Essays & Commentary Books

The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing

Amazon Price: $20.97 List Price: $34.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Oxford University Press, USA Amazon Marketplace: 45 new & used starting at $19.85

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Science -> General
Subjects -> Science -> History & Philosophy -> General
Subjects -> Science -> Essays & Commentary

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Boasting almost one hundred pieces, The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing is a breathtaking celebration of the finest writing by scientists--the best such collection in print--packed with scintillating essays on everything from "the discovery of Lucy" to "the terror and vastness of the universe."
Edited by best-selling author and renowned scientist Richard Dawkins, this sterling collection brings together exhilarating pieces by a who's who of scientists and science writers, including Stephen Pinker, Stephen Jay Gould, Martin Gardner, Albert Einstein, Julian Huxley, and many dozens more. Readers will find excerpts from bestsellers such as Douglas R. Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach, Francis Crick's Life Itself, Loren Eiseley's The Immense Journey, Daniel Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea, and Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us. There are classic essays ranging from J.B.S. Haldane's "On Being the Right Size" and Garrett Hardin's "The Tragedy of the Commons" to Alan Turing's "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" and Albert Einstein's famed New York Times article on "Relativity." And readers will also discover lesser-known but engaging pieces such as Lewis Thomas's "Seven Wonders of Science," J. Robert Oppenheimer on "War and Physicists," and Freeman Dyson's memoir of studying under Hans Bethe.
A must-read volume for all science buffs, The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing is a rich and vibrant anthology that captures the poetry and excitement of scientific thought and discovery.

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2007 (The Best American Series (TM))

Amazon Price: $11.20 List Price: $14.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Houghton Mifflin Amazon Marketplace: 67 new & used starting at $0.77

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> World Literature -> United States -> History & Criticism -> Literary Theory
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> World Literature -> United States -> Collections & Readers
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> World Literature -> British -> 20th Century

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"Science is about not knowing and wanting badly to know. Science is about flawed and complicated human beings trying to use whatever tools they've got, along with their minds, to see something strange and new. In that sense, writing about science is just another way of writing about the human condition." -- from the introduction by Richard Preston

The twenty-eight pieces in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2007 span a wide range of topics, from the farthest reaches of space to the everyday world around us to the secrets hiddin in our own bodies. Michael Lemonick travels to an extinct volcano in Hawaii, where telescopes at the summit are providing researchers with a glimpse of the most distant galaxy ever seen -- and profound new insights into the creation of the universe. Neil deGrasse Tyson takes a sharp, witty look at Americans' delirium over space travel. And with surgical precision Michael Perry describes how a medical autopsy is performed. Dead men can tell tales.

Here we also see examinations of the sometimes harmful impact of science on the natural world. Susan Casey gives an alarming portrait of plastic waste pollution in the world's oceans, including a dead zone in the mid-Pacific that's twice the size of Texas. Michael Shnayerson heads to West Virginia, where the Appalachians are being blasted at the rate of several ridgetops a week, all in the pursuit of ever-elusive coal. And Paul Bennett goes deep beneath Rome's streets, where cutting-edge excavation techniques are revealing newfound treasures in one of the world's oldest cities.

A profile of a late, distinguished British ornithologist by John Seabrook reveals that the man's personal collection of bird skins, now in the British Natural History Museum, was largely stolen or bought and intentionally mislabeled. Richard Conniff visits a former Brooklyn social worker turned primatologist who has become a fierce advocate of the lemur. And Patricia Gadsby takes us into the kitchens of Europe's finest chefs to explain how the new field of molecular gastronomy is revolutionizing fine cuisine.

Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Amazon Price: $10.85 List Price: $15.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: W. W. Norton Amazon Marketplace: 48 new & used starting at $7.49

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Science -> Astronomy -> Astronomy
Subjects -> Science -> Astronomy -> Astrophysics & Space Science
Subjects -> Science -> Astronomy -> Cosmology

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 65 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Gould for the Common Man? 5 out of 5 stars.
14 of 15 people found this review helpful.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is the current director of the hayden Planetarium and an astrophysicist with the American Museum of Natural History. His picture shows a portly African-American with a wry smile, wearing a vest with astonomical figures perhaps cut from a wizard's robe discarded by Hogwarts. Most likely half of America knows better what he looks and sounds like than I do, since he appears frequently on TV, on the Daily Show and various Fox blathergrounds. I heard him talking about comets for a few minutes on my car radio, and found him very quick, very amusing.

A comparison with Stephen Jay Gould is almost inevitable. This book, like most of Gould's, is a selection of Tyson's columns for the magazine Natural History. Tyson has a lighter touch and will be easier going for people without much background in science. He is nowhere near as encyclopedic or allusive as Gould, which will come as a relief to many. Gould wrote, increasingly so over the years, as a Harvard Don, which all the rhetorical flourishes of a man who expects his readers to be very erudite. The danger of such writing is pomposity and condescension. Since I almost became a Harvard Don myself, I have a high tolerance for pomposity, but I find Tyson's writing style delightfully relaxed.

Tyson's subject in Death by Black Hole is the astronomical zoo of gravitationally caged objects - stars, planets, comets, asteroids, and Anomalous Flying Objects - in what we still call the Universe, although the name seems less and less appropriate. Tyson back-fills as needed with tidbits of history but his central purpose is to make us acquainted with current observational astronomy. People who "already know all that" will enjoy his witty delivery, while the rest of us will learn quite a lot, quite painlessly.

One of the Identified Flying Objects Tyson describes is the asteroid Apophis, which ought to be of maximum interest for anyone under 40 years old. Tyson writes: "On Friday the 13th of April, 2029, an asteroid large enough to fill the Rose Bowl as though it were an egg cup, will fly so close to Earth that it will dip below the altitude of our communication satellites ...If the trajectory of Apophis at close approach passes within a narrow range of altitudes called the Keyhole, the precise influence of Earth's gravity on its orbit will guarantee that seven years later in 2036...the asteroid will hit earth directly, slamming in the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii." You knew that, didn't you, and you've already made reservations for the observation grandstand on Mt. Whitney? What a show! But Tyson continues: "The tsunami it creates will wipe out the entire west coast of North America, bury Hawaii, and devastate all the land masses of the Pacific Rim." Oops. I'd better warn my grandchildren to sell my house in SF before it's too late.
Tyson doesn't mention it, but there's an upside to Apophis -- no need to worry about global warming after all.

In fact, Tyson is not all levity about Apophis, or about the inevitable fate of civilization. Later in the book, he discusses what "we" should be doing about our self-preservation in a universe that is far from anthropically perfect for human life, or any kind of life at all. Read it and quake - from laughter as well as fear.

Editorial Review:

"One of today's best popularizers of science."—Kirkus Reviews

Loyal readers of the monthly "Universe" essays in Natural History magazine have long recognized Neil deGrasse Tyson's talent for guiding them through the mysteries of the cosmos with stunning clarity and childlike enthusiasm. Here Tyson compiles his favorite essays across a myriad of cosmic topics. The title essay introduces readers to the physics of black holes by explaining just what would happen to your body if you fell into one, while "Hollywood Nights" assails Hollywood's feeble efforts to get its night skies right. Tyson is the world's best-known astrophysicist, and he's at his best here, as a natural teacher who simplifies the complexities of astrophysics while sharing his infectious excitement for our universe.

The Best American Science Writing 2007 (Best American Science Writing)

Gina Kolata, Jesse Cohen

Amazon Price: $10.17 List Price: $14.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harper Perennial Amazon Marketplace: 77 new & used starting at $3.99

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Science -> General
Subjects -> Science -> History & Philosophy -> History of Science
Subjects -> Science -> Essays & Commentary

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

If you're interested in . . . 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 7 people found this review helpful.

. . . advances in medical knowledge and therapies, then this is the book for you. Not surprisingly, the Internet is increasing knowledge of the conditions that beset us. One of these, once thought to be only another unfortunate result of strokes, is now known to be more widespread. Joshua David's article on prosopagnosia - "face blindness" - reveals how people who cannot recognise faces, any faces, need not be victims of strokes. Face blindness can be congenital, and one estimate puts its prevalence up to six million people in the US alone. Another condition, Alzheimer's, is also undergoing expanded study, as Stacey Burling's essay follows. Post-mortem brain examination has been the only way to develop diagnostic tools. Recent work is providing new ways of learning if the disease has become established, allowing earlier treatment. Depression victims are also being relieved of symptoms through a method related to heart pacemakers as described by David Dobbs in "Depression Switch".

. . . progress in basic physics or mathematics, there are articles on the latest thinking and experiments. Tyler Cabot's "Theory of Everything" relates the "fool's errand" by those on that seemingly hopeless quest. Another apparently fruitless task was the solution of the famous Poncaire's conjecture - a century-old proposition with implications for both mathematics and cosmology. In an article about a bizarre mathematician, David Gruber and Sylvia Nasar relate the story of Field Medal [mathematics' Nobel Prize] winner Grigory Perelman. Jonathon Keats finds another application for numeric calculations in his essay on a computer-based "invention machine". Yet another article on numbers, more practical and, to some, useful is presented by Patricia Gadsby in "Cooking for Eggheads".

. . . the latest discoveries on prehistoric life, then Barry Yeoman's article, "Schweitzer's Dangerous Discovery" will capture your attention. In the fossil bones of a long extinct Tyrannosaurus rex, Mary Schweitzer teased out remnants of soft tissue. The discovery raised questions about a real-life "Jurassic Park", but it also stirred the "Christian Creationist" community to declare the fossils weren't as ancient as palaeontologists had long declared. Attempts to discredit the "dangerous idea of" Charles Darwin are endemic in the US and in Dover, Pennsylvania those efforts came to a new head. In "God of Gorilla", Matthew Chapman relates the events surrounding an attempt to inject "creationism" into a local school system.

. . . just what science is all about, then Oliver Sacks, always a compelling read, explains some interesting studies on vision in "Stereo Sue". An unexpected relationship between economics and how we make decisions is explored in "Mind Games" by John Cassidy. An attention-grabbing mix of cognitive science and values, the article is worth anybody's review. A topic of increasing interest, climate change, is dealt with in two captivating articles. "Butterfly Lessons" relates how various forms of life are appearing in unexpected places due to warming trends. Yet, some of the research on climate change is being challenged as William J. Broad explains.

The "Best American Science Writing" series is always a fruitful addition to any library shelf. This volume is no exception. Gina Kolata is to be congratulated on her selection, as are each of the writers represented here. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Editorial Review:

Provocative and engaging, this collection brings together the premiere science writing of the year. Featuring the imprimatur of bestselling author and New York Times reporter Gina Kolata, one of the nation's foremost voices in science and medicine, and with contributions from Atul Gawande, Elizabeth Kolbert, and Oliver Sacks, among others, The Best American Science Writing 2007 is a compelling anthology of our most advanced, and most relevant, scientific inquiries.

Ideas and Opinions

Albert Einstein

Amazon Price: $5.99 List Price: $5.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Bonanza Books Amazon Marketplace: 127 new & used starting at $1.90

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Philosophy -> General
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> General
Subjects -> Science -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 41 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

If you really want to know what Einstein said read this book 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Einstein's ideas about religion are here in his own words so you don't have to trust does who want to distort them to their own convenience.

These book is writen in a very easy to understand way because as Einstein himself stated "if something can be explained then it can be explained clearly.

The ideas he clearly explains are brilliant and they are about a lot of the things he was interested in his life.

Magnifying glass, please! 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I like the book, but didn't realize the print would be so small! I can hardly read it.

Another Side of Einstein 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Einstein is good for more than complicated equations. This book shows that he is able to balance the logical and the philosophical. Even though this was written decades ago, Einstein's take on America and world is spot-on. Much of what he warned could happen has happened. Deep.

Editorial Review:

IDEAS AND OPINIONS contains essays by eminent scientist Albert Einstein on subjects ranging from atomic energy, relativity, and religion to human rights, government, and economics. Previously published articles, speeches, and letters are gathered here to create a fascinating collection of meditations by one of the world's greatest minds.

Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

Lewis Thomas

Amazon Price: $11.20 List Price: $14.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Penguin (Non-Classics) Amazon Marketplace: 78 new & used starting at $1.98

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Science -> Biological Sciences -> Biology -> Cell Biology
Subjects -> Science -> Biological Sciences -> Biology -> General
Subjects -> Science -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 45 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Forever Young 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Lewis Thomas is that odd trifecta: a learned scientist; a speculative philosopher; and a master of prose both gracious and graceful.

The Lives of a Cell is a book of 29 essays originally written for the New England Journal of Medicine. They are short; they are light and airy; they are pretty; they are fun. Teenagers could enjoy them. But these essays are fundamentally serious and scientific. Lewis is always on the hunt for the cosmic insight or deeper truth.

His mind works metaphorically. He seeks interconnections. A recurring motif is to wonder whether social animals such as ants are like cells or more like human societies or perchance like the planet earth. Here is a celebrated quote:

"I have been trying to think of the earth as a kind of organism, but it is no go. I cannot think of it this way. It is too big, too complex, with too many working parts lacking visible connections. The other night, driving through a hilly, wooded part of southern New England, I wondered about this. If not like an organism, what is it like, what is it most like? Then, satisfactorily for that moment, it came to me: it is most like a single cell."

This book was a bestseller around 1975 and won the National Book Award. Everyone seemed to be reading it. I read it. I recently ordered it again because I thought it might contain a tidbit for a video I was making called How To Teach Science. No such luck, but this is a book anyone could enjoy reading twice. Most of it remains in the present. It is finally the most readable of science books. Here are two more samples:

"My cells are no longer the pure line entities I was raised with; they are ecosystems more complex than Jamaica Bay. I like to think that they work in my interest, that each breath they draw for me, but perhaps it is they who walk through the local park in the early morning, sensing my senses, listening to my music, thinking my thoughts."

"Viewed from a suitable height, the aggregating clusters of medical scientists in the bright sunlight of the boardwalk at Atlantic city, swarmed there from everywhere for the annual meetings, have the look of assemblages of social insects. There is the same vibrating, ionic movement, interrupted by the darting back and forth of jerky individuals to touch antennae and exchange small bits of information..."

For anyone thinking of writing non-fiction, this is an ultimate text book. Apparently Thomas learned his style from Montaigne. Good luck on that.

For anyone thinking of a career in science, Thomas shows the advantages of being partly a generalist, of being in your field and outside your field--the better to see some strange shadow or artifact that nobody else has noticed.

Epilogue: I ordered a used copy from an Amazon dealer in the northwest USA. Stuck in the book was an old ticket to a music concert (George Winston, solo piano; Wikipedia says he has been called The Father of New Age Music). Date of ticket: 1985. City: Norfolk, Va., where I am now. That's the sort of goofy loop that Thomas could build an essay on. What's more New Age than Amazon?

A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love

Richard Dawkins

Amazon Price: $10.17 List Price: $14.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Mariner Books Amazon Marketplace: 52 new & used starting at $4.34

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Religion & Spirituality -> Religious Studies -> Science & Religion
Subjects -> Science -> General
Subjects -> Science -> History & Philosophy -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 55 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Richard Dawkins has an opinion on everything biological, it seems, and in A Devil's Chaplain, everything is biological. Dawkins weighs in on topics as diverse as ape rights, jury trials, religion, and education, all examined through the lens of natural selection and evolution. Although many of these essays have been published elsewhere, this book is something of a greatest-hits compilation, reprinting many of Dawkins' most famous recent compositions. They are well worth re-reading. His 1998 review of Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont's Fashionable Nonsense is as bracing an indictment of academic obscurantism as the book it covered, although the review reveals some of Dawkins' personal biases as well. Several essays are devoted to skillfully debunking religion and mysticism, and these are likely to raise the hackles of even casual believers. Science, and more specifically evolutionary science, underlies each essay, giving readers a glimpse into the last several years' debates about the minutiae of natural selection. In one moving piece, Dawkins reflects on his late rival Stephen Jay Gould's magnum opus, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, and clarifies what it was the two Darwinist heavyweights actually disagreed about. While the collection showcases Dawkins' brilliance and intellectual sparkle, it brings up as many questions as it answers. As an ever-ardent champion of science, honest discourse, and rational debate, Dawkins will obviously relish the challenge of answering them. --Therese Littleton

The Best American Science Writing 2006 (Best American Science Writing)

Atul Gawande

Amazon Price: $10.17 List Price: $14.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harper Perennial Amazon Marketplace: 79 new & used starting at $3.49

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Science -> General
Subjects -> Science -> History & Philosophy -> History of Science
Subjects -> Science -> Essays & Commentary

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

really good 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This is the first edition of this series that I have read. It's pretty good, although, this is more science reporting than science writing. There is a difference, but the articles were well researched and interesting. And they cover a wide variety of topics. Not as good as the Best American Science and Nature Writing, but a great layman's source for the world of science.

Good essays, on average 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The overall result is positive, some essays not that good, some nice, and a few nicer. By the end, it is worth to go through them and discover one by one.

Yay for science! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Delivers what it promises; engaging informative scientific papers from the year. Good read! These books get better every year

Phenominal compilation 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I was a bit skeptical getting a readers-digest type of a book.

However, this turned out to be a very impressive material. A compilation of best articles in science written in 2006, what could be better for a person who likes a good non-fiction read?

I think the editor did a fabulous job selecting a wide range of subjects.

I highly recommend this book and I myself am buying this series now yearly.

Editorial Review:

Together these twenty-one articles on a wide range of today's most leading topics in science, from Dennis Overbye, Jonathan Weiner, and Richard Preston, among others, represent the full spectrum of scientific inquiry, proving once again that "good science writing is evidently plentiful" (American Scientist).

Group Theory in the Bedroom, and Other Mathematical Diversions

Brian Hayes

Amazon Price: $16.50 List Price: $25.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Hill and Wang Amazon Marketplace: 24 new & used starting at $11.74

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Science -> General
Subjects -> Science -> History & Philosophy -> General
Subjects -> Science -> Physics -> Mathematical Physics

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

An Award-Winning Essayist Plies His Craft

Brian Hayes is one of the most accomplished essayists active today—a claim supported not only by his prolific and continuing high-quality output but also by such honors as the National Magazine Award for his commemorative Y2K essay titled “Clock of Ages,” published in the November/December 1999 issue of The Sciences magazine. (The also-rans that year included Tom Wolfe, Verlyn Klinkenborg, and Oliver Sacks.) Hayes’s work in this genre has also appeared in such anthologies as The Best American Magazine Writing, The Best American Science and Nature Writing, and The Norton Reader. Here he offers us a selection of his most memorable and accessible pieces—including “Clock of Ages”—embellishing them with an overall, scene-setting preface, reconfigured illustrations, and a refreshingly self-critical “Afterthoughts” section appended to each essay.

The Best American Science Writing 2008 (Best American Science Writing)

Sylvia Nasar, Jesse Cohen

Amazon Price: $10.17 List Price: $14.95 Not yet published By: Harper Perennial

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Science -> General
Subjects -> Science -> Reference -> General
Subjects -> Science -> Essays & Commentary

Editorial Review:

Edited by Sylvia Nasar, bestselling author of A Beautiful Mind and former economics correspondent for the New York Times, The Best American Science Writing 2008 brings together the premiere science writing of the year. Distinguished by the foremost voices and publications—among them Pulitzer Prize-winner Amy Harmon, Nobel Prize-winner Al Gore, and award-winning and bestselling author Oliver Sacks—this anthology is a comprehensive overview of our most advanced and most relevant scientific inquiries.