Book Review
Scatterbrain
One might assume that training brains towards perfection is a worthy goal, but German neuroscientist Henning Beck’s "Scatterbrain" promotes a different perspective. The book refutes received opinions about the brain’s apparent...
Book Review
50 Things to See in the Sky
“The sky above us holds limitless wonder,” astrophysicist and television producer Sarah Barker declares. Technology may have made it easier to spot and understand heavenly bodies, but it will never explain away their magic. Barker...
Book Review
Meteorites
The stories in Julie Paul’s "Meteorites" assess possibilities for growth in the wake of worst case scenarios. Loss and illness become opportunities for restoration that broken characters often overlook. A man travels to Hawaii with the...
Book Review
The Molecule of More
Dopamine has a lot to answer for. First discovered in 1957, it is variously known as “the pleasure molecule” and “the reward circuit.” In "The Molecule of More", an excellent work of wide-ranging popular science, Daniel Z....
Book Review
The Ape That Understood the Universe
Steve Stewart-Williams, associate professor of psychology at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, wants to help readers get an outside perspective on humanity to realize just how strange some aspects of evolution are. To that...
Book Review
Climate Justice
Author Mary Robinson was the first woman president of Ireland, serving from 1990 to 1997; afterward, she served as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002. She was also an honorary president of the global...
Book Review
Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel's Autism
The unequivocal title of his third book tells you that Peter J. Hotez isn’t pulling any punches. As a Baylor College of Medicine vaccine scientist and the father of an adult daughter with autism, he’s heavily invested in the fight...
Book Review
Inevitably Toxic
Most of the ten essays collected in "Inevitably Toxic" are based on papers presented at Claremont College’s “Contested Expertise, Toxic Environments” workshop in Fall 2015. Reading them is like attending an academic conference and...