Volume 98 | Number 6 | November-December 2010
Lee Smolin
A review of A Tear at the Edge of Creation, by Marcelo Gleiser. Is the search for a theory of everything fundamentally misguided?
Colin C. Adams
A review of Flatland: An Edition with Notes and Commentary, by Edwin A. Abbott. Edited by William F. Lindgren and Thomas F. Banchoff. The plot is creaky, says Adams, but Flatland is great mathematical literature—required reading for anyone who wants to be culturally literate in mathematics
Jeremiah James
A review of Image and Reality: Kekulé, Kopp, and the Scientific Imagination, by Alan J. Rocke. Figuring out how atoms connect to form molecules was one of the landmark achievements of 19th-century science. Rocke chronicles the emergence of structure theory through the efforts of a network of chemists in several countries
Sandra Knapp
A review of The Art of Plant Evolution,by W. John Kress and Shirley Sherwood, and Flora Mirabilis: How Plants Have Shaped World Knowledge, Health, Wealth, and Beauty, by Catherine Herbert Howell. Kress and Sherwood explain the evolutionary interrelationships of plants depicted in paintings by contemporary botanical artists; Howell uses botanical art of the past to explore the history of plant exploration and exploitation
Brian Hayes
A review of A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution, by Dennis Baron. Virtual paper is displacing the real thing. Will this shift be a positive development in human culture?
Joan Roughgarden
A review of Looking for a Few Good Males: Female Choice in Evolutionary Biology, by Erika Lorraine Milam. As Milam’s history of sexual selection demonstrates, the subject of how secondary sexual characteristics evolve has been contentious and politically loaded ever since Darwin first theorized about it. Roughgarden notes that the science is still far from settled
Mark Denny
A review of Glimpses of Creatures in their Physical Worlds, by Steven Vogel. If you’re looking for food for thought, this book about biomechanics provides a feast, says Denny
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
A review of Biology Is Technology: The Promise, Peril, and New Business of Engineering Life, by Robert H. Carlson. Is a future in which people will be able to build synthetic biological systems in their garages out of BioBricks just around the corner?
Theodore M. Porter
A review of The Pleasures of Statistics: The Autobiography of Frederick Mosteller, by Federick Mosteller. Edited by Stephen E. Fienberg, David C. Hoaglin and Judith M. Tanur. Despite its flaws as an autobiography, this narrative provides a fascinating view of statistics, Porter says, particularly when Mosteller "almost inadvertently" reveals the personage of the statistician.
Phillip F. Schewe
A review of When the Lights Went Out: A History of Blackouts in America, by David E. Nye. Nye explores the effects of blackouts as a disruption of social experience and describes the overhaul of the power industry that followed deregulation