Gems From Our Friends
Discover’s tireless contributors keep churning out books by the trayful. Here is a sampling from 2004.
By Alex Stone
Archives of the Universe: A Treasury of Astronomy's Historic Works of Discovery
Marcia Bartusiak (Pantheon Books, $35)
Bartusiak chronicles humanity’s quest to comprehend the cosmos, focusing on a list of 100 documents that spans millennia and includes ancient Mayan Venus tables, Newton’s Principia, and physicist Alan Guth’s 1981 paper on the inflationary universe.
Text by Josie Glausiusz, Photographs by Volker Steger (Chronicle Books, $24.95)
A curious combination of yuck and wow, this quirky and beautifully illustrated book explores the myriad ways in which we share our lives with insects—and ultimately depend on them for our existence.
Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another
Philip Ball (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27)
In a synthesis of social science and natural science, Ball examines the evolution of complex human systems—markets, cultures, governments, and the like—using principles of physics.
The Genome War: How Craig Venter Tried to Capture the Code of Life and Save the World
James Shreeve (Alfred A. Knopf, $26.95)
Shreeve documents the brilliant and frenzied race by maverick biologist Craig Venter to beat the U.S. government in mapping the human genome.
Mind Wide Open:Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life
Steven Johnson (Scribner, $25)
In a quest to investigate the link between mind and brain, our Emerging Technology columnist inserts himself into a five-ton magnetic resonance imaging scanner and submits to neurofeedback sessions, in which he learns to play video games by altering his own brain waves.
Pandora's Baby: How the First Test Tube Babies Sparked the Reproductive Revolution
Robin Marantz Henig (Houghton Mifflin, $25)
Now a routine practice with over a million notches on its headboard, in vitro fertilization began as fringe science denied government grants. Henig charts the tumultuous growth of this revolutionary procedure, from the research that led to the birth of the first test-tube baby in 1978 to present-day debates over cloning and genetic engineering.
Plague: The Mysterious Past and Terrifying Future of the World's Most Dangerous Disease
Wendy Orent (Free Press, $25)
During the Middle Ages the Black Death killed off at least one-quarter of Europe’s population. Orent travels through history with the fleaborne pathogen, which was engineered as a biological weapon during the cold war and, in the form of resistant strains, still threatens the world today.
Strange Universe: The Weird and Wild Science of Everyday Life - On Earth and Beyond
Bob Berman (Henry Holt, $25)
Our Sky Lights columnist proffers a potpourri of essays on the scientific wonders underlying the ordinary. Groundhog Day, calendars, and the physics of your morning commute are among the topics that he probes.
Sy Montgomery and Nic Bishop (Houghton Mifflin, $18)
Aimed at the young aspiring naturalist, this lurid narrative offers an up-close look at nature’s most notorious arachnids and the scientists who study them.
Robert M. Sapolsky (Henry Holt, $16)
An updated edition of Sapolsky’s eminently readable treatise on the evolutionary roots, biological pathways, and health consequences of the human stress response.
