I plan to spend a good chunk of my weekend reading two new books that have recently come into my possession. And the best part is that I didn't have to pay for either of them - the only thing cooler than books are free books. The first is Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo, by Sean Carroll. Sean Carroll is a geneticist from the University of Wisconsin and one of the most influential evolutionary biologists alive (not to be confused with Sean Carroll, the University of Chicago cosmologist). My dad just finished reading this book and dropped it off to me figuring I'd want to read it as well.
The second is America's Constitution: A Biography, by Akhil Amar. Amar is one of America's finest constitutional law scholars; he teaches at Yale Law School. This book was sent to me by Timothy Sandefur, who graciously and generously sent copies of this book to me, Jason and Jon, the Positive Liberty crew (thanks again, Tim). We're all going to read the book and then write some essays about it, which should be great fun (yes, this is how geeks have fun, so back off). Amar does consistently excellent work on con law so I'm really looking forward to reading this book, which is over 600 pages long.
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Still waitin' for my copy.
Can't wait to get it.
Jon-
The pony express made it to Michigan first. Should be two days by horse to get to Jersey.
I wanted to read Endless Forms Most Beautiful and I went to go buy it but it's somewhere around 26 bucks or something, only in hardcover. I don't have that kind of money to spend so I think I'll just wait for the paperback version. The same goes for The Case for the Female Orgasm (That's actually kind of embarrassing to say, lol). Why are books so expensive? It's annoying.
I have to admit to being underimpressed by Caroll's book. I was expecting ... more. Um. More technical, though a little dated, is Raff's The Shape of Life and Brian Hall's Evolutionary Developmental Biology is also a keeper.
Thanks for the heads-up on the Amar book - I had read a review recently and had meant to pick up a copy. Now you've gone and reminded me.
Oh, and you might also enjoy The Dynamic Constitution by Richard H. Fallon, jr. I did.
I really enjoyed Endless Forms. I wrote my first blog entry on it. As a physicist I had not studied biology in a long time and what I remembered did not thrill me. Clearly the has been a lot of progress, and I saw things in Enless Forms that did excite me.