The
Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing or Choice are
Undermining Education by Diane Ravitch. Clicking the book cover takes you to my review. If you'd prefer to follow this direct link to the book at Amazon.com, be sure to look at the most recent customer reviews, where you'll find one called "Intriguing and Informative, Regardless of Your Political Stance" by Science Shelf reader Dan Murphy, who is a family physician and school board member in Oregon. Without stating his personal position on Ravitch's conclusions, he makes a powerful case for everyone involved in the educational enterprise to consider what she says.
The Flooded Earth: Our Future in a World Without Ice Caps, I take author Peter D. Ward to task, not for the science but rather for the way he presents it. His readers appreciate his provocative style that leads in challenging directions, but, to quote my review:This time Ward may have allowed speculation to carry him farther than most readers will be willing to go.
The problem won't be the writing or the subject matter. Ward's narrative skills are a strong as ever. His readers accept that human activity has increased atmospheric carbon dioxide and, consequently, has set the planet on a path toward a very different climate.
They understand that the greatest and least predictable effect will be the melting of the polar ice sheets and the consequent rise in sea level.
They will also accept his scientific argument that looking at the geological record can shed light on the likely consequences of a rapid rise in CO2.
So they will accept his main premise: "The greatest single scientific question--and for our society, a question of life or death--is how far and how fast the seas will rise.... It doesn't take much of a change in climate conditions to edge us from manageability into catastrophe."
The problem is likely to be the way Ward chooses to describe that catastrophe. He presents a series of speculative vignettes of life at various low-lying locations from Miami to Venice to the Netherlands to Bangladesh, as the level of atmospheric CO2 and the oceans rise. Implicit in this future history is that "the very nature of politicians and the people they serve mitigates ... proactive response to climate change."
Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error by Kathryn Schulz. My review notes:Imagination, illusion, and humor are just a few of the human traits and abilities that, according to Schulz, are intimately connected with being wrong. Without flubs, missteps, gaffes, blunders, illusions, misperceptions, misapprehensions, and clinging to mistaken beliefs (until we correctly or incorrectly believe otherwise), we would not truly be human.You won't go wrong giving this book a try.
Readers will find tasty tidbits in every chapter. One striking insight is that "we can't talk about error in the first person present tense. The moment in which we can logically say 'I am wrong' simply doesn't exist; in becoming aware that a belief is false, we simultaneously cease to believe it."
Here's Looking at Euclid: A Surprising Excursion Through the Astonishing World of Math by Alex Bellos. That link takes you to the Science Shelf version of a review that includes an arcane limerick, which the book review editor of the Dallas Morning News decided to cut. He was probably right, but then his readers are probably less math-savvy than you are.
Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void. A single sentence synopsis of that review is: "Roach's fans will not be disappointed." Translated, that means you will laugh a lot and learn a lot about the challenges of launching flesh-and-blood, food-eating, waste-eliminating, hormone-driven, fallible, gravity-dependent human beings for a space voyage that will last for several months before arriving at an unearthly destination. And you thought rocket science was hard!
The Grand Design, an upcoming book by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. I'm still pondering what to say about it in my review. In any case, I've granted exclusive rights to that review to the Philadelphia Inquirer through September 12, 2010. At that point, I'll change the link in this paragraph to point to the Science Shelf review. Right now, it points to a page at Amazon.com for pre-ordering the book. UPDATE: The Inquirer published the review on September 5, so you can now read it here.
Massive: The Missing Particle That Sparked the Greatest Hunt in Science by Ian Sample. There's a chance that the book may already be slightly dated when it appears in November, depending on what happens at Fermilab in llinois and the Large Hadron Collider, which straddles the Swiss-French border deep underground. Still, its main themes promise to hold up nicely. The blurb on the back cover of the advance reading copy describes it as "A prize-winning science writer's history of the 40-year search for the Higgs boson and the intense rivalries, clashing egos, and grand ambition that led to the brink of a world-changing discovery." Stay tuned for my assessment of how well Massive lives up to its publicity.
Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception by Charles Seife. I've previously written very positive reviews of two of Seife's other math-related books, 
Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea and 
Alpha and Omega: The Search for the Beginning and the End of the Universe. If the review turns out well, I have a commitment from one of my favorite book review editors to take a serious look. But even if my review isn't published in a newspaper, I'll post it here at Science Shelf.
the Pan Ohio Hope Ride. The picture shows him at the end of the 2009 event after biking about 320 miles from Cleveland to Cincinnati over four days. Even if you encounter this page after the 2010 event is completed, the additional donations will help families by giving them free or affordable lodging in one of those two cities' Hope Lodges while loved ones are undergoing cancer treatment. FYI, my son is the elementary science teacher at the Canton (OH) Country Day School.
Do Hummingbirds Hum? Fascinating Answers to Questions about Hummingbirds (Animal Q&a Series, parperback) by George C. West and Carol A. Butler
On Fact and Fraud: Cautionary Tales from the Front Lines of Science by David Goodstein (author of Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil)
How It Ends: From You to the Universe by Chris Impey
Girls on the Edge: The Four Factors Driving the New Crisis for Girls-Sexual Identity, the Cyberbubble, Obsessions, Environmental Toxins by Leonard Sax
Professor Stewart's Hoard of Mathematical Treasures by Ian Stewart
Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality by Manjit Kumar
The Art and Politics of Science by Harold Varmus
Pavlov's Dog and Schroedinger's Cat: Scenes from the Living Laboratory by Ron Harre'
The Pythagorean Theorem: The Story of Its Power and Beauty by Alfred S. Posamentier
The Wave Watcher's Companion: From Ocean Waves to Light Waves via Shock Waves, Stadium Waves, and All the Rest of Life's Undulations by Gavin Pretor-Pinney (author of The Cloudspotters Guide: The Science History and Culture of Clouds)
The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr
The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness by Oren Harman
How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like by Paul Bloom
The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics by David Harriman
How to Mellify a Corpse: And Other Human Stories of Ancient Science and Superstition by Vicki Leon
Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine
The Smart Swarm: How Understanding Flocks, Schools, and Colonies Can Make Us Better at Communicating, Decision Making, and Getting Things Done by Peter Miller
