Behave by Robert Sapolsky review – why do we do what we do?
This magisterial account of human behaviour journeys from immediate brain response back to long-term social causes. It also suggests we have no free willYou reach out to touch someone’s arm, or perhaps...
View ArticleEinstein’s Greatest Mistake by David Bodanis review – the story of a fallible...
Stubbornness beset Einstein’s later years when he increasingly distrusted new experimental dataIn this very readable biography of one of the most famous scientists of all time, Bodanis tells “the story...
View ArticleA Crack in Creation review – Jennifer Doudna, Crispr and a great scientific...
This is an invaluable account, by Doudna and Samuel Sternberg, of their role in the revolution that is genome editingIt began with the kind of research the Trump administration wants to unfund:...
View ArticleDead Zone review – a call to change our way of farming
Philip Lymbery, head of Compassion in World Farming, argues cogently for the end of factory farming to save species on the edge of extinction“In the blink of an evolutionary eye,” Philip Lymbery...
View ArticleThe Way of the Hare by Marianne Taylor review – an unexpectedly fascinating...
This absorbing study of Britain’s fastest land mammal lacks the epiphanies of some nature writing but is replete with leporine loreA couple of years ago, two nature writers carried out a polite but...
View ArticleFatal attraction – writers' and artists' obsession with the sea
From Shakespeare to Woolf, Turner to Gormley, Philip Hoare explores the eternal allure of the ocean‘The sea has many voices / Many gods and many voices,” TS Eliot wrote. “We cannot think of a time that...
View ArticleThe Seabird’s Cry by Adam Nicolson review – gritty, poetic and soaring
A beautiful exploration of 10 species of seabirds – and the threats they faceAdam Nicolson says this “paean to the beauty of life on the wing” began when he read a Seamus Heaney lecture exploring...
View ArticleIs the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for...
It is an industry like no other, with profit margins to rival Google – and it was created by one of Britain’s most notorious tycoons: Robert Maxwell. By Stephen BuranyiIn 2011, Claudio Aspesi, a senior...
View ArticlePurple passages make for bad nature writing | Letters
Writing about nature demands more than a delicate balance between poetry and science, argues Nicholas UsherwoodIt was good to see that unresolved 2015 debate between Mark Cocker and Robert Macfarlane...
View ArticleBook reviews roundup: The Secret Life; No Is Not Enough; Phone
What the critics thought of Andrew O”Hagan’s The Secret Life, Naomi Klein’s No Is Not Enough and Phone by Will SelfTechnology and the difference between real and fake are preoccupying writers of...
View ArticleAs Kingfishers Catch Fire: Books & Birds – review
Alex Preston’s literary compendium of birds, illustrated by Neil Gower, is a sumptuous labour of love“It’s not quite the book I meant to write, but then, as Iris Murdoch said, ‘Every book is the wreck...
View ArticleCaesar’s Last Breath by Sam Kean review – the air we breathe and why heaven...
An epic scientific story, from the Earth’s first days to your most recent inhalation, is told with a helluva high level of informalityWe are creatures of light and air. Life’s a gas, in every sense. We...
View ArticleShark Drunk and A Sea Monster’s Tale review – the lure of an astonishing fish
Morten Strøksnes is in search of a Greenland while Colin Speedie is mesmerised by the basker. Philip Hoare considers a new kind of shark feverIt is the ancientness of sharks that helps to enthrall and...
View ArticleWeapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil review – trouble with algorithms
This powerful study, subtitled How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, exposes the bias in predictive modellingAs a child, mathematics was Cathy O’Neil’s passion: “math provided a...
View ArticleThe Songs of Trees by David George Haskell review – looking and listening in...
In a work of scientific depth and lyricism, repeated visits to a dozen trees reveal connections to other biological and cultural lifeIn The Baron in the Trees, the 1957 comic masterpiece by Italo...
View ArticleShark Drunk by Morten Strøksnes review – fishy tales from two men in a boat
The pursuit of a truly elusive creature makes a delightful diversionThree-quarters of the way up Norway’s west coast, the islands of the Lofoten archipelago rear out of the Atlantic, towering mightily...
View Article'I was hooked for life': science writers on the books that inspired them
Brian Cox, Garry Kasparov, Gaia Vince and other stars of science writing pick the books that fired their imaginationsRelated: Ultimate questions with Adam Biles and Sean Carroll – books podcastRelated:...
View ArticleRichard Dawkins and Carlo Rovelli on science and culture – books podcast
Subscribe and review: iTunes, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud and Acast. Join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterThis week we’re talking science and culture, and how to bridge the divide between the...
View ArticleIn Thoreau's footsteps: my journey to Walden for the bicentennial of the...
He retreated to a cabin by a pond and wrote Walden, the most influential guide to happy living ever. As his devotees (modestly) celebrate his bicentennial, our writer follows in the footsteps of Henry...
View ArticleRadical Technologies by Adam Greenfield review – luxury communism, anyone?
A tremendously intelligent and stylish book on the ‘colonisation of everyday life by information processing’ calls for resistance to rule by the tech eliteIt seems like only a few years ago that we...
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