Gavin Pretor-Pinney (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Pretor-Pinney) achieved unexpected success with his previous book, The Cloudspotter’s Guide, an appreciation of the different types of water vapour masses that fill our skies. Now the author has produced what he claims is a natural follow-up. ‘A mere cloud-spotter is, in fact, without even realising it, a wave-watcher, since clouds are often borne […]
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Most autobiographies cover the main events of a life with the reader often left with only glimpses of the inner life of the author. Carl Jung’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jung) autobiographical Memories, Dreams, Reflections (first English translation 1963), focuses on the great psychologist’s spiritual and intellectual awakenings. The descriptions of his visions, dreams and fantasies, which he considered his
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This is Eric Kandel’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Kandel) account of how his personal quest to understand memory intersected with the emergence of a new science. In Search of Memory relates the astonishing story of how four different and distinct disciplines – behaviourist psychology, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and molecular biology – converged into a powerful new science of mind. Through
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The Highland Clearances, occurring roughly between 1792 and the 1850s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Clearances), was one of the cruellest episodes in Scotland’s history. In Consider the Lilies (1968) Iain Crichton Smith (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_Crichton_Smith) captures its impact through the thoughts and memories of old Mrs Scott who has lived all her life within the narrow confines of her community. Alone and bewildered by the demands
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Exiled to Jamaica after the Battle of Culloden in 1746, Sir John Wedderburn made a fortune, alongside his three brothers, as a faux surgeon and sugar planter. In the 1770s, he returned to Scotland to marry and re-establish the family name. He brought with him Joseph Knight, a black slave and a token of his
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Denise Mina (http://www.denisemina.co.uk/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denise_Mina) treats us to a grisly Glasgow crime novel in Garnethill. Maureen O’Donnell wasn’t born lucky. A psychiatric patient and survivor of sexual abuse, she’s stuck in a dead-end job and a secretive relationship with Douglas, a shady therapist. Her few comforts are making up stories to tell her psychiatrist, the company of
Nature Via Nurture (first published 2003) tackles one of the most contentious debates in science: Are human qualities and behaviour determined by genes (nature) or by their environment (nurture)? The debate has only grown louder since the human genome has been found to comprise only 30,000 genes. Some scientists claim that we don’t have enough genes to account
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Richard Dawkins’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins and http://www.richarddawkins.net/) 2004 popular science book, The Ancestor’s Tale, is loosely modelled on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Instead of pilgrims journeying to Canterbury, Dawkins’ protagonists are living species, journeying back through evolutionary time. In real time, individual species diverged and speciated. But in the backwards time of The Ancestor’s Tale, separate species start the
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Gavin is creating a unique ‘holiday experience’; every horrid facility hated by tourists who dislaike being abroad will be available on a converted North Sea oil rig. To test the facilities he’s hosting a reunion for his old school (none of his ex-classmates can remember him, but what the heck, it’s free). He is so busy showing
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