THE SCIENCE SHELF NEWSLETTER

Dear Science Readers,

As noted in the earlier version of this newsletter, I spent much of September immersed in writing a book manuscript that is due by year's end. Now that project is my top priority, even displacing my book reviewing. So this will be the last Science Shelf newsletter of 2005. I expect to begin monthly updates again in January.

I have completed my reviews of the two new books that I was so eagerly anticipating when I wrote in the earlier version of this newsletter. Here's the latest about them:

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach is a worthy sequel to her earlier Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers.

Likewise, Life as We Do Not Know It: The NASA Search for (and Synthesis of) Alien Life by Peter Ward is full of wonderful speculation about life elsewhere in our solar system. In a way, it is a counterpoint to Ward's The Life and Death of Planet Earth (with Donald Brownlee), offering at least a bit of hope of a haven for Earth life when the Sun heats up enough to make Earth uninhabitable a billion years hence.

Two older Science Shelf reviews are worth another look, as the books have been reissued in paperback. Richard Dawkins' brilliant The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution is now priced so affordably that you can send it as a gift to every member of the Dover, PA, school board. And E=mc^{2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation} by David Bodanis has been reissued in paperback with a new forward by Simon Singh.

Reader Barbara Krueger, whose son was a pretty good southpaw pitcher for his college baseball team, responded to my call for someone to "step up to the plate" with a guest review of A Left-Hand Turn Around the World: Chasing the Mystery and Meaning of All Things Southpaw by David Wolman. If you're a lefty or have one in your family, you'll enjoy her review.

No one has yet offered to review Halley's Quest: A Selfless Genius and his Troubled Paramore by Julie Wakefield. If you think you can deliver a review that your fellow Science Shelf readers would enjoy, look over the Books Received page, which is updated regularly and always worth a look, and send me an e-mail with your request by the end of November, 2005.

One of my September reviews is continuing to get a lot of online attention, the controversial The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney. If you are planning to buy it or any other book featured here, I'd appreciate your using the Amazon.com links that support the Science Shelf (with no cost to you). If you are the kind of person who looks twice before buying, remember to go back to Amazon.com using the following link to reward the person who "hand-sold" the book to you. You can make sure that happens by bookmarking or putting http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/drfredsplac in your favorites as your normal entry point to Amazon.com

Another Science Shelf review getting a lot of attention tells what there is to like (with one large quibble frome me) about Dava Sobel's October release, The Planets.

Getting back to the topic of life forms, I know that most of you share my views about the teaching of "Intelligent Design" in science classes. I read and got permission to reprint a great book-centered column on that topic by Dallas Morning News critic Jerome Weeks. I've been blogging about it, too, and I invite you to check out my commentary at scienceblog.com.

Beyond Jupiter: The Story of Planetary Astronomer Heidi Hammel, part of the "Women's Adventures in Science" series for middle-grade readers

I'll close with the usual appeal for Science Shelf clicks, since I still need a little more support than I have been getting for the work necessary to maintain the site.

I'm not very good at making sales pitches, because I think that the value of a service ought to be apparent. But I realize that even my most loyal readers need a reminder that they can help me recover the cost of this site and generate a small amount for my efforts without spending a penny more than they normally would. I have added a prominent gateway link to Amazon.com on the main page of The Science Shelf. If you have some book shopping to do, or if you want to buy anything else that Amazon sells (even a George Foreman grill for those spring and summer cookouts), please use your Science Shelf bookmark -- you do have it bookmarked, don't you? -- and click that link to Amazon.com. Or this one.

Please consider updating your bookmarks or favorites to replace your old Amazon.com entry point with that URL (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/drfredsplac).

And remember, if you learn about a book through a page on the Science Shelf site, you can make sure my efforts are rewarded by using the links on the Science Shelf page to buy that title.

Thanks!

I'm always glad to hear about your finds to share with other visitors to The Science Shelf. Please e-mail me the author and title, and I'll create a page for that book. I will either keep the recommendation anonymous, use your cyber-alias or, if you permit, your real name and/or e-mail address. Add a sentence or two or a more detailed review (up to 1000 words) and I'll consider it for publication here. See the Science Shelf guidelines page for more information.

Please feel free to send this URL (www.scienceshelf.com/news.htm) to your friends. And don't forget, you and they can join the Science Shelf's e-mail list to be alerted to the latest news at the site. Please be assured that I will not share your name or e-mail or use them for other purposes.

Happy science reading!

Fred Bortz

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