Harold Green
A review of THE AGE OF EDISON: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America by Ernest Freeberg
David Schoonmaker
A brief review of A VERY SHORT TOUR OF THE MIND: 21 Short Walks Around the Human Brain by Michael C. Corballis
Katie L. Burke
A review of PALEOFANTASY: What Evolution Really Tells Us About Sex, Diet, and How We Live by Marlene Zuk
The Editors
This issue marks the debut of our new, brief and occasional books section
Hallie Sessoms
A brief review of Into Great Silence: A Memoir of Discovery and Loss among Vanishing Orcas, by Eva Saulitis
Fenella Saunders
A brief review of Hubble's Universe: Greatest Discoveries and Latest Images, by Terence Dickinson
David Schoonmaker
A brief review of em>Antarctica: An Intimate Portrait of a Mysterious Continent, by Gabrielle Walker, and Secrets of the Ice: Antarctica’s Clues to Climate, the Universe, and the Limits of Life, by Veronica Meduna
Fenella Saunders
A review of Turing’s Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe, by George Dyson
After a nearly 70-year run, the Scientists’ Bookshelf will cease publication
Brian Hayes
A review of The King of Infinite Space: Euclid and His Elements, by David Berlinski. “Berlinski offers a meditative monologue on Euclid’s place in the history of mathematics and the history of ideas,” says Hayes
Julianne Lutz Warren
A review of On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson, by William Souder. Souder’s sensitive and thorough biography of Carson, Warren writes, “helps us see her life work as crafting a narrative in which science is used to care for Earth”
Michael Bérubé
A review of Getting Inside Your head, by Lisa Zunshine. Zunshine employs concepts from cognitive science to explain humans’ appetite for fictional scenes in which characters’ mental states are unintentionally revealed to us. This theory, says Bérubé, is “helpfully specific,” although the effort to extend it over a wide range of scenarios and art forms falls a bit flat
Peter H. Raven
A review of Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions and Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment, by Daniela Bleichmar. Naturalists and artists on Spanish expeditions to the New World created thousands of botanical images; this well-researched book explores an archive of them
Carol Dorf
A review of Complexities: Women in Mathematics, edited by Bettye Anne Case and Anne M. Leggett, and A Wealth of Numbers: An Anthology of 500 Years of Popular Mathematics Writing, edited by Benjamin Wardhaugh. These two very different anthologies open unique windows on mathematical history
Katie L. Burke
A brief review of Skulls: An Exploration of Alan Dudley’s Curious Collection, by Simon Winchester, with photographs by Nick Mann
Fenella Saunders
A brief review of The Tinkerers: The Amateurs, DIYers, and Inventors Who Make America Great, by Alec Foege
Nancy Langston
A review of The Big Muddy: An Environmental History of the Mississippi and Its Peoples, from Hernando de Soto to Hurricane Katrina, by Christopher Morris. Environmental and social issues converge at the mouth of the Mississippi River: Morris documents a history of repeated attempts to control the river's flow, many made at the expense of African Americans
Brian Hayes
A review of The Fractalist: Memoir of a Scientific Maverick, by Benoit B. Mandelbrot. In this posthumously published memoir, Mandelbrot is not shy about proclaiming his own achievements. But his choice to exclude some important characters in his stories of mathematical and scientific advancement is troublesome, says Hayes
Emily Buehler
A review of Marie Curie and Her Daughters: The Private Lives of Science’s First Family, by Shelley Emling. This biography of Curie and her daughters Irene and Eve tends toward the dramatic early on, but later chapters reveal much about the lives of the women that are its subject, as well as about their contemporaries
Katie L. Burke
A review of Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, by David Quammen. Quammen’s latest book tackles the thorny questions and sometimes-gruesome details of the quest to understand diseases transmitted from animals to humans. His fans will not be disappointed
Tim Stallmann
A review of Atlas of Design, Volume 1, edited by Timothy R. Wallace and Daniel P. Huffman. This collection of maps focuses on cartography that takes design as seriously as it does science, says Stallmann. The result is a diverse set of maps that illuminates new directions in the practice of cartography
Fenella Saunders
A brief review of Picturing the Cosmos: Hubble Space Telescope Images and the Astronomical Sublime, by Elizabeth A. Kessler
Anna Lena Phillips
A brief review of An Ecology of Happiness, by Eric Lambin, translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan
The Editors
Each winter we peruse the year’s large-format books about science and present brief reviews of the ones we like best
Fenella Saunders
A brief review of Planetfall: New Solar System Visions, by Michael Benson
Katie L. Burke
A brief review of Longleaf, Far as the Eye Can See: A New Vision of North America’s Richest Forest, by Bill Finch, Beth Maynor Young, Rhett Johnson and John C. Hall
David Schoonmaker
A brief review of Cycling Science: How Rider and Machine Work Together, by Max Glaskin
Anna Lena Phillips
A brief review of Natural Companions: The Garden Lover’s Guide to Plant Combinations, by Ken Druse. Botanical photographs by Ellen Hoverkamp