Winner-Take-All Politics

Author: Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson

A groundbreaking work that identifies the real culprit behind one of the great economic crimes of our time— the growing inequality of incomes between the vast majority of Americans and the richest of the rich.
We all know that the very rich have gotten a lot richer these past few decades while most Americans haven't. In fact, the exorbitantly paid have continued to thrive during the current economic crisis, even as the rest of Americans have continued to fall behind. Why do the "haveit- alls" have so much more? And how have they managed to restructure the economy to reap the lion's share of the gains and shift the costs of their new economic playground downward, tearing new holes in the safety net and saddling all of us with increased debt and risk? Lots of so-called experts claim to have solved this great mystery, but no one has really gotten to the bottom of it—until now.
In their lively and provocative Winner-Take-All Politics, renowned political scientists Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson demonstrate convincingly that the usual suspects—foreign trade and financial globalization, technological changes in the workplace, increased education at the top—are largely innocent of the charges against them. Instead, they indict an unlikely suspect and take us on an entertaining tour of the mountain of evidence against the culprit. The guilty party is American politics. Runaway inequality and the present economic crisis reflect what government has done to aid the rich and what it has not done to safeguard the interests of the middle class. The winner-take-all economy is primarily a result of winner-take-all politics.
In an innovative historical departure, Hacker and Pierson trace the rise of the winner-take-all economy back to the late 1970s when, under a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress, a major transformation of American politics occurred. With big business and conservative ideologues organizing themselves to undo the regulations and progressive tax policies that had helped ensure a fair distribution of economic rewards, deregulation got under way, taxes were cut for the wealthiest, and business decisively defeated labor in Washington. And this transformation continued under Reagan and the Bushes as well as under Clinton, with both parties catering to the interests of those at the very top. Hacker and Pierson's gripping narration of the epic battles waged during President Obama's first two years in office reveals an unpleasant but catalyzing truth: winner-take-all politics, while under challenge, is still very much with us.
Winner-Take-All Politics—part revelatory history, part political analysis, part intellectual journey— shows how a political system that traditionally has been responsive to the interests of the middle class has been hijacked by the superrich. In doing so, it not only changes how we think about American politics, but also points the way to rebuilding a democracy that serves the interests of the many rather than just those of the wealthy few.

The Decline and Fall of the American Republic

Author: Bruce Ackerman

The author shows how the institutional dynamics of the last half-century have transformed the American presidency into a potential platform for political extremism and lawlessness. Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the War on Terror are only symptoms of deeper pathologies. ­Ackerman points to a series of developments that have previously been treated independently of one another—from the rise of presidential primaries, to the role of pollsters and media gurus, to the centralization of power in White House czars, to the politicization of the military, to the manipulation of constitutional doctrine to justify presidential power-grabs. He shows how these different transformations can interact to generate profound constitutional crises in the twenty-first century—and then proposes a series of reforms that will minimize, if not eliminate, the risks going forward.
The book aims to begin a new constitutional debate. Americans should not suppose that Barack Obama’s centrism and constitutionalism will typify the presidencies of the twenty-first century. We should seize the present opportunity to confront deeper institutional pathologies before it is too late.

The Shadows of Consumption Consequences for the Global Environment

Author: Peter Dauvergne

The Shadows of Consumption gives a hard-hitting diagnosis: many of the earth's ecosystems and billions of its people are at risk from the consequences of rising consumption. Products ranging from cars to hamburgers offer conveniences and pleasures; but, as Peter Dauvergne makes clear, global political and economic processes displace the real costs of consumer goods into distant ecosystems, communities, and timelines, tipping into crisis people and places without the power to resist.

In The Shadows of Consumption, Peter Dauvergne maps the costs of consumption that remain hidden in the shadows cast by globalized corporations, trade, and finance. He traces the environmental consequences of five commodities: automobiles, gasoline, refrigerators, beef, and harp seals. In these fascinating histories we learn, for example, that American officials ignored warnings about the dangers of lead in gasoline in the 1920s; why China is now a leading producer of CFC-free refrigerators; and how activists were able to stop Canada's commercial seal hunt in the 1980s (but are unable to do so now).

Dauvergne's innovative analysis allows us to see why so many efforts to manage the global environment are failing even as environmentalism is slowly strengthening. He proposes a guiding principle of "balanced consumption" for both consumers and corporations. We know that we can make things better by driving a fuel-efficient car, eating locally grown food, and buying energy-efficient appliances; but these improvements are incremental, local, and insufficient. More crucial than our individual efforts to reuse and recycle will be reforms in the global political economy to reduce the inequalities of consumption and correct the imbalance between growing economies and environmental sustainability.

Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else

Author: Geoff Colvin

One of the most popular Fortune articles in many years was a cover story called “What It Takes to Be Great.” Geoff Colvin offered new evidence that top performers in any field--from Tiger Woods and Winston Churchill to Warren Buffett and Jack Welch--are not determined by their inborn talents. Greatness doesn’t come from DNA but from practice and perseverance honed over decades.

And not just plain old hard work, like your grandmother might have advocated, but a very specific kind of work. The key is how you practice, how you analyze the results of your progress and learn from your mistakes, that enables you to achieve greatness.

Now Colvin has expanded his article with much more scientific background and real-world examples. He shows that the skills of business—negotiating deals, evaluating financial statements, and all the rest—obey the principles that lead to greatness, so that anyone can get better at them with the right kind of effort. Even the hardest decisions and interactions can be systematically improved.

This new mind-set, combined with Colvin’s practical advice, will change the way you think about your job and career—and will inspire you to achieve more in all you do

The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress

Author: Joel Mokyr
In a world of supercomputers, genetic engineering, and fiber optics, technological creativity is ever more the key to economic success. But why are some nations more creative than others, and why do some highly innovative societies--such as ancient China, or Britain in the industrial revolution--pass into stagnation?
Beginning with a fascinating, concise history of technological progress, Mokyr sets the background for his analysis by tracing the major inventions and innovations that have transformed society since ancient Greece and Rome. What emerges from this survey is often surprising: the classical world, for instance, was largely barren of new technology, the relatively backward society of medieval Europe bristled with inventions, and the period between the Reformation and the Industrial Revolution was one of slow and unspectacular progress in technology, despite the tumultuous developments associated with the Voyages of Discovery and the Scientific Revolution.
What were the causes of technological creativity? Mokyr distinguishes between the relationship of inventors and their physical environment--which determined their willingness to challenge nature--and the social environment, which determined the openness to new ideas. He discusses a long list of such factors, showing how they interact to help or hinder a nation's creativity, and then illustrates them by a number of detailed comparative studies, examining the differences between Europe and China, between classical antiquity and medieval Europe, and between Britain and the rest of Europe during the industrial revolution. He examines such aspects as the role of the state (the Chinese gave up a millenium-wide lead in shipping to the Europeans, for example, when an Emperor banned large ocean-going vessels), the impact of science, as well as religion, politics, and even nutrition. He questions the importance of such commonly-cited factors as the spill-over benefits of war, the abundance of natural resources, life expectancy, and labor costs.
Today, an ever greater number of industrial economies are competing in the global market, locked in a struggle that revolves around technological ingenuity. The Lever of Riches, with its keen analysis derived from a sweeping survey of creativity throughout history, offers telling insights into the question of how Western economies can maintain, and developing nations can unlock, their creative potential.

THE TENTH PARALLEL Dispatches From the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam

Author: Eliza Griswold
The tenth parallel—the line of latitude seven hundred miles north of the equator—is a geographical and ideological front line where Christianity and Islam collide. More than half of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims live along the tenth parallel; so do sixty percent of the world’s 2 billion Christians. Here, in the buzzing megacities and swarming jungles of Africa and Asia, is where the two religions meet; their encounter is shaping the future of each faith, and of whole societies as well.

An award-winning investigative journalist and poet, Eliza Griswold has spent the past seven years traveling between the equator and the tenth parallel: in Nigeria, the Sudan, and Somalia, and in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The stories she tells in The Tenth Parallel show us that religious conflicts are also conflicts about land, water, oil, and other natural resources, and that local and tribal issues are often shaped by religious ideas. Above all, she makes clear that, for the people she writes about, one’s sense of God is shaped by one’s place on earth; along the tenth parallel, faith is geographic and demographic.

An urgent examination of the relationship between faith and worldly power, The Tenth Parallel is an essential work about the conflicts over religion, nationhood and natural resources that will remake the world in the years to come.

The Big Questions: The Universe

Author: Stuart Clark
The Big Questions series enables renowned experts to tackle the 20 most fundamental and frequently asked questions of a major branch of science or philosophy. Each 3000-word essay simply and concisely examines a question that has eternally perplexed enquiring minds, providing answers from history's great thinkers. This ambitious project is a unique distillation of humanity's best ideas. In Big Questions: The Universe, Dr Stuart Clark tackles the 20 key questions of astronomy and cosmology: What is the universe? How big is the universe? How old is the universe? What are stars made from? How did the Universe form? Why do the planets stay in orbit? Was Einstein right? What are black holes? How did the Earth form? What were the first celestial objects? What is dark matter? What is dark energy? Are we really made from stardust? Is there life on Mars? Are there other intelligent beings? Can we travel through time and space? Can the laws of physics change? Are there alternative universes? What will be the fate of the universe? Is there cosmological evidence for God?

Stuart Clark's top 10 approachable astronomy books

1. The Edge of Physics by Anil Ananthaswamy

Part science, part travel book. Ananthaswamy searches for cosmological truth by visiting the often remote observatories and laboratories studying the universe. Ultimately, this story is an enchanting exploration of the author's quest to understand not just a little more about the universe, but a little more about his own place within it.

2. Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel

The most dramatic retelling of the Galileo story for a generation, and a rather tragic tale to boot. Sobel's memorable prose relies on letters between Galileo and his oldest daughter, a nun, to shine new light on the iconic astronomer. A masterful blend of history and astronomy.

3. The Book Nobody Read by Owen Gingerich

Gingerich's compelling narrative illuminates his quest to explore the cultural reception of Copernicus's revolutionary idea that the Earth orbited the sun and not vice versa. Gingerich also relates the difficulties of being an American researcher during the cold war, knowing that his quarry lay behind the iron curtain.

4. Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos by Dennis Overbye

This extended piece of top-class journalism captures astronomy as it is really practised in the corridors of academia and the lecture halls of conferences. Personal rivalries and personalities have as much to do with "progress" as having the right answer. Sprawling, complex and epic, it is also a page-turner.

5. Project Orion by George Dyson

How far will man go to reach the stars? Back in the 1950s, idealism was running high and a group of scientists and engineers gathered at The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey. Their goal was to harness nuclear bombs to launch manned spacecraft. Utter madness but beautifully recounted by George Dyson, whose father was one of the misguided idealists.

6. Dragonfly by Bryan Burrough

Manned spaceflight rather than astronomy, but a vivid behind-the-scenes portrayal of America's participation in Russia's Mir space station. It strips away the PR gloss and builds a factual story that reads likes a near-future thriller. Gripping, with some genuinely jaw-dropping moments of drama.

7. The Sleepwalkers by Arthur Koestler

Dense and detailed, this is a book you may have to work at, but there are rich rewards for anyone who stays the course. It also grows better with each re-reading. Koestler weaves the greatest history of astronomy up to Newton ever written.

8. Decoding the Universe by Charles Seife

Forget matter and energy, space and time, Seife argues that the most fundamental property of the universe is the information it contains. Until we accept this, we are stymied from further progress, rather like a baby playing with the box instead of the gift inside. Provocative and interesting, it challenges you to think differently.

9. The Very First Light by John C Mather and John Boslough

A thrilling tale of big science within Nasa, this is the story behind the mission that discovered the "seeds" of today's galaxies in the faint glow of the very first light left over from the creation of the universe.

10. Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy by Kip S Thorne

A fantastic tale of the consequences of relativity rather than the development of it. Black holes are predicted by relativity and are the weirdest things imaginable, so weird that astronomers tried for decades to wish them away. Even today, they still don't know what they are. Cracking story, cracking science.

Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming

Author:  Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway

Story about the misuse of science to mislead the public on matters ranging from the risks of smoking to the reality of global warming. The people the authors accuse in this carefully documented book are themselves scientists—mostly physicists, former cold warriors who now serve a conservative agenda, and vested interests like the tobacco industry. The authors name these scientists—all with powerful connections in government and the media—including Robert Jastrow, Frederick Seitz, and S. Fred Singer. Seven compelling chapters detail seven issues (acid rain, the dangers of smoking and secondhand smoke, the ozone hole, global warming, the Strategic Defense Initiative, and the banning of DDT) in which this group aimed to sow seeds of public doubt on matters of settled science. They did so by casting aspersions on the science and the scientists who produce it. Oreskes, a professor of history and science studies at UC–San Diego, and science writer Conway also emphasize how journalists and Internet bloggers uncritically repeat these charges.

The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years

Author: Sonia Shah
Malaria has been a global scourge since the Ice Age, and despite the fact that it's treatable, it still kills about 1 million people a year. Scientists and physicians have worked for decades upon decades to eliminate the disease, but after tens of thousands of years, it's beginning to look unkillable. Malaria has been eradicated in the United States for nearly 60 years, but the disease has still worked its way inextricably into our cultures and identities. Many older Americans, particularly in the South, remember chasing after trucks spraying the (now banned) insecticide DDT as children, playing in the cool mist on hot summer days. Even one of the world's best-known soft drinks, tonic water, gets its name from the mixer's original use as a treatment for malaria (it contains quinine, which is still used, in larger doses, to treat the disease).
There have been deadlier, scarier and more stubborn diseases, but few that have affected human evolution and global culture as much as malaria has. In The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years, journalist Sonia Shah provides an absorbing overview of the causes, treatments and effects of the disease, from the birth of the Plasmodium falciparum parasite in Africa thousands of years ago to global health initiatives of the past decade. In previous books, Shah has chronicled "the story of oil" (Crude) and written about pharmaceutical companies testing drugs on indigent patients (The Body Hunters). In The Fever, she displays the same curiosity, eye for history, and anger on behalf of the oppressed. (Drug companies take it squarely on the chin here as well, particularly in the chapter titled "Pharmacological Failure.")

Shah's biggest strength is her unforced, almost conversational writing style. Microbiology and epidemiology can get very complicated very quickly, but Shah proves to be an excellent translator, for the most part explaining even the most complicated scientific processes in an accessible (though never patronizing) way. At times, she gets ahead of herself — early sections on the evolution of Plasmodium required, at least for me, a rereading or two. Mostly, though, she's able to weave sections about science, history, and culture together in a seamless and fascinating way. Shah's intellectual enthusiasm and dry sense of humor recall popular science writers such as Steven Pinker and Stephen Jay Gould; her narrative strength and penchant for investigative journalism bring to mind science reporter and Flu author Gina Kolata.
"While we debate, and argue, and haphazardly collect our strength to fight malaria, the parasite refines its plague upon us," writes Shah. The Fever is a call to arms, though it's written with admirable clearheadedness and not a trace of alarmism. It's a compelling account of a disease that remains out of sight — and thus out of mind — for most Americans, even as it slowly tightens its grip on other parts of the world. Despite Shah's engaging prose and obvious enthusiasm, the subject matter means it's far from an easy read — but it might well be an essential one.

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Author:  Nicholas Carr

I sit down at the computer to work, but after two minutes my e-mail in-box pings. Two new messages! I read them, write quick replies, and get back to work. But then I check ESPN.com to see how the Cardinals did yesterday, and then I decide to open a Pandora station. I return to my work, but three minutes later I check on the stock market and then skim headlines on Google News. I work for another minute, and then...
I’m not complaining – not entirely. I like getting information and getting it fast. But I think I’m losing something, too – concentration, focus, and patience. Do you know what I mean?
In The Shallows, technology writer Nicholas Carr offers a measured but alarming answer. He concludes that the Internet is changing not only what we think about (gossip, up-to-the-minute news) but how we think. “Media ... supply the stuff of thought,” he writes, and “also shape the process of thought.”
Scientists have studied this change by examining neural pathways in the brain. They have concluded, says Carr, that “virtually all of our neural circuits – whether they’re involved in feeling, seeing, hearing, moving, thinking, learning, perceiving, or remembering – are subject to change.” The Internet, along with cellphones and television, is changing our brains, these scientists conclude.
Carr examines various historical advances in communication – from standardized writing to the printing press – to show how they, too, changed us. For example, literate people can better understand language, process visual signals, reason, and memorize than can illiterates. Furthermore, different languages produce different kinds of thinkers. For example, studies show English readers develop the part of the brain associated with deciphering visual shapes more than do Italians, probably because English words often look different from the way they sound, whereas Italian words are spelled just the way they are spoken.
Consider how different correspondence by letter is from text messaging or e-mailing. One arrives slowly; the other is immediate. One is developed in large, sometimes complex, paragraphs; the other is often composed of single sentences. As a result, says Carr, “our indulgence in the pleasures of informality and immediacy has led to a narrowing of expressiveness and a loss of eloquence.”
Also consider the difference between the book and the Web page. It requires concentration and commitment from the reader to tackle Orwell or Shakespeare. But the Internet is just the opposite, Carr notes. “When we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and cursory learning.”
Hyperlinks, for instance, provide a choice: Should I keep reading or follow the link elsewhere? This choice reroutes our thoughts, forcing us to pause for a moment to evaluate the options. Every time we encounter a hyperlink (or, for that matter, other links, advertisements, or pop-ups), our thought makes an extra turn. Not surprising, then, are the results of an experiment showing that people who read text littered with hyperlinks comprehended and remembered far less than people who read the same text without links.
German researchers concluded that the average Internet user spends 10 seconds or less on a Web page. Researcher Jakob Neilson used more than 200 tiny cameras to trace human eye movement across Web pages, and found that people generally move in an “F” shape, reading across the top and then skipping down a bit to skim a bit more. When asked, “How do users read on the Web?” Neilson replied, “They don’t.”
Patricia Greenfield wrote in Science magazine that the Internet has led to the “widespread and sophisticated development of visual-spatial skills,” such as rotating objects in our minds and judging distances. But with “our new spatial intelligence” comes a reduction in “deep processing” that supports “mindful knowledge acquisition, inductive analysis, critical thinking, imagination, and reflection.”
Carr brilliantly brings together numerous studies and experiments to support this astounding argument: “With the exception of alphabets and number systems, the Net may well be the single most powerful mind-altering technology that has ever come into general use.”
Socrates once warned that writing would “implant forgetfulness,” providing “a recipe not for memory, but for reminder.” Maybe Socrates wasn’t wrong, just ahead of his time. What would he say about the Internet?

Glorified Dinosaurs: The Origin and Early Evolution of Birds

Author: Luis Chiappe

The last few years have witnessed an unparalleled rate of discoveries of early birds and their dinosaurian predecessors. Written by a recognised authority in the field, Glorified Dinosaurs: The Origin and Early Evolution of Birds provides a comprehensive summary of these discoveries and addresses the fascinating topic of how modern birds evolved from fearsome dinosaurs akin to the celebrated Velociraptor. The book focuses on an evolutionary approach and presents current research and fossil discoveries. The title includes coloured photographs of fossils and fossil localities, many of which have been rarely reproduced elsewhere.

Beasts of Eden: Walking Whales, Dawn Horses, and Other Enigmas of Mammal Evolution

Author: David Wallace
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this excellent work proves that a mural is worth 300 pages. Wallace (The Bonehunter's Revenge, etc.) uses the often overlooked Age of Mammals mural at Yale's Peabody Museum as the theme around which he builds the story of the evolution of scientific thought on mammalian evolution. Rather than structure his narrative around the theories themselves, Wallace focuses on the savants and scientists who developed them. Vivid descriptions of the "bare-knuckled rivalries of Gilded Age paleontology"-which saw respected scientists sending saboteurs to each other's digs and lambasting one another in the popular press, and museum founders who grafted human teeth onto the heads of roosters-bring these men to life as well as the best of them were able to do for the specimens they found. Each character's particular expeditions, macabre youthful pastimes and the fossils that led to their fame or downfall are illuminated by abundant quotations from a wide variety of sources. Judicious use of personal anecdotes lends an air of conviviality to the author's prose, and frequent returns to the Peabody mural add still more depth and perspective. Paleontology buffs will not be the only ones entranced; this charming story, skillfully told, will appeal to history and biography fans as well. 18 b&w photos, 2 line illus.

Book List on Humanizing of Animals

1. The Emotional Lives of Animals by Marc Bekoff
2. Why Animal Suffering Matters by Andrew Linzey
3. Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation by Gary Francione
4. Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance by Jason Hribal 

Book List on Society and Consumerism

1. Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet by Tim Jackson
2. Free: Adventures on the Margins of a Wasteful Society by Katherine Hibbert
3. The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy by Raj Patel
4. Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It) by William Poundstone 
5. Small Change: Why Business Won't Change the World by Michael Edwards

CHEATING MONKEYS AND CITIZEN BEES : The NATURE of COOPERATION in ANIMALS and HUMANS

Author: Lee Dugatkin

Evolutionary biologist Dugatkin (Cooperation Among Animals) is unabashed in his belief that "the study of evolution and animal behavior can be used to foster and enhance cooperation in humans." Without resorting to simple minded biological determinism, he argues forcefully that the behavioral predisposition of humans may be predicted by evolution. Thus, he asserts that research in animal behavior can provide baseline information about parallel behavior in (admittedly more complex) humanity. Such investigations may ultimately help us better understand the underpinnings of human behavior and allow us to restructure our environments to promote more cooperation. Dugatkin explains that cooperation arises through four pathways, "family dynamics, reciprocal transactions, selfish teamwork, and group altruism." He devotes one chapter to each pathway, clearly explaining the underlying evolutionary theory and providing myriad animal examples. His fascinating instances range widely from vampire bats willing to regurgitate blood for starving neighbors to mongooses who take turns baby-sitting. Each chapter concludes with an attempt to tie the lessons learned from animals to suggestions for public policy issues as diverse as class size in elementary schools and partnering in police departments. These applications, however, are the weakest part of an otherwise startling and eye-opening glimpse into the evolution of behavior.

Seasons of Life: The Biological Rhythms That Enable Living Things to Thrive and Survive

Author: Russell G. Foster and Leon Kreitzman

At the onset of winter, the American wood frog burrows into the soil of its native northern Canada. As the temperature drops, the frog's body begins to freeze, and in response it produces a supply of glucose that effectively lowers the freezing point of water, preventing the formation of ice crystals. For months the frog stops breathing and its heart stops beating. When spring arrives and the land begins to thaw, so does the wood frog.
Animals and plants are able to adapt to the planet's changing seasons by virtue of their internal calendar, write Russell G. Foster and Leon Kreitzman in Seasons of Life: The Biological Rhythms That Enable Living Things to Thrive and Survive (Yale University Press). In their previous book together, Rhythms of Life (Yale University Press), the authors dealt with the circadian clock that allows organisms to track the time of day, even in controlled laboratory settings. The circannual calendar, they note, requires much more patience of the scientists who study it; but although their knowledge of seasonal biological variations remains incomplete, "we have uncovered some of the mechanisms involved."
Those mechanisms include hibernation, migration, and seasonal reproduction, which ensures that animals give birth at the optimum time of year for survival —largely determined by the relative abundance of food. Many nonequatorial animals accomplish this by breeding only at certain times. During the rest of the year, their reproductive organs "regress," or all but disappear, saving much-needed energy as well as preventing conception.
Foster and Kreitzman —respectively a professor of circadian neuroscience at the University of Oxford and a science writer and broadcaster —stress the interconnectivity between species' seasonal adaptations: "The organisms higher up the food chain have to time their activities to the rise and fall in the abundance of those lower down the food chain." Thus interference with one species' population can set off a complex series of reactions throughout an entire ecosystem.
The second half of Seasons of Life focuses on Homo sapiens and the myriad ways our lives —and deaths —are affected by the time of year. The authors examine the seasonal cycles of infectious diseases, as well as seasonal affective disorder and how it has been diagnosed and treated throughout human history. They even suggest that the month in which a person is born has significant statistical correlations. Although predicting people's future based on the month of their birth has long been the province of astrologers, studies now show that, depending on geographical location, date of birth may be linked to incidence of certain diseases, physical characteristics, and even personality traits. Summer babies are more likely to develop the digestive disorder celiac disease, winter babies "show increased novelty and sensation seeking," and, "in the Northern Hemisphere, babies born in the early part of the year are 6 to 8 percent more likely than others to develop schizophrenia later in life."
Noting that "humans, just as chimpanzees and gorillas, are ready to procreate more or less at the drop of a hat, more or less most of the time," the authors look to factors like women's nutritional status at the time of conception to account for variations in offspring. Our past plays a role, too: June is still the most popular month in which to marry, in part because, for our agrarian forebears, "a June or July conception and a subsequent early spring birth meant that the mother had recovered to some extent in time for the busy autumn harvest season the following year."
Climate change has already begun to affect the duration and dispositions of the seasons, threatening all species, warn the authors: "Those that succeed will be those that have the flexibility to change and adapt to the new temporal regime."

The Routes of Man: How Roads Are Changing the World and the Way We Live Today

Author: Ted Conover

The author  reveals globalization's neural system growing along the world's expanding and connecting road systems. Governments and smugglers, armies and insurgents, and the local poor and international NGOs negotiate their ambitions at border crossings, checkpoints, and dives. Tracing the route of rare mahogany from Peru's illegal jungle logging camps to Manhattan's brownstones, he examines how highways connect the fates of forests, untouched tribes, and finicky antique collectors. In the Himalayan frontier of Kashmir, highways are ventures of national territorial control, and in China a growing superhighway system underscores the disparity between the haves and have-nots. Conover's voice is that of a sobered Kerouac, tamed by a bigger conscience, and on an open road increasingly controlled by corporate, government, and military interests. His acclaimed narrative gifts are on full display in a wonderfully evenhanded treatment of the roadway in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Highways have been co-opted for Israeli settlements, and Palestinian professors, engineers, and migrant laborers construct ever-shifting back-road routes and taxi-hops to earn their living. With Conover as our guide, we move through Israeli checkpoints in Palestine's West Bank and witness the daily indignities faced by corralled Palestinian commuters and the psychological angst of Israeli soldiers. There is no open road here, just a gritty, fractured infrastructure of hatred that strangles both nations.More subtly, Conover reveals the highway as common social territory, particularly as the meeting place between men and women. His treatment of east African truck drivers—whose travels are suspected to be linked with the global spread of AIDS—avoids stereotype and sensationalism. He is as attentive to and interested by the drudgery of transporting goods as with the truckers' polygamy or encounters with sex workers and police bribery. We meet truck drivers who are true gentlemen and tough, articulate women fully capable of negotiating roadside life. Conover maintains a commitment to accurate portrayal and embraces the whole world, not only its dramatic aspects. The Routes of Man seeks to describe more than to explain this ever-connecting world. It does the former with an agility that leaves the reader anticipating the next adventure. But the narrative fails to build the argument posed in its subtitle: that roads themselves have become a source of change in the world, independent of the nations, armies, and cities that build, control, and fill them with trade and traffic. But this many-textured journey is not to be missed. Conover deftly navigates the romance and harsh reality of a world intent on a real and not just a virtual connectedness

The Age of Persuasion: How Marketing Ate Our Culture

Author:  Terry O'Reilly and Mike Tennant 
The ad men behind CBC Radio’s The Age of Persuasion combine lively social history and years of industry experience to show how the art of persuasion shapes our culture.

Witty, erudite and irrepressibly irreverent, The Age of Persuasion provides a hugely entertaining — and eye-opening — insider’s look at the ever-expanding world of marketing.

The Age of Persuasion is for those who say “advertising doesn’t work on me” as well as those who want to understand how this industry has become inseparable from modern culture. Using their popular CBC Radio series as a starting point, Terry O’Reilly and Mike Tennant tell the fascinating story of how modern marketing came of age — from the early players to the Mad Men of the 1960s and beyond. With insider anecdotes and examples drawn from pop culture, they also probe deeply into the day-to-day workings and ethics of a business that is rapidly evolving in the age of Facebook and YouTube.

Imagination in Place

Author: Wendell Berry

In this varied and vibrant collection of new writings, Wendell Berry covers a wide landscape of interests relevant to us all, ranging from public policy to nature and spirituality. He shares his singular perspective on matters that affect each of us on personal and public levels--indeed, this collection confirms what Berry readers have long known: Few writers in America can match the depth of his thought or the ringing clarity of his prose. Imagination in Place brings to date Berry's perspective on such essential current concerns as agriculture, sustainability, and the economy. He addresses the latter with his much admired essay Faustian Economics, previously published in Harper's Magazine and included here--an especially prescient commentary given our country's current challenges with late capitalism. There are also beautiful essays of tribute, wherein Berry offers insights into the lives and works of writers such as Wallace Stegner, James Still, Gary Snyder, Kathleen Raine, Donald Hall, and Jane Kenyon. Altogether, readers familiar with Wendell Berry's work and those new to his thought will find the essays here to be full of extraordinary power and hope.

Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, And Save Our Lives

Author: Shankar Vedantam

The hidden brain is Shankar Vedantam's shorthand for a host of brain functions, emotional responses, and cognitive processes that happen outside of our conscious awareness, but that have a decisive effect on how we behave. * The hidden brain has its finger on the scale when we make all of our most complex and important decisions--it decides who we fall in love with, whether we should convict someone of murder, or which way to run when someone yells 'fire!' * * It explains why we can become riveted by the story of a single puppy adrift on an ocean but are quickly bored by a story of genocide. * The hidden brain can also be deliberately manipulated to vote against their interest, or even become suicide terrorists. * * But the most disturbing thing is that it does all of this without our knowing. * * Shankar Vedantam, longtime author of the Washington Post's popular 'Department of Human Behavior' column, takes us on a tour of this phenomenon and explores its consequences. * * Using original reporting that combines the latest scientific research with compulsively readable narratives that take readers from the American campaign trail to terrorist indoctrination camps, from the World Trade Center on 9/11 to, yes, a puppy adrift in the Pacific Ocean, Vedantam illuminates the dark recesses of our minds while making an original argument about how we can compensate for our blind spots-and what happens when we don't.

Evidence of the Afterlife - The Science of Near-Death Experiences

Author: Jeffrey Long


Evidence of the Afterlife shares the firsthand accounts of people who have died and lived to tell about it. Through their work at the Near Death Experience Research Foundation, radiation oncologist Jeffrey Long and his wife, Jody, have gathered thousands of accounts of near-death experiences (NDEs) from all over the world. In addition to sharing the personal narrative of their experiences, visitors to the website are asked to fill out a one hundred–item questionnaire designed to isolate specific elements of the experience and to flag counterfeit accounts.
The website has become the largest NDE research database in the world, containing over 1,600 NDE accounts. The people whose stories are captured in the database span all age groups, races, and religious affiliations and come from all over the world, yet the similarities in their stories are as awe-inspiring as they are revealing. Using this treasure trove of data, Dr. Long explains how medical evidence fails to explain these reports and why there is only one plausible explanation—that people have survived death and traveled to another dimension.

The last taboo : opening the door on the global sanitation crisis

Author: Black, M. and Fawcett, B

This book breaks many silences surrounding today's sanitation crisis. It de-couples the 'water and sanitation' connection, and argues that - to make real progress - we need a radical new mind-set. In the byways of the developing world, much is quietly happening on the excretory frontier. This book takes us on a tour of those endeavours, in the company of today's sanitary heroes. In 2008, the International Year of Sanitation, the authors bring - with humour and impeccable taste - this awkward subject to a wider audience than the world of international filth usually commands. They seek the elimination of the 'Great Distaste' so that people without political clout or economic muscle can claim their right to a dignified and hygienic place to 'go'. Contents: A short history of the unmentionable; Runaway Urbanization and the rediscovery of filth; In dignity and health; Pit stops: the expanding technological menu; Selling sanitation to new users; Shitty livelihoods, or what?; Bringing on the new sanitary revolution. The book is an introduction for practitioners, students, activists and policy makers needing to understand the sanitation crisis.

The Universe - Order Without Design

Author: Carlos Calle

The author sets the scene by reviewing the historical background. Later, he introduces the major breakthroughs in 20th-century astrophysics: the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation, a fossil from the hot Big Bang; the startling inflationary theory of the Universe, in which its extent doubled 100 times in almost no time at all; confirmation that unseen dark matter outweighs visible matter by a factor of ten or more in clusters of galaxies; and the realisation that six billion years ago the expansion of the Universe began to accelerate in a cosmic jerk in which mysterious dark energy made itself felt as a version of anti-gravity. In addition to astrophysics, Calle introduces the fundamental aspects of sub-atomic physics, as well as good descriptions of attempts to unify the four forces of nature.
By assembling a mass of evidence from physics and astrophysics, the author is in a position to ask if the Universe is fine-tuned for the origin of life. This is actually an old question, but it has become a pressing issue because the former large uncertainties in the value of cosmological parameters have now been eliminated. The arrival of precision cosmology has fuelled the growth of the intelligent design bandwagon, the movement that uses probabilities to claim that our Universe had a supernatural creator.
Calle tackles intelligent design with some flair by invoking the latest cosmological models that arise from string theory, which suggests that our Universe may be just one among an unimaginable number of universes, each of which has its own set of physical laws. This, of course, turns the probability argument on its head: yes, life is improbable, just as winning the Lotto jackpot is improbable, but jackpots get won, and life exists somewhere if we posit endless cycles of universe creation or we accept the multiverse concept where we can have as many universes as we please in order to get one that is lively.
This account is outstanding in terms of setting out the issues objectively, and thus allowing readers to reach their own conclusions. Those who reject intelligent design are in good intellectual company: Pierre-Simon Laplace famously said to Napoleon, "I had no need for that hypothesis". There is plenty of food for thought in this book.

Secrets of the Universe: How We Discovered the Cosmos

Author: Paul Maurdin

Discoveries in astronomy challenge our fundamental ideas about the universe. Where the astronomers of antiquity once spoke of fixed stars, we now speak of whirling galaxies and giant supernovae. Where we once thought Earth was the center of the universe, we now see it as a small planet among millions of other planetary systems, any number of which could also hold life. These dramatic shifts in our perspective hinge on thousands of individual discoveries: moments when it became clear to someone that some part of the universe—whether a planet or a supermassive black hole—was not as it once seemed.

Secrets of the Universe invites us to participate in these moments of revelation and wonder as scientists first experienced them. Renowned astronomer Paul Murdin here provides an ambitious and exciting overview of astronomy, conveying for newcomers and aficionados alike the most important discoveries of this science and introducing the many people who made them. Lavishly illustrated with more than 400 color images, the book outlines in seventy episodes what humankind has learned about the cosmos—and what scientists around the world are poised to learn in the coming decades. Arranged by types of discovery, it also provides an overarching narrative throughout that explains how the earliest ideas of the cosmos evolved into the cutting-edge astronomy we know today. Along the way, Murdin never forgets that science is a human endeavor, and that every discovery was the result of inspiration, hard work, or luck—usually all three.

The first section of Secrets explores discoveries made before the advent of thetelescope, from stars and constellations to the position of our own sun. The second considers discoveries made within our own solar system, from the phases of Venus and the moons of Jupiter to the comets and asteroids at its distant frontier. The next section delves into discoveries of the dynamic universe, like gravitation, relativity, pulsars, and black holes. A fourth examines discoveries made within our own galaxy, from interstellar nebulae and supernovae to Cepheid variable stars and extrasolar planets. Next Murdin turns to discoveries made within the deepest recesses of the universe, like quasars, supermassive black holes, and gamma ray bursters. In the end, Murdin unveils where astronomy still teeters on the edge of discovery, considering dark matter and alien life.

From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time

Author : Sean Carroll

do things, left by themselves, tend to become messier and more chaotic? What would Maxwell's Demon say to a Boltzmann Brain?
The answers can be traced to the moment of the Big Bang -- or possibly before.
Time pervades our lives -- we keep track of it, lament its loss, put it to good use. The rhythms of our clocks and our bodies let us measure the passage of time, as a ruler lets us measure the distance between two objects. But unlike distances, time has a direction, pointing from past to future. From Eternity to Here examines this arrow of time, which is deeply ingrained in the universe around us. The early universe -- the hot, dense, Big Bang -- was very different from the late universe -- cool, empty, expanding space -- and that difference in felt in all the workings of Nature, from the melting of ice cubes to the evolution of species.
The arrow of time is easy to perceive, much harder to understand. Physicists appeal to the idea of entropy, the disorderliness of a system, which tends to increase according to the celebrated Second Law of Thermodynamics. But why was entropy ever small in the first place? That's a question that has been tackled by thinkers such as Ludwig Boltzmann, Stephen Hawking, Richard Feynman, Roger Penrose, and Alan Guth, all the way back to Lucretius in ancient Rome. But the answer remains elusive.
The only way to understand the origin of entropy is to understand the origin of the universe -- by asking what happened at the Big Bang, and even before. From Eternity to Here discusses how entropy relates to black holes, cosmology, information theory, and the existence of life. The book tells a story that starts in the kitchen, where we can turn eggs into omelets but never the other way around, and takes us to the edges of the universe. Modern discoveries in cosmology -- dark energy and the accelerating universe -- and quantum gravity -- the possibility of time before the Big Bang -- come together to suggest a picture of a multiverse in which the arrow of time emerges naturally from the laws of physics.

The Rebel

Author: Albert Camus

One of Camus' primary arguments in The Rebel concerns the motivation for rebellion and revolution. While the two acts - which can be interpreted from Camus' writing as states of being - are radically different in most respects, they both stem from a basic human rejection of normative justice. If human beings become disenchanted with contemporary applications of justice, Camus suggests that they rebel. This rebellion, then, is the product of a basic contradiction between the human mind's unceasing quest for clarification and the apparently meaningless nature of the world. Described by Camus as "absurd," this latter perception must be examined with what Camus terms "lucidity." Camus concludes that the absurd sensibility contradicts itself because when it claims to believe in nothing, it believes in its own protest and the value of the protester's life. Therefore, this sensibility is logically a "point of departure" that irresistibly "exceeds itself." In the inborn impulse to rebel, on the other hand, we can deduce values that enable us to determine that murder and oppression are illegitimate and conclude with "hope for a new creation."
Another prominent theme in The Rebel, which is tied to the notion of incipient rebellion, is the inevitable failure of attempts at human perfection. Through an examination of various titular revolutions, and in particular the French Revolution, Camus argues that most Revolution has involved a fundamental denial of both history and transcendental values. Such revolutionaries aimed to kill God. In the French Revolution, for instance, this was achieved through the execution of Louis XVI and subsequent eradication of the Divine Right of Kings. The subsequent rise of Utopian and materialist idealism sought "the end of history." Because this end is unattainable, according to Camus, terror ensued as the revolutionaries attempted to coerce results. This culminated in the "temporary" enslaving of people in the name of their future liberation. Notably, Camus' reliance on non-secular sentiment does not involve a defence of religion; indeed, the replacement of divinely-justified morality with pragmatism simply represents Camus' apotheosis of transcendental, moral values.
Faced with the manifest injustices of human existence on one hand, and the poor substitute of revolution on the other, Camus' rebel seeks to fight for justice without abandoning transcendental values, including the principle of the intrinsic value of human life. Consequently, some rebels attempt to justify their actions through a crude form of payment. As Camus argues, the Russian terrorists active in the early 20th Century were prepared to offer their own lives as payment for the lives they took.
A third is that of crime, as Camus discusses how rebels who get carried away lose touch with the original basis of their rebellion and offer various defenses of crime through various historical epochs.
At the end of this book Camus exposes the possible moral superiority of the ethics and political plan of trade unionism.

Darwin's Lost World - The hidden history of animal life

Author: Martin Brasier

The quest of scientists since Darwin to solve a case he found 'inexplicable' - the lack of fossils in rocks before the Cambrian, over 540 million years old An account of the earliest known animals - the enigmatic Ediacaran creatures, and the small shelly fossils - that have hardly ever been described before to a lay audience. (Books by Gould and Conway-Morris focus on the more famous, and much later animals of the Burgess Shale.) A personal account of the piecing together of clues about the lead up to the Cambrian from an Oxford scientist involved at the forefront of work on early life A richly readable and engaging account of the trials and tribulations of expeditions to remote places such as Siberia and Outer Mongolia Tackles deep and still unresolved questions of evolution: when and how did animals evolve and what drove the great evolutionary innovations of the 'Cambrian Explosion'? These are areas of intense and exciting current research and Brasier here gives his own take on the emerging answers, as one of the leading players in the field Darwin made a powerful argument for evolution in the Origin of Species, based on all the evidence available to him. But a few things puzzled him. One was how inheritance works - he did not know about genes. This book concerns another of Darwin's Dilemmas, and the efforts of modern palaeontologists to solve it. What puzzled Darwin is that the most very ancient rocks, before the Cambrian, seemed to be barren, when he would expect them to be teeming with life. Darwin speculated that this was probably because the fossils had not been found yet. Decades of work by modern palaeontologists have indeed brought us amazing fossils from far beyond the Cambrian, from the depths of the Precambrian, so life was certainly around. Yet the fossils are enigmatic, and something does seem to happen around the Cambrian to speed up evolution drastically and produce many of the early forms of animals we know today. In this book, Martin Brasier, a leading palaeontologist working on early life, takes us into the deep, dark ages of the Precambrian to explore Darwin's Lost World. Decoding the evidence in these ancient rocks, piecing together the puzzle of what happened over 540 million years ago to drive what is known as the Cambrian Explosion, is very difficult. The world was vastly different then from the one we know now, and we are in terrain with few familiar landmarks. Brasier is a master storyteller, and combines the account of what we now know of the strange creatures of these ancient times with engaging and amusing anecdotes from his expeditions to Siberia, Outer Mongolia, Barbuda, and other places, giving a vivid impression of the people, places, and challenges involved in such work. He ends by presenting his own take on the Cambrian Explosion, based on the picture emerging from this very active field of research. A vital clue involves worms - burrowing worms are one of the key signs of the start of the Cambrian. This is fitting: Darwin was inordinately fond of worms.Readership: Readers of popular science - particularly those with an interest in earth sciences and the history of life on Earth. Students and researchers in earth sciences, geology, and zoology will also find the book of interest for it provides not only fresh insights into the field, but also stories of adventure too.

Earth democracy: justice, sustainability and peace

Author: Vandana Shiva

Boldly confronting the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, world-renowned physicist/activist Vandana Shiva responds with Earth Democracy, or, as she prophetically names it, "The People's Project for a New Planetary Millennium." A leading voice in the struggle for global justice and sustainability, here Shiva describes what earth democracy could look like, outlining the bedrock principles for building living economies, living cultures, and living democracies.
Starting from the initial enclosure of the commons-the privatization of 6 million acres of public land in 18th-century Britain—Shiva goes on to reveal how the "commons" continue to shrink as more and more natural resources are patented and fenced. Accompanying this displacement from formerly accessible territory, she argues, is a growing attitude of disposability that erodes our natural resources, ecological sustainability, and cultural diversity. Worse, human beings are by no means safe from this assignment of disposability. Through the forces of neoliberal globalization, economic and social exclusion work in deadly synergy to perpetrate violence on vulnerable groups, extinguishing the lives of millions.
Yet these brutal extinctions are not the only trend shaping human history. Forthright and energetic, Vandana Shiva updates readers on the movements, issues, and struggles she helped bring to international attention—the genetic engineering of food, the theft of culture, and the privatization of natural resources—and deftly analyzes the successes and new challenges the global resistance now faces. From struggles on the streets of Seattle and Cancún and in homes and farms across the world has grown a set of principles based on inclusion, nonviolence, reclaiming the commons, and freely sharing the earth's resources. These ideals, which Shiva calls Earth Democracy, will serve as unifying points in our current movements, an urgent call to peace, and the basis for a just and sustainable future.

THE DEPARTMENT OF MAD SCIENTISTS-How DARPA Is Remaking Our World, From the Internet to Artificial Limbs

Author: Michael Belfiore
The first-ever inside look at DARPA—the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency—the maverick and controversial group whose futuristic work has had amazing civilian and military applications, from the Internet to GPS to driverless cars
America's greatest idea factory isn't Bell Labs, Silicon Valley, or MIT's Media Lab. It's the secretive, Pentagon-led agency known as DARPA. Founded by Eisenhower in response to Sputnik and the Soviet space program, DARPA mixes military officers with sneaker-wearing scientists, seeking paradigm-shifting ideas in varied fields—from energy, robotics, and rockets to peopleless operating rooms, driverless cars, and planes that can fly halfway around the world in just hours. DARPA gave birth to the Internet, GPS, and mind-controlled robotic arms. Its geniuses define future technology for the military and the rest of us.
Michael Belfiore was given unprecedented access to write this first-ever popular account of DARPA. Visiting research sites across the country, he watched scientists in action and talked to the creative, fearlessly ambitious visionaries working for and with DARPA. Much of DARPA's work is classified, and this book is full of material that has barely been reported in the general media. In fact, DARPA estimates that only 2 percent of Americans know much of anything about the agency. This fascinating read demonstrates that DARPA isn't so much frightening as it is inspiring—it is our future.

Diabetes Rising: How a Rare Disease Became a Modern Pandemic, and What to Do About It

Author: Dan Hurley
Nearly 90 years after the discovery of insulin, with an estimated $116 billion spent annually on the medical treatment of diabetes in the United States, why is diabetes the one major cause of death that’s been relentlessly rising for a century? Diabetes Rising investigates why the nearly two dozen medications approved for type 2 (adult-onset) diabetes, and all the high-tech treatments for type 1 (juvenile-onset) diabetes, are failing to slow this modern pandemic of Western civilization. The book also profiles promising new approaches that are making significant strides toward preventing, curing, or dramatically improving treatment of the disease. Written by Dan Hurley, a regular contributor to the science section of the New York Times (and himself a type 1 diabetic for over 30 years), Diabetes Rising breaks medical news by revealing:

• The wealthiest town in Massachusetts, where an outbreak of type 1 diabetes among the children has parents up in arms, and a state investigation underway.
• The county in West Virginia with the highest rate of type 2 diabetes in the country (where Hurley spent an evening with a family of 10 siblings, all of whom have the disease, and the local Wal-Mart proudly announces that it sells more Little Debbie snack cakes than any other Wal-Mart in the world). 
• Why the rate of type 1 diabetes has been rising just as fast and just as long as the rate of type 2, transforming a childhood disease that was once exceedingly rare into one that now affects most elementary school systems in the country. 
• How the “artificial pancreas,” long considered a holy grail that would take decades to develop, has now reached the final stages of testing—the book describes Hurley’s extraordinary experience participating in one of the world’s first clinical trials of the device, and profiles the colorful mavericks pushing the technology forward. 
• Why international diabetes experts believe that three simple, little-known approaches—avoiding cow’s milk in baby formulas, getting adequate amounts of vitamin D, and simply playing in the dirt—could prevent many cases of diabetes.
• Innovative public-health strategies in New York City, Los Angeles and elsewhere that are seeking to attack diabetes today just as campaigns of a century ago defeated communicable diseases—with public-health laws regulating fast-food restaurants.

The Three Cultures: Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, and the Humanities in the 21st Century

Author: Jerome Kagan
A half century ago, British scientist and novelist C.P. Snow lamented the divisions between natural scientists and humanities scholars of his day in his lecture The Two Cultures. In Kagan’s latest book, the Harvard psychologist expounds on Snow’s analysis with an insightful description of the strengths, shortcomings and potential of 21st century academic culture.

The Three Cultures revisits the natural sciences and humanities but also considers the place of social sciences in the modern academy. Kagan begins by examining differences among the cultures, right down to their vocabularies. The word fear, for instance, means one thing to a biologist, another to a psychologist and holds still another meaning for the poet, Kagan explains.
The book next examines how those differences play out. Kagan contrasts the veneration earlier natural scientists enjoyed with the increasing skepticism of today, explaining how political and historical events contributed to this decline in stature. He describes social scientists’ struggle to differentiate their scholarship from that of natural scientists. In perhaps the most polemic section of the book, he calls on economists to relinquish their claims of exactitude.
Snow argued 50 years ago that rivalries between natural scientists and humanists prevented scholars from tackling the world’s most pressing problems. The same gulf exists today among the three cultures, Kagan argues convincingly. With Kagan’s evenhanded assessment, the reader is led to one important conclusion: Scholars in each branch cannot afford to exist in isolated ivory towers.

Here Be Dragons: How the Study of Animal and Plant Distributions Revolutionized Our Views of Life and Earth

Author: Dennis McCarthy

Why do we find polar bears only in the Arctic and penguins only in the Antarctic? Why do oceanic islands often have many types of birds but no large native mammals? As Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace travelled across distant lands studying the wildlife they both noticed that the distribution of plants and animals formed striking patterns - patterns that held strong clues to the past of the planet. The study of the spatial distribution of living things is known as biogeography. It is a field that could be said to have begun with Darwin and Wallace. In this lively book, Denis McCarthy tells the story of biogeography, from the 19th century to its growth into a major field of interdisciplinary research in the present day. It is a story that encompasses two great, insightful theories that were to provide the explanations to the strange patterns of life across the world - evolution, and plate tectonics. We find animals and plants where we do because, over time, the continents have moved, separating and coalescing in a long, slow dance; because sea levels have risen, cutting off one bit of land from another, and fallen, creating land bridges; because new and barren volcanic islands have risen up from the sea; and because animals and plants vary greatly in their ability to travel, and separation has caused the formation of new species. The story of biogeography is the story of how life has responded and has in turn altered the ever changing Earth. It is a narrative that includes many fascinating tales - of pygmy mammoths and elephant birds; of changing landscapes; of radical ideas by bold young scientists first dismissed and later, with vastly growing evidence, widely accepted. The story is not yet done: there are still questions to be answered and biogeography is a lively area of research and debate. But our view of the planet has been changed profoundly by biogeography and its related fields: the emerging understanding is of a deeply interconnected system in which life and physical forces interact dynamically in space and time.

Books Recommended by Scientific American for 2009

Secrets of the Universe: How We Discovered the Cosmos
by Paul Murdin. University of Chicago Press, 2009
Astronomer Paul Murdin traces the history of astronomical discoveries—from the shape of Earth to the cosmic microwave background to the origin of the elements. Pictured at the right is the N49 supernova remnant in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Supernovae play a key role in distributing the elements made in stars.
A Year on the Wing: Four Seasons in a Life with Birds
by Tim Dee. Free Press, 2009
In this lyrical memoir, radio producer and writer Tim Dee draws on 40 years of avian observation to compose an account of a year in the lives of birds. Along the way he explores humanity’s fascination with these creatures and their journeys on the wing.
This Will Change Everything: Ideas That Will Shape the Future
edited by John Brockman. Harper Perennial, 2009
John Brockman, literary agent and founder of the online science salon Edge.org, has rounded up more than 150 luminaries to reflect on ideas that are poised to change the world in their lifetimes. Among the contributors are Nobel laureate physicist Frank Wilczek on the quantum world, biologist Paul Ewald on infectious disease and psychologist Sherry Turkle on robot companions.
Department of Mad Scientists: How DARPA Is Remaking Our World, from the Internet to Artificial Limbs
by Michael Belfiore. Smithsonian, 2009
The Lives of the Brain: Human Evolution and the Organ of Mind
by John S. Allen. Belknap Press, 2009