Reviews
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EcosystemsBOOK LIST | Trees, Truffles, and Beasts: How Forests Function
An argument that simple policies will not save complex forests.Rutgers Univ. Press, 2008, 280 p., $26.95 (paperback). TREES, TRUFFLES, AND BEASTS: HOW FORESTS FUNCTION
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Humans
BOOK REVIEW | Curiosity and Enlightenment: Collectors and Collections from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century
Chock-full of unicorn horns (narwhal teeth), griffin claws (antelope antlers), leopard skins, petrified wood or other gems hand-picked from nature, “cabinets of curiosities” have developed a modern-day reputation as whimsical caboodles of miscellaneous oddities. This book will overturn that impression. A proper collection was “a model of universal nature, made private,” as Francis Bacon, the […]
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Health & Medicine
BOOK REVIEW | Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life
When science writer Carl Zimmer looks into a petri dish teeming with E. coli, he sees himself, humanity and all life. In Microcosm, Zimmer traces the lessons biologists have learned from the microbe, which calls our guts its home. He also uses it to discuss some of the most fundamental questions in biology: What is […]
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Life
BOOK LIST | Manipulative Monkeys: The Capuchins of Lomas Barbudal
Primatologists follow the social lives of these big-brained Costa Rican monkeys. Harvard Univ. Press, 2008 358 p. $45 MANIPULATIVE MONKEYS
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Math
BOOK LIST | Guesstimation: Solving the World’s Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin
Learn to use simple arithmetic to approximate anything. Princeton Univ. Press, 2008, 300 p. $19.95 GUESSTIMATION
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Space
BOOK LIST | Newton: Ackroyd’s Brief Lives
The book promises a personal history of Isaac Newton. Ackroyd also wrote Shakespeare: The Biography and London: The Biography. Nan A. Talese, 2008 176 p. $21.95 NEWTON: ACKROYD’S BRIEF LIVES
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Plants
BOOK LIST | Winter Trees
In this picture book, a child uses sight and touch to identify seven common trees, even after they’ve lost their leaves. Charlesbridge Publishing, 2008, 30 p. $15.95 WINTER TREES
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Health & Medicine
BOOK REVIEW | A Portrait of the Brain
What you don’t know about the brain could fill a book. That’s true even if you happen to be a brain surgeon or neuroscientist. Luckily, Zeman, a British neurologist, has painted A Portrait of the Brain in lucid, conversational prose. Zeman steps us through the brain’s inner workings, starting with the most fundamental element — […]
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Earth
BOOK LIST | A Grain of Sand: Nature’s Secret Wonder
Beautiful photos of sand grains up close reveal surprising diversity. Text describes a sand grain’s journey from mountain to beach. A GRAIN OF SAND Voyageur Press, 2008, 112 p. $20.
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Planetary Science
BOOK LIST | Titan Unveiled
Astronomer Lorenz and science writer Mitton provide the details of what we know so far about Saturn’s moon. TITAN UNVEILED Princeton University Press, 2008, 243 p., $29.95
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Astronomy
BOOK LIST | Archimedes to Hawking: Laws of Science and the Great Minds Behind Them
Pickover, who has authored 40 books on many aspects of science and mathematics, discusses how the works of great minds from Archimedes to Stephen Hawking have changed humankind’s understanding of the universe. BIG IDEAS, AND BIG THINKERS, IN COSMOLOGY Oxford University Press, 2008, 514 p., $27.95.