The latest Science Shelf newsletter is now available at
www.scienceshelf.com/news.htm.
Highlights include links to new or soon to come reviews of:
• Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach, a worthy sequel to her
earlier Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
• Life as We Do Not Know It: The NASA Search for (and Synthesis of) Alien Life
by Peter Ward, which is full of wonderful speculation about life elsewhere in
our solar system and a counterpoint to Ward’s The Life and Death of Planet
Earth (with Donald Brownlee), offering at least a bit of hope of a haven for
Earth life when the Sun heats up enough to make Earth uninhabitable a billion
years hence.
• A Left-Hand Turn Around the World: Chasing the Mystery and Meaning of All
Things Southpaw by David Wolman reviewed by Science Shelf subscriber Barbara
Krueger, whose son was a pretty good southpaw pitcher for his college baseball
team. If you’re a lefty or have one in your family, you’ll enjoy her review.
It also includes links to reviews of two venerable books with new paperback
editions:
• The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution by Richard Dawkins,
now priced so affordably that you can send it as a gift to every member of the
Dover, PA, school board; and
• E=mc2: A Biography of the World’s Most Famous Equation by David Bodanis, with a new forward by Simon Singh.
I’ve also updated the books received page
(www.scienceshelf.com/BooksReceived.htm) with two fascinating books that I hope to review for next January and February, plus three major science books due for publication this month.
Happy reading!
Scientifically yours,
Fred Bortz
