Volume 97 | Number 4 | July-August 2009
William McGrew
A review of Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding, by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. The emergence of the extended family was the key development in the transformation of apes into early hominins, Hrdy suggests
Bettina Arnold
A review of Europe Between the Oceans: 9000 B.C.–A.D. 1000, by Barry Cunliffe. Cunliffe’s major point is that the extensive coastline of the European peninsula served to increase mobility and innovation among the peoples who lived there from the end of the Pleistocene until A.D. 1000
Peter Pesic
A review of The Great Equations: Breakthroughs in Science from Pythagoras to Heisenberg, by Robert P. Crease. Crease emphasizes the slow development of ideas and the historic matrix within which the great equations emerged
Douglas Erwin
A review of Evolution: The First Four Billion Years, edited by Michael Ruse and Joseph Travis. Part collection of essays, part encyclopedia, the book is “an interesting jambalaya,” says Erwin, and should prove useful for students and the general public
Edward W. Felten
A review of Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness after the Digital Explosion, by Hal Abelson, Ken Ledeen and Harry Lewis. The authors explore a variety of policy and social issues arising from our increasing dependence on digital technologies
Brian Hayes
A review of The Grid Book, by Hannah B. Higgins. Higgins, who examines the cultural significance of devices for organizing space and time, has produced “an informative and sometimes provocative meditation on the place of geometry in human life,” says Hayes
Seymour Mauskopf
A review of The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America, by Steven Johnson. The title is a double entendre, says Mauskopf, referring both to Priestley’s work in pneumatic chemistry and to the genesis of the terrestrial atmosphere. One of Johnson’s principal themes is that Priestley was a significant influence on such early American leaders as Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
Dan Lloyd
A review of Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension, by Andy Clark, and Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness, by Alva Noë. Are the mechanisms of mind all in the head? These authors think not
Richard H. Kessin
A review of The Social Amoebae: The Biology of Cellular Slime Molds, by John Tyler Bonner. Bonner offers an evolutionary and ecological perspective in this book, which focuses on the history of the early discoveries about Dictyostelium
Neil Safier
A review of The Tropics of Empire: Why Columbus Sailed South to the Indies, by Nicholas Wey Gómez. Wey Gómez posits Columbus as the precursor of a particularly sinister form of European expansion,” says Safier, “and as a geographical elitist who believed that the torrid zone—and the people who inhabited it—would serve Europe as an abundant and exploitable material mine”
Total Records : 11