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Short Book Reviews
Short notes 2001
Title THE EDUCATION OF A MATHEMATICIAN. Author P.J. Davis. Publisher Natick, Massachusetts: Peters, 2000, pp. x + 353, US$22.95/£20.00. Philip J. Davis is Professor Emeritus of Applied Mathematics at Brown University. He is the author of many books and papers. This volume is in the main his autobiography.
From the book jacket: "The light-hearted anecdotal style entertains while the analytical, yet generally optimistic, approach presents us with monumental questions about the role of mathematics in war and peace and the interaction between mathematics and society. His speculations on the future of mathematics in the light of recent technological possibilities open the question of whether the field will advance or suffer as a result.
"Davis' accounts span the past eighty years, as well as several countries, wars, and changes of societal philosophy. He has studied under Norbert Wiener, worked side-by-side with Ralph Boas, Jr, and was a personal friend of Otto Neugebauer."
Title WILLIAM OSLER. A Life in Medicine. Author M. Bliss. Publisher New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. xiv + 581, £27.50. From the book jacket: "William Osler was born in a parsonage in backwoods Canada on July 12, 1849. In a life lasting seventy years, he practiced, taught, and wrote about medicine at Canada's McGill University, America's Johns Hopkins University, and finally as Regius Professor at Oxford. At the time of his death in England in 1919, many considered him to be the greatest doctor in the world.
"Osler, who was a brilliant, innovative teacher and a scholar of the natural history of disease, revolutionized the art of practicing medicine at the bedside of his patients. He was idolized by two generations of medical students and practitioners for whom he came to personify the ideal doctor. But much more than a physician, Osler was a supremely intelligent humanist. In both his writings and his personal life, and through the prism of the tragedy of the Great War, he embodied the art of living. It was perhaps his legendary compassion that elevated his healing talents to an art form and attracted to his private practice students, colleagues, poets (Walt Whitman for example) politicians, royalty, and nameless ordinary people with extraordinary conditions.
"William Osler's life lucidly illuminates the times in which he lived. Indeed, this is a book not only about the evolution of modern medicine, the training of doctors, holism in medical thought, and the doctor-patient relationship, but also about humanism, Victorianism, the Great War, and much else. Meticulously researched, drawing on many new sources and offering new interpretations, William Osler: A Life in Medicine brings to life both a fascinating man and the formative age of twentieth-century medicine. It is a classic biography of a classic life, both authoritative and highly readable."
Title WAY OUT THERE IN THE BLUE. Author F. FitzGerald. Publisher New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000, pp. 592, US$30.00. From the book jacket: "Using the Star Wars missile defense program as a magnifying glass on his presidency, Frances FitzGerald gives us a wholly original portrait of Ronald Reagan, the most puzzling president of the last half of the twentieth century.
"Reagan's presidency and the man himself have always been difficult to fathom. His influence was enormous, and the few powerful ideas he espoused remain with us still – yet he seemed nothing more than a charming, simple-minded, inattentive actor. FitzGerald shows us a Reagan far more complex than the man we thought we knew. A master of the American language and of self-presentation, the greatest storyteller ever to occupy the Oval Office, Reagan created a compelling public persona that bore little relationship to himself
"Way Out There in the Blue is a ground-breaking history of the American side of the end of the Cold War. Both appalling and funny, it is a black comedy in which Reagan, playing the role he wrote for himself, is the hero."
Title CARDANO'S COSMOS: THE WORLDS AND WORKS OF A RENAISSANCE ASTROLOGER. Author A. Grafton. Publisher Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999, pp. xii + 284, US$35.00. Girolamo Cardano (1501-1576) made lasting contributions to mathematics (especially algebra), medicine, physics, and probability (in a work that appeared posthumously in 1663). Grafton's book is an engaging scholarly study of Cardano's work on astrology, and its place in his life and society. The astrology of that time is presented as an empirical art and discipline related to early attempts by scholars to understand the universe and their place in it.
Title CARL SAGAN'S COSMIC CONNECTION. An Extraterrestrial Perspective. Author C. Sagan. Publisher Produced by J. Agel. New contributions by F. Dyson, A. Druyan and D. Morrison. Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. xxxi + 302, £17.95/US$24.95. From the book jacket: "In 1973, Carl Sagan published The Cosmic Connection, a daring view of the universe, which rapidly became a classic work of popular science and inspired a generation of scientists and enthusiasts. This seminal work is reproduced here for a whole new generation to enjoy. Dr. Sagan, in his typically lucid and lyrical style, discusses many topics from astrophysics and solar system science, to colonization of other worlds, terraforming and the search for extraterrestrials. He conveys his own excitement and wonder, and relates the revelations of astronomy to the most profound human problems and concerns: issues that are just as valid today as they were 30 years ago.
"New to this edition are Freeman Dyson's comments on Sagan's vision and on the importance of this work, Ann Druyan's assessment of Sagan's cultural significance as a champion of science, and David Morrison's discussion of the advances made since 1973 and what became of Sagan's predictions."
Title THE ROAD SINCE STRUCTURE. Author T.S. Kuhn. Edited by J. Conant and J. Haugeland. Publisher University of Chicago Press, 2000, pp. viii + 335, US$25.00. From the book jacket: "Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, published in 1962, is among the most important works of our time. It has been translated into twenty-five languages, and the English edition alone has sold more than one million copies. Structure established Kuhn as the century's most influential philosopher. During the last twenty years of his life, however, Kuhn was radically rethinking the central concepts of that work. When he died in 1996, he left an unfinished sequel to Structure and a plan for this volume, a collection of philosophical essays written since 1970.
"Divided into three parts, The Road since "Structure" is the fullest record we now have of the new direction Kuhn was taking during the last two decades of his life. The first part of the book consists of self-standing essays in which Kuhn refines the basic concepts set forth in Structure – paradigm shifts, incommensurability, and the nature of scientific progress. In part two, Kuhn replies at length to criticisms of his earlier work. Here the reader will find him arguing his position with many of his eminent contemporaries, including Paul Feyerabend, Karl Popper, Carl Hempel, and Charles Taylor.
"The third part of the volume is the transcript of a remarkable autobiographical interview with Kuhn conducted in Athens in 1995, not quite a year before his death. Here, the usually reticent Kuhn discusses his own intellectual development – his family and upbringing, his education, the influence of his training as a physicist, his war work, his relations with his colleagues, the responses to Structure – as well as his struggles to define his philosophical position both before and after that landmark work."
Title GLORIOUS ECLIPSES. Their Past, Present, and Future. Author S. Brunier and J.-P. Luminet. Translated by S. Dunlop. Publisher Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 192, £25.00/US$39.95. From the book jacket: "This beautiful volume deals with eclipses of all kinds – lunar, solar and even those elsewhere in the Solar System. Bringing together in one place all aspects of eclipses, and lavishly illustrated throughout, Glorious Eclipses covers the history of eclipses from ancient times, the celestial mechanics involved, their observation and scientific interest. Personal accounts are given of recent eclipses, up to and including the last total eclipse of the twentieth century: the one on August 11th 1999 that passed across Europe, Romania, Turkey and India. This unique book contains the best photographs taken all along its path and is the perfect souvenir for all those who tried or wished to see it. In addition, it contains all you need to know about forthcoming eclipses up to 2060, complete with NASA maps and data, making it the perfect resource for both novice and veteran eclipse-chasers."
Title NATURAL ATTENUATION FOR GROUNDWATER REMEDIATION. Author National Research Council. Publisher Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2000, pp. xiv + 274, £34.95. From the back cover: "In the past decade, officials responsible for cleanup of contaminated groundwater have increasingly turned to natural attenuation – essentially allowing naturally occuring processes to reduce the toxic potential of contaminants – versus engineered solutions. This saves both money and headaches. To the people in surrounding communities, though, it can appear that cleanup officials are simply walking away from contaminated sites.
"The book explores how contamination occurs, explaining concepts and terms, and includes case studies from the Hanford nuclear site, military bases, and other sites. It provides historical background and important data on clean-up processes and goes on to offer critical reviews of fourteen published protocols for evaluating neutral attenuation."
Title THE GLOBAL SOUL. Jet Lag, Shopping Malls and the Search for Home. Author P. Iyer. Publisher London: Bloomsbury, 2000, pp. 303. From previous reviews: "This brilliant and restless celebration of cultural plurality is a godsend for those countless individuals who compulsively voyage between real and imaginary homes, both past and present. Pico Iyer offers them (or, if truth be told, us) a collective Identity – "global souls"."
Caryl Phillips, author of Cambridge
"The Global Soul takes the genre of travel writing as far as it can go… A world where no place is foreign and the most puzzling person one meets on the journey is oneself."
Richard Rodriguez, author of Hunger of Memory
Title THE DATING GAME. One Man's Search for the Age of the Earth. Author C. Lewis. Publisher Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. ix + 253, £17.95/US$24.95 From the book jacket: "The Dating Game tells the story of one man's vision of developing a geological timescale that would finally lead to an accurate date for the Age of the Earth. Despite scientific opposition, financial hardship and personal tragedy, Arthur Holmes, greatest geologist of the twentieth century, fought for fifty years to convince the establishment of an Earth of great antiquity: a fight which eventually transformed the moribund 'art' of geology into a dynamic science."
Title CONSERVING EARTH'S BIODIVERSITY. Author E.O. Wilson and D.L. Perlman. Publisher Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2000, pp. CD-ROM, US$39.95. The CD-ROM includes ten interactive models such as population growth rates, genetic stochasticity in small populations, two in-depth case studies, twenty-one video clips of E.O. Wilson, and fifteen detailed world maps (population growth rates, global land cover).
Title BEYOND SIX BILLION. Forecasting the World's Population. Author National Research Council. Publisher Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2000, pp. xviii + 236, £21.95. From the book cover: "Is rapid world population growth actually coming to an end? As population growth and its consequences have become front-page issues, projections of continued though slower growth from such institutions as the United Nations and the World Bank have been called into question.
"Beyond Six Billion asks what such projections really say, why they say it, whether they can be trusted, and whether they can be improved. The book includes analyses of how well past United Nations and World Bank projections have panned out, what errors have occurred, and why they have happened.
"Focusing on fertility as one key to accurate projections, the committee examines the transition from high, constant fertility to low fertility and discusses whether developing countries will eventually attain the very low levels of births now observed in the industrialized world. Other keys to accurate projections, predictions of lengthening life span and of the impact of international migration on specific countries, are also explored in detail.
"How good are our methods of population forecasting? How can we cope with the inevitable uncertainty? What population trends can we anticipate? Beyond Six Billion illuminates not only the forces that shape population growth but also the accuracy of the methods we use to quantify these forces and the uncertainty surrounding projections."
Title HITLER'S GIFT. SCIENTISTS WHO FLED NAZI GERMANY. Author J. Medawar and D. Pyke. Publisher London: Richard Cohen Books (in association with The European Jewish Publication Society), 2000, pp. xx + 268, £20.00. From the book jacket: " 'If the dismissal of Jewish scientists means the annihilation of contemporary German science, then we shall do without science for a few years.'
"With these words Hitler closed the door on Germany's fifty-year record of world supremacy in science. The exodus of German and Austrian scientists, mostly Jewish, that followed caused critical damage to Germany's scientific output and brought invaluable gains to the West. The Third Reich's losses included the leading physicists who became the driving force behind the atomic bomb project.
"Britain played the major role in rescuing the scientists and, within weeks of the dismissals, leading British academics had set up an agency to support the exiles and help them find jobs. Of 1,500 refugees, twenty went on to win Nobel Prizes. Among them were the co-discoverer of penicillin, the physician who revolutionized the treatment of paraplegics, and Max Perutz who discovered the atomic structure of the haemoglobin molecule, with all its implications for how oxygen is taken round the body.
"The gripping individual stories of emigration, rescue and escape include that of Einstein, the world's most famous scientist; Fritz Haber, the German-Jewish patriot who galvanized Germany's war effort in 1914-18, only to be forced out by Hitler; and Leo Szilard, restless genius who disproved the scientific establishment's belief that atomic chain reactions were 'moonshine'. The dilemmas of those who stayed are equally dramatic: Max Planck, German scientist father-figure, who could not believe the new regime would last; Werner Heisenberg, brilliant inventor of the Uncertainty Principle, whose wartime record is still controversial; and Max von Laue, revered for his heroic opposition to the Third Reich.
"Medawar and Pyke describe the wartime internment and deportation of many refugee scientists, classed as enemy aliens although implacably opposed to the Nazis. The invention of the bomb is told in the context of the refugees' crucial contribution."
"The authors drew much of their material from interviews with more than twenty surviving refugee scholars to create a moving account of the scientific diaspora which resulted from Hitler's policy. As one refugee scientist wrote, 'Far from destroying the spirit of German scholarship, the Nazis had spread it all over the world. Only Germany was to be the loser.' "
From a review: "Hitler's gift to Britain and America was talent, more valuable than gold – that is the message of this inspiring book" M.F. Perutz
Title VOODOO SCIENCE. The Road from Foolishness to Fraud. Author R.L. Park. Publisher Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. xi + 230, £18.99. From the book jacket: "Science fascinates us by its power to surprise. Occasionally, unexpected results that appear to violate accepted laws of nature can herald revolutionary advances in human knowledge. Many 'revolutionary' discoveries turn out to be wrong, however, and even eminent scientists have had their careers tarnished, mistakenly thinking that they have made a great discovery. This is pathological science, in which scientists are subject to self-delusion. And if scientists can sometimes fool themselves, how much easier it is to craft arguments deliberately intended to befuddle jurists with little or no scientific background. This is junk science, typically consisting of theories of what could be so, with little supporting evidence to prove that it is so.
"Sometimes there is no evidence at all. Ancient beliefs in demons and magic still sweep across the modern landscape, but they are now dressed in the language and symbols of science. This is pseudosience, which its practioners may believe to be science, just as witches and faith healers may believe they can call forth supernatural powers.
"What may begin as an honest error, has a way of evolving from self-delusion to fraud. As Robert Park points out, the line between foolishness and fraud is thin, and because it is not always easy to tell when that line is crossed, he uses the term voodoo science to cover them all: pathological science, junk science, pseudoscience, and fraudulent science. His book is intended to help the reader recognize voodoo science and to understand the forces that conspire to keep it alive.
"Scientists, Park observes, insist that the cure for voodoo science is to raise the level of scientific literacy. But what is it that a scientifically literate society should know? It is not specific knowledge of science the public needs, Park argues, so much as a scientific world view – an understanding that we live in an orderly universe governed by natural laws that cannot be circumvented by magic or miracles."
Title IN THE SHADOW OF THE BOMB: BETHE, OPPENHEIMER, AND THE MORAL RESPONSIBILITY OF THE SCIENTIST. Author S.S. Schweber. Publisher Princeton University Press, 2000, pp. xviii + 260, £15.95. From the book jacket: "In the Shadow of the Bomb narrates how two charismatic, exceptionally talented physicists – J. Robert Oppenheimer and Hans A. Bethe – came to terms with the nuclear weapons they helped to create. In 1945, the United States dropped the bomb, and physicists were forced to contemplate disquieting questions about their roles and responsibilities. When the Cold War followed, they were confronted with political demands for their loyalty and McCarthyism's threats to academic freedom. By examining how Bethe and Oppenheimer – two men with similar backgrounds but divergent aspirations and characters – struggled with these moral dilemmas, one of our foremost historians of physics tells the story of modern physics, the development of atomic weapons, and the Cold War.
"Oppenheimer and Bethe led parallel lives. Both received liberal educations that emphasized moral as well as intellectual growth. Both were outstanding theoreticians who worked on the atom bomb at Los Alamos. Both advised the government on nuclear issues, and both resisted the development of the hydrogen bomb. Both were, in their youth, sympathetic to liberal causes, and both were later called to defend the United States against Soviet communism and colleagues against anti-Communist crusaders. Finally, both prized scientific community as a salve to the apparent failure of Enlightenment values.
"Yet, their responses to the use of the atom bomb, the testing of the hydrogen bomb, and the treachery of domestic politics differed markedly. Bethe, who drew confidence from scientific achievement and integration into the physics community, preserved a deep integrity. By accepting a modest role, he continued to influence policy and contributed to the nuclear test ban treaty of 1963. In contrast, Oppenheimer first embodied a new scientific persona – the scientist who creates knowledge and technologies affecting all of humanity and boldly addresses their impact – and then could not carry the burden of this persona. His desire to retain insider status, combined with his isolation from creative work and collegial scientific community, led him to compromise principles and, ironically, to lose prestige and fall victim to other political insiders.
"Schweber draws on his vast knowledge of science and its history – in addition to his unique access to the personalities involved – to tell a tale of two men that will enthral readers interested in science, history, and the lives and minds of great thinkers."
Title PILLS, POTIONS AND POISONS. How Drugs Work. Author T. Stone and G. Darlington. Publisher Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. xvi + 476, £18.99. From the book jacket: "Pills, Potions and Poisons provides in clear, non-technical language an account of how medicines and other drugs work in the body, with historical, often amusing anecdotes about the discovery of drugs and the people behind their discovery. It covers all the major groups of drugs, with complete listings of specific drugs available in both the UK and USA. Individual chapters deal with drugs to treat high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, constipation, ulcers, cancers, infections, impotence, incontinence, arthritis, and osteoporosis, as well as hormone replacement therapy and oral contraceptives. There are chapters on the drugs used for treating disorders of the brain, such as schizophrenia, depression, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, and epilepsy. There is coverage too of substances of recreation and abuse, and of some of the poisons we can encounter, including the venoms of snakes, spiders, scorpions, and marine organisms."
Title THE ENVIRONMENTAL PENDULUM. A Quest for the Truth about Toxic Chemicals, Human Health, and Environmental Protection. Author R.A. Freeze. Publisher Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2000, pp. xiv + 323, US$19.95. From the book cover: "The pendulum of environmental policy swings back and forth from one extreme to the other, depending on which camp is in power and who has the ear of the media. Neglect is followed by overkill. Concern breeds action; disillusionment breeds reaction. The Environmental Pendulum provides a thoughtful and evenhanded assessment of this chronic conflict."
Title TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION AS AN EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS. Author J. Ziman (Ed.). Publisher Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. xvii + 379, £40.00/US$64.95. From the book cover: "The central idea of this book is very simple. Of the innumerable inventions that are put on the market, only the few that survive the test of use are reproduced. Stone axes, bicycles, medicines, jet aircraft and other technological artefacts thus 'evolve' in much the same way as biological organisms. What can we learn about technological innovation by thinking of it as a cyclic process of variation and selection, analogous to Darwinian evolution? For the first time, leading experts from many disciplines discuss this metaphor thoroughly in non-technical language, showing how it throws completely new light on many aspects of social and economic change, with many practical policy implications."
Title MAKING IT BETTER. Expanding InformationTechnology Research to Meet Society's Needs. Author National Research Council. Publisher Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2000, pp. xix + 248, £21.95. From the book cover: "The birth of modern IT in the second half of the 20th century marked a time of exploring and demonstrating basic capabilities. Today the expectations are changing as IT plays a more prominent role in commerce, education, and daily life and as growing numbers of people and organizations become reliant on IT systems. The kinds of research investments needed to advance information technology in the early 21st century are also evolving. What major advances are needed to ensure that IT systems will reliably support a growing range of applications? How hard wil it be to achieve such advances? Whose expertise is needed to realize them?"
"Making IT Better addresses these questions by examining trends in IT research and development. It recommends an expansion in the scope of future research and proposes new mechanisms for bringing together a more diverse set of researchers."
Title IRRATIONAL EXUBERANCE. Author R.J. Shiller. Publisher Princeton University Press, 2000, pp. xxi + 296, £17.50. From the book jacket: "In this bold and potentially urgent volume, Robert J. Shiller, a respected expert on market volatility, offers an unconventional interpretation of recent U.S. stock market highs and shows that Alan Greenspan's term "irrational exuberance" is a good description of the mood behind the market. He warns that poorer performance may be in the offing and tells us how we – as a society and individually – can respond."
Title THE PHYSICS OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY. Author N. Gershenfeld. Publisher Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. xiv + 370, £24.95/US$39.95. From the book jacket: "The familiar devices that we use to collect, transform, transmit, and interact with electronic information operate surprisingly close to very many fundamental physical limits. A hand-held GPS receiver requires special and general relativistic corrections to the time reported by the system's atomic clocks; the typical distance between air molecules in a hard disk drive is larger than the height that the head flies above the platter; the linewidth in a VLSI circuit is approaching the size of a single atom; the performance of satellite receivers is limited by the echo of the Big Bang.
"Given the economic and intellectual importance of these scaling limits, surprisingly few people are equipped to addess them. Understanding how such devices work, and how they can (and cannot) be improved, requires deep insight into the character of physical law as well as engineering practice. The Physics of Information Technology provides this needed connection by introducing underlying governing equations and then deriving operational device principles. This self-contained volume will help both physical scientists and computer scientists see beyond the conventional division between hardware and software to understand the implications of physical theory for information manipulation. It is at this interface that many of the most dramatic advances in both domains are occuring.
"The books starts with an introduction to units, forces, and the probabilistic foundations of noise and signalling, then progresses through the electromagnetics of wired and wireless communications, and the quantum mechanics of electronic, optical, and magnetic materials, to discussions of mechanisms for computation, storage, sensing, and display. Attention is drawn throughout to the remarkable opportunities associated with more closely integrating the physical and logical descriptions of classical and quantum information."
Title CHAOS OF DISCIPLINES. Author A. Abbott. Publisher University of Chicago Press, 2001, pp. xvi + 259, US$54.00/£34.50 Cloth; US$17.00/£11.00 Paper. "[The author] presents a fresh and daring analysis of the evolution and development of the social sciences. Chaos of Disciplines reconsiders how knowledge actually changes and advances. Challenging the accepted belief that social sciences are in a perpetual state of progress, Abbott contends that disciplines instead cycle around an
inevitable pattern of core principles. New schools of thought, then, are less a reaction to an established order than they are a reinvention of fundamental concepts.
"Chaos of Disciplines" uses fractals to explain the patterns of disciplines, and then applies them to key debates that surround the social sciences. Abbott argues that knowledge in different disciplines is organized by common oppositions that function at any level of theoretical or methodological scale. Opposing perspectives of thought and method, then, in fields ranging from history, sociology, and literature, are to the contrary, radically similar; much like fractals, they are each mutual reflections of their own distinctions. Abbott extends this concept to social structure and moral action in the book's closing chapters. He demonstrates how self-similar social structures arise, considers their implications for individual experience and solidarity, and then shows how self-similarity makes sense of the debate over politicization in academia; ultimately, Chaos of Disciplines contends that the political wars in the humanities and social sciences involve far less disagreement than we think."
Title The Hilbert Challenge. Author J.J. Gray. Publisher Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. xii + 315, £20.00. From the book jacket: "David Hilbert was arguably the leading mathematician of his generation. He was among the few mathematicians who could reshape mathematics: he brought together an impressive technical power and a mastery of detail with a unique vision of where the subject was going and how it should get there. This was the unique combination of qualities which he brought to the settings of his famous 23 Problems. … [The author] examines what has made this the pre-eminent collection of problems in mathematics, what they tell us about what drives mathematicians, and the nature of reputation, influence, and power in the world of mathematics."
Title A MathematicIAN Grappling with his century. Author L. Schwartz. Publisher Basel, Switzerland: Birkhäuser, 2000, pp. viii + 490, SFr58.00/DM68.00/ÖS487.00. From the book announcement: "Laurent Schwartz is one of the most remarkable intellects of the 20th century. His discovery of distributions, one of the most beautiful theories in mathematics, earned him a 1950 Fields Medal. Beyond this formidable achievement, his love for science and for teaching led him to think deeply and lecture broadly to the general public on the significance of science and mathematics to the well-being of the world. At the same time, his commitment to the social good, even at the expense of his beloved research, proved a moral compass throughout his life. The fight for human rights and his major role in the battle against the wars in Algeria and Vietnam were typical of matters close to his heart. The story of his life in the context of his century provides for future generations an inspiring testimonial from an extraordinary mathematician and thinker."
Title GeoRge Green. Mathematician and Physicist 1793-1841. The Background to His Life and Work, 2nd edition. Author D.M. Cannell Publisher Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, 2001, pp. xxxiv + 316. From the back of the book: "Green was a mathematical physicist who spent most of the first 40 years of his life working not as a physicist but as a miller in his father's grain mill. Green received only four terms of formal schooling, and at the age of nine he had surpassed his teachers. Green studied mathematics in his spare time and in 1828 published his most famous work. An Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism. It was in this essay that the famous Green's Theorem and Green's functions first appeared. Although this work was largely ignored during his lifetime, it is now considered of major importance in modern physics.
"This is the first major biography of Green, and the most complete picture of Green's life and education, available today. Green is presented as a person rather than as merely the inventor of a mathematical function. The updated second edition includes a new section of scientific references along with the lectures given by Julian Schwinger and Freeman Dyson at the bicentenary celebration of Greorge Green's birth held at the University of Nottingham in 1993."
Title A Passion for DNA. Genes, Genomes, and Society. Author J.D. Watson. With an introduction, afterword, and annotations by W. Gratzer. Publisher Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. xx + 250, £18.99. From the book jacket: "In 1953, two young, unknown scientists sparked a worldwide revolution. Studying DNA for clues to the nature of genes, James Watson and Francis Crick deduced its molecular composition – two chains twisted into a double helix – and immediately realized that the structure implied how genes were copied and passed from one generation to the next.
"Their observation has had extraordinary consequences. The discovery of a genetic code that all living things share and the realization that the code translates into proteins. The ability to alter an organism's genetic make-up. Recognition that diseases like cancer begin when genes go wrong. The foundations of a biotechnology industry and the means of cloning plants and animals. A start on cataloguing human genes. And the glimmer of a new kind of medicine that uses DNA therapeutically.
"In the midst of the ferment, its instigator Jim Watson has been tireless. A principal architect and visionary of the new biology, a Nobel Prize-winner at 34 and best-selling author at 40 (The Double Helix), he had the authority, flair, and courage to take an early and prominent role as commentator on the march of DNA science and its implications for society. In essays for publications large and small, and in lectures around the world, he delivered what were, in effect, dispatches from the front lines of the revolution. Outspoken and sparkling with ideas and options, a selection of them is collected for the first time in this volume. Their resonance with today's headlines is striking.
"As a public concern about genetically modified food mounts, here is Watson's salutary reminder, from a previous era of DNA anxiety, that restrictions on potentially rewarding research are justifiable only if there is robust evidence of likely harm. Commenting on the 1970's War on Cancer, he warns that effective leadership of publicly funded research initiatives, such as the current search for an AIDS vaccine, demands the courage to support promising but risky new ideas and prune away anything less than the best. And as the first Director of the Human Genome Project, now approaching its climax, he acknowledges the past evils of eugenics but argues fiercely for the need to balance potential misuses of genetic data with the overwhelming benefits of a rational attack on the roots of disease."
Title Trilobite! Eyewitness to Evolution. Author R. Fortey. Publisher London: Flamingo, 2001, pp. xv + 269, £6.99. From a review by Roger Highfield, Sunday Telegraph: "This sparkling book reminds us all what science is really about… Trilobites persisted for 300 million years (man has so far survived half a per cent as long). Through their unique multifaceted eyes, evolution and extinction are placed in perspective. Fortey explodes the cliché of the scientist as a white coat that won't emote. What better way to remind us that, despite being founded on theory and objective observation, science is very much the work of flesh and blood."
Title The Energy of Nature. Author E.C. Pielou. Publisher University of Chicago Press, 2001, pp. xii + 294, US$25.00/£17.50. From the book jacket: "E.C. Pielou explores energy's role in nature – how and where it originates, what it does, and what becomes of it. Drawing on a wide range of scientific disciplines, from physics, chemistry, and biology to all the earth sciences, as well as on her own lifelong experience as a naturalist, Pielou opens our eyes to the myriad ways in which energy and its transfer affect the earth and its inhabitants. Along the way we learn how energy is delivered to the earth from the sun; how it causes weather, winds, and tides; how it shapes the earth through mountain building and erosion; how it is captured and used by living things; how it is stored in chemical bonds; how nuclear energy is released; how it heats the unseen depths of the planet and is explosively revealed in the turnoil of earthquakes and vulcanoes; how energy manifests itself in magnetism and electromagnetic waves; how we harness it to fuel human societies and much more."
Title The Engines of our Ingenuity. An Engineer Looks at Technology and Culture. Author J.H. Lienhard. Publisher Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. viii + 262, £17.99. From the book jacket: "A million people tune in each weekday to hear John H. Lienhard's radio program "The Engines of Our Ingenuity." Now, Lienhard has gathered together his reflections on the nature of technology, culture, human inventiveness, and the history of engineering in the fascinating new book.
"The Engines of Our Ingenuity offers a series of intriguing glimpses into technology – as a mirror, as a danger, as a product of heroic hubris. The book brims with insightful observations. Lienhard writes, for instance, that the history of technology is a history of us – we are the machines we create. The technology of farming, for example, altered life on earth when humans and wheat became dependent upon one another for their mutual survival. We also learn war does not necessarily fuel invention (radar, jets, and the digital computer all emerged before Word War II began), and that the medieval Church was actually a driving force behind the growth of Western technology (Cistercian monasteries were virtual factories, putting water wheels to work in wood-cutting, forging, and olive crushing). Lienhard also illuminates the unpredictable nature of the inventive mind, leading us through one fascinating example after another. Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, for instance, were highly passionate, even combative figures, while the almost invisible Josiah Willard Gibbs, living a quiet, outwardly uneventful life, was probably America's greatest scientist.
"Lienhard's themes are illuminated with stories of inventors, mathematicians, and engineers, telling the story of the canoe, the DC-3, the Hoover Dam, the diode, and the sewing machine. The result is less history than autobiography – for the autobiography of all of us is written in our machines."
Title Ways of Knowing. A New History of Science, Technology and Medicine. Author J.V. Pickstone. Publisher Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2001, pp. xii + 271, US$55.00 Cloth; US$20.00 Paper. From the book cover: "[The author] provides a new and accessible framework for understanding science, technology, and medicine (STM) in the West from the Renaissance to the present. Pickstone's approach has four key features. First, he synthesizes the long-term histories and philosophies of disciplines that are normally studied separately. Second, he dissects STM into specific ways of knowing – natural history, analysis, and experimentalism – with separate but interlinked elements. Third, he explores these ways of knowing as forms of work related to our various technologies for making, mending, and destroying. And finally, he relates scientific and technical knowledges to popular understanding and to politics."
Title Funding Science in America. Congress, Universities, and the Politics of the Academic Pork Barrel. Author J.D. Savage. Publisher Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. xiii + 219, £12.95/US$19.95 Paper. [Original; Cloth 1999] From a review by D.A. Bromley, Yale University: "This excellent book presents by far the most complete and authoritative analysis of the earmarking of Federal funding for academic science yet available. Savage has researched the rise and growth of such earmarking – frequently referred to simply as academic pork – from both Congressional and academic viewpoints. As someone heavily involved with this unfortunate practice – one that in my opinion has the potential to destroy the quality of American science – I would congratulate Professor Savage on this understanding and presentation of the often complex and tangled relationships among the Congress, the federal agencies, and the research universities."
Title Statistics, Science and Public Policy: Society, Science, and Education. Author A.M. Herzberg and I. Krupka (Eds.). Publisher Kingston, Canada: Queen's University, 2000, pp. xiii + 224, Can$29.95. Approximately forty leading scientists, politicians, senior public servants and journalists from several countries met at Herstmonçeux Castle in the U.K. to consider how to promote better understanding between scientists and policy-makers by focussing on the issue of society, science and responsibility. This volume consists of the edited version of the proceedings of the conference.
Title Can A Darwinian be a Christian? The Relationship Between Science and Religion. Author M. Ruse. Publisher Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. xi + 242, £19.95/US$24.95. From the book jacket: "This book addresses a question at the heart of the current debate about the relationship between science and religion, in particular between that form of the evolutionary biology known as Darwinism and the basic tenets of the Christian faith. The question is: Can someone who accepts Darwin's theory of natural selection subscribe at the time to the essential claims of Christianity?"
Title The Science of Marijuana. Author L.L. Iverson. Publisher Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. xvi + 283,£18.99. From the book jacket: "After alcohol and nicotine, marijuana is the most commonly used "recreational" drug in Western countries. There has already been a growing debate about the medical applications of marijuana and other cannabis-based preparations and increasing pressure to legalize such use. Voters in several states in the U.S. in the 1996 and 1998 elections approved proposals to implement such measures.
"In The Science of Marijuana the author explains the remarkable advances that have been made in scientific research on cannabis with the discovery of specific receptors and the existence of naturally occurring cannabis-like substances in the brain. The book also gives an objective and up-to-date assessment of the scientific basis for the medical use of cannabis and what risks this may entail. The recreational use of the drug and how it affects users is described along with some predictions about how attitudes to cannabis use may change in the future."
Title Defenders of the Truth. The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond. Author U. Segerstråle. Publisher Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. ix + 493, £20.00. From the book jacket: "In the summer of 1975 the distinguished Harvard entomologist Edward O. Wilson published his Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. In the book, Wilson defined sociobiology as a new discipline devoted to 'the systematic study of the biological basis of all social behaviour.' He explicitly included our own species Homo sapiens, and devoted his final chapter to humans, suggesting that human sex role divisions, aggressiveness, moral concerns, religious beliefs, and much more, have genetic basis. The book came under intense fire from a group of critics and battle lines were drawn. In one notable incident, some three years after the book's publication, Wilson, about to speak at a symposium sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, had a jug of water poured over his head by a group of hecklers. The sociobiology controversy was in full swing.
"Defenders of the Truth is the definitive account of the controversy, a fascinating tale involving clashes of convictions about science and its social role. But Segerstråle's canvas is on an altogether grander scale. Here is an engrossing insight into the world of science and the scientists who inhabit it. Here, too, are important scientific, moral, and political issues, and perennial themes such as the objectivity of science, the social use of scientific knowledge, human nature, and free will. Some of these themes have recently resurfaced in conjunction with the Human Genome project and the so-called Science Wars.
"The key participants described have all been interviewed and studied by the author, at the time when the controversy was at its height, and more recently. They include Edward O. Wilson, Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould, the Harvard scientists at the heart of the controversy when it first erupted, and, from the 'British connection', John Maynard Smith and Richard Dawkins. 'The characters in my story', writes Ullica Segerstråle, 'are all defenders of the truth – it is just that they have different conceptions of where the truth lies."
Title Bushmanders and Bullwinkles. How Politicians Manipulate Electronic Maps and Census Data to Win Elections. Author M. Monmonier. Publisher Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2001, pp. xii + 208, US$25.00/£16.00. From the book cover: "Written from a perspective of a cartographer rather than a political scientist, Bushmanders and Bullwinkles examines the political tales maps tell when votes and power are at stake. Monmonier shows how redistricting committees carve out favorable election districts for themselves and their allies; how disgruntled politicians use shape to challenge alleged racial gerrymanders; and how geographic information systems can make reapportionment a controversial process with outrageous products. He also explores the debates over the proper roles of natural boundaries, media maps, census enumeration, and ethnic identity. Monmonier also questions recent successful challenges to contorted election districts. Do the Supreme Court's pronouncements reflect obsolete assessments of distance and shape? How relevant is a district's perimeter? Is a focus on form, not function, little more than a distraction from larger issues like power sharing and election reform?"
Title Nature in the Marketplace. Capturing the Value of Ecosystem Services. Author G. Heal. Publisher Washington D.C.: Island Press, 2000, pp. xv + 203, US$50.00 Cloth; US$25.00 Paper. From the back cover: "In recent years, scientists have begun to focus on the idea that healthy, functioning ecosystems provide essential services to human populations, ranging from water purification to climate regulation. Nature in the Marketplace examines the real prospects for nature's marketable services to "turn profits" at levels that exceed the profits expected from alternative, ecological destructive, business activities."
Title Biometrika: One Hundred Years. Author D.M. Titterington and D.R. Cox (Eds.). Publisher Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. viii + 383. £45.00. From the book jacket: "This volume marks the centenary of Biometrika, one of the world's leading academic journals in statistical theory and methodology . A brief history of the journal (D.R. Cox) sets the scene, followed by six specially commissioned articles that review the most important contributions made by papers in the journal to a number of important areas of statistical activity. These are general theory and methodology (A.C. Davidson), design of experiments (A.C. Atkinson and R.A. Bailey), survival analysis (D. Oakes), nonparametrics (P. Hall), sample surveys (T.M.F. Smith) and time series (H. Tong). Authoritative but accessible, the reviews provide an impressive survey of statistical science development during the twentieth century.
"The second half of the book consists of reprints of selected papers that are highlights from the pages of Biometrika. These include: F. Yates (1939) on the design of agricultural and biological experiments; H.E. Daniels (1944) on measures of correlation in sample permutations; E.S. Pearson (1968) on the early correspondence between W.S. Gosset, R.A. Fisher and K. Pearson; and W.K. Hastings (1970) on Monte Carlo sampling methods using Markov chains.
"Biometrika: One Hundred years is designed to be accessible, stimulating and useful to all those interested in the development of statistics and in the application of statistical theory to the problems of science, medicine, technology, economics and demography."
Title Stochastic Processes: Theory and Methods. Author D.N. Shanbhag and C.R. Rao (Eds.). Publisher Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2001, pp. xvii + 967, DFL375.00/€170.17/ US$175.00. From the preface: "J. Neyman, one of the pioneers in laying the foundations of modern statistical theory, stressed the importance of stochastic processes in a paper written in 1960 in the following term: "Currently in the period of dynamic indeterminism in science, there is hardly a serious piece of research, if treated realistically, does not involve operations on stochastic processes. …
"The literature on stochastic processes is very extensive and is distributed in several books and journals. There is a need to review the different lines of researches and developments in stochastic processes and present a consolidated and comprehensive account for the benefit of students, research workers, teachers and consultants. …
"An effort is made in this volume to cover as many branches of stochastic processes as possible. Also to get the balance right, we have retained some chapters with applied flavour in this volume. In the planned second volume, we keep the option of including one or two chapters of theoretical nature, assuming that they provide with avenues for future research to specialists in applied areas."
Title Handbook of statistics in clinical oncology. Author J. Crowley (Ed.). Publisher New York: Dekker, 2001, pp. xiv + 548, US$175.00. From the preface: "This book is a compendium of statistical approaches to the problems facing those trying to make progress against cancer. As such, the focus is on cancer clinical trials, although several of the contributions also apply to observational studies, and many chapters generalize beyond cancer research. This field is approximately 50 years old, and it has been at least 15 years since such a summary appeared; because much progress has been made in recent decades, the time is propitious for this book. The intended audience is primarily but not exclusively statisticians working in cancer research; it is hoped that oncologists might benefit as well from reading this book."
Title AEONS. The Search for the Beginning of Time. Author M. Gorst. Publisher London: Fourth Estate, 2001, pp. 314, £14.99. From the book jacket: "When did the world begin? This question strikes at the root of mankind's understanding of the universe, or of the divine scheme of things. In 1650, Bishop James Ussher announced to no one's enormous surprise that the world began in 4004 BC. His date was so widely accepted that it was printed in the margins of the King James Bible, a close reading of which had allowed Ussher to make the calculation in the first place. But though his logic was impeccable, his numbers were wrong. Ussher was followed by a sometimes bizarre, always dogged stream of scientists and philosophers, each determined to calculate the moment when the world began. Edward Lhuyd took his inspiration from the boulders of his native Wales to conclude that the world must be several thousand years older than Ussher proposed; Edmund Halley, the astronomer, suggested that the salinity of the sea might provide the clue to the age of the earth, meanwhile the Comte de Buffon attempted to replicate the cooling of the Earth's core by heating tiny iron balls and comparing their loss of heat. He reckoned the world was 10 million years old.
"Darwin needed the world to be old enough to allow evolution, and by the beginning of the twentieth century scientists at last started to think in terms of billions of years. In 1998 two independent teams of astronomers probing the heavens with the Hubble space telescope found what they believe is the final piece in the jigsaw – the decisive evidence that reveals the age of the universe. With a margin of error of over a billion years, their result may lack the reassuring precision of Ussher's exact moment of creation, but in a final twist to the tale the discovery unveils a universe more startling than anyone imagined. Aeons is the story of science, religion and philosophy, as ever locked in a tense struggle to define and explain the human condition."
Title ENIGMA. The Battle for the Code. Author H. Sebag-Montefiore. Publisher London: Phoenix, 2001, pp. xvi + 491, £7.99 paper. [Original 2000] From the book cover: "No episode in the Second World War has captured the modern imagination more strongly than the cracking of the Enigma code by the boffins at Bletchley Park.
"Yet was this really what happened? Without for a moment belittling the work of Alan Turing and his team of eccentric codebreakers, this book shows the extent to which the breaking of the all-important Naval Enigma code was reliant on more traditional forms of cloak and dagger: The heroic capture of ships and U-boats and their codebooks on the high seas, and the betrayal of his German homeland by Enigma Spy, an old-fashioned traitor. Such deeds turned out to be just as decisive as any cryptographic breakthrough. Using new material from the archives this book for the first time tells the full, thrilling story of Enigma: The Battle for the Code."
Title Rockefeller and the Internationalization of mathematics between two world wars. Documents and Studies for the Social History of Mathematics in the 20th Century. Author R. Siegmund-Schultze. Publisher Basel, Switzerland: Birkhäuser, 2001, pp. xiii + 341, SFr128.00/ DM170.00/ÖS1241.00. From the book cover: "Philanthropies funded by the Rockefeller family have been prominent in the social history of the twentieth century for their involvement in medicine and applied science. This book provides the first detailed study of their relatively brief but nonetheless influential foray into the field of mathematics.
"The careers of a generation of pathbreakers in modern mathematics, such as S. Banach, B.L. van der
Waerden and André Weil, were decisively affected by their becoming fellows of the Rockefeller-funded International Education Board in the 1920s. To help promote cooperation between physics and mathematics Rockefeller funds supported the erection of the new Mathematical Institute in Göttingen between 1926 and 1929, while the rise of probability and mathematical statistics owes much to the creation of the Institute Henri Poincaré in Paris by American philanthropy at about the same time."
Title Quantum Leaps in the Wrong Direction. Where Real Science Ends… and Pseudoscience Begins. Author C.M. Wynn and A.W. Wiggins. With cartoons by S. Harris. Publisher Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry Press, 2001, pp. x + 226, US$18.95/Can$25.95. From the book cover: "Get the straight story on things like astrology, ghosts, spontaneous human combustion, psychic surgery, and ESP. You hear about these fantastic happenings every day on television and in the supermarket tabloids. Is any of this true or are they making it all up? While many people tune just for laughs, plenty of readers believe their outrageous claims – often because they simply don't have a clear notion of what science really is.
"So how do you figure out what constitutes real science and what is nonsense? Quantum Leaps in the Wrong Direction carefully deconstructs five examples of pseudoscience – UFOs, out-of-body experiences, astrology, creationism, and ESP – and gives easy recipes to test other dubious notions so that you can tell what lies in the realm of real science and what more properly deserves the tag of pseudoscience.
"Brilliantly illustrated with hilarious cartoons by the renowned science cartoonist Sidney Harris, Quantum Leaps in the Wrong Direction is wonderful fun as well as illuminating science. This witty, disarmingly delightful book is for anyone – but especially for those folks who secretly check their horoscope every day."
From a review: "Quantum Leaps is one of a far too small cluster of rational books that respond to 'voodoo science'. Wynn and Wiggins carry it out with wit and cunning." L.M. Lederman, winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize in physics and author of The God Particle.
Title The One Culture? A Conversation About Science. . Author J.A. Labinger and H. Collins (Eds.). Publisher University of Chicago Press, 2001, pp. xi + 329, US$17.00/£11.00. From the book cover: "Who has the right to speak about science? What is the proper role of scientific knowledge? How should scientists interact with the rest of society in decision making? Because science occupies a central position in the world today, such questions are vitally important. Although there are no simple solutions. The One Culture? shows the reader exactly what is at stake in the so-called Science Wars and provides valuable framework for how to go about seeking the answers we so urgently need."
From a book review by Roald Hoffmann, Cornell University: "A world admiring and yet suspicious of science needs an intelligent way to talk of what we know, and how that knowledge is gained. More than moving beyond the 'Science Wars' the voices of The One Culture? shows us, with spirit, how this can be done."
Title A Gardner's Workout. Training the Mind and Entertaining the Spirit. Author M. Gardner. Publisher Natick, Massachusetts: Peters, 2001, pp. xi + 319, US$35.00/£25.00. From the book cover: "Gardner, the Master of Mathematical Games and Puzzles, has introduced a wide range of readers to the world of recreational mathematics over the past decades, and charmed his way into their hearts with enthusiasm for the subject. Perhaps best known as the author of Scientific American's "Mathematical Games" column for 25 years. Gardner has gained a large following among puzzlers, magicians and mathematicians.
"In the years since Gardner has continued to write articles for academic journals and popular magazines. Forty-one of those pieces, never before published in book form, are collected in this volume.
"Truly a treat for Martin Gardner's many fans, the articles span a wide range of topics. They include games of chance and why a "computer" will always beat a human player, word ladders and mathematical word play games, tiling puzzles, magic squares, computer and calculator "magic" tricks and other mathematical puzzles. Providing the tools to furnish our all-too-sluggish minds with an athletic workout, Gardner's problems foster an agility of the mind as they entertain."
Title Errors, Medicine and the Law. Author A. Merry and A. McCall Smith. Publisher Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. vi + 254, £47.50 Cloth; £17.95 Paper. From the back of the book: "Untoward injuries are unacceptably common in medical treatment, at times with tragic consequences for patients. The phrases 'an epidemic of error' and 'the medical toll' have been coined to describe this problem of 'iatrogenic harm', which it has been suggested may have contributed to ninety-eight thousand deaths per year in the USA. Some of these incidents are the result of negligence on the part of doctors, but more usually they are no more than inevitable concomitants of the complexity of modern healthcare. This book is fundamentally about distinguishing the former from the latter. It questions the understandable, but often inappropriate, tendency to blame individuals for these events and points out that the goal of safety is far better served by a sophisticated understanding of the difference between negligence and inevitable error, and by a frank recognition of just why human error occurs and how things go wrong in any complex system
"Although medicine is used as the book's primary example, the points made apply equally to aviation, many industrial activities, and many other fields of human endeavour. The book advocates a more informed alternative to the blaming culture which has increasingly come to dominate our response to accidents, whether in the medical field or elsewhere."
Title Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century. Author Foreword by the Institute of Medicine. Publisher Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2001, pp. xx + 335, US$50.00. From the foreword: "This is the second and final report of the Committee on the Quality of Health Care in America. …
"The present report addresses quality-related issues more broadly, providing a more strategic direction for redesigning the health care delivery system of the 21st century."
Title The Science of Cooking. Author P. Barham. Publisher Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2001, pp. 244, US$34.95. This book is based on the author's experiences in presenting popular lectures in science.
From the book cover: "A kitchen is no different from most science laboratories and cookery may properly be regarded as an experimental science. Food preparation and cookery involve many processes which are well described by the physical sciences. Understanding the chemistry and physics of cooking should lead to improvements in performance in the kitchen. For those of us who wish to know why certain recipes work and perhaps more importantly why others fail, appreciating the underlying physical processes will inevitably help in unravelling the mysteries of the "art" of good cooking."
Title The Chicago Guide to your Academic Career. A Portable Mentor for Scholars from Graduate School through Tenure. Author J.A. Goldsmith, J. Komolos and P. Schine Gold. Publisher Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2001, pp. xx + 310. From the book cover: "Is a career as a professor the right choice? With a perpetually tight job market in the traditional academic fields, the path to an academic career for many aspiring scholars might become a frustrating one. Where can they turn for good, frank answers to their questions? Here, three distinguished scholars – with more than 75 years of combined teaching experience – talk openly about what is good and what is not so good about academia, as a place to work and as a way of life. Written as an informal conversation among colleagues, the book is packed with inside information – about finding a mentor, making it through the dissertation, getting a job, obtaining tenure, and lots more useful advice."
Title Evolutionary Genetics. From Molecules to Morphology. Author R.S. Singh and C.B. Krimbas (Eds.). Publisher Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. xvii + 702, £65.00/US$95.00. From the book cover: "This collection of essays is produced in honor of Lewontin's 65th birthday. The volume is unique, as it has a comprehensive coverage of modern evolutionary genetics from molecules to morphology by a group of star authors, including his students and colleagues. Such a comprehensive treatment of evolutionary genetics has never been attempted before. The volume is set in a historical perspective, but it has an up-to-date coverage of material in the various fields. The areas covered are the mathematical and the molecular foundations of population genetics, molecular variation and evolution, selection and genetic polymorphisms, linkage and breeding system evolution, quantitative genetics and phenotypic evolution, gene flow and population structure, speciation, behavior, and ecology."
Title Climate Change. A multidisciplinary Approach. Author W.J. Burroughs. Publisher Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. xv + 298, £52.50/US$85.00 Cloth; £18.95/US$29.95 Paper. From the book cover: "Climate Change: A Multidisciplinary Approach provides a concise, up-to-date presentation of our current knowledge of climate change and its implications for society. The book begins by giving a balanced coverage of the physical principles of the global climate, its behaviour on all timescales, and the evidence for and concequences of past change. It then reviews how we measure climate change and the statistical methods for analysing data, before exploring the causes of climate change and how we can model this behaviour. The final sections discuss predictions of future climate change and the economic and political debate surrounding its prevention and mitigation."
Title Under the Weather. Climate, Ecosystems, and Infectious Disease. Author National Research Council. Publisher Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2001, pp. xiv + 146, US$37.95. From the book cover: "Since the dawn of medical science, connections between changes in the weather and the appearance of epidemic diseases have been recognized. As our understanding of these connections grows, many hope that it will be possible to build models for predicting disease outbreaks based on climate forecasts and ecological observations. However, understanding the effects of climate in the context of all of the other forces that drive infectious disease dynamics presents a tremendous scientific challenge. Can this understanding be used to help the field of public health advance from "surveillance and response" to "prediction and prevention"? And perhaps the question of greatest public concern: Can we predict how global warming will affect the emergence and transmission of infectious disease agents around the world?
Title Climate Change 2001: Mitigation. Contribution of Working Group III to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Author B. Metz, D. Davidson, R. Swart and J. Pan (Eds.). Publisher Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. x + 752, £90.00/US$130.00 Cloth; £34.95/US$49.95 Paper. From the book: "Climate Change 2001: Mitigation is the most comprehensive and up-to-date scientific, technical and economic assessment of options to mitigate climate change and their costs."
Title Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Author J.T. Houghton et al (Eds.). Publisher Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. x + 881, £90.00/US$130.00 Cloth; £34.95/US$49.95 Paper. From the book: "Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis is the most comprehensive and up-to-date scientific assessment of past, present and future climate change."
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