science books
jdupuis | January 11, 2011Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway
The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home by Dan Ariely
Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach
How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like by Paul Bloom
The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons
What…
jdupuis | January 10, 2011Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Emperor's New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth by Irving Kirsch
How Music Works: The Science and Psychology of Beautiful Sounds, From Beethoven to the Beatles and Beyond by John Powell
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time by Sean Carroll
I'm always looking for recommendations and notifications of book lists as they appear in various media outlets…
jdupuis | January 9, 2011I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This post, from April 4, 2009, covered two books:
Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future by Cory Doctorow
Mafiaboy: How I Cracked the Internet and Why It's Still Broken by…
jdupuis | January 6, 2011Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World by David Kirkpatrick
MacroWikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier
Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson
The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home by Dan Ariely
I'm always looking for recommendations and notifications of book lists as they appear in various media…
jdupuis | January 6, 2011Another bunch of lists for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
US News & World Report
Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
WGBH/Harvard Book Store
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Seattle Times
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival" by John Vaillant
I'm always looking for recommendations and notifications of book lists as they appear in various media outlets. If…
jdupuis | January 5, 2011Another couple of lists for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
I've tended not to highlight individual people's bloggy lists that much here, just for the sake of my sanity and so as not to go too crazy with the number of posts, but I thought that these two list were interesting enough to merit inclusion. I've done it before, maybe I'll do it again!
Jennifer Ouellette
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA by Maryn McKenna
The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by…
jdupuis | January 5, 2011Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure. This list is from the December 5, 2010 edition of the Sunday Times. Unfortunately, I can't link to it because they have a paywall between me and the content. I did, however, get access to the full text via one of our article databases. Yay Academic OneFile!
Alex's Adventures in Numberland by Alex Bellos
Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe by Roger Penrose
The Eerie Silence: Are We Alone in the Universe? by Paul Davies
Drawing the Map of Life: Inside the Human Genome Project by Victor K…
jdupuis | January 2, 2011I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of David Suzuki: An Autobiography, is from October 3, 2006.
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We live in a time when the military, industry, and medicine are all applying scientific insights, with profound social, economic, and political…
jdupuis | December 31, 2010Another bunch of lists for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
Toronto Star
The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant
Time
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light by Jane Brox
You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier
GalleyCat
Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter by Tom Bissell
Insectopedia by Hugh Raffles
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
I'm always looking for recommendations and notifications of book lists as they appear in…
jdupuis | December 30, 2010Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
On the Origin of Species: The Illustrated Edition by Charles Darwin with David Quammen
The Six-Cornered Snowflake by Johannes Kepler
The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements by Sam Kean
Star Vistas: A Collection of Fine Art Astrophotography by Greg Parker and Noel Carboni
America In Space: NASA's First Fifty Years by Steven Dick, Robert Jacobs, Constance Moore, and Bertram Ulrich
Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of…
jdupuis | December 29, 2010Another bunch of lists for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
Wichita Eagle
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Daily Beast
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal-Sentinel (and here)
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum
The…
jdupuis | December 28, 2010Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Plundered Planet: Why We Must--and How We Can--Manage Nature for Global Prosperity by Paul Collier
The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes from a Climate-Changed Planet by Heidi Cullen
Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats by Gwynne Dyer
Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do about It by Anna Lappe and Bill McKibben
Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New…
jdupuis | December 26, 2010I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one covers two books and is from March 7, 2006:
The Best American Science Writing 2005 by Alan Lightman, editor & Jesse Cohen, series editor
The Best American Science & Nature Writing 2005 by Jonathan Weiner,…
jdupuis | December 23, 2010Although it is perilously close to way too late, but you do have time to rush down to an actual, honest-to-goodness bookstore (or perhaps get an ebook from an estore) and maybe pick up one of these titanic suggestions from Ethan Gilsdorf on Tor.com. All great stuff for the geek in your life.
Hint, hint.
Anyways, here's what Gilsdorg suggests with his descriptions at the original post:
My Best Friend is a Wookiee: One Boy's Journey to Find His Place in the Galaxy by Tony Pacitti
Android Karenina by Leo Tolstoy and Ben H. Winters
We, Robot: Skywalker's Hand, Blade Runners, Iron Man, Slutbots…
jdupuis | December 22, 2010Another couple of lists for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
I've tended not to highlight individual people's blog lists or whatever that much here, just for the sake of my sanity and so as not to go too crazy with the number of posts, but I thought that these two list were very interesting from the point of view of understanding the impact of technology on education and publishing.
Between them, these are a couple of very good places to start reading about where the media/education industrial complex is headed, for good or ill.
I'll include every item on their…
jdupuis | December 21, 2010Another bunch of lists for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
Vancouver Sun
Drowning in Oil: BP & the Reckless Pursuit of Profit by Loren Steffy
How the Scots Invented the Modern World The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It by Arthur Herman
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Largehearted Boy
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Slate
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Boston Globe
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by…
jdupuis | December 20, 2010Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
The Tunguska Mystery by Vladimir Rubtsov
Coming Climate Crisis? Consider the Past, Beware the Big Fix by Claire L Parkinson
How It Ends: From You to the Universe by Chris Impey
Lake Views: This World and the Universe by Steven Weinberg
The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It by Scott Patterson
Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist by Thomas Levenson
Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by…
jdupuis | December 20, 2010Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
FWIW, this tends to be the most important list for me every year in terms of collection development.
The Vertical Farm: The New Urban Agriculture by Despommier, Dickson
Not a Chimp: The Hunt for the Genes That Make Us Human by Taylor, Jeremy
Pandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Costs of Civilization by Wells, Spencer
The Grand and Bold Thing: An Extraordinary New Map of the Universe Ushering in a New Era of Discovery by Finkbeiner, Ann
The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness by…
jdupuis | December 19, 2010I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud, is from November 14, 2006.
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This year, during my sabbatical, I'm really trying to read a lot of science non-fiction, as opposed to my usual diet of science…
jdupuis | December 18, 2010I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of Countdown: A History of Space Flight, is from November 14, 2006.
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The decision to read this book was certainly not rocket science, even if it is a book about rocket science. An engaging and fascinating read,…