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

Eating Animals

Author: Jonathan Safran Foer 
Jonathan Safran Foer spent much of his teenage and college years oscillating between omnivore and vegetarian. But on the brink of fatherhood-facing the prospect of having to make dietary choices on a child's behalf-his casual questioning took on an urgency His quest for answers ultimately required him to visit factory farms in the middle of the night, dissect the emotional ingredients of meals from his childhood, and probe some of his most primal instincts about right and wrong. Brilliantly synthesizing philosophy, literature, science, memoir and his own detective work, Eating Animals explores the many fictions we use to justify our eating habits-from folklore to pop culture to family traditions and national myth-and how such tales can lull us into a brutal forgetting. Marked by Foer's profound moral ferocity and unvarying generosity, as well as the vibrant style and creativity that made his previous books, Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, widely loved, Eating Animals is a celebration and a reckoning, a story about the stories we've told-and the stories we now need to tell. 

Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness

Author: Tracy Kidder
Strength in What Remains is an unlikely story about an unreasonable man. Deo was a young medical student who fled the genocidal civil war in Burundi in 1994 for the uncertainty of New York City. Against absurd odds--he arrived with little money and less English and slept in Central Park while delivering groceries for starvation wages--his own ambition and a few kind New Yorkers led him to Columbia University and, beyond that, to medical school and American citizenship. That his rise followed a familiar immigrant's path to success doesn't make it any less remarkable, but what gives Deo's story its particular power is that becoming an American citizen did not erase his connection to Burundi, in either his memory or his dreams for the future. Writing with the same modest but dogged empathy that made his recent Mountains Beyond Mountains (about Deo's colleague and mentor, Dr. Paul Farmer) a modern classic, Tracy Kidder follows Deo back to Burundi, where he recalls the horrors of his narrow escape from the war and begins to build a medical clinic where none had been before. Deo's terrible journey makes his story a hard one to tell; his tirelessly hopeful but clear-eyed efforts make it a gripping and inspiring one to read

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope

Author: William Kamkwamba

William Kamkwamba was born in Malawi, a land withered by drought and hunger, a place where hope and opportunity were hard to find. But William had read about windmills and dreamed of building one that would bring his family electricity and running water, luxuries that only two percent of Malawians could afford. He used scrap metal, tractor parts, and bicycle halves to forge a crude machine that eventually powered four lights, complete with homemade switches and a circuit breaker made from nails and wire. A second windmill turned a water pump that could battle the drought and famine looming with every season.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind will inspire anyone who doubts the power of one individual's ability to change his community and better the lives of those on an entire continent.

Wisdom Song: The Life of Baba Amte

Author: Neesha Mirchandani

To the dalai lama, he is an extraordinary person, and to Gandhi, he was the abhay sadhak. He, however, describes himself as “just the mad son of a mad mother”. He is a nonagenarian living legend, a dreamer and an achiever — Baba Amte.

Rediscovering the life of a legendary maverick is “a dangerous thing”, says Neesha Mirchandani. She has exploited all possible sources — existing biographies, reports, documentaries, audio interviews, articles and so on — to make this biography a collective memory of those who have known Baba over the years.

Baba Amte, a lawyer-turned-healer, nursed people with leprosy at a time when it was incurable. “We see beauty,” said Baba, “in the ruins of the Ajanta and Ellora caves. Then why can’t we see the beauty in the ruins of man?... I started my leprosy work to find answers to these questions.”

In 1949, Baba launched Maharogi Sewa Samiti at Warora in Maharashtra and subsequently took a medical training at the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine so that he could treat people with leprosy. Upon his return to Warora he successfully treated almost 4,000 patients. In 1951, Maharogi Sewa Samiti was granted fifty acres of land, three kilometres from Warora.

Baba set up the samiti’s first commune there and named it Anandwan. He went there with his wife, two sons, one cow, a dog and Rs 14. He turned that stretch of rocky, barren land into a thriving settlement. Some criticized Baba for making ‘the poor disabled’ leprosy patients toil for the commune, but according to him this made them self-reliant and proud of their own strengths. In 1967, Baba moved to Somnath and within a decade, six communes were set up there. He started Lok Biradari Prakalp at Hemalkasa in 1973 to reach out to the Madia Gond tribals.

In the wake of Operation Blue Star, Baba embarked on two national integration campaigns — Bharat Jodo — in 1985 and 1987 to kindle the spirit of communal harmony.

During his controversial vigil by the Narmada river (1990-2000), Baba, coping with a crippling spinal degenerative disease, stayed at Nijbal to show his solidarity with the Narmada Bachao Andolan activists and for state-sponsored environmental plunder. This move came in for severe criticism, and finally Baba decided to return home. He tried to arrange for a peace trip to Pakistan in 2000, but in vain.

Mirchandani has skillfully mingled facts and fiction while portraying Baba and his authority in a gripping narrative. Her approach is simple, but she knows well how to retell a story. Thus, she goes beyond the role of a researcher.

Baba Amte made a simple discovery — “Your work is your life made visible”. His sermon can still inspire many in this country and usher in a sea change.

Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity

Author: Dr James Hansen

An urgent and provocative call to action from the world’s leading climate scientist—speaking out here for the first time with the full story of what we need to know about humanity’s last chance to get off the path to a catastrophic global meltdown, and why we don’t know the half of it. In Storms of My Grandchildren, Dr. James Hansen—the nation’s leading scientist on climate issues—speaks out for the first time with the full truth about global warming: The planet is hurtling even more rapidly than previously acknowledged to a climatic point of no return. Although the threat of human-caused climate change is now widely recognized, politicians have failed to connect policy with the science, responding instead with ineffectual remedies dictated by special interests. Hansen shows why President Obama’s solution, cap-and-trade, which Al Gore has signed on to, won’t work; why we must phase out all coal, and why 350 ppm of carbon dioxide is a goal we must achieve if our children and grandchildren are to avoid global meltdown and the storms of the book’s title. This urgent manifesto bucks conventional wisdom (including the Kyoto Protocol) and is sure to stir controversy, but Hansen—whose climate predictions have come to pass again and again, beginning in the 1980s when he first warned Congress about global warming—is the single most credible voice on the subject worldwide. Hansen paints a devastating but all-too-realistic picture of what will happen in the near future, mere years and decades from now, if we follow the course we’re on. But he is also an optimist, showing that there is still time to do what we need to save the planet. Urgent, strong action is needed, and this book, released to coincide with the Copenhagen Conference in December 2009, will be key in setting the agenda going forward to create a groundswell, a tipping point, to save humanity—and our grandchildren—from a dire fate more imminent than we had supposed.