Denialism:
How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and
Threatens Our Lives. It's the only book I've ever seen that has about
equal numbers of 1-, 2-, 3-, 4-, and 5-star reviews there. My rather critical review
continues to get numerous hits on the web. I thought the book struck precisely
the wrong tone even while raising an important issue. But I'm glad that people
are talking about it. If you want to see a spirited discussion, click here
and look at the customer reviews and comments to those reviews.
Settled
in the Wild: Notes from the Edge of Town by Susan Hand Shetterly is an
evocative collection of nature writing that adds up to a memoir, the perfect
book to curl up with in your easy chair, with fireplace crackling (if you have
one).
Anticancer:
A New Way of Life by long-term brain-cancer survivor David
Servan-Schreiber, M.D., Ph.D as life-enhancing, life-affirming, and even
life-saving. My review
noted: "As someone who wanted to beat his cancer, Servan-Schreiber was
eager to try anything. But as a scientist, he was not about to grope blindly.
It was time for serious research into the relationship between cancer,
lifestyle issues, and chemicals in the environment. Anticancer,
published in his native France last year ([2007], 15 years after his first
diagnosis) and now appearing in English, is the result."
The
Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing or Choice are
Undermining Education by Diane Ravitch, who is, in effect, recanting
and apologizing for supporting the No Child Left Behind program with its
emphasis on standardized tests, which she now views as counterproductive.
Whatever your views of NCLB, keep your eyes open for more about this
provocative book. If you want to get a sense of my views, see my previous Science Shelf review of a book
called Tested.
The
Little Book of String Theory by Steven S. Gubser. Not that string
theory is uncontroversial in physics circles, as I note in an earlier comparative review of The
Trouble with Physics and Not Even Wrong. Those books are
still getting a lot of play among people who think that String Theory is at the
end of its rope, so to speak.
What's
Eating You: People and Parasites by Eugene H. Kaplan. I had such a
great time with Kaplan's earlier Sensuous Seas: Tales of a
Marine Biologist that I'm itching (only figuratively, I hope) to see how he
handles this topic.
Cars
on Mars: Roving the Red Planet by Alexandra Siy.
Lives
of the Trees: An Uncommon History by Diana Wells
God's
Brain by Lionel Tiger and Michael McGuire 
My
Brain Made Me Do It: The Rise of Neuroscience and the Threat to Moral
Responsibility by Eliezer J. Sternberg 
The
Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle Aged
Mind by Barbara Strauch 
Sum:
Forty Tales from the Afterlives, now in paperback by neuroscientist
David Eagleman 
The
Joy of Chemistry: The Amazing Science of Familiar Things, now in paperback
by Cathy Cobb and Monty L. Fetterolf 
How
to Find a Habitable Planet by James Kasting
The
Great Equations: Breakthroughs in Science from Pythagoras to Heisenberg,
now in paperback by Robert P. Crease
Seven
Wonders of Exploration Technology by Fred Bortz.
