science books
jdupuis | December 2, 2013While browsing through my various social media feeds this morning I noticed that Amazon is having crazy Cyber Monday Kindle sales. Not much science or technology is on offer -- it's mostly popular fiction -- but there is a very nice selection of Einstein books that you can purchase.
They are all $2.82 TODAY!
The World As I See It
Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words
Essays in Humanism
The Theory of Relativity: and Other Essays
Letters to Solovine: 1906-1955
Letters on Wave Mechanics: Correspondence with H. A. Lorentz, Max Planck, and…
jdupuis | December 2, 2013Some capsule reviews of books I've finished over the last little while, in the spirit of catching up.
van Grouw, Katrina. The Unfeathered Bird. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013. 304pp. ISBN-13: 978-0691151342
This is a seriously beautiful coffee table-sized scientific illustrations book on birds. Basically the idea of the book is to explore birds through drawings mostly of whole or partial skeletons but also some of musculature and "plucked" bodies. A bit odd, a bit creepy but breath-taking. The book opens with a very general section on what birds have in common and then goes into…
jdupuis | November 24, 2013It is time. The season of lists begins again!
Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting about all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that I can find around the web in various media outlets.
From the beginning it’s been a pretty popular service so I’m happy to continue it.
For my purposes, I define science books pretty broadly to include science, engineering, computing, history & philosophy of science & technology, environment, social aspects of science and even business books about technology trends or technology innovation. Deciding what is and isn’t…
jdupuis | November 14, 2013It is time. The season of lists begins again!
Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting about all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that I can find around the web in various media outlets.
From the beginning it’s been a pretty popular service so I’m happy to continue it.
For my purposes, I define science books pretty broadly to include science, engineering, computing, history & philosophy of science & technology, environment, social aspects of science and even business books about technology trends or technology innovation. Deciding what is and isn’t…
jdupuis | November 10, 2013It is time. The season of lists begins again!
Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting about all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that I can find around the web in various media outlets.
From the beginning it’s been a pretty popular service so I’m happy to continue it.
For my purposes, I define science books pretty broadly to include science, engineering, computing, history & philosophy of science & technology, environment, social aspects of science and even business books about technology trends or technology innovation. Deciding what is and isn’t…
jdupuis | October 17, 2013Chris Turner's The War on Science: Muzzled Scientists and Wilful Blindness in Stephen Harper's Canada (website) is a book that absolutely must be read by every Canadian interested in the future of science and science policy in the country.
And the Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government is wagering that that's a pretty low percentage of the population. If Susan Delacourt and Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson are to be believed, the strategy that the Prime Minister is using focuses on an emerging coalition of western Canadians and new Canadians and suburbanites in eastern…
jdupuis | October 4, 2013Nikola Tesla is a science rockstar. How can you tell? Like any great rockstar, he's dead. And he has a rock band named after him. He's wild and colourful. He epitomizes the mad scientist. He was flamboyant and yet strangely ascetic, he was fond of spectacle and showmanship yet also a bit of a hermit. He was a prodigious inventor and scientist, perhaps unparalleled in his own or any time. He's inspired web comic wars, even. And a Indigogo campaign to raise funds for a museum. And a Kickstarter for a graphic novel adaptation of his life. (Yes, I supported both...)
In fact, his out-sized…
jdupuis | September 27, 2013Last night I attended the Lane Anderson Award dinner where this year's winners were announced. A huge congratulations to all the winners and nominees and sincere thanks to the organizers for inviting me to such a wonderful event.
Here is the press release from last night:
$10,000 Lane Anderson Award Winners
Celebrating the Best Science Writing in Canada
Toronto. 26th September, 2013: The Fitzhenry Family Foundation announced the winners of the 2012 Lane Anderson Award. Finalists and winners were feted at an intimate dinner in Toronto.
The annual Lane Anderson Award, now in its fourth year,…
jdupuis | September 13, 2013Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson's book The Big Shift: The Seismic Change in Canadian Politics, Business, and Culture and What It Means for Our Future is pretty obviously not a science book. Rather, it's a book about Canadian politics. But of course here in Canada these days, it's hard to talk about science without talking about politics at least a little. This book is interesting from a science policy perspective since it endeavors to give insight into the deeper rationale behind the current Conservative government's actions. In a sense, it asks, "What kind of Canada do Stephen Harper and…
jdupuis | August 29, 2013One of the highlights of the year for me is the Lane Anderson Award shortlist announcement.
From their website:
The Lane Anderson Award honours the very best science writing in Canada today, both in the adult and young-reader categories. Each award will be determined on the relevance of its content to the importance of science in today’s world, and the author’s ability to connect the topic to the interests of the general trade reader.”
The annual Lane Anderson Award honours two jury-selected books, in the categories of adult and young-reader, published in the field of science, and written by…
Reading Diary: How to fake a moon landing: Exposing the myths of science denial by Darryl Cunningham
jdupuis | August 27, 2013Darryl Cunningham's How to Fake a Moon Landing: Exposing the Myths of Science Denial is a bit different from most of the graphic novels I've reviewed in this space. Most of the earlier books I've reviewed have been biographical or historical in nature with the more expository ones at least having some fictional narrative wrapped around the scientific content. I guess you could say there's quite a bit of sugar to make the medicine go down a bit more smoothly.
This book however is really nothing but exposition with just enough bare-bones narrative to keep the facts rolling. It's a series of…
jdupuis | August 19, 2013I've been mostly on vacation for the last little while so I've fallen a bit behind on writing the book reviews I feature here on the blog fairly regularly. In fact, there might even be a few books that, ahem, have been sitting around read and unreviewed for perhaps even longer than the last month or so.
I thought I'd use this post as a bit of internal incentive to actually get the damn things written.
I'll take a crack at listing some books here. I'll go with those that are read but unreviewed, in process of being read (or that I intend to start very soon).
I'm also listing those that are on…
jdupuis | August 9, 2013Albert's Ideas helped build spaceships and satellites that travel to the moon and beyond. His thinking helped us understand our universe as no one ever had before.
But still, Albert left us many big questions. Questions that scientists are working on today.
Questions that someday you may answer...by wondering, thinking and imagining.
So ends the incredibly wonderful children's book On a Beam of Light: A Story of Albert Einstein with words by Jennifer Berne and pictures by Vladimir Radunsky.
Aimed at a preschool audience, this book tells the story of Albert Einstein's life in lively and…
jdupuis | July 8, 2013There are two kinds of children's books: those that are aimed primarily at the kids themselves and those that are aimed at the adults that actually shell out the cash to pay for the books. There's certainly a lot of overlap -- books that kids love but that also catch the eyes, hearts & minds and wallets of the adults doing the shopping. But wander the aisles of your local bookstore and you'll see what I mean. Often beautifully illustrated, with a sophisticated artistic touch and a mature and serious topic, you can tell the books that are aimed at the parents and uncles and cousins and…
jdupuis | June 12, 2013First Second Books is one of my favourite publishers of graphic novels, in particular because they seem to like to do a lot of science-themed books. Jim Ottaviani's book Feynman was one of my favourite graphic novels of the last few years. Perhaps not surprisingly, First Second published Feynman.
The latest from the science graphic novel dynamic duo is Primates: The Fearless Science of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas, this time with the art by Maris Wicks. And it is certainly up to the incredibly high standards set by Feynman, if not even a little bit better.
What's it about?…
jdupuis | May 21, 2013Someone shoot me if I ever use the term NP-complete in a sentence. Or at least if I ever use the term in a conversation with "civilians."
Such is the dilemma of reading and reviewing a wonderful book like Lance Fortnow's The Golden Ticket: P, NP, and the Search for the Impossible. I'll be tempted to start throwing around terms that Fortnow has explained so well and so clearly. A temptation I should resist. Instead I should recommend this book.
Anyways, what's the book about? As the title indicates, the purpose is to explain to a popular audience the computer science concept of P vs. NP, in…
jdupuis | April 29, 2013What kind of place has Canada become?
The kind of place that closes world-class research facilities in the arctic and in lake country. (Thanks, Ontario!)
The kind of place where the government actively muzzles it's own scientists and librarians, the scientists for wanting to share their research and librarians who want to talk about the importance of preserving our heritage, scientific and cultural.
The kind of place where Environment Canada would take their own name off their weather service website. Really? Yeah, really.
The kind of place where the Federal Government slashes its own role…
jdupuis | April 26, 2013I'll admit, I'm a bit of a book snob, a strange thing to say for a lifetime comics/science fiction/fantasy/horror/mystery fan, but there you go. Perhaps more precisely, I'm a snob about books versus other media.
But in my defense I'll maintain that I'm getting better as I get older -- more tolerant and accepting and less snobby. Perhaps not coincidentally, I think my takes in reading material are getting more diverse too.
In any case, let's all enjoy 30 things to tell a book snob.
1. People should never be made to feel bad about what they are reading. People who feel bad about reading will…
jdupuis | April 8, 2013Every once in a while a review copy of a book comes over the transom and it just makes your day. Nothing else that could happen is going to put a damper on the bright sunny mood that springs from such a happy moment.
One that arrived a few days ago that I can wait to read is Lance Fortnow's The Golden Ticket: P, NP, and the Search for the Impossible. Now that made my day! It's definitely next in line for reading.
A few months ago the book that definitely made such an impact when it arrived was Steve White's Dinosaur Art: The World's Greatest Paleoart. It immediately jumped out as an…
drorzel | March 20, 2013As you may or may not know, I'm currently at work on a book called How to Think Like a Scientist. This raises the fairly obvious question in the post title, namely, why should people think like scientists? What's the point?
In a sense, this is (as Ethan Zuckerman pointed out at lunch the other day) the underlying question at the heart of the whole endeavor of science communication. I mean, I've written two books about modern physics for a general audience, and when I have time, I write this blog aimed at non-scientists. What's the point of doing all that, anyway? What is it I hope to achieve…