, be…
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• Twigger: The Extinction Club
  …le reptiles in ''Big Snake'' and I looked forward to diving into this book about the rare Chinese Milu or Pere David deer. …erial court. A Basque missionary and amateur naturalist, Pere David, wrote about the deer and smuggled some butchered deer parts back to the West in a Fren…
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• Plait: Death from fhe Skies (2)
  [[Category: Book Notes]][[Category: Video Book Notes]][[Category: Top-Rated Books]]
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• Shipman: Taking Wing
  …o gain wisdom, was ''Taking Wing'' by Pat Shipman. It was basically a book about the fossil bird ''Archaeopteryx'' and how this fossil explains the origin … I read this book to gain some insight on research on various hypotheses concerning flight a…
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• Fagan: The Little Ice Age
  …Basic Books, 2000. xxi + 246 pages; illustrated with maps and charts; with notes and index. … from about 900 to 1300 AD, and the present global warming, which began in about 1850.
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• Gazzaniga: Human
  …que''. New York : HarperCollins, 2008. xii + 447 pages, with bibliographic notes and index. …on that float some distance above low-level brain functions, what is known about how we think and feel and perceive the world and others in it.
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• Winchester: The Man Who Loved China
  …the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom''. HarperAudio, 2008. Unabridged audio book read by Simon Windhester; 9.25 hours on 8 CD-ROMs. …t a few days before his death he continued to work on his research for the book every weekday.
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• Guy: The Mysterious Receding Seas
  …ery intrigued by this theory and hoped that I’d learn something from the book whether I eventually agreed with the theory or not. … Guy based his theory on, but I can’t. I wish I could tell you that this book was well written, but I can’t.
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• Holmes: The Well-Dressed Ape
  …e: A Natural History of Myself''. Brilliance Audio, 2009. Unabridged audio book read by Joyce Bean; 15 hours on audio CD. [[Category: Book Notes]][[Category: Audio Books]]
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• Gribbin: The Birth of Time
  …niverse is?" Answering it with precision and care, as Gribbin does in this book, turns out to be a fascinating story that takes in a big chunk of scientif… …ans of natural selection were held hostage for some time by mistaken ideas about how old our Sun could—or could '''not'''—be. That question didn't get …
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• Mlodinow: The Drunkard's Walk
  …ives''. New York : Pantheon Books, 2008. xi + 252 pages; illustrated, with notes and index. …n our everyday lives, yet most people do not understand them or think much about them. [p. xi]
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• Johnson: The Invention of Air
  …a.'' New York : Rivershead Books, 2008. xvi + 254 pages; illustrated; with notes and index. This book is less a biography and more a biographical appreciation of Priestly and h…
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• Seife: Sun in a Bottle
  …trated with line drawings and 8 pages of black and white photographs; with notes, bibliography, and index. …ion energy, but Argentina's president, Juan Perón, was gleefully bragging about having generated "thermonuclear reactions" and harnessing the power of the…
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• Nabhan: Where Our Food Comes From
  …ctices as a vital resource in maintaining the world's food supply. In this book he's decided he will follow in the footsteps of Vavilov and see how agricu… Each chapter of the book takes him to a different locale, from North and South America, to Ethiopia…
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• Johanson: Lucy's Legacy
  …own and understood species of hominid. One of the things I like about this book is that the authors prefer the term hominid to hominin. I am so totally wi… … concerning their biology. Paleoanthropologists are well known to disagree about all aspects of the biology of fossil hominids and we gain a nice insider's…
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• Fleming: The Inner Voice
  …a Scienticity book note? The original instrument was the human voice. This book explores what can be done with the human voice to hone it to the caliber n… …mily, children, studies, education, and marriage, but I will approach this book note highlighting how she was coached to make the most of her voice. (Her …
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• Sherwood: The Survivors Club
  …ed by an National Public Radio interview with the author, I wanted to read about the characteristics and traits survivors share. The author interviewed peo… …rvivorprofiler.org/ Internet-based Survivor Profiler test]. Readers of the book may take the test online to discover their Survivor personality and three …
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• Michaels: Doubt is their Product
  [[Category: Book Notes]] [[Category: Video Book Notes]][[Category: Top-Rated Books]]
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• Gray: Mad Science Experiments
  [[Category: Book Notes]] [[Category: Video Book Notes]]
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• Oakley: Evil Genes
  [[Category: Book Notes]] [[Category: Video Book Notes]]
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• Paglen: Blank Spots on the Map
  [[Category: Book Notes]] [[Category: Video Book Notes]]
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• Zimmer: Microcosm
  [[Category: Book Notes]] [[Category: Video Book Notes]]
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• Tyson: The Pluto Files
  [[Category: Book Notes]] [[Category: Video Book Notes]]
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• Nardi: Life in the Soil
  [[Category: Book Notes]] [[Category: Video Book Notes]]
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• Fagan: The Long Summer
  … 2004. xvii + 284 pages; illustrated with line drawings and maps; includes notes and index. Sometime about 10,000 years ago human civilization underwent a profound change. Bands of …
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• Gilder: The Age of Entanglement
  …lustrated with drawing by the author, some photographs; includes glossary, notes, bibliography, and index. The title of Louisa Gilder's book is evidently meant to be literary, alluding perhaps to Auden's famous 1947…
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• Wolverton: A Life in Twilight
  …39 pages; illustrated with photographs and facsimiles of letters; includes notes, bibliography, and index. … many achievements, activity, discovery, intrigue, and controversy swirled about him for decades.
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• Crouch: Lighter than Air
  …. 191 pages, copiously illustrated with etchings and photographs; includes notes, bibliographic references, and index. The earliest history of human flight came about through the development of balloons, "lighter than air" craft that float u…
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• Potter: You Are Here
  …ng nonscientists, that laypeople hear some stark scientific pronouncements about the universe and our place in it as bleak and dehumanizing and they worry:… …venture an opinion on, say, the Large Hadron Collider, if we knew a little about what a particle accelerator is and what this one might achieve. We might e…
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• Gribbin: Schroedinger's Kittens
  …e his ''In Search of Schr&ouml;dinger's Cat'' left off; perhaps that's the book to read first, but I can't comment yet because I read this one first. …e are the equations of the theory that give their perfectly useful answers about how the world works, but the equations themselves don't tell us what the s…
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• Schultz: The Stuff of Life
  …her words, I believe I fit in the category of "intended audience" for this book. …bating skills likely aren't adept enough to change anyone's mind. But this book worked wonderfully!
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• Science Book Challenge
  … There is also a [[:Image: Sbc01.jpg | jpeg version]] ]] <center><b>Read a book for science literacy!</b> <b>The [[Science Book Challenge 2013 | Book Challenge for 2013]] is open and ready to announce your participation. Joi…
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• Livingston: Edible Plants and Animals
  This book is presented in an encyclopedia format with limited information on each ed… The book is written in two sections separating the animals from the plants. The ton…
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• Gribbin: Stardust
  …all to arms for biblical literalists. It's also the literal thesis of this book. We can easily forget that the phrase does have a literal meaning—or ver… And so the central idea of the book is stellar nucleosynthesis: how the various elements come to be made in st…
  7 KB (1218 words) - 15:33, 8 June 2009
• Lightman: A Sense of the Mysterious (2)
  …literature, and the alternate ways in which scientists and humanists think about the world. Included are in-depth portraits of some of the great scientists… Lightman's book went on my To-Be-Read list that very day -- and I've just now (in 2009!) r…
  3 KB (579 words) - 03:50, 15 June 2009
• Gardner: The Science of Fear
  …Put Ourselves in Greater Danger''. New York : Dutton, 2008. 339 pages with notes, bibliography and index. …hy do we worry about things we shouldn't and ignore things we should worry about?" The answer, in short, is that we listen to iPods, read the newspaper, w…
  3 KB (539 words) - 16:38, 15 June 2009
• Johnson: Miss Leavitt's Stars (2)
  …t herself in this book, because, though he tried, there isn’t much known about her outside of her work. Still, I wanted a scientific biography and, desp… …ed and waned throughout the short book (so much so that I had to renew the book at the library in order to finish it) and, sorry to say, much of the scien…
  1 KB (245 words) - 01:52, 16 June 2009
• Hutchins: The Secret Doorway
  …ar I'm very intrigued by images from the far reaches of space ... and this book has '''LOTS''' of them! …n. Galaxies, stars, nebulae, planets, and many, many more images fill this book to bursting.
  3 KB (505 words) - 20:21, 18 June 2009
• Alcabes: Dread
  [[Category: Book Notes]] [[Category: Video Book Notes]]
  440 B (53 words) - 16:39, 10 July 2009
• Carroll: Remarkable Creatures
  A book to fill my head with thoughts of fieldwork! Great stories from the histor… …standing of human evolution. Carroll is a wonderful writer and frames this book like a detective story, following the adventures of people who are familia…
  1 KB (194 words) - 16:59, 10 July 2009
• Sacks: Oaxaca Journal
  …one I recommend whenever I meet someone who "never reads nonfiction". This book felt a bit more raw than his others; he explains in the introduction that … [[Category: Book Notes]]
  1 KB (221 words) - 21:00, 15 July 2009
• Blum: Ghost Hunters
  …h Blum’s ''Ghost Hunters''. on a total whim. I was looking up some other book--I can’t remember which one--and suddenly this popped up on to my screen… …one’s personal lives as well as their intellectual ones, which makes the book feel like a fascinating group biography as well. Since Blum is a marvelous…
  7 KB (1226 words) - 21:19, 15 July 2009
• Judson: Dr Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation
  This book was awesome! It’s a book about evolutionary biology, written as a sex column. Various animals write in wi… … out loud, instead of rolling my eyes at the corniness. I was reading this book in the living room, and Mom kept making me read sections to her, because I…
  1 KB (194 words) - 21:27, 15 July 2009
• King: Brunelleschi’s Dome
  …book since architecture is an aspect of art I know nothing about. It tells about the construction of Florence’s ''Santa Maria del Fiore'' dome in the 140… … had more questions than answers. While King included some sketches in the book, the only image of the dome is from the painting on the cover!
  2 KB (307 words) - 21:38, 15 July 2009
• Winchester: Krakatoa
  [[Category: Book Notes]] [[Category: Video Book Notes]]
  436 B (46 words) - 03:02, 17 July 2009
• Chaikin: A Passion for Mars
  …ntion to the subtitle of the book! Once I relaxed and got aligned with the book the author '''did''' choose to write I found it quite enjoyable, even exci… …ter and got to live out a fair amount of it professionally, wanted to talk about other people's passions for Mars and show some of where that passion has t…
  7 KB (1109 words) - 03:46, 17 July 2009
• Muller: Physics for Future Presidents
  …nes''. New York : W.W.Norton & Company, 2008. 380 pages; illustrated; with notes and index. …ime doing it. These are the first paragraphs from the introduction of this book:
  7 KB (1170 words) - 04:14, 17 July 2009
• Meller: Evolution Rx
  …ealing to a woman as a mate to father her child?) Notably lacking from the book, however, is a theory on why males have nipples! …loys scientific logic while working through the various hypotheses in this book, but mostly he encourages us to use our common sense in thinking through p…
  2 KB (251 words) - 02:48, 7 August 2009
• Taylor: My Stroke of Insight
  …eractions with stroke patients. In fact, it seems that the message of this book is clearly intended, at least in part, for those friends, family, and care… [[Category: Book Notes]]
  3 KB (508 words) - 21:31, 26 August 2009
• Starlings Arrive in North America
  … still to be found nesting there in 1901, but have not been heard of since about that time.{{ref|mtc01}} …lowing year an additional 80 birds were released.{{ref|mtc02}} A period of about 10 years was required for the starling to become established around New Yo…
  10 KB (1505 words) - 02:23, 10 September 2009
• Michaels: Doubt is their Product (2)
  …en fatal, effects of their products. The technique is to manufacture doubt about scientific knowledge. …body count continued to mount, the dissemination of scientific information about bladder cancer outbreaks to chemical manufacturers had little impact on th…
  6 KB (895 words) - 04:13, 10 September 2009
• Fiennes: The Snow Geese
  …her had always loved birds but William had never had the patience to learn about them. When they came back from the hotel he couldn't get "The Snow Goose"… …es writes wonderfully about bird migration, behavior, and physiology. His book includes discussion on migratory research and nesting patterns as well as …
  2 KB (256 words) - 15:46, 11 September 2009
• Reeves: A Force of Nature
  This book is part of a series called "Great Discoveries". I read another in this ser… I picked this up for many reasons: I like reading about physicists at that time period, and I was interested in Rutherford because…
  4 KB (750 words) - 02:35, 24 September 2009
• Morgan: Poles Apart
  That might be a natural reaction to the new book ''Poles Apart'' by Gareth Morgan and John McCrystal. Gareth is a well-know… But what about their obvious prejudices? They certainly start as sceptics of human caused…
  10 KB (1602 words) - 03:46, 24 September 2009
• Stenger: Quantum Gods
  There’s something about modern physics, especially quantum mechanics, which attracts magical think… …tically and Stenger provides an important service exposing this in his new book.
  9 KB (1438 words) - 16:49, 28 September 2009
• Chalmers: The Scientist's Atom and the Philosopher's Stone
  … the early pages. He sees "philosophical, as opposed to scientific, claims about the structure of matter are not confirmed by, but at best only accommodate… … being accommodated to experimental findings. Even when researchers talked about atoms they remained philosophical ideas rather than experimentally determi…
  7 KB (1077 words) - 03:18, 25 September 2009
• Foster: Critique of Intelligent Design
  …y to the Present''. New York : Monthly Review Press, 2008. 240 pages' with notes. But this book takes the struggle to the most fundamental level. That of the philosophica…
  10 KB (1553 words) - 01:25, 25 September 2009
• Ramachandran: Phantoms in the Brain
  …capitate your friends and enemies, using your natural blind spot. Standing about ten feet away from the other person, close your right eye and look at his … …get up to. It’s a combination of general knowledge of the brain, stories about individual patients, and Ramachandran’s scientific speculation. The chap…
  5 KB (914 words) - 02:39, 25 September 2009
• Sacks: Uncle Tungsten (2)
  …ou wanted?! *sigh* But I suppose you want to hear about the book, not just about my author crush. …mistry was my least-favourite class in high school, but while reading this book I became insanely excited over and enamoured with the periodic table.
  2 KB (383 words) - 03:56, 30 September 2009
• Suzuki: Tree
  …terwards. Of course, no man is an island, the tree is no different, so the book also discusses its habitat, the wonderful forest ecosystem it plays such a… …(don’t you just love little sketches?). And at just under 200 pages, the book didn’t wear out its welcome at all. I highly recommend this for anyone w…
  2 KB (287 words) - 16:10, 30 September 2009
• McKibben: Deep Economy
  …nged our goals and values. I highly recommend this one to anyone concerned about the current state of affairs, anyone looking for a different way to evalua… …he month in our overheating world. We need a similar shift in our thinking about economics we need it to take human satisfaction and societal durability mo…
  4 KB (623 words) - 16:18, 30 September 2009
• Gawande: Complications
  Atul Gawande, ''Complications : Notes from the Life of a Young Surgeon''. New Delhi ; New York, NY : Penguin Boo… …ful philosophies, and his compelling stories. Which is to say, I love this book and I think everyone should read it.
  6 KB (1083 words) - 20:14, 30 September 2009
• Streever: Cold
  This is the kind of natural history-science book I love, the kind I can open up at any page and find something really intri… …lder climates. This well-written little book is full of interesting facts about humans and animals that live in the cold.
  2 KB (270 words) - 22:33, 25 November 2009
• Science Book Challenge 2010
  …011 |2011 Challenge]] is now open;<br> please join us there.<br><br>Read a book for science literacy!<br>This is our third annual challenge, bigger and be… …e is easy as pi: read 3 (or 3.14!) science books during 2010, then tell us about the books you've read and help spread science literacy.
  19 KB (2780 words) - 01:41, 4 February 2011
• Stewart: Letters to a Young Mathematician
  Stewart's book is in the style of Rilke's ''Letters to a Young Poet''. It is a series of … … of Warwick in England, writes in an engaging, clear style which makes his book very enjoyable to read.
  1 KB (156 words) - 22:32, 1 January 2010
• Sabbagh: The Riemann Hypothesis
  …ars and the methods they use. It took a long time to make it through this book: not because Sabbagh was unclear, but because the concepts were difficult … [[Category: Book Notes]]
  2 KB (251 words) - 22:57, 1 January 2010
• Murphy: Plan C
  Part I of the book does a good job of describing peak oil and climate change, and why it will… …ivers through a not-yet-created computerized system. He is very passionate about this being the answer to our future transportation needs and barely touche…
  4 KB (719 words) - 23:16, 1 January 2010
• Henslin: This Is Your Brain On Joy
  …will be going on my keeper shelf. Dr. Henslin said in the beginning of the book that one of the main goals is to bring brain science into average Christia… He references the work of Dr. Daniel Amen and the SPECT brain scans in the book. A SPECT is a Single Photon Emission Computerized Tomography image. It is …
  3 KB (457 words) - 22:11, 2 January 2010
• Reynolds: Medical Mysteries
  …cinated by medical oddities. Ripley's ''Believe It or Not'' and ''Guiness Book of World Records'' spawned my interest in medical oddities. How can we fo… …and technology are at in understanding and treating these conditions. The book is presented in a way that a non-medical person can understand. Amazingly…
  2 KB (264 words) - 04:04, 15 January 2010
• Wolf: Proust and the Squid
  This is another selection in my streak of books about the purpose of reading in our lives. This one differs a little as it focus… …ically fascinating to me, and to have neuroscience and reading in the same book, well, how could it get better than that?
  3 KB (522 words) - 03:15, 22 January 2010
• Florey: Script and Scribble
  …story of handwriting is catching, and she talked further about it and this book over at [http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/story/script-scribble-kitty-bu… Here's a bit of the blurb from the book jacket itself:
  5 KB (738 words) - 03:21, 22 January 2010
• New Scientist: Do Polar Bears Get Lonely
  …lar Bears Get Lonely? : And Answers to 100 Other Weird and Wacky Questions about how the World Works''. New York : Henry Holt and Co., 2009. xi + 240 pages… …n the ''New Scientist'' magazine. As a non-science reader, this is a great book for me : intriguing questions with answers explained simply. It's a great …
  870 B (131 words) - 02:19, 29 January 2010
• New Scientist: Does Anything Eat Wasps
  …ine's popular 'Last Word' column. Funny, easy to read and unexpected, this book is a great way to learn answers to some of science's most intriguing quest… [[Category: Book Notes]]
  878 B (130 words) - 02:06, 29 January 2010
• Walker: The Hot Topic
  …. No jargon, no spin, just clear facts and evidence. Once you've read this book, you can be in no doubt that we need to act now. [[Category: Book Notes]][[Category: Top-Rated Books]]
  910 B (140 words) - 02:14, 29 January 2010
• Zimmerman: The Universe in a Mirror
  … been taken with the Hubble over the years and felt compelled to read this book. [[Category: Book Notes]]
  1 KB (234 words) - 03:30, 29 January 2010
• Kanipe: The Cosmic Connection
  …inded person to get through but I did learn a few new facts. Note that the book was written for the lay person. …say at the outset that I have always loved the space program. I chose this book because of that love. The first 2 chapters were the hardest for me to get …
  3 KB (467 words) - 03:47, 29 January 2010
• Tyson: The Pluto Files (2)
  …read in a bold blue color and a cartoon, which is what attracted me to the book in the first place. …quire that all school textbooks be rewritten and no one seemed to be happy about that.
  3 KB (471 words) - 03:56, 29 January 2010
• Bradley: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
  The book is utterly charming and the narrative compelling, but I laud it here for i… [[Category: Book Notes]][[Category: Top-Rated Books]]
  4 KB (632 words) - 23:16, 16 February 2010
• Schewe: The Grid
  …rified World''. Washington, DC : Joseph Henry Press, 2007. 311 pages; with notes and index. …nterconnected and interdependent grid came about it Schewe's theme in this book. At the root is this imperative of physical behavior: the electrical power…
  8 KB (1380 words) - 05:28, 19 February 2010
• Andrews: In Cold Pursuit
  …work with famous scientist Emmett Vanderzee. Unfortunately, just as she is about to begin her research career—and the adventure of a lifetime—she learn… …lly over all the interesting things she finds there, ask lots of questions about how the tightly knit community at McMurdo base operates as she's indoctrin…
  5 KB (821 words) - 04:57, 22 February 2010
• Mlodinow: The Drunkard's Walk (2)
  …ives''. New York : Pantheon Books, 2008. xi + 252 pages; illustrated, with notes and index. He reviews the history of probability, which I hadn't ever really thought about. The idea of figuring out percentages and basing judgments on them is a lo…
  3 KB (451 words) - 04:24, 26 February 2010
• Coyne: Why Evolution Is True
  …lution rapidly occurring during a human lifetime. The vast majority of the book focuses on evolution in general -- single-celled organisms up through mamm… …that I prefer so much more to pictures because it brings uniformity to the book. And, possibly my favorite part, is that Coyne didn't attack any other bel…
  2 KB (387 words) - 03:44, 20 March 2010
• Davidson: Fire in the Turtle House
  …nd manage to thread honest emotion through it all. I also enjoyed that the book tells the story of FP but it also subtly reveals how scientific research i… …dly recommend this book. If you are simply interested in reading a science book that is fantastically written, then I whole-heartedly recommend Osha Gray …
  2 KB (377 words) - 04:05, 20 March 2010
• Weisman: The World Without Us
  …ty to overcome the significant damage it has experienced; in reality, this book fell short of my expectations. …inuing to enjoy the side-bars that were prominent in the first part of the book as well.
  3 KB (436 words) - 16:09, 20 March 2010
• Marion: Genetic Rounds
  Although he's often uncomfortable about it, as a clinical geneticist, Marion (''The Intern Blues'') examines his p… === Why did I pick this book? ===
  6 KB (987 words) - 03:28, 1 April 2010
• Anderson: The Collectors of Lost Souls
  [[Category: Book Notes]]
  2 KB (323 words) - 21:23, 1 June 2010
• Chaikin: Voices from the Moon
  I loved this book. It was a nice trip down memory lane for me because I was an avid follower… …o said that none of the astronauts on the ill-fated Apollo 13 even thought about it because they never felt that it was impossible for them to get back to …
  2 KB (399 words) - 22:00, 1 June 2010
• Spellberg: Rising Plague
  … became angry. He is not the most impartial person, is he? Earlier in the book, he made a case for the need to create more antiobiotics in order to fight… …des of his mouth. He contraindicates himself several times throughout the book.
  5 KB (799 words) - 22:31, 1 June 2010
• Streever: Cold (2)
  …s wander around; if you are looking for a straightforward beginning-to-end book you won't find it here. For instance, the history of scientists' attempts… … much; there was breadth but not depth in the book. I could read an entire book on those explorers, or how people from various cultures handle the cold, o…
  2 KB (256 words) - 02:24, 2 June 2010
• Skloot: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
  …lly written, sharply reported. It is a story about science but, much more, about life" -- Susan Orlean, author of ''The Orchid Thief''. === Why did I pick this book? ===
  19 KB (3180 words) - 03:36, 2 June 2010
• Breining: Super Volcano
  The inside cover blurb summarizes the book as "Using field research and interviews with geologists and a paleontologi… …s of the park. 2000 earthquakes occur each year here which tells me it is about to erupt. In 1985 there were 3,000 earthquakes with as many as 200 per day…
  4 KB (646 words) - 02:41, 12 July 2010
• Scarth: Vesuvius
  …eruption. Most of the science is in the first 3 chapters. The rest of the book is pure history. …ion fueled every thought in those days and both clergy and historians lied about what they saw in order to make a religious point. Another fact that amaze…
  2 KB (371 words) - 02:54, 12 July 2010

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