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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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 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
Author: Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway
