Book Review
Emily Grosholz
A review of Approaching Ice: Poems, by Elizabeth Bradfield, and Darwin: A Life in Poems, by Ruth Padel. Scenes from the history of science are rendered in these two well-referenced collections. One offers glimpses into the lives of a plenitude of polar explorers, the other a verse biography of Charles Darwin
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Robin Chapman
A review of Intersecting Sets: A Poet Looks at Science, by Alice Major. What might a poet who has devoted much time to the consideration of science have to say about these two disciplines? Plenty, it turns out: “Major offers us the pleasure of watching another writer’s mind in motion at every scale,” says Chapman
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Rick Mullin
A review of Hypotheticals, by Leigh Kotsilidis. In poems that are at their best engaging, quirky and sharp, Kotsilidis not only delves into the language of science, but questions the enterprise itself, says Mullin
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Sarah Glaz
A review of The Scientific Method, by Mary Alexandra Agner. This slim chapbook contains substantive work, including seven poems that take as their subjects the lives and work of historic women scientists
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Anna Lena Phillips
A review of Between Page and Screen, by Amaranth Borsuk and Brad Bouse. Borsuk uses the medium of poetry to investigate the interface of print and code, with all its attendant dilemmas and anxieties. This investigation is embodied in the project’s form: a print book that requires a webcam-containing device to be read
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John T. Jost
A review of The Fair Society: The Science of Human Nature and the Pursuit of Social Justice, by Peter Corning. “At this moment in history,” Jost writes, “when our problems are so much clearer than their solutions, it is a genuine contribution to offer clearheaded analysis and moral encouragement to take much-needed steps in the direction of social and economic justice.”
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Jan Sapp
A review of Race?: Debunking a Scientific Myth, by Ian Tattersall and Rob DeSalle, and Race and The Genetic Revolution: Science, Myth, and Culture, edited by Sheldon Krimsky and Kathleen Sloan. The notion of race as a biological construct has long been out of scientific favor, but the idea persists in medicine and law enforcement, among other areas, leading to inaccurate assessments and inequitable treatment. These two books discuss this problem with critical acuity, says Sapp
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Hugh Gusterson
A review of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. This story of medicine, genetics, ethics and race has received much acclaim, and appropriately so, says Gusterson; readers who have not picked it up yet should add it to their reading list
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Colin Allen
A review of Mindreading Animals: The Debate over What Animals Know about Other Minds, by Robert W. Lurz. The question of whether animals have a “theory of mind,” the ability to attribute mental states to themselves and to other animals, is a contentious one. Lurz suggests an array of experiments designed to show whether an animal is relying on a theory of mind or simply making judgments based on the behavioral cues given by another animal. The experiments are intriguing, says Allen, but they do not fully answer the question of whether animals can “mind read”
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Terrence Sejnowski
A review of Networks of the Brain, by Olaf Sporns. The vast amount of data that neuroscientists are collecting about the brain requires equally complex systems to analyze it. Sporns relates neuroscience to network science, detailing significant advances in brain imaging, especially for the human brain, and describing what remains to be done in order to understand how our minds work
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Total Records : 1203