Book Review: Skeptic
/Popular debater and science writer Michael Shermer's latest book collects some of the columns he's written for Scientific American
Read MoreBook Review: Cosmosapiens
/A sweeping new overview of the sciences has big ambitions - and some odd sticking points
Read MoreBook Review: Half-Life
/In 1950 a prominent Western nuclear physicist disappeared - and re-surfaced years later in the Soviet Union, helping the Russians to develop their atomic arsenal. A gripping new book tells the story of a traitor who was also a genius
Read MoreBook Review: The Lagoon
/We think of Aristotle as the premiere ancient philosopher, but Armand Marie Leroi's witty, masterful new book urges us to remember that the philosopher was first and foremost a naturalist.
Read MoreBook Review: Dodging Extinction
/In the face of a black wall of facts about environmental degradation and mass extinction, a scientist and teacher offers a much-needed note of hope
Read MoreClassics Reissued: Cosmos
/A quarter-century after its first appearance, a beloved popular-science classic gets a new reprint
Read MoreBook Review: Signatures of Life
/A popular science writer looks at the evidence for life on other planets
Read MoreBook Review: Scatter, Adapt, and Remember
/One of our most enjoyable science-writers turns in a reasonably hopeful prognosis for mankind's future
Read MoreBook Review: The Design in Nature
/The originator of Constructal Theory writes another book expounding his notion that all things flow against resistance, and that everything flowing is alive.
Read MoreNow in Paperback: Evolution - The First Four Billion Years
/A gigantic new paperback examines every nook and cranny of Darwin's famous theory, still controversial after 150 years.
Read MoreReview of The Evolution of God
/In his review of The Evolution of God, Ignazio de Vega illustrates how Robert Wright investigates the origins of humankind's notions of God.
Read MoreWonderful Water World
/All life on Earth is bound to our vast and complex oceans, the subject of The Smithsonian Institute’s new exhibit. Ben Soderquist dives into its companion volume: Ocean: Our Water, Our World.
Read MoreTerror Planet
/It has been a part of every human life since mankind was born – but how much does any of us know about lightning? Terry Soderquist reviews John S. Friedman’s Out of the Blue and tries to fill in the gaps on this most scarifying of natural phenomena.
Read MoreBeautiful Corpses
/In The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments, George Johnson assays the experiments he sees as most elegantly defining the wonder of the scientific method. But with their reliance on chemicals, voltages, and vivisections, are these experiments really “beautiful?” Lianne Habinek straps on her lab goggles and takes a look.
Read MoreAbsent Friends: Oh True Apothecary!
/In this regular feature, Steve Donoghue celebrates the books of the 17th-Century physician Nicholas Culpeper, whose medicine may be archaic but whose wisdom and literary merit are by no means obsolete.
Read MoreLab v. Library
/Jonah Lehrer’s Proust Was a Neuroscientist attempts to reconcile the ageless turf war between the arts and sciences, but, as Lianne Habinek reports, Lehrer’s propositions may leave both sides feelings shortchanged.
Read MoreA Tiny and Swattable Mind
/Steve Donoghue gently debunks the anthropocentric conceits of Pulitzer Prize-winner Douglas Hofstadter’s newest book, I Am a Strange Loop.
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