Philip Ball (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Ball and http://www.philipball.co.uk/) encourages us to take our eyes away from the individual and focus on the broader currents of activity in human society. He asks whether there are ‘natural laws’ that govern the ways in which humans behave and organize themselves, just as there are physical laws that govern the motions of atoms and […]
What if you could predict your future — which political party you will vote for, what kind of person you will marry, which disease will end your life, whether your blue mood will fester into something more troubling, even debilitating. Would you want to know? Taking a uniquely intimate and cheeky approach to the personal
My Beautiful Genome Read More »
How did life invent itself? Where did DNA come from? How did consciousness develop? Powerful new research methods are providing vivid insights into the makeup of life. Comparing gene sequences, examining atomic structures of proteins, and looking into the geochemistry of rocks have helped explain evolution in more detail than ever before. Nick Lane (http://www.nick-lane.net/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Lane) expertly reconstructs the history
If a man supports Celtic one day and Rangers the next then he is fickle but not necessarily illogical. From this starting point, and assuming no previous knowledge of the subject, Wilfrid Hodges (http://wilfridhodges.co.uk/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfrid_Hodges) takes the reader through the whole gamut of logical expressions in a simple and lively way. Readers who are more mathematically adventurous
Logic by Wilfred Hodges Read More »
As a prolific author, BBC commentator, and magazine editor, Nigel Calder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Calder) has spent a lifetime spotting and explaining the big discoveries in all branches of science. In Magic Universe, he draws on his vast experience to offer readers a lively, far-reaching look at modern science in all its glory, shedding light on the latest ideas
Thriller, beast-fable and fantasy, Evie Wyld’s (http://www.eviewyld.com/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evie_Wyld ) second novel is a sparky, dark yarn set in a georgic world of sheep husbandry where things have gone spectacularly awry. A double narrative runs between an unnamed island off the British coast and prior action in Australia. All the Birds, Singing (2013) opens with the discovery of
All the Birds, Singing Read More »
The universe, the 18th-century mathematician and philosopher Jean Le Rond d’Alembert said, ‘would only be one fact and one great truth for whoever knew how to embrace it from a single point of view.’ James Gleick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gleick and http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Glei) has just this perspective, and signals it in the first word of the title of his new book, The
Starving children who eat vomit and a prisoner chewing through one of his own arteries in an attempt to escape torture were among the horrors on show in Nadeem Aslam’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadeem_Aslam and http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/jan/26/nadeem-aslam-life-in-writing) previous novel, The Wasted Vigil, set in Afghanistan amid the rise and fall of the Taliban. In his new book we find children forced to drink urine and
The Blind Man’s Garden Read More »
Iain Banks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_Banks and http://www.iain-banks.net/) died on 9 June 2013. Diagnosed with terminal cancer of the gallbladder he wittily asked his long term partner Adele if she would do him the honour of becoming his widow (http://www.iain-banks.net/2013/04/03/a-personal-statement-from-iain-banks/). He has left multitudes of grieving fans. In the fifth book in the ‘Culture’ series, published 1996, he offers us
