Michael Bérubé
A review of Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture, by Alan Sokal. In his new book Sokal leaves the terrain of literary theory, says Bérubé, and enters “realms where the distinction between justified and unjustififed belief actually matters to the world—specifically, the history and philosophy of science . . . and religion.”
Daniel Kennefick
A review of Einstein for the 21st Century: His Legacy in Science, Art, and Modern Culture, edited by Peter L. Galison, Gerald Holton and Silvan S. Schweber. Twenty essayists consider what elements formed Einstein’s view of the world and what effects his work and persona have had
Alasdair Whittle
A review of Solving Stonehenge: The New Key to an Ancient Enigma, by Anthony Johnson. Johnson argues that the builders of Stonehenge had an understanding of the geometry of squares and circles that allowed them to lay out the different elements of the stone monument with impressively regular proportionality
Sander Gliboff
A review of The Tragic Sense of Life: Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle over Evolutionary Thought, by Robert J. Richards. This book marks a major rehabilitation of Haeckel as a mainstream Darwinian, says Gliboff
Charles Perrow
A review of Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next Fifty Years, by Vaclav Smil. By enriching our understanding of the complexity of nature and society, Smil shows that we have much more to fear than accumulating carbon dioxide
John C. Butcher
A review of Lewis Carroll in Numberland: His Fantastical Mathematical Logical Life. By Robin Wilson. Wilson’s brief life of Charles Dodgson explains for a general audience his work as a mathematician and includes samples of the problems and puzzles found in his books on recreational mathematics
Jaron Lanier
A review of The Symmetries of Things, by John H. Conway, Heidi Burgiel and Chaim Goodman-Strauss. “This book is a plaything,” says Lanier, “an inexhaustible exercise in brain expansion for the reader, a work of art and a bold statement of what the culture of math can be like, all rolled into one”
Michael J. Disney
A review of The Universe in a Mirror: The Saga of the Hubble Space Telescope and the Visionaries Who Built It, by Robert Zimmerman. Zimmerman’s blow-by-blow account of how the Hubble got built is a cracking good read, says Disney
Audra J. Wolfe
A review of Rebels, Mavericks, and Heretics in Biology, edited by Oren Harman and Michael R. Dietrich. Highlighting the value of dissent, these 19 essays open a new conversation on the nature of scientific innovation, says Wolfe
Brian Hayes
A review of The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges’ Library of Babel, by William Goldbloom Bloch. This mathematical companion to Borges’ austere fable offers new ways to engage with the themes of the fiction
Kate Scholberg
A review of Fermilab: Physics, the Frontier, and Megascience, by Lillian Hoddeson, Adrienne W. Kolb and Catherine Westfall. Reviewed by Kate Scholberg. At the center of this account of the fascinating rise of Fermilab are the charismatic personalities of its first two directors—Robert Wilson and Leon Lederman
Robert Dorit
A review of Western Diseases: An Evolutionary Perspective, by Tessa M. Pollard. Pollard argues that our physiology, honed in a time of small population groups, scarcity and episodic plenty, betrays us in a modern world that has become increasingly sedentary, urbanized and calorie-rich
Anna Lena Phillips
Environmental toxicologist, author of Motherhood, the Elephant in the Laboratory: Women Scientists Speak Out
Anna Lena Phillips
Mathematician, coauthor of How Round Is Your Circle? Where Engineering and Mathematics Meet
Theodore M. Porter
A review of The Scientific Life: A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocation, by Steven Shapin. Have the advantages of entrepreneurial science been oversold? Are contemporary funding regimes subtly eroding the integrity of science? Quite possibly so, Porter concludes
Hal Abelson
A review of The Future of the Internet—And How to Stop It, by Jonathan Zittrain. The creative work inspired by the enormous flexibility of the Internet is threatened, says Zittrain, by a trend away from open platforms and toward what he calls "tethered appliances"
David Lindley
A review of Kelvin: Life, Labours and Legacy, edited by Raymond Flood, Mark McCartney and Andrew Whitaker. Why, asks Lindley, has Lord Kelvin's remarkable catalog of achievements left so little impression?
Michael P. Branch
A review of A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir, by Donald Worster. Worster has expertly sifted and sorted the details of Muir's complex life story to produce an engaging biography that should be considered definitive, says Branch
Steven Hill
A review of Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren’t Fair (and What We Can Do About It), by William Poundstone. Poundstone explores the unintended consequences of plurality voting and the pros and cons of the various electoral systems that have been proposed as alternatives
Daniela Bleichmar
A review of Measuring the New World: Enlightenment Science and South America, by Neil Safier. Safier's account of the Geodesical Expedition to the Equator in 1735 thoughtfully examines how Enlightenment science fared in South America and how that continent was depicted in Europe as a consequence of this exploration
Christine Casson
A review of Conversations with Wendell Berry, edited by Morris Allen Grubbs. These 17 interviews conducted over three decades show the prescience and consistency of Berry’s vision, says Casson, and they invite reflection on how little has been accomplished during that span of time
Paul Baker
A review of Amazon Expeditions: My Quest for the Ice-Age Equator, by Paul Colinvaux. Colinvaux recounts his travels in search of lakes containing mud dating from the last glacial maximum, telling the tale with humor, ego and enthusiasm, says Baker
Norman M. Weinberger
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, by Oliver Sacks. Sacks sprinkles brief accounts of recent neuroscientific findings throughout the detailed descriptions of cases that are at the heart of this book, but he doesn't discuss the scientific issues in enough depth, complains Weinberger
Martin Davis
A review of The Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour through Alan Turing's Historic Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine, reviewed by Martin Davis. Petzold provides a line-by-line close reading of Turing's classic paper "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem," explaining background material as needed