The Age of Wonder
The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes Reviewed by Benjamin Moser Harper's Magazine Richard Holmes's monumental The Age of Wonder:...
View ArticleThe Age of Wonder
Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder is at once a history of Regency-era scientific discovery and a meditation on what the pursuit of science says about us as individuals and as a culture. Scrupulously...
View ArticleThe Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
This is an absolutely fascinating account of a line of cells that would proliferate to such a degree that they became immortal. Shaved from a tumor in a poor black woman in the 1950s, cultured without...
View ArticleThe Disappearing Spoon
Sam Kean proves that chemistry makes for great storytelling with this entertaining look at the human stories behind the elements found in the periodic table. A delightful history of science, The...
View ArticleDecoding the Heavens
Decoding the Heavens recounts the discovery of the Antikythera mechanism, arguably the most remarkable archaeological find in human history. A mechanical computer dating from the second century BCE, it...
View ArticleThe Granola Section in Walmart
I'm sitting in the authors' tent at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, and it's time to put out the bunting. I've had an idea for my next book, a slim but vital volume entitled "Smart Questions...
View ArticleVenus of Longitude
On Tuesday, June 5, 2012, people across the world get to witness a rare, celestial shadow play. The planet Venus will, for about seven hours, cross the disk of the sun, a "transit" that happens less...
View ArticleThe Knowledge
What happens after the apocalypse? Dartnell provides concise explanations of agriculture, medicine, transportation, energy, and the scientific method. Not a how-to book but rather a framework for...
View ArticleThe Fragility of Grand Discoveries
When I was in graduate school at Berkeley I was offered a prestigious fellowship to study for a year in Germany, but I decided it would be a disruption, so I wrote a short note declining the offer. As,...
View ArticleYou Are… Who?
Writing a book is an unnatural act of communication.Writing a book is an unnatural act of communication. Speaking to a person, or even to an audience, is an interaction. Very different styles are...
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