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AUTHOR INTERVIEW: JERRY COYNE

In Why Evolution Is True, University of Chicago biologist Jerry Coyne marks Darwin's 200th birthday with a comprehensive case for his theory. "I realized when I started teaching that nobody ever taught the evidence for evolution, which is wide-ranging and cool," he says. "And yet when you read Darwin, the thing that's most fascinating is the evidence he musters in support of it." Read the full interview.

SCIENTISTS' NIGHTSTAND: KEITH THOMSON

In reading for pleasure, Oxford biologist Keith Thomson admires the essays of Brown University historian Gordon Wood as well as Joseph Ellis's American Sphinx, "simply because he explains Thomas Jefferson better than anyone else." Read Thomson's complete list of recommendations.

MARCH-APRIL 2009 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dr. Varmus Goes to Washington
A review of The Art and Politics of Science, by Harold Varmus. Varmus's engaging memoir deserves to be followed by a second volume, says Cook-Deegan.
Robert Cook-Deegan

An Entangled Drama
A review of The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics Was Reborn, by Louisa Gilder. This vividly imagined re-creation of some of the most subtle intellectual history of the 20th century is grippingly readable, says Mermin.
David Mermin

Deep Doo-Doo
A review of The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters, by Rose George, The Last Taboo: Opening the Door on the Global Sanitation Crisis, by Maggie Black and Ben Fawcett, and The Culture of Flushing: A Social and Legal History of Sewage, by Jamie Benidickson. George and Black and Fawcett offer an NGO’s-eye view of a feces-smothered world in search of solutions, says Hamlin. But can it really be true, as Benidickson’s legal history of hydraulic sanitation suggests, that public health is founded in private property and is a private matter?
Christopher Hamlin

Obstacles and Tricks
A review of Structure and Randomness: Pages from Year One of a Mathematical Blog, by Terence Tao. Tao’s book and blog provide a fascinating glimpse into the mind of one of the best mathematicians working today, says Shalizi.
Cosma Shalizi

On the Origin of Specious Arguments
A review of Natural Security: A Darwinian Approach to a Dangerous World, edited by Raphael D. Sagarin and Terence Taylor. There are surely lessons that the field of international security could learn from evolutionary biology, says Gusterson, but this book fails to deliver them.
Hugh Gusterson

Looters
A review of Loot: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World, by Sharon Waxman, and Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle over Our Ancient Heritage, by James Cuno. Waxman describes high-profile cases of museums returning stolen works of ancient art to their country of origin, focusing on the flamboyant personalities involved, whereas Cuno, a museum director, defends the mores of his profession, decrying the nationalism that has given rise to demands that objects be returned.
Jenifer Neils

QCD with a Light Touch
A review of The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces, by Frank Wilczek. This lively, playful book does a superb job of introducing readers to our current understanding of the nature of matter and the forces that govern the universe, says Dzierba.
Alex Dzierba

The Sun Yet Warms His Native Ground
A review of Lost Land of the Dodo: An Ecological History of Mauritius, Réunion, and Rodrigues, by Anthony Cheke and Julian Hume. The story of the Mascarenes illustrates how human activity can devastate ecosystems—and, in color paintings of the islands’ extinct flora and fauna, Hume offers a glimpse of what has been lost.
Rob Dunn

The Saga of Snowbasin
A review of Bargaining for Eden: The Fight for the Last Open Spaces in America, by Stephen Trimble. Trimble tells the story of the struggle to keep Mount Ogden, Utah, from being developed.
Susan L. Smith

Things that Teach
A review of Tools of American Mathematics Teaching, 1800–2000, by Peggy Aldrich Kidwell, Amy Ackerberg-Hastings and David Lindsay Roberts. This book surveys the "material culture" of the mathematics classroom: protractors, blocks, beads, geometric models, slide rules, calculators and the like.
Fernando Gouvêa

Nanoviews

Short takes on three books: Trying Leviathan • What Have You Changed Your Mind About? • The Lost Art of Walking

OFF THE SHELF

Darwin's 200th birthday this week was the occasion for an essay by Richard Dawkins reviewing Jerry Coyne's book Why Evolution Is True in the Times Literary Supplement. The current issue of Nature has a review of Darwin's Sacred Cause ("a controversial new reconstruction" of Darwin's life) and six poems by Darwin's great-great-granddaughter, Ruth Padel. Smithsonian magazine has an essay by Thomas Hayden, "What Darwin Didn't Know"; an interview with Alfred Russel Wallace expert Andrew Berry; and an essay by Richard Conniff on how Darwin was affected when he learned of Wallace's research. And in the New York Times, Olivia Judson looks back on Darwin's life. The Times also has a Topics page about Darwin, which includes links to their coverage of him.

Harold Varmus's new memoir was reviewed by Seth Shulman in the Washington Post. On January 30, 2009, Varmus was interviewed on Talk of the Nation's "Science Friday." The Scientist has an excerpt from the book. The autobiography of J. Michael Bishop (with whom Varmus shared the Nobel Prize) was reviewed by David Cantor in the November-December 2003 issue of American Scientist.

The Age of Entanglement is reviewed by Don Howard in Nature, by Chad Orzel on his blog, Uncertain Principles, and by James Trefil in the Washington Post. Powells.com has an interview with the author of the book, Louisa Gilder, and the audio for a public radio interview with Gilder can be downloaded or played here.

The Nation has a review that discusses, among other books, Who Owns Antiquity and Loot.

The New York Review of Books has an essay discussing several books about the destruction of antiquities in Iraq.

The London Review of Books has a review by Jerry Fodor of Supersizing the Mind.

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