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These are science news’ favorite books of 2021.

These are the Science News staff’s picks for must-read science books of the year.

‘Flavorama’ guides readers through the complex landscape of flavor

Rain Bosworth smiling and looking at a parent-child pair to her left. She has blonde hair and blue eyes and wearing blue button-up shirt. The parent is looking at an iPad, sitting in front of them on a round table. The iPad is displaying what appears to be a video with a person signing. The parent has black hair and wearing a navy polka dot shirt. The child is sitting on the parent's lap and staring at Bosworth.

Rain Bosworth studies how deaf children experience the world

A woman is pictured in front of three overlapping circles, representing the three stars of an alien star system, in an image from the Netflix show "3 Body Problem."

Separating science fact from fiction in Netflix’s ‘3 Body Problem’

Language model misses depression in Black people's social media posts.

Language models may miss signs of depression in Black people’s Facebook posts

Aimee Grant is sitting on a wheelchair against a white wall. She has a short, purple hair and wearing glasses, a necklace and a black short-sleeve dress with white flower pattern. She also has tattoos on her right arm.

Aimee Grant investigates the needs of autistic people

A photograph of four silhouetted people standing in front of a warm toned abstract piece of artwork that featured tones of yellow, red, orange and pink swirls.

In ‘Get the Picture,’ science helps explore the meaning of art

What Science News saw during the solar eclipse

During the awe of totality, scientists studied our planet’s reactions

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Book Reviews in 2022

The history of US health inequity, and a vision for the Moon: Books in Brief

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks.

Andrew Robinson

How commercial rivalry is ruining space, and more: Books in brief

The doubt behind knowing, and insights in sci-fi: Books in brief

How smallpox inoculation united America

Government responsibility for public health shaped the fledgling nation’s concepts of freedom.

Heidi Ledford

Greta Thunberg on climate solutions, and more: Books in brief

Orphan drugs, and the science of 007: Books in brief

Why did the FBI track Nobel-winning microbiologist Salvador Luria?

The refugee phage pioneer was denied a passport for championing peace and freedom.

Alison Abbott

How science museums can use their power

A trawl through exhibition halls and storage rooms reveals a drive to do better.

Anna Novitzky

California on fire, and can plants think? Books in brief

The rise of scientific racism in palaeoanthropology

A forensic anthropologist unmasks insidious interpretations of fossil finds.

Fatimah Jackson

Huxley: the family that championed evolution

A multigenerational biography illuminates a dynasty’s vexed influence on science and society.

Stuart Mathieson

Time to curb the data brokers

Governments should provide for digital public information infrastructure — but how?

Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe

Old trees have much to teach us

An expansive global history explores humanity’s vexed relationship with venerable plants.

Josie Glausiusz

A universe of biodiversity and saved by migration: Books in brief

Violent conservation, and your brain on magic: Books in brief

This naval oceanographer couldn’t go to sea but was key to planning wartime landings

Mary Sears led a mostly female research team that was crucial to US operations in the Pacific theatre in the 1940s.

Alexandra Witze

The double toll of viruses and social injustice

COVID-19 is just the latest disease to expose persistent racism and poverty.

Jennifer Hochschild

Peter Higgs: the man behind the God particle

A friend’s close look at a reclusive physicist and his community.

Robert P. Crease

How DDT lingers, and why we help others: Books in brief

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the week’s best science picks.

How the peanut trade prolonged slavery

The legume’s history in West Africa is intimately linked with conquest.

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The Best Books of 2023

A Smithsonian magazine special report

The Ten Best Science Books of 2023

From stories on the depths of the ocean to the stars in the sky, these are the works that moved us the most this year

Bridget Alex , Riley Black , Dan Falk , Shi En Kim , Carlyn Kranking and Joe Spring

In the past 12 months, record-breaking wildfires burned across Canada, and a tragic blaze swept through Maui . A piece of an asteroid landed on Earth after an epic space mission, and artificial intelligence advanced in leaps and bounds. In our oceans, a sub imploded on a fatal dive to the Titanic , and orcas gained our attention as they broke rudders off boats.

In between writing and editing articles about all of those stories, we read longer, more involved works of nonfiction. From these, we picked our ten favorites published between December of last year and this November. They range from a book about a group dedicated to rehabilitating injured turtles, to the story of a damaging wildfire that burned through a city in Canada, to a work on the amazing discoveries that have been made by scientists exploring the ocean’s depths. Check out these top science titles from the past year, selected by Smithsonian magazine’s editors and frequent contributors.

Fire Weather: A True Story From a Hotter World by John Vaillant

In a year when record-setting forest fires raged across Canada and their smoke clouded the skies across North America , and a Maui forest fire incinerated the town of Lahaina in a deadly blaze, the most harrowing book we read about climate change featured a devastating forest fire. In Fire Weather , author John Vaillant crafts a thriller about a cataclysmic inferno that burned through the town of Fort McMurray, Alberta, in May 2016. (We ran an excerpt of the book here .) The blaze generated hurricane-force winds and lightning, and entire neighborhoods burned to the ground under a type of pyrocumulus cloud usually associated with volcanoes. Roughly 100,000 people evacuated what would become the costliest disaster in Canadian history.

Vaillant’s story of Fort McMurray’s destruction illustrates a perfect storm of sorts. Fort McMurray is in the middle of Alberta’s tar sands, or bituminous sands. As Vaillant colorfully writes, “Bituminous sand is to a barrel of oil what a sandbox soaked in molasses is to a bottle of rum.” Its deposits in Canada are one of the biggest known petroleum reserves in the world, and Fort McMurray is in the energy-intensive business of recovering it, upgrading it and transporting it. The fossil fuel that comes from Fort McMurray, when burned, releases the greenhouse gases that cause climate change—and the conditions in which fires can flourish. Vaillant weaves together the story of the tar sands industry, the impacts of climate change and the white-knuckle evacuation of the town into a frightening wake-up call of our new reality concerning wildfires. — Joe Spring

Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World

With masterly prose and a cinematic eye, Vaillant takes us on a riveting journey through the intertwined histories of North America’s oil industry and the birth of climate science, to the unprecedented devastation wrought by modern forest fires, and into lives forever changed by these disasters.

Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell by Sy Montgomery

Scuttling Earth for at least 220 million years, turtles have survived more than one mass extinction, including the one that offed dinosaurs. But in a geologic instant, humans have pushed more than half their 360 known species to near-extinction. And in an actual instant, animals slated to live a century or more can be killed—after their shells are crushed by cars, their mouths are snagged by fishhooks or their ponds are drained by developers.

Yet there is hope for some turtles. The Turtle Rescue League in Southbridge, Massachusetts, rehabilitates hundreds of ailing turtles each year. In Of Time and Turtles , author Sy Montgomery joins the small squad in spring of 2020, just as routine life freezes for Covid-19. The book recounts her year with the league, as they incubated eggs, injected antibiotics, mended shattered shells and returned healed patients to nature. Montgomery’s sensory-rich writing brings readers into the action: You’ll watch a cold-stunned sea turtle move “in ultra slow-mo, a toy whose batteries are almost run out”; smell a wetland “scented like pencil shavings”; and walk across “moss that cushions and squelches with every step.” You’ll bond with favorite patients like Fire Chief, a 42-pound snapper with a custom-built wheelchair, and Lucy, a tropical tortoise rejuvenated with watermelon slices. Between scenes of reptile rescue, Montgomery draws from research papers, news stories, novels and poetry to muse on turtles and the passage of time. Ultimately though, the shell-armored reptiles, “ancient, unhurried, long-lived beings,” are what help her make peace with mortality and growing old. — Bridget Alex

Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell

National Book Award finalist for The Soul of an Octopus and New York Times bestseller Sy Montgomery turns her journalistic curiosity to the wonder and wisdom of our long-lived cohabitants—turtles—and through their stories of hope and rescue, reveals to us astonishing new perspectives on time and healing.

Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet by Ben Goldfarb

From the start of Ben Goldfarb’s fascinating book on road ecology, Crossings , the reader is peppered with jaw-dropping facts. Some 40 million miles of roadways encircle the Earth. While a half-century ago 3 percent of land-dwelling mammals died on a road, in 2017 that percentage had quadrupled. In 1995, researchers estimated that, in the United States, deer factor into more than a million vehicle crashes annually, injure 29,000 drivers and passengers, and kill more than 200. (We ran an excerpt of the book, with many more surprising facts, here .) And the book is engrossing for other reasons. In it, Goldfarb chronicles roads from California to Canada to Tasmania to show how they have impacted the natural world—and that includes us. He explores how roads have affected everything from butterflies to mountain lions to frogs.

His journey is not just a recounting of dismal experiences. He looks to those places where engineers have built overpasses and underpasses—and animals and humans have benefited as a result. Some of those creations are expensive, but animal crashes cost the U.S. more than $8 billion dollars a year, so fixes are in order. The Nugget Canyon underpasses, built in Wyoming, for example, prevented 95 crashes with animals annually, and so paid for themselves within five years. By citing so many interesting examples of things done right, Goldfarb invites us to contemplate a future of roads that could be much brighter, if we would just adopt an ethic, he says, in which roads embrace the land instead of conquer it. — J.S.

Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet

An eye-opening account of the global ecological transformations wrought by roads, from the award-winning author of Eager .

Starborn: How the Stars Made Us (and Who We Would Be Without Them) by Roberto Trotta

Without the stars, the history of our species would have been very different. That’s the central argument in Roberto Trotta’s engaging homage to the star-studded night sky, Starborn . The stars are more than just pretty: As Trotta shows, our efforts to understand the movements of the stars and planets (and the sun and the moon) played a crucial role in the development of navigation and precision timekeeping. In ancient Egypt, for example, the bright star Sirius was worshipped as a deity, and the start of the new year was signaled when Sirius first became visible in the pre-dawn sky. Seafaring Polynesians, meanwhile, traveled from island to island in the Pacific Ocean by memorizing the positions and movements of some 200 stars—aided by their knowledge of ocean currents, fish, birds and seaweed. Today’s most accurate timekeepers are atomic clocks , which count vibrations of a cesium atom—but even these need to be tweaked based on the sun and stars, because the Earth’s spin is gradually slowing.

But the night sky is no longer as visible as it once was. The author shows just how much we’re losing as light pollution—first from cities and industrialization and now from so-called constellation satellites like those launched by SpaceX—obliterates all but the very brightest stars and planets for millions of Earthlings. Though Trotta is a theoretical physicist, this is nothing like a textbook; rather, the author uses his own insightful observations and personal anecdotes to pay tribute to our evolving relationship with the universe. Perhaps above all, the book is a reminder to look up—and not to take that vista for granted. — Dan Falk

Starborn: How the Stars Made Us (and Who We Would Be Without Them)

A sweeping inquiry into how the night sky has shaped human history

Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O’Connell’s Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People by Tracy Kidder

In Rough Sleepers , author Tracy Kidder profiles a dedicated doctor who treats Boston’s homeless. Harvard-educated physician Jim O’Connell is the founder and president of the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program . “The Program,” as O’Connell calls it, employs roughly 400 workers to treat more than 11,000 homeless people annually. O’Connell, who refers to the unhoused as “rough sleepers,” a 19th-century British term, is called Dr. Jim by his patients. He treats them in a clinic and drives a van to meet them on the streets. He addresses everything from lice and scabies to more advanced problems that patients have following years of neglect, including large tumors and, in one case, a hernia that dropped below a man’s knees. Aside from care, O’Connell sometimes hands out his own money and gift cards.

Homelessness is an overwhelming problem with lots of causes, from poverty to drug addiction to mental illness, and battling it is difficult. O’Connell is just the last line of defense, a committed pro who, by one account, is a man at a bottom of a cliff trying to catch people after they fall off. Although Kidder briefly delves into the increasing urban homelessness problem and organizations’ attempts to fight it, this book makes our list because of the author’s flowing narrative showing the bond among Dr. Jim, his co-workers and his unhoused patients. That often-overlooked sector of society is perhaps best illustrated in the book after one homeless person dies, and people in the clinic and on the street share stories and mourn his passing. “The community of rough sleepers, usually so loose and informal,” Kidder writes, “could sometimes seem as intimately connected as mycelium under a forest floor.” — J.S.

Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O'Connell's urgent mission to bring healing to homeless people

Tracy Kidder has been described by The Baltimore Sun as “a master of the nonfiction narrative.” In Rough Sleepers , Kidder tells the story of Dr. Jim O’Connell, a gifted man who invented a community of care for a city’s unhoused population, including those who sleep on the streets—the “rough sleepers.”

How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures by Sabrina Imbler

Nature is unabashedly queer. We are surrounded by species that live outside our human experience, points of reflective contrast to our terrestrial lives. Sabrina Imbler’s scientifically steeped memoir How Far the Light Reaches revels in these differences, using an aquarium of undersea creatures as foils for significant moments in the author’s life. The preserved remains of a whale are a foil for dissecting a breakup, and our sometimes leering fascination with a marine worm called the sand striker gives form to a meditation on consent. Imbler’s essay “We Swarm,” especially, is a treasure. Squishy marine organisms called salps, which spend part of their lives in aggregations of hundreds of individuals, open a warm recollection of Pride celebrations along the New York shoreline.

Each of Imbler’s chapters is rife with scientific information about the species they’ve chosen, but the book shines as an exercise in undersea empathy. “I want to know what kinds of transformation the cuttlefish is capable of when it is motivated not by fear but by community and sex,” Imbler writes, “and I am not interested in calling it a disguise.” A creature like a cuttlefish may seem so far removed from what we know, separated by over 500 million years of history, but Imbler beautifully demonstrates that we can catch glimmers of ourselves in lives that thrive from the photic zone to the deepest depths. — Riley Black

How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures

A queer, mixed race writer working in a largely white, male field, science and conservation journalist Sabrina Imbler has always been drawn to the mystery of life in the sea, and particularly to creatures living in hostile or remote environments. Each essay in their debut collection profiles one such creature.

The Devil’s Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance by Dan Egan

As chemicals go, phosphorus—number 15 on the periodic table—is something of a paradox. In The Devil’s Element , journalist Dan Egan explains how phosphorus is essential for all life; it can be found in every cell in your body. But it is also combustible and explosive. So-called white phosphorus is a waxy substance that spontaneously combusts when exposed to oxygen—and can cause temperatures to hit 2,370 degrees Fahrenheit. White phosphorus was the key ingredient in the bombs dropped by the Allies on Hamburg, Germany, during World War II, unleashing a firestorm that leveled the city and killed some 37,000 people.

First isolated by a German alchemist in the 1600s, phosphorus today is an essential ingredient in fertilizers; without it, millions would go hungry. But the United States may run out of phosphorus in just a few decades—a looming crisis that Egan says may rival the more talked-about shortages we may soon face with oil and water. Meanwhile, runoff from agricultural use is sending phosphorus into our lakes and rivers, leading to toxic algae blooms and rendering large swaths of water unsafe. A case in point is Florida, which holds more phosphorus deposits than any other state, but is also now plagued with smelly and even dangerous waterways, thanks to the over-use of the chemical. With a compelling mix of science, history and geopolitics, Egan illuminates our complex relationship with this enigmatic element. — D.F.

The Devil's Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance

Phosphorus has played a critical role in some of the most lethal substances on earth: firebombs, rat poison, nerve gas. But it’s also the key component of one of the most vital: fertilizer, which has sustained life for billions of people. In this major work of explanatory science and environmental journalism, Pulitzer Prize finalist Dan Egan investigates the past, present, and future of what has been called “the oil of our time.”

My Father’s Brain: Life in the Shadow of Alzheimer’s by Sandeep Jauhar

Alzheimer’s disease robs a person’s memory, yes, but it also causes sweeping behavioral transformations that can include agitation and stubbornness. Those with the condition can become difficult patients, unrecognizable to their loved ones. The slow-acting and irreversible disease “is more feared than death itself,” writes Sandeep Jauhar in My Father’s Brain . After his father starts to show signs of dementia in 2014, Jauhar’s parents move states to be closer to their sons. But the close proximity does little to prevent his father’s Alzheimer’s from upending the lives of family members. Jauhar doesn’t shy away from narrating the ugly and difficult experiences of his father’s irrational behavior, which often leads to sibling fights and frustration for the author.

The book is an excellent introduction to the impacts of Alzheimer’s—on the patient and caregivers. It shines the brightest when detailing the factors that add financial and logistical challenges to families caring for the chronically ill. Millions of people care for a family member with Alzheimer’s, but Jauhar’s voice is unique; he taps into his dual identity as a doctor and son of immigrants to explore the ethics and cultural expectations of long-term care. Although the book doesn’t offer hope for a preventative or cure, readers will find comfort in Jauhar’s honesty—and, for those going through the same journey of caring for someone with Alzheimer’s, solidarity. — Shi En Kim

My Father's Brain: Life in the Shadow of Alzheimer's

A deeply affecting memoir of a father’s descent into dementia, and a revelatory inquiry into why the human brain degenerates with age and what we can do about it

The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean by Susan Casey

In June, the world paid more attention than usual to deep-sea exploration when OceanGate’s Titan submersible went quiet while exploring the Titanic . Later, the public learned the craft imploded . That was the rare tragic episode of deep-ocean adventures, one years in the making due to the company’s failure to test and heed warnings. But a much more awe-inspiring exploration of the deep has been taking place for decades, and Susan Casey’s enthralling book, The Underworld , documents it in stunning detail. (We ran an excerpt of the book here .) As Casey points out, though you can view maps of Mars on your iPhone, 80 percent of Earth’s seafloor hasn’t been charted in sharp detail. So much remains to be discovered, and Casey makes it a point to see what is out there by interviewing deep-sea pioneers and even heading down thousands of feet in submersibles herself. As she goes, she shares the amazing sights around her—fish that light up like a meteor shower, shrimp doing wheelies and orange microbial mats. She also chronicles the history of deep-sea exploration and details the current efforts to discover more about a world that deserves our attention now more than ever. Many companies are considering mining the seafloor for precious metals, and Casey’s book is a testament to the fact that so many beautiful and important things live down there that we should learn about before doing damage. — J.S.

The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean

Susan Casey is our premiere chronicler of the aquatic world. For The Underworld , she traversed the globe, joining scientists and explorers on dives to the deepest places on the planet, interviewing the marine geologists, marine biologists, and oceanographers who are searching for knowledge in this vast unseen realm.

Better Living Through Birding: Notes From a Black Man in the Natural World by Christian Cooper

In little more than two minutes captured on video in May 2020, the life of New York City birder Christian Cooper drastically changed. He saw a dog run through a forested section of Central Park and asked its owner, a white woman, to leash her pet in accordance with the law. When she refused, he began to film her with his smartphone, and as he did, she said she would call the police on him and tell them “an African American man is threatening my life.” As the racist incident came to national attention, Cooper quickly became the best-known birder in America. And, amid a hobby that is largely older and white, “the fact that that birder is Black turned heads,” Cooper writes.

With his memoir, Better Living Through Birding , the self-described “Black, gay nerd” pulls back the curtain on the rest of his life outside those two minutes. He begins with an inside glimpse into the world of Central Park birders that he entered as a child. Alongside other binocular-toting enthusiasts, he wakes up at the crack of dawn to chase rarities, like the gray-and-yellow Kirtland’s warbler, and finds beauty in the more mundane, like the iridescent sheen of a common grackle. But Cooper’s story takes readers beyond Central Park, to awe-inspiring destinations around the world, from Australia’s Uluru rock to the Everest Base Camp. He also shares experiences from inside the walls of the Marvel Comics offices, where he worked as a writer and editor, and from the streets of New York, where he protests following an incident of violence against a gay couple in upper Manhattan. Every bit of Cooper’s experience is intertwined with his appreciation for nature, and his memoir is punctuated with descriptions of birding so imbued with passion—from watching a fiery-orange Blackburnian warbler in Central Park to sprinting after chimney swifts in Selma, Alabama—that they could make even a non-birder’s veins pulse with excitement. — Carlyn Kranking

Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World

Better Living Through Birding recounts Christian Cooper’s journey through the wonderful world of birds and what they can teach us about life, if only we would look and listen.

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A Note to our Readers Smithsonian magazine participates in affiliate link advertising programs. If you purchase an item through these links, we receive a commission.

Bridget Alex | | READ MORE

Bridget Alex is an anthropologist and science writer based in Pasadena, California. Her stories can be found in outlets including Discover , Science , and Atlas Obscura . She tweets @bannelia .

Riley Black | | READ MORE

Riley Black is the author of The Last Days of the Dinosaurs and many other books. She is a science correspondent for Smithsonian magazine covering fossils and natural history, and she writes about the prehistoric past for a variety of publications.

Dan Falk | | READ MORE

Dan Falk is a science journalist based in Toronto. His books include The Science of Shakespeare and In Search of Time .

Shi En Kim | | READ MORE

Shi En Kim is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance science journalist. Her work has appeared in National Geographic , Scientific American , the Atlantic , Popular Science and others. In 2021, she interned at Smithsonian magazine as an AAAS Mass Media Fellow.

Carlyn Kranking | | READ MORE

Carlyn Kranking is the assistant web editor for science and innovation.

Joe Spring | READ MORE

Joe Spring is the associate digital science editor for Smithsonian magazine.

10 of the best popular science books as chosen by authors and writers

By George Monbiot , Colin Tudge , Pragya Agarwal , Jonathan Drori , Emily Shuckburgh , Cassandra Coburn , Jojo Mehta , Jim Down , Camilla Pang and Richard Walker

24 April 2021

A fantastic science book can wow you, entertain you and change the way you think, all over the course of a few hundred pages. It can also act as a source of inspiration. We have asked 10 brilliant science writers and authors to pick their favourites, many of which were influenced earlier in their careers by their choices. Did your favourite make the list?

The best popular science books as picked by science writers

Jonathan Drori chooses Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

This is like being asked to choose the best vegetable or your favourite child! However, if pressed, I would nominate Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring , published in 1962 but still luminous and relevant. With her strong evidence and clear voice, Carson ignited global environmental efforts by detailing the effects of DDT and other pesticides on the environment . In addition to showing that life on Earth is composed of complex webs of interdependency, she revealed the dangers posed to humans and wildlife by artificial pesticides and exposed the cosy acceptance of industry propaganda by government officials.

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55 Books Scientific American Recommends in 2023

The best fiction, nonfiction, history and sci-fi books Scientific American staff read in 2023

By Brianne Kane

Person reading book in front of book shelf

Tara Moore/Getty Images

The Scientific American editorial team learned a lot this year. We debated why we’ll never live in space , explored the deep ocean (sort of), and asked how dinosaurs got so big . We also read a ton of books. While of course there were quite a few science fiction books (we can't help ourselves), we also learned how to cook, fell in and out of love with intriguing fictional characters, and got the scoop on how many bears really exist, what our universe actually looks like and why we’re even here.

Below is a collection of what SciAm staff read this year, including recent fiction and nonfiction, selections from our Reviews section , titles from some familiar faces and a bountiful backlist to keep your TBR list on its toes.

Happy reading!

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1. A City on Mars by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith Penguin Random House, 2023 (Tags: Space, Graphic Novel)

“Critically acclaimed, bestselling authors Kelly and Zach Weinersmith set out to write the essential guide to a glorious future of space settlements , but after years of research, they aren’t so sure it’s a good idea,” Penguin Random House says. “In a world hurtling toward human expansion into space, A City on Mars investigates whether the dream of new worlds won’t create nightmares, both for settlers and the people they leave behind. In the process, the Weinersmiths answer every question about space you’ve ever wondered about, and many you’ve never considered.”

“Hilarious, unputdownable book; though you may feel worse about possible space settlements, you’ll value living here on Earth all the more.” — Clara Moskowitz, Senior Editor, space and physics

2. Eight Bears by Gloria Dickie W.W. Norton, 2023 (Tags: History, Nature)

“In Eight Bears, ” notes W.W. Norton, “journalist Gloria Dickie embarks on a globe-trotting journey to explore each bear’s story, whisking readers from the cloud forests of the Andes to the ice floes of the Arctic; from the jungles of India to the backwoods of the Rocky Mountain West.”

“There are only eight true bears in the world?!” — Meghan Bartels, News Reporter

3. Perfectly Good Food by Irene and Margaret Li W.W. Norton, 2023 (Tags: Cooking, Reference)

“Written by the chef-sisters behind Boston’s acclaimed Mei Mei Dumplings, this cookbook/field guide is a crucial resource for the thrifty chef, the environmentally mindful cook, and anyone looking to make the most of their ingredients,” the publisher says.

“I don’t have a lot of cookbooks, but this book is right next to The Joy of Cooking for me, it's so helpful.” — Brianne Kane, Senior Editorial Coordinator

4. The Man from the Future by Ananyo Bhattacharya W.W. Norton, 2022 (Tags: Biography, History, Mathematics)

“An electrifying biography of one of the most extraordinary scientists of the twentieth century and the world he made. The smartphones in our pockets and computers like brains. The vagaries of game theory and evolutionary biology. Nuclear weapons and self-replicating spacecrafts. All bear the fingerprints of one remarkable, yet largely overlooked, man: John von Neumann,” states W.W. Norton.

“Incredible look at the mind and times of maybe the smartest person who ever lived.” — Gary Stix, Senior Editor, mind and brain

5. Period by Kate Clancy Princeton University Press, 2023 (Tags: Biology, Medicine, History)

“ Period counters the false theories that have long defined the study of the uterus, exposing the eugenic history of gynecology while providing an intersectional feminist perspective on menstruation science,” according to Princeton University Press.

“Worth reading if only for the demolition of the idea of a ‘normal’ 28-day cycle! She's also great at considering the social implications of science.” — Meghan Bartels, News Reporter

6. Our Fragile Moment by Michael Mann Hachette, 2023 (Tags: Climate Change, Nature)

“For the vast majority of its 4.54 billion years,” says the publisher, “Earth has proven it can manage just fine without human beings . Then came the first proto-humans, who emerged just a little more than 2 million years ago—a fleeting moment in geological time. What is it that made this benevolent moment of ours possible? Ironically, it’s the very same thing that now threatens us—climate change.”

“Really smart, clever and eye-opening look at the five most extreme shifts in Earth's climate over 4.5 billion years, and the lessons those episodes have for our dramatic climate shift today.” — Mark Fischetti, Senior Editor, sustainability

7. The Patriarchs by Angela Saini Penguin Random House (Tags: History, Sociology)

“In this bold and radical book, award-winning science journalist Angela Saini explores the roots of what we call patriarchy, uncovering a complex history of how it first became embedded in societies and spread across the globe from prehistory into the present,” the publisher says.

“A powerful show of how the patriarchy is made and remade, over and over again.” — Meghan Bartels, News Reporter

8. The Warped Side of Our Universe by Kip Thorne, Lia Halloran Liveright, 2023 (Tags: Space/Physics, Art)

“Epic verse and pulsating paintings merge to shed light on time travel, black holes, gravitational waves and the birth of the universe. Nearly two decades in the making, The Warped Side of Our Universe marks the historic collaboration of Nobel Laureate Kip Thorne and award-winning artist Lia Halloran. It brings to vivid life the wonders and wildness of our universe ’s ‘Warped Side,’” according to Liveright, an imprint of W.W. Norton.

“I thought I was getting another book on black holes; instead I discovered a delightful explosion of illustrations, science and verse.” — Dan Vergano, Senior Opinion Editor

9. The Possibility of Life by Jaime Green HarperCollins, 2023 (Tags: Astronomy, Philosophy)

From the publisher: “In The Possibility of Life, acclaimed science journalist Jaime Green traces the history of our understanding, from the days of Galileo and Copernicus to our contemporary quest for exoplanets. Along the way, she interweaves insights from science fiction writers who construct worlds that in turn inspire scientists.… The Possibility of Life explores our evolving conception of the cosmos to ask an even deeper question: What does it mean to be human?”

“I know Jaime, so I've been waiting for this book for a long time, and it was worth the wait!” — Meghan Bartels, News Reporter

10. Grace in All Simplicity by Chris Quigg and Robert Cahn Pegasus Books, 2023 (Tags: Physics, History)

“ Grace in All Simplicity narrates the saga of how we have prospected for some of Nature’s most tightly held secrets, the basic constituents of matter and the fundamental forces that rule them. In these pages we will meet scientists of both past and present. These men and women are professional scientists and amateurs, the eccentric and the conventional, performers and introverts. Scientists themselves, Cahn and Quigg convey their infectious joy as they search for new laws of nature,” states Pegasus Books.

“A fascinating and accessible description of the incredible revolution physicists have made in understanding the world's smallest pieces.” — Clara Moskowitz, Senior Editor, space and physics

1. Girlfriend on Mars by Deborah Willis W.W. Norton, 2023 (Tags: Space, Romance)

“ Girlfriend on Mars is at once a satirical indictment of our pursuit of fame and wealth amidst environmental crisis, and an exploration of humanity’s deepest longing, greatest quest, and most enduring cliché: love,” the publisher says.

“I loved this book, and hated how I related to both main characters Amber and Adam.” — Brianne Kane, Senior Editorial Coordinator

2. Harold by Steven Wright Simon & Schuster, 2023 (Tags: Humor, Historical Fiction)

“Harold documents the meandering, surreal, often hilarious, and always thought-provoking stream-of-consciousness ruminations of the title character during a single day in class,” notes the publisher. “This novel will change the way you perceive your daily existence.”

“It's definitely a fun read but fans of his comedy might enjoy it more. Takes place in the mind of a young boy in just one day in school, oddly enough, bird lovers might enjoy it. You'll have to find out why!” —Silvia De Santis, Prepress and Quality Manager

3. I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore Knopf, 2023 (Tags: Historical Fiction, Magical Realism)

“Bold, meditative, theatrical, this new novel is an inventive, poetic portrait of lovers and siblings as it questions the stories we have been told which may or may not be true. I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home takes us through a trap door, into a windswept, imagined journey to the tragic-comic landscape that is, unmistakably, the world of Lorrie Moore,” according to publisher Knopf, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

“A road-trip novel about the inevitability of entropy—in our shared physical world and in our private emotional ones” —Angelique Rondeau, Senior Copy Editor

4. Other People's Clothes by Calla Henkel Penguin Random House, 2022 (Tags: Mystery, LGBTQ+, Historical Fiction)

“Hoping to escape the pain of the recent murder of her best friend, art student Zoe Beech finds herself studying abroad in the bohemian capital of Europe—Berlin. Rudderless, Zoe relies on the arrangements of fellow exchange student Hailey Mader, who idolizes Warhol and Britney Spears and wants nothing more than to be an art star,” the publisher says. “ Other People’s Clothes brilliantly illuminates the sometimes dangerous intensity of female friendships, as well as offering an unforgettable window into millennial life and the lengths people will go to in order to eradicate emotional pain.”

“This book could totally be turned into a series/movie!” —Isabella Bruni, Digital Producer

5. Prophet by Sin Blaché and Helen Macdonald Grove, 2023 (Tags: Mystery, LGBTQ+, Romance)

From the publisher: “Adam Rubenstein and Sunil Rao have been reluctant partners since their Uzbekistan days. Adam is a seemingly unflappable American Intelligence officer and Rao is an ex-MI6 agent, an addict and rudderless pleasure hound, with the uncanny ability to discern the truth of things—about everyone and everything other than Adam. When an American diner turns up in a foggy field in the U.K. after a mysterious death, Adam and Rao are called in to investigate, setting into motion the most dangerous and otherworldly mission of their lives.”

“I could not put this book down and nearly threw it across the room when I finished it!” — Brianne Kane, Senior Editorial Coordinator

6. The Road to Roswell by Connie Willis Penguin Random House, 2023 (Tags: Humor, Romance, Fantasy)

“ The Road to Roswell is packed full of Men in Black, Elvis impersonators, tourist traps, rattlesnakes, chemtrails, and Close Encounters of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth kind,” the publisher notes. “Can Francie, stuck in a neon green bridesmaid’s dress, save the world—and still make it back for the wedding?”

“Do you want to drive aimlessly around New Mexico under the dictatorship of a well-meaning alien and the friends he picks up along the way?” — Meghan Bartels, News Reporter

7. Archangel by Andrea Barrett W.W. Norton, 2023 (Tags: Short Stories, Historical Fiction)

“A young boy comes of age amid an explosion of homespun investigations. A widowed science writer tries to reconcile the influence of emotion on scientific theory. A famous biologist finds himself outpaced by his students, even as he seeks to teach them. Throughout these deftly plotted stories, Andrea Barrett weaves subtle connections among the tales within this collection and characters in her earlier works,” the publisher says.

“The stories in this collection explore how people react when new scientific theories sweep onto the scene: Some embrace the fresh ideas, others defend the more established orthodoxies at all costs. And in between such debates, life—work, children, war—keeps on happening.” — Sophie Bushwick, Associate Editor, technology

8. The Terraformers by Annie Newitz Macmillan (Tags: Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction)

“Destry's life is dedicated to terraforming Sask-E. As part of the Environmental Rescue Team, she cares for the planet and its burgeoning eco-systems as her parents and their parents did before her. But the bright, clean future they're building comes under threat when Destry discovers a city full of people that shouldn’t exist, hidden inside a massive volcano,” writes the publisher. “ The Terraformers will take you on a journey spanning thousands of years and exploring the triumphs, strife, and hope that find us wherever we make our home.”

“A delightful, world-building science-fiction book about—world-building, as in terraforming new worlds for future human habitation. I fell for the main characters right away, human and nonhuman.” — Laura Helmuth, Editor in Chief

9. The Nature Book by Tom Comitta Coffee House Press, 2023 (Tags: Nature, Speculative Fiction)

“Part sweeping evocation of Earth’s rhythms, part literary archive, part post-human novel, The Nature Book collages descriptions of the natural world into a singular symphonic paean to the planet,”says Coffee House Press. “What does our nature writing say about us, and more urgently, what would it say without us?”

“Easily one of the most creative literary works I’ve ever read, this will be on my bedside table maybe forever.” — Brianne Kane, Senior Editorial Coordinator

10. This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub Penguin Random House, 2022 (Tags: Time Travel, History)

“On the eve of her fortieth birthday, Alice’s life isn’t terrible,” writes the publisher. “But her father is ailing, and it feels to her as if something is missing. When she wakes up the next morning, she finds herself back in 1996, reliving her sixteenth birthday. But it isn’t just her adolescent body that shocks her, or seeing her high school crush—it’s her dad, the vital, charming, forty-something version of her father with whom she is reunited. Now armed with a new perspective on her own life and his, some past events take on new meaning. Is there anything that she would change if she could?”

“I’ll read almost anything that involves a woman going back to the recent past, and everyone I know kept telling me not to miss this one” — Brianne Kane, Senior Editorial Coordinator

Selections from Review Section

1. For Blood and Money by Nathan Vardi W.W. Norton, 2023 (Tags: Business, Medicine, Technology)

“ For Blood and Money tells the little-known story of how an upstart biotechnology company created a one-in-a-million cancer drug, and how members of the core team—denied their share of the profits—went and did it again. In this epic saga of money and science, veteran financial journalist Nathan Vardi explains how the invention of two of the biggest cancer drugs in history became (for their backers) two of the greatest Wall Street bets of all time,” the publisher says.

"One can already imagine the movie version" —Madana Chaffa, January issue

2. The Darkness Manifesto by Johan Eklöf and translated by Elizabeth DeNoma Scribner, 2023 (Tags: Philosophy, Nature)

“How much light is too much light? Satellite pictures show our planet as a brightly glowing orb, and in our era of constant illumination, light pollution has become a major issue. The world’s flora and fauna have evolved to operate in the natural cycle of day and night. But in the last 150 years, we have extended our day—and in doing so have forced out the inhabitants of the night and disrupted the circadian rhythms necessary to sustain all living things, including ourselves,” the publisher says.

"Eklöf highlights the startling sprawl of these lesser-known consequences without evoking a hopeless or cynical tone. Instead the book is a reflective reminder that our control of the world is as delicate as the smallest of species affected by it." —Sam Miller, February issue

3. Your Brain on Art by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross Penguin Random House, 2023 (Tags: Art, Neuroscience)

“Magsamen and Ross offer compelling research that shows how engaging in an art project for as little as forty-five minutes reduces the stress hormone cortisol, no matter your skill level, and just one art experience per month can extend your life by ten years. They expand our understanding of how playing music builds cognitive skills and enhances learning; the vibrations of a tuning fork create sound waves to counteract stress; virtual reality can provide cutting-edge therapeutic benefit; and interactive exhibits dissolve the boundaries between art and viewers, engaging all of our senses and strengthening memory,” states the publisher.

"Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross walk a fine line between expounding the health benefits of participating in art and arguing that such therapeutic effects need not be perfectly understood by science to be useful." —Maddie Bender, March issue

4. Elixir by Theresa Levitt Harvard University Press, 2023 (Tags: History, Chemistry, Philosophy)

“For centuries, scientists believed that living matter possessed a special quality—a spirit or essence—that differentiated it from nonliving matter,” writes Harvard University press. “ Elixir tells the story of two young chemists who were not convinced, and how their work rewrote the boundary between life and nonlife.… Rich in sparks and smells, brimming with eccentric characters, experimental daring, and the romance of the Bohemian salon, Elixir is a fascinating cultural and scientific history.”

"Levitt traces how researchers’ pursuit of the true composition of these oils laid the foundation for modern organic chemistry." —Fionna M.D. Samuels, April issue

5. In The Herbarium by Maura C. Flannery Yale University Press, 2023 (Tags: Botany, History)

“Maura C. Flannery tells the history of herbaria, from the earliest collections belonging to such advocates of the technique as sixteenth-century botanist Luca Ghini,” writes Yale University Press. “She charts the growth of herbaria during the Age of Exploration, the development of classification systems to organize the collections, and herbaria’s indispensable role in the tracking of climate change and molecular evolution.”

“Maura C. Flannery makes a compelling case for reinvigorating the relevance of these ‘hidden gardens’ by exploring their significance as bellwethers of climate change, libraries for biodiversity research, sources of plant DNA, and opportunities to acknowledge and amend the erasure of Indigenous and enslaved people’s contributions to botany.” —Dana Dunham, May issue

6. On Earth as It Is on Television by Emily Jane Penguin Random House, 2023 (Tags: Humor, Fantasy)

“Since long before the spaceships’ fleeting presence, Blaine has been content to go along with the whims of his supermom wife and half-feral, television-addicted children. But when the kids blithely ponder skinning people to see if they’re aliens, and his wife drags them all on a surprise road trip to Disney World, even steady Blaine begins to crack. Embracing the strangeness that is life in the twenty-first century, On Earth as It Is on Television is a rollicking, heartfelt tale of first contact that practically leaps off the planet,” the publisher says.

“Unusually fun and absurd take on what might otherwise be just another imitation of Independence Day or The Day the Earth Stood Still. ” —Meg Elison , June Issue

7. A Second Chance for Yesterday RA Sinn (pseudonym for siblings Rachel Hope Cleves and Aram Sinnreich) Simon & Schuster, 2023 (Tags: Romance, Time Travel)

“Nev Bourne is a hotshot programmer for the latest and greatest tech invention out there: SavePoint, the brain implant that rewinds the seconds of all our most embarrassing moments,” writes Simon & Schuster. “But when she hits go on the test-run, she wakes up the next day only to discover it's yesterday…. Created by historian and futurist sibling authors, A Second Chance for Yesterday is a time-twisting story of family, redemption and queer love.”

“A perceptive, mesmerizing time-travel tale of self-revelation and redemption.” —Lorraine Savage, July/August double issue

8. Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang Penguin Random House, 2023 (Tags: Speculative Fiction, LGBTQ+)

“Sensuous and surprising, joyous and bitingly sharp, told in language as alluring as it is original, Land of Milk and Honey lays provocatively bare the ethics of seeking pleasure in a dying world,” says the publisher. “It is a daringly imaginative exploration of desire and deception, privilege and faith, and the roles we play to survive. Most of all, it is a love letter to food, to wild delight, and to the transformative power of a woman embracing her own appetite.”

"A thought-provoking fusion of the sensory and the speculative." —Dana Dunham, September issue

9. Alfie & Me by Carl Safina W.W. Norton, 2023 (Tags: Biography, Nature, Memoir)

“ Alfie & Me is the story of the remarkable impact this little owl would have on their lives. The continuing bond of trust following her freedom—and her raising of her own wild brood—coincided with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a year in which Carl and Patricia were forced to spend time at home without the normal obligations of work and travel. Witnessing all the fine details of their feathered friend’s life offered Carl and Patricia a view of existence from Alfie’s perspective,” according to W.W. Norton.

"Don’t expect a dramatic, sensational plot; here the quiet message is that nature doesn’t need to serve us humans beyond existing for itself." —Sam Miller, October issue

10. Eat, Poop, Die by Joe Roman Hachette, 2023 (Tags: Nature, History)

“From the volcanoes of Iceland to the tropical waters of Hawaii, the great plains of the American heartland, and beyond, Eat, Poop, Die takes readers on an exhilarating and enlightening global adventure, revealing the remarkable ways in which the most basic biological activities of animals make and remake the world—and how a deeper understanding of these cycles provides us with opportunities to undo the environmental damage humanity has wrought on the planet we call home,” the publisher says.

"One of those rare books that truly changes the way you look at the world." —Lucy Cooke, November issue

Some Familiar Faces

Here’s a look at some of the books published this past year by Scientific American staff and contributors.

1. The Mind of a Bee by Lars Chittka Princeton University Press, 2022 (Tags: Nature, Neuroscience)

“Most of us are aware of the hive mind—the power of bees as an amazing collective,” notes Princeton University Press. “But do we know how uniquely intelligent bees are as individuals? In The Mind of a Bee , Lars Chittka draws from decades of research, including his own pioneering work, to argue that bees have remarkable cognitive abilities…. They may even possess consciousness.”

Check out Chittka’s July/August feature asking “ Do Insects Feel Joy and Pain? ”

2. Ice by Amy Brady Penguin Random House, 2023 (Tags: History, Business)

“Ice is everywhere: in gas stations, in restaurants, in hospitals, in our homes. Americans think nothing of dropping a few ice cubes into tall glasses of tea to ward off the heat of a hot summer day…. Ice on-demand has so revolutionized modern life that it’s easy to forget that it wasn’t always this way—and to overlook what aspects of society might just melt away as the planet warms,” the publisher says.

Not only is Brady a contributing editor, but she also contributed a feature article on climate-friendly cocktail recipes in our July/August issue.

3. Under Alien Skies by Philip Plait W.W. Norton, 2023 (Tags: Space, Physics)

“This lively, immersive adventure through the cosmos, Plait draws ingeniously on both the latest scientific research and his prodigious imagination to transport you to ten of the most spectacular sights outer space has to offer,” states W.W. Norton. “In vivid, inventive scenes informed by rigorous science—injected with a dose of Plait’s trademark humor— Under Alien Skies places you on the surface of alien worlds, from our own familiar Moon to the far reaches of our solar system and beyond.”

In a blurb about the book, Editor in Chief Laura Helmuth calls it “a funny, warm, and welcoming guide to the most marvelous places in the universe… You’ll experience what it would be like to actually be there, while learning some of the most mind-expanding science humans have ever figured out.”

4. Building Science Graphics by Jen Christiansen CRC Press, 2022 (Tags: Art, Data Visualization)

“ Building Science Graphics: An illustrated guide to communicating science through diagrams and visualizations is a practical guide for anyone—regardless of previous design experience and preferred drawing tools—interested in creating science-centric illustrated explanatory diagrams…. The heart of the book is composed of two step-by-step graphical worksheets, designed to help jump-start any new project,” the publisher says.

“An amazing resource for all levels of experience, and the best book launch party I’ve been to all year!” — Brianne Kane, Senior Editorial Coordinator

5. I Feel Love by Rachel Nuwer Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023 (Tags: Psychology, Medicine)

“The unlikely story of how the psychedelic drug MDMA emerged from the shadows to the forefront of a medical revolution—and the potential it may hold to help us thrive. Few drugs in history have generated as much controversy as MDMA—or held as much promise. Once vilified as a Schedule I substance that would supposedly eat holes in users’ brains, MDMA (also known as Molly or Ecstasy) is now being hailed as a therapeutic agent that could transform the field of mental health and outpace psilocybin and ketamine as the first psychedelic approved for widespread clinical use” the publisher says.

Nuwer discusses her work with us in this Science, Quickly podcast episode .

Bountiful Backlist

1. The Same Dog by Robert Aickman (Tags: Short Story, Weird Fiction, Horror)

“Nothing is like Aickman, which is both a blessing and a curse if you like his work. I still think about it once a week, even years after reading it.” —Ryan Reid, Art Director

2. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami (Tags: Magical Realism, Science Fiction)

“If you’re into fantasy-sci-fi storylines, you’ll likely get a kick out the character cast: a narrator, who is himself a human data-storage-encryption device, a DIY brain-hacker, an all-pink-clad teen whose sound is initially muted, the unicorn skulls where dreams are held, the creepy inklings and information pirates called semiotics.” —Jeanna Bryner, Managing Editor

3. Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer (Tags: Biography, Nature)

“Older memoir but not to be missed; riveting at its climax and devastating in its impact.” —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor

4. Servants of the Map by Andrea Barrett (Tags: Short Stories, Historical Fiction)

“Caught between science and human desire, characters try to make sense of their lives, going from the tops of the Himalayas to the suburbs of American cities.” —Josh Fischman, Senior Editor, medicine and science policy

5. The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet by Vandana Singh (Tags: Short Stories, Science Fiction)

“Delightful collection of short stories.” —Madhusree Mukerjee, Senior Editor, science and society

6. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (Tags: LGBTQ+, Literary Fiction)

“This was recommended all over TikTok so I finally gave it a chance. Beautifully written but extremely depressing.” —Sunya Bhutta, Chief Engagement Editor

7. H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald (Tags: Memoir, Nature, Birds)

“How has it taken me so long to read this book?” —Sophie Bushwick, Associate Editor, technology

8. The Wonder by Emma Donoghue (Tags: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Religion)

“One of the most memorable/haunting novels I've read in the past few years.” —Amanda Montañez, Associate Graphics Editor

9. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond (Tags: Sociology, History, Social Justice)

“Epic, eye-opening; the reporting is absolutely incredible, and you get so close to some of the characters that it sometimes feels like a novel.” — Amanda Montañez, Associate Graphics Editor

10. Behave by Robert Sapolsky (Tags: Psychology, Neuroscience, Philosophy)

“Fascinating and witty account of what drives our good and bad behaviors.” — Madhusree Mukerjee, Senior Editor, science and society

11. The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai (Tags: LGBTQ+, Historical Fiction)

“Tremendous telling of the Chicago AIDS epidemic during the 1980s. Makkai's extensive research and reporting makes for a story that still resonates today.” — Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor

12. WordSlut by Amanda Montell (Tags: Linguistics, History, Social Justice)

“Such an interesting look at the ways that patriarchy is ensconced in language.” —Meghan Bartels, News Reporter

13. Earthlings by Sayaka Murata; translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori (Tags: Magical Realism, Horror, Literary Fiction)

“A rollercoaster of emotions and very bizarre.” —Sunya Bhutta, Chief Engagement Editor

14. The Sounds of Life by Karen Bakker (Tags: Nature, History)

“A fascinating account of how acoustic technology is allowing us to eavesdrop on creatures' conversations.” —Madhusree Mukerjee, Senior Editor, science and society

15. Fairy Tale by Stephen King (Tags: Fantasy, Horror, Science Fiction)

“Just pure escapism and fun. If you need to get absorbed in a good story, this one's it.” — Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor

16. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (Tags: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction)

“Beautiful characters, heart wrenching story. Mind-opening perspective on an area of the country that often gets looked down upon.” —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor

17. The Myth of Normal by Daniel Maté and Gabor Maté (Tags: Psychology, Sociology)

“This absorbing book argues that trauma is built into Western society and is responsible for many ills, including the autoimmune disease ALS.” —Madhusree Mukerjee, Senior Editor, science and society

18. A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys (Tags: Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, LGBTQ+)

“A wholly original, thoughtful take on extraterrestrial first contact has Earth's citizens wondering if they should go all-in on saving Earth or escape to another planet for a fresh start.” —Clara Moskowitz, Senior Editor, space and physics

19. Heaven by Mieko Kawakami; translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd (Tags: Literary Fiction, Young Adult)

“The book explores trauma bonds and the long-term pain—both mental and physical—that bullying causes.” —Sunya Bhutta, Chief Engagement Editor

20. Astrotopia by Mary-Jane Rubenstein (Tags: Space, Religion)

“A version of spaceflight's story that isn't told often enough.” —Meghan Bartels, News Reporter

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73 best science books you need to read in 2024

Our team has hand-picked the very best science books you should read in 2024.

A good science book won't just teach you some interesting facts: it will help you to look at the world around you in a different way. Whether it's an archaeology book that helps you to re-evaluate humans' place in the natural world, or a cosmology book that takes you back to how it all began, you'll come out the other side with a brand new perspective.

For those with a curious mind, science books are an invaluable resource for learning about subjects you have no idea about. From the more mainstream subjects like health, psychology and wildlife, to the more intense topics like quantum physics and geometry, to the more light-hearted subjects like food science, there's sure to be plenty of new stuff to learn.

Whatever your taste, there are new, brilliant science books being released every week. We've picked our choice of the very best, so read on for plenty of inspiration to expand your personal library.

If you're in the mood for something specific, we also have plenty of reading lists on various subjects to help you choose.

In no particular order, here are some of our very favourite science books.

The best science books to read in 2024

The joy of science.

Jim Al-Khalili

In Jim Al-Khalili’s latest offering, The Joy of Science , we are presented with eight lessons in how to lead a more rational life and see things as they really are. It’s an easily digestible, pocket-sized guide in how to think more scientifically, and how this can benefit us in everyday life.

Looking at things objectively can help break down social constructs and pre-existing beliefs, and the ideas at the heart of scientific method are deeply relevant as we try to navigate the complicated times that we live in.

Listen to Jim explain the origins of the Universe on the Science Focus Podcast

Insectpedia: A Brief Compendium of Insect Lore

By Eric. R. Eaton

With hand-drawn illustrations, anecdotes, and curious facts about some of the most fascinating bug species on the planet, this pocket-friendly encyclopaedia is a delightful and entertaining collection of insect lore and storied history of entomology.

From murder hornets and jumping beans to mole crickets and zombie lady-beetles, Insectpedia has a charming blend of insect facts and mythology. It’s presented in an A-Z format, making it easy to pick up and read for only a few seconds to learn something new. This is an ideal book if you like to start conversations with, “Hey, did you know…”

Geopedia: A Brief Compendium of Geologic Curiosities

By Marcia Bjornerud

Discover a treasure trove of bizarre and awe-inspiring geologic wonders that have captured our imagination over the millennia with Geopedia: A Brief Compendium of Geologic Curiosities . From areology (the study of the geology of Mars) to zircon (a mineral that can outlast almost all other materials on Earth), this is an engaging and entertaining lexicon on the diversity of rocks and our interactions with them.

It covers mythology, geologic processes, and imports from diverse languages, all written with a healthy helping of humour and wit. This pocket-sized book is illustrated, and the hardback comes bound in real cloth, so it’s ideal to toss in your bag and dip into on the go.

The Science of Can and Can’t: A Physicist’s Journey Through the Land of Counterfactuals

Chiara Marletto

Most laws of physics tell us what must happen. Throw a ball in the air and it will come back down. But physicist Chiara Marletto, a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, says that laws like this only tell us part of the story.

The rest, she says, lie in 'counterfactuals': things that could be. A notebook could be written in. There is no law of physics that tells us whether it will be – but we can't describe what it's for without talking about the possibility.

Marletto believes that counterfactual properties like this could hold the key to solving some of the biggest problems in science, from the biology of life, to artificial intelligence , to climate change.

Listen to Chiara on the Science Focus Podcast

Project Hail Mary

An important memo to all fans of Andy Weir’s debut novel The Martian (and the Hollywood adaptation): read Project Hail Mary. Now.

While the premise of the new story sounds near identical to the author’s earlier work – a lone man is forced to use his scientific cunning after he becomes stranded from Earth – the introduction of a mystery lifeforce, which we won’t spoil here, blasts the plot in an unexpected direction.

Significantly, the protagonist is no Mark Watney, the astronaut played by Matt Damon in The Martian movie, either. The main character is, well, he doesn’t know what he is, waking from a coma next to two corpses, his memory banks empty. And if that’s not enough to draw you in, we don’t know what will.

Listen to Andy on the Science Focus Podcast
Read an interview with Andy

Foodology: A Food-lover’s Guide to Digestive Health and Happiness

Saliha Mahmood Ahmed

Foodology is part recipe book, part science book, all food. Gastroenterologist and food writer Saliha Mahmood Ahmed takes us on a tour of the digestive system, from the very first bite to... the other end. On the way, she also dives into why food makes us so happy and how a delicious smell can make our mouths water.

On top of all of this, of course, are 50 recipes designed not just to be delicious, but to support your gut health.

Always On: Hope and Fear in the Social Smartphone Era

Rory Cellan-Jones

Wake up. Check social media. Send a 'good morning' text. Check the weather app. Check the news... From the moment our alarm apps go off in the morning to when we finally log off Instagram at night, our smartphones are always by our sides.

On the one hand, we can connect with more people than ever before and we have unlimited access to information. But on the other, these devices are encroaching on every aspect of our lives, giving tech companies more access to and more control over everything about us.

Either way, the smartphone has arguably changed our lives more than almost any tool ever invented. In Always On , Rory Cellan-Jones, the BBC's chief technology correspondent, explores whether this is cause for hope or fear.

Handmade: A Scientist’s Search for Meaning through Making

Anna Ploszajski

Scientists tend to think about materials in terms of quantities like their melting point, their density and how much pressure they can withstand. But humanity's earliest materials scientists didn't work in a lab measuring how much stress an object could withstand: they worked with their hands and made things.

Anna Ploszajski, herself a materials scientist, goes back to these ancient roots to explore in a hands-on way. She learns from the trial-and-error wisdom of generations of experts in clay, sugar, steel, glass, paper and more.

Be Who You Want: Unlocking the Science of Personality Change

Christian Jarrett

The promise of changing your personality to become who you aspire to be might sound like the domain of life coaches and unconvincing self-help books. But it turns out that such a thing is possible, says psychologist Dr Christian Jarrett.

Using genuine science, Jarrett explains how you really can alter your personality to your liking, whether that's becoming more extroverted or conscientious, or even learning to use the 'Dark Triad' – narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy – to your advantage.

Read an extract from Be Who You Want
Listen to Christian on the Instant Genius podcast

The Motherhood Complex: The Story of Our Changing Selves

Melissa Hogenboom

People often say that becoming a parent is one of the best things someone can do. But we talk a lot less about how pregnancy and giving birth change the body.

Science journalist Melissa Hogenboom takes on this topic in The Motherhood Complex . She describes every aspect of the experience, from the psychological effect of your changing body to how pregnancy affects the brain.

She also looks at the social side of parenting, drawing on her experience as a mother of two to explore how a parent’s sense of self and relationship to the rest of the world are altered after they have a child.

Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Absolutely Everything

Jordan Ellenberg

Geometry is undoubtedly among most people's least favourite topics from school. Not only is it complicated, it often seems to have no value for the real world. When am I ever going to need to know how to draw an equilateral triangle using only a ruler and a pair of compasses?

It turns out, though, that geometry really does have real-world uses. As Jordan Ellenberg explains in Shape , not only does geometry have uses in physics and artificial intelligence, it also pops up in finance, US politics and even poetry.

Listen to Jordan on the Instant Genius podcast

Swearing Is Good For You

The next time someone tells you off for swearing, give them a copy of this book. Byrne explains all the ways in which swearing is good for us, from pain relief to team bonding, and reveals what cursing chimpanzees can tell us about the origin of dirty words.

Mysteries Of The Quantum Universe

Thibault Damour & Mathieu Burniat

Billed as ‘Tintin meets Brian Cox’, this book performs the tricky task of making quantum physics accessible. Join Bob and his dog Rick on a journey through the world of the very small, talking atoms with Einstein and eating crêpes with Max Planck.

Only Connect: The Official Quiz Book and Only Connect: The Difficult Second Quiz Book

Jack Waley-Cohen and David McGaughey

Train yourself to win an episode of Only Connect , the BBC’s fiendish quiz hosted by Victoria Coren Mitchell. Both books of puzzles get you to find the connections, finish the sequences, defeat the Connecting Walls and decode the phrases with missing vowels.

The puzzles are classics taken from the TV programme, arranged in increasing difficulty. Start with a warm-up from the first heat, and gradually work your way up to questions worthy of the final round.

10 of the best quiz collections and puzzle books

The Animals Among Us

John Bradshaw

Why do we keep pets? Bradshaw argues that it goes beyond cuteness and companionship, and all the way back to an ancient connection in our shared past. Weaving together psychology and evolutionary science, the book will give pet owners a newfound appreciation for their furry friends.

Listen to John on the Science Focus Podcast

Beyond Infinity

Eugenia Cheng

It takes a talented writer to bring the concept of infinity to life, but Cheng’s infectious enthusiasm makes maths a delight. Discover why some infinities are bigger than others, and why there’s always room at an infinite hotel, even if it’s full.

Read an extract from Beyond Infinity
Five fascinating facts about infinity

Graphic Science: Seven Journeys of Discovery

Darryl Cunningham

With his crisp comic art, Cunningham tells the stories of seven scientists who history has rather overlooked. Mary Anning, Alfred Wegener, Fred Hoyle, Jocelyn Bell Burnell… they’re names you may have heard of, but Graphic Science underlines the importance of their work.

Testosterone Rex

Cordelia Fine

The winner of 2017's Royal Society books prize, Fine cuts through gender stereotypes with panache, dispelling the myth that testosterone creates a deep-rooted division between the sexes and discussing what this means for the society we live in.

Read an extract from Testosterone Rex
Read an interview with Cordelia

Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong – and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story

Angela Saini

Another book on our list tackling gender stereotypes, Saini discusses how centuries of science have painted a distorted picture of sex differences, the impact this has had on women in society, and how we’re finally beginning to redress the balance.

Listen to Angela on the Science Focus Podcast

Other Minds

Peter Godfrey-Smith

The octopus is essentially an alien species right here on Earth – a sentient being whose intelligence has evolved entirely independently from our own. Godfrey-Smith peers into the minds of these cephalopods, revealing what they can tell us about the nature of consciousness itself.

Read an extract from Other Minds

Gastrophysics

Charles Spence

In this breezy introduction to the new science of gastrophysics, Spence explains why our mealtimes are a truly multisensory experience. It turns out that everything from the background music to the colour and shape of our plates affects the taste of our food.

Read an interview with Charles

Women In Science

Rachel Ignotofsky

Discover (or rediscover) the work of 50 trailblazing women in science in Ignotofsky’s gorgeously illustrated book. Familiar names like Marie Curie and Ada Lovelace sit alongside lesser-known pioneers such as Maria Sibylla Merian, one of the first and more important entomologists.

Read an extract from Women in Science

Ask An Astronaut

Who better to describe life in space than someone who’s walked the (space)walk? Tim pens answers to the public’s burning questions, revealing what space smells like, how he enjoyed a cosmic cuppa, and what it felt like to return to Earth.

Read an interview with Tim after his return to Earth

Caesar’s Last Breath

Every breath we take tells a story as old as the Earth. Kean’s eye-opening guide to the science and history of our atmosphere takes in everything from radioactive pigs and spontaneous combustion to Julius Caesar’s final moments and some unforgettable performance art at the Moulin Rouge.

Read an interview with Sam

Out Of Nothing

Daniel Locke & David Blandy

Combining science fact with dreamlike imagery, Locke and Blandy’s eye-popping graphic novel celebrates the ingenuity of the human mind. We travel across centuries from Gutenberg’s printing press to Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web, via Picasso, Einstein, Rosalind Franklin and more.

Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery

Henry Marsh

Following up 2014’s much-lauded Do No Harm was never going to be easy, but this second part of Henry Marsh’s memoir is an equally honest, human and beautifully written account of the ups and downs of his life as a brain surgeon.

To Be A Machine

Mark O’Connell

With shades of Jon Ronson and Louis Theroux, O’Connell explores the world of transhumanism, meeting the cyborgs, utopians and futurists who hope to use technology to improve the human condition. It makes for an engrossing, witty and at times disturbing read.

Read an extract from To Be A Machine
Listen to Mark on the Science Focus Podcast

Anatomy: A Cutaway Look Inside the Human Body

Hélène Druvert & Jean-Claude Druvert

A cutaway book of the human body, Anatomy elicited gasps of delight in the office. Its flaps and delicate lasercuts allow kids to explore the organs, systems and senses that keep us alive, while the accompanying text provides a nice introduction to human biology.

Patient H69

Vanessa Potter

One day, Vanessa Potter started to lose her sight. Within three days, she was completely blind. Patient H69 documents her descent into darkness – and her subsequent recovery as, armed with scientific insight, she began to make sense of her unique condition.

The Angry Chef: Bad Science and the Truth About Healthy Eating

Anthony Warner

Paleo, GAPS, alkaline, detox… so many diets, but do any of them actually work? With scientific rigour and a generous helping of expletives, Warner takes on the food fads one by one, and asks why we’re so easily taken in by pseudoscience in the first place.

Read our interview with Anthony Warner
Listen to Anthony on the Science Focus Podcast

The Lost Words

Robert Macfarlane & Jackie Morris

Worried by the way in which natural words (acorn, dandelion, kingfisher, etc) are disappearing from children’s vocabulary, Robert Macfarlane has teamed up with illustrator Jackie Morris to produce this exquisite ‘spell book’, combining acrostic poems with hand-painted artwork.

Nodding Off: The Science of Sleep from Cradle to Grave

Alice Gregory

After two decades as a prominent sleep researcher, Prof Alice Gregory is well placed to teach us how to sleep better. In Nodding Off , she explains the science of sleep and what happens if we don’t get enough of it. She also offers important tips on how to improve our shut-eye, to help us feel better in our waking hours.

Listen to Alice on the Science Focus Podcast

Notes on a Nervous Planet

After experiencing years of anxiety and panic attacks, Matt Haig began to looks for the links between how he was feeling and what was going on around him. Notes On A Nervous Planet is Haig’s look into how to feel happy on a fast and nervous planet, and tells us how we can lead happier, healthier and saner lives.

The science of happiness: seven books to bring a smile to your face

How to Invent Everything: Rebuild All of Civilization

Picture this: you’ve gone back in time for a casual gander at what cavemen were like, or to have a go at taming a dinosaur, but your time machine broke. And you can’t fix it. But don’t stress, you’ve got Ryan North’s informative manual on how to rebuild civilisation from scratch. Get started with inventing language, and then over 400 pages build your way up to modern computers.

Listen to Ryan on the Science Focus Podcast

Wonders: Spectacular Moments in Nature Photography

Rhonda Rubinstein

Wonders features the award-winning images from the BigPicture Natural World Photography competition. Along with stunning photos, this science book explains the scientific phenomena and photography behind each shot.

The Happy Brain: The Science of Where Happiness Comes From, and Why

Dean Burnett

In our constant quest for happiness, we change jobs, pursue relationships, watch stand-up comedy and take up hobbies, among many, many other things. Neuroscientist Dean Burnett combines cutting-edge research and views from all kinds of experts to explain where happiness comes from, and why we need it so much.

Listen to Dean on the Science Focus Podcast

Totally Random: Why Nobody Understands Quantum Mechanics

Jeffrey Bub, Tanya Bub

In this graphic novel about entanglement, you’ll learn how quantum physics has led to wild theories about cats who are both dead and alive, and you’ll listen in on Niels Bohr’s therapy sessions with Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger. It’s more fun than you ever thought you could have learning about quantum mechanics.

Brief Answers to the Big Questions

Stephen Hawking

Published posthumously, Stephen Hawking’s last book tackles some of the Universe’s biggest questions. Is time travel possible? Is there other intelligent life in the Universe? How do we shape the future? And unlike A Brief History Of Time , this one is actually intelligible to the average armchair reader.

Can you solve these deviously difficult Stephen Hawking-inspired questions?

Inventing Ourselves: The secret life of the teenage brain

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

Adolescence is a crazy time: there’s a need for intense friendships and extreme risk-taking, and it’s also when many mental illnesses begin to develop. In her book, which won the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize 2018, neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore draws on cutting-edge research to explain what’s happening in the brains of teenagers, and what it can tell us about how we’ve all developed.

Listen to Sarah-Jayne on the Science Focus Podcast
Read an interview with Sarah-Jayne

Alex Hutchinson

The capacity to endure underlies most great athletic performances, but what limits endurance? Against the backdrop of some of the world’s best athletes trying to break the two-hour marathon mark, Alex Hutchinson explores new science around what defines our limits: is it our bodies, food, or pain? Or is it all in our heads?

Listen to Alex on the Science Focus Podcast

The Science of Sin

We all sin to some extent, whether that’s eating more cake than we know is good for us, or carrying out more serious illicit acts. In The Science Of Sin , neurobiologist Jack Lewis talks us through why we do bad things, illuminates the neural battles between temptation and restraint, and helps us understand why we do the things we know we shouldn’t.

Listen to Jack on the Science Focus Podcast

Wildlife Photographer of the Year: Portfolio 28

Wildlife photographer of the year (Best books)

Rosamund Kidman Cox

The Natural History Museum’s annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition always delivers beautiful wildlife images. Portfolio 28 features the best of 2018’s competition.

Hélène Druvert, Emmanuelle Grundmann

Ocean by Hélène Druvert and Emmanuelle Grundmann explains the most fascinating facets of the sea, including waves, coral reefs and the food chain. With captivating fold-out infographics and stunning laser-cut illustrations, it’s a beautiful, interactive tome that’ll help both kids and adults appreciate our oceans.

Matt Fitch, Chris Baker, Mike Collins

Apollo tells the suspense-filled story of the first Moon landing in graphic novel form. It’s well-researched and includes rich historical detail, tracking not only the mission itself, but the political tension around the programme and the nerve-racking experience shared by the crew’s families.

Dictionary of Dinosaurs

Matthew G Baron

This beautiful book, illustrated by Dieter Braun, details every dinosaur that’s ever been discovered, from Aardonyx to Zuniceratops . It includes up-to-date facts from dinosaur experts about where these creatures lived, what they ate and when they roamed the planet.

Infinite Wonder: An Astronaut’s Photographs from a Year in Space

Scott Kelly

Astronaut Scott Kelly had a year that photographers would envy. He circled the Earth 5,400 times, witnessing 10,944 sunrises and sunsets – about 16 per day. From the International Space Station, he viewed our planet in a unique way, and shares his incredible photos with us in Infinite Wonder .

The Weil Conjectures

Karen Olsson

André and Simone Weil were brother and sister. One a renowned mathematician known for contributions to algebraic geometry and number theory, the other a famous philosopher and political activist. Maths and philosophy become entangled in this fascinating memoir of the two 20th-Century figures.

Something Deeply Hidden

Sean Carroll

From physicist Sean Carroll comes a history of quantum discoveries, and a guide to a subject that has baffled and blinded with its potential. Tackling huge questions, myths and conundrums about our Universe is no easy task, but Carroll does so elegantly.

The parallel worlds of quantum mechanics

Jennifer Paxton and Katy Wiedemann

This beautiful book explores the human body from underneath the skin as if it were a journey through a museum. Katy Wiedemann’s delicately drawn diagrams accompany Jennifer Paxton’s detailed anatomical information for a learning experience that is quite unlike any other.

Journey underneath the skin with these amazing pictures from the new book Anatomicum

Kit Chapman

How do scientists make elements that don’t naturally exist? In this engaging book, Kit Chapman opens our eyes to the way superheavy, unstable elements at the far reaches of the periodic table have changed our lives, and predicts what’s next for nuclear science.

The weird ways extraordinary scientists made synthetic elements

Superior: The Return of Race Science

A timely look at the history of racism and racial bias within the scientific community. Perhaps most shocking is the sign of race science returning to modern conversations around genetics and political power.

Read the edited transcript of the interview

The Uninhabitable Earth

David Wallace-Wells

What will continued climate change do to our planet? The future is much worse than we think, says David Wallace-Wells, who is deputy editor of New York magazine and a science writer. Sparking debate and conversation across the world, The Uninhabitable Earth is one of 2019’s best books.

The NASA Archives: 60 Years in Space

Piers Bizony, Andrew Chaikin and Roger Launius

A stunning visual journey through the NASA archives, documenting six decades of space exploration. Essays discuss the past, present and future of the American space agency, and with over 400 images, illustrations and photographs, most not widely seen by the general public, this is a coffee table book that is a delight to pick up and peruse.

Invisible Women

Caroline Criado Perez

The winner of 2019's Royal Society Science Book Prize reveals the shocking way that the world was designed with only one gender in mind. From female participants missing from research studies, to health apps allowing users to track copper intake but not periods, the holes in our knowledge of women – called the ‘gender data gap’ by Criado Perez – has led to a history of discrimination.

Listen to Caroline on the Science Focus Podcast

Life Changing: How Humans are Altering Life on Earth

Helen Pilcher

The book that has stood out for me in 2020 is Helen Pilcher's Life Changing . It is a fascinating but complicated topic that necessarily involves bring together a lot of tricky ideas and concepts. Helen's book does exactly that, and in a brilliantly engaging way.

I had the pleasure of doing a festival event online with Helen over the summer and it was a joy to explore some of the many weird, and often not so wonderful, ways we are altering species. – Recommended by Dr Adam Hart

10 weird ways humans have influenced animal evolution

Is Free Speech Racist?

Gavan Titley

This is a small but mighty book.

Titley shows how racists have capitalised on free speech arguments to "reanimate racist discourses", and he soberly, succinctly skewers the claim that the big threat to free speech is from those who challenge racism, or any other kind of prejudice, including transphobia. – Recommended by Angela Saini

Stephen Hawking: A Memoir of Friendship and Physics

Leonard Mlodinow

This concise memoir of Stephen Hawking swapped back and forth between light-touch biography and personal recollections of a close friendship between Hawking and the author spanning the last fifteen years of Hawking’s life. We think we know Hawking the great scientist but this book highlights the sheer ordinariness of the many daily routines that made up the unseen part of his life.

The stories, told with humour and fondness, mean that I feel I now know Stephen Hawking a little better. – Recommended by Prof Jim Al-Khalili

Listen to Leonard on the Science F o cus Podcast

Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA

Neil Shubin

Neil Shubin’s book is one that completely changed my understanding of evolution. I understood how small changes evolved – gradually changing colour or brains getting bigger. But it wasn’t until I read this book that I could finally get my head around how the really big changes happened, like moving from the ocean to land or learning to fly.

The things I learned from this book stayed with me – I’m still dropping facts into conversation. – Recommended by Sara Rigby

Listen to Neil on the Science Focus Podcast

What Have I Done?

Laura Dockrill

Laura has tackled an extremely difficult and often taboo subject with searing honesty and humour. As a person struggling with postnatal mental health challenges myself, reading someone else's difficulties in print made me feel less alone. A scary number of parents suffer with similar issues but it's rarely spoken about, especially in such an open way.

I'm so sorry about what Laura went through, but am very grateful to her for sharing her story as it gives me, and I'm sure others, hope, that we can get through it. – Recommended by Roma Agrawal

Barry Lopez

I’ve been dying to read Barry Lopez’s Horizon , the long-awaited full-length follow up to his 1986 Arctic Dreams , but for various reasons I saved it until the paperback release in 2020, and I’m so glad I did.

This was the perfect 2020 book. With Lopez as my guide, I escaped on six long, inspiring journeys — from the Kenyan desert to Antarctica — that made me gasp, cry, smile and think very differently about the world. My copy is full of notes and scribbles and I know I’ll be returning to Lopez’s magnificent prose and challenging ideas for years to come. – Recommended by Dr Helen Scales

Spoon-Fed: Why Almost Everything We’ve Been Told about Food is Wrong

Tim Spector

Don’t go shopping when you’re hungry. That’s really the only rule I have when it comes to food. But, as I get older, my body is telling me I might need to make a few changes. The trouble is, it seems the more we understand about how food affects our health and mood, the more complicated it is to decide what we ought to put in our bodies.

Prof Tim Spector’s book is an easy-to-digest guide to all the controversies in the world of diet and nutrition right now. Do diets ever work? Should we all be eating less salt? Are carbs the devil’s work?

Without ever shying away from the complicated science, Spector's book satisfyingly arrives at some simple advice that would probably improve most diets. In short: listen to your body and eat diversely. It’s a breezy read, and I’ll be honest, probably the first book about food I’ve read cover-to-cover that that didn’t have a recipe in it. – Recommended by Daniel Bennett

7 food 'facts' that are completely wrong

Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art

Rebecca Wragg Sykes

Kindred by Rebecca Wragg Sykes is a sensitive, beautiful and very human view of our ancient relatives, the Neanderthals. Her writing is lyrical, insightful and poignant, and her enthusiasm is infectious. Highly recommended. – Recommended by Dr Helen Pilcher

Listen to Rebecca on the History Extra Podcast
Did Neanderthals have a society?

The Gynae Geek: Your No-Nonsense Guide to ‘Down-There’ Healthcare

Dr Anita Mitra

I’ve followed Dr Anita Mitra, aka The Gynae Geek, on Instagram for a while and always loved her accessible approach to female health. This year, I decided to treat myself to a copy of her paperback book. I have a science-based education and work at BBC Science Focus , so like to think that I have a pretty good grasp of anatomy and biology, but like many people of my age, my school sex education was abysmal.

This book not only gave no-nonsense, non-judgmental advice about ‘down there’ but also left me absolutely gob-smacked by some facts about the female reproductive system. Did you know, for example, that the Fallopian tubes are mobile, and one tube can pick up an egg from the opposite ovary? Nope, neither did I!

It’s also a wonderful form of support for anyone who is worried about pregnancy, polycystic ovary syndrome, endometriosis or other gynaecological concerns, and can either put your mind to rest or help you decide if you need to reach out to a healthcare professional. – Recommended by Alice Lipscombe-Southwell

Read an extract from The Gynae Geek

A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears)

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

While it's not strictly an official 'science' book, it is nonetheless an alarming, eyebrow-raising and often hilarious true life tale of what happens when a fringe political ideology clashes with the real world, in ways which incorporate economics, conservation, zoology, parasitology, environmentalism, various types of psychology and animal behaviour studies, and more. – Recommended by Dean Burnett

Read an extract from A Libertarian Walks Into A Bear

A Perfect Planet: Our One in a Billion World Revealed

Published to accompany Sir David Attenborough’s latest five-part series due to air on BBC One in the New Year, this is a book brimming with spectacular photography and great behind-the-scenes details. Each chapter covers a major topic; the Sun, weather, the oceans, volcanoes and humans, and tells the story of how the combination of these five ingredients somehow coalesced to form our perfect planet.

It has all the major bases covered, too. Crocodiles trying to catch birds? Check. Crazy scientist standing next to an erupting volcano? Check. Cryogenic frogs that freeze their blood and later come back to life? Check!

A short review like this (especially in the hands of an untrained picture editor) can’t really do a book justice, but if you love wildlife and appreciate great photography then this is the book you want. – James Cutmore

In pictures: Sir David Attenborough's new series A Perfect Planet

Cosmic Clouds 3-D: Where Stars Are Born

David Eicher and Brian May

Legendary Queen guitarist Brian May brings us the first book to show cosmic clouds of gas and dust – nebulae – in 3D.

I often think the beauty of the night sky is epic enough to rival the revered art that hangs in major galleries around the world. Now this gorgeous book allows us to see them like never before. – Recommended by Colin Stuart

Drugs Without the Hot Air: Making Sense of Legal and Illegal Drugs

Anyone wanting a clear-headed primer on the science of what drugs are, how they work, and why people take them need look no further than David Nutt’s landmark work.

The second edition was published in early 2020 and includes the latest developments in the science as well as the addition of several up-to-date case studies. There’s a lifetime’s worth of knowledge and research to dig into here but thanks to Nutt’s direct, no nonsense writing style the book also serves as a masterclass in science communication. – Recommended by Jason Goodyer

Read an extract from Drugs Without the Hot Air

Diary of an Apprentice Astronaut

Samantha Cristoforetti

Lately, I have become as fascinated by the way that humans relate to science and the natural world, as I am to the scientific breakthroughs themselves. I’ve also, for the first time, realised just how momentous it is to be sending people into space. Having never known a time when this hasn’t happened, it’s taken me a while to get it into perspective!

So, this diary of what it is like to go through astronaut training for a 200-day mission to the International Space Station crossed my desk at exactly the right time. ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti writes with honesty. Her prose is simple and down to Earth, which increased my empathy for her story. – Dr Stuart Clark

The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

This spectacular book is more than traditional history, as many of its surprising – often strange – revelations about Viking life come not from texts, but archaeology.

Price guides us through their vast world, studding his grand narrative with extraordinary details: isotopic identification of Scandinavian skeletons in Russia, silk caps from York and Lincoln probably from the same Byzantine bale, and a candle burning until the air inside a burial chamber ran out. – Recommended by Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes

How to Argue with a Racist

Adam Rutherford

Given the renewed examination of race relations sparked by the tragic death of George Floyd, How to Argue with a Racist is doubtlessly one of the most important reads of 2020. But it’s arguably the most interesting too: debunking racial pseudoscience, geneticist and author Adam Rutherford expertly explains how all humans (including white supremacists) share African and Chinese ancestors – and how, biologically, race is near impossible to define.

As a bonus, it also demonstrates the many flaws of your ancestry DNA test results, and why most Brits are related to Edward III. Engaging and thought-provoking throughout. – Recommended by Thomas Ling

Listen to Adam on the Science Focus Podcast

The Little Book of Cosmology

Lyman Page is a professor of astronomy at the Princeton University in New Jersey and his principal area of research has for decades been the heat afterglow of the Big Bang . Incredibly, it is still around us today, greatly cooled by cosmic expansion in the past 13.82 billion years and accounting for a whopping 99.9 per cent of the photons, or particles of light, in the Universe.

I thought this would be just another book by an academic jumping on the popular science bandwagon and short-changing the public with something pretty ordinary. But nothing could be further from the truth.

This ranks alongside Steven Weinberg’s The First Three Minutes as the best book on cosmology I have read. A compact treasure-trove of cosmic insights to be read, mulled over, and read again. – Recommended by Marcus Chown

Read an extract from The Little Book of Cosmology

Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret

Catherine Colman Flowers

The introduction of the sewage system was one of the revolutionary inventions that changed the world.

This book is a reminder that basic waste sanitation is vital for public health, and is a wake-up call that climate change and rising sea levels will inevitably hit the underprivileged hardest. – Recommended by Jheni Osman

Explaining Humans: What Science Can Teach Us about Life, Love and Relationships

Dr Camilla Pang

If you want to understand how light refracts, or how proteins in the body work, read this book. If you want to make better decisions, or understand how to form fruitful friendship groups, read this book.

It came as no shock to me when Explaining Humans was chosen as The Royal Society's science book of the year in 2020. This book changed my life in many ways. It brought to light aspects of society that I didn't even know I hadn't understood, until now. It enabled me to begin unpicking my reasons for doing things a certain way, to start questioning my own routines and 'rules' for life. – Recommended by Amy Barrett

Listen to Camilla on the Science Focus Podcast

Science book reading lists

We reckon this is a fine selection of books to read, but there are plenty more that are well worth your time from the annals of history. If you’re looking for a little inspiration, here are a few more of our book recommendations to mull over:

28 of the best non-fiction and fiction books we read in 2020
20 of the best wildlife books and nature writing
16 of the best maths books
5 best physics books, according to Jim Al-Khalili
AI: 5 of the best must-read artificial intelligence books
5 race science books you must read
Science books for kids: 5 books for budding scientists

Are you excited to read any of the books on this list? Let us know what you think of our pick of the best science books out this month by messaging us on Twitter or Facebook , tag us in a picture of you reading any of the books on Instagram , and join the Science Focus Book Club for a community of other science book lovers.

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Best Science and Medicine Books of 2022

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Engaging, enlightening, and deeply informative. Full review >

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A book review is a thorough description, critical analysis, and/or evaluation of the quality, meaning, and significance of a book, often written in relation to prior research on the topic. Reviews generally range from 500-2000 words, but may be longer or shorter depends on several factors: the length and complexity of the book being reviewed, the overall purpose of the review, and whether the review examines two or more books that focus on the same topic. Professors assign book reviews as practice in carefully analyzing complex scholarly texts and to assess your ability to effectively synthesize research so that you reach an informed perspective about the topic being covered.

There are two general approaches to reviewing a book:

Descriptive review: Presents the content and structure of a book as objectively as possible, describing essential information about a book's purpose and authority. This is done by stating the perceived aims and purposes of the study, often incorporating passages quoted from the text that highlight key elements of the work. Additionally, there may be some indication of the reading level and anticipated audience.
Critical review: Describes and evaluates the book in relation to accepted literary and historical standards and supports this evaluation with evidence from the text and, in most cases, in contrast to and in comparison with the research of others. It should include a statement about what the author has tried to do, evaluates how well you believe the author has succeeded in meeting the objectives of the study, and presents evidence to support this assessment. For most course assignments, your professor will want you to write this type of review.

Book Reviews. Writing Center. University of New Hampshire; Book Reviews: How to Write a Book Review. Writing and Style Guides. Libraries. Dalhousie University; Kindle, Peter A. "Teaching Students to Write Book Reviews." Contemporary Rural Social Work 7 (2015): 135-141; Erwin, R. W. “Reviewing Books for Scholarly Journals.” In Writing and Publishing for Academic Authors . Joseph M. Moxley and Todd Taylor. 2 nd edition. (Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 1997), pp. 83-90.

How to Approach Writing Your Review

NOTE: Since most course assignments require that you write a critical rather than descriptive book review, the following information about preparing to write and developing the structure and style of reviews focuses on this approach.

I. Common Features

While book reviews vary in tone, subject, and style, they share some common features. These include:

A review gives the reader a concise summary of the content . This includes a description of the research topic and scope of analysis as well as an overview of the book's overall perspective, argument, and purpose.
A review offers a critical assessment of the content in relation to other studies on the same topic . This involves documenting your reactions to the work under review--what strikes you as noteworthy or important, whether or not the arguments made by the author(s) were effective or persuasive, and how the work enhanced your understanding of the research problem under investigation.
In addition to analyzing a book's strengths and weaknesses, a scholarly review often recommends whether or not readers would value the work for its authenticity and overall quality . This measure of quality includes both the author's ideas and arguments and covers practical issues, such as, readability and language, organization and layout, indexing, and, if needed, the use of non-textual elements .

To maintain your focus, always keep in mind that most assignments ask you to discuss a book's treatment of its topic, not the topic itself . Your key sentences should say, "This book shows...,” "The study demonstrates...," or “The author argues...," rather than "This happened...” or “This is the case....”

II. Developing a Critical Assessment Strategy

There is no definitive methodological approach to writing a book review in the social sciences, although it is necessary that you think critically about the research problem under investigation before you begin to write. Therefore, writing a book review is a three-step process: 1) carefully taking notes as you read the text; 2) developing an argument about the value of the work under consideration; and, 3) clearly articulating that argument as you write an organized and well-supported assessment of the work.

A useful strategy in preparing to write a review is to list a set of questions that should be answered as you read the book [remember to note the page numbers so you can refer back to the text!]. The specific questions to ask yourself will depend upon the type of book you are reviewing. For example, a book that is presenting original research about a topic may require a different set of questions to ask yourself than a work where the author is offering a personal critique of an existing policy or issue.

Here are some sample questions that can help you think critically about the book:

Thesis or Argument . What is the central thesis—or main argument—of the book? If the author wanted you to get one main idea from the book, what would it be? How does it compare or contrast to the world that you know or have experienced? What has the book accomplished? Is the argument clearly stated and does the research support this?
Topic . What exactly is the subject or topic of the book? Is it clearly articulated? Does the author cover the subject adequately? Does the author cover all aspects of the subject in a balanced fashion? Can you detect any biases? What type of approach has the author adopted to explore the research problem [e.g., topical, analytical, chronological, descriptive]?
Evidence . How does the author support their argument? What evidence does the author use to prove their point? Is the evidence based on an appropriate application of the method chosen to gather information? Do you find that evidence convincing? Why or why not? Does any of the author's information [or conclusions] conflict with other books you've read, courses you've taken, or just previous assumptions you had about the research problem?
Structure . How does the author structure their argument? Does it follow a logical order of analysis? What are the parts that make up the whole? Does the argument make sense to you? Does it persuade you? Why or why not?
Take-aways . How has this book helped you understand the research problem? Would you recommend the book to others? Why or why not?

Beyond the content of the book, you may also consider some information about the author and the general presentation of information. Question to ask may include:

The Author: Who is the author? The nationality, political persuasion, education, intellectual interests, personal history, and historical context may provide crucial details about how a work takes shape. Does it matter, for example, that the author is affiliated with a particular organization? What difference would it make if the author participated in the events they wrote about? What other topics has the author written about? Does this work build on prior research or does it represent a new or unique area of research?
The Presentation: What is the book's genre? Out of what discipline does it emerge? Does it conform to or depart from the conventions of its genre? These questions can provide a historical or other contextual standard upon which to base your evaluations. If you are reviewing the first book ever written on the subject, it will be important for your readers to know this. Keep in mind, though, that declarative statements about being the “first,” the "best," or the "only" book of its kind can be a risky unless you're absolutely certain because your professor [presumably] has a much better understanding of the overall research literature.

NOTE: Most critical book reviews examine a topic in relation to prior research. A good strategy for identifying this prior research is to examine sources the author(s) cited in the chapters introducing the research problem and, of course, any review of the literature. However, you should not assume that the author's references to prior research is authoritative or complete. If any works related to the topic have been excluded, your assessment of the book should note this . Be sure to consult with a librarian to ensure that any additional studies are located beyond what has been cited by the author(s).

Book Reviews. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Book Reviews. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Hartley, James. "Reading and Writing Book Reviews Across the Disciplines." Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 57 (July 2006): 1194–1207; Motta-Roth, D. “Discourse Analysis and Academic Book Reviews: A Study of Text and Disciplinary Cultures.” In Genre Studies in English for Academic Purposes . Fortanet Gómez, Inmaculada et al., editors. (Castellò de la Plana: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I, 1998), pp. 29-45. Writing a Book Review. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Writing Book Reviews. Writing Tutorial Services, Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning. Indiana University; Suárez, Lorena and Ana I. Moreno. “The Rhetorical Structure of Academic Journal Book Reviews: A Cross-linguistic and Cross-disciplinary Approach .” In Asociación Europea de Lenguas para Fines Específicos, María del Carmen Pérez Llantada Auría, Ramón Plo Alastrué, and Claus Peter Neumann. Actas del V Congreso Internacional AELFE/Proceedings of the 5th International AELFE Conference . Zaragoza: Universidad de Zaragoza, 2006.

Structure and Writing Style

I. Bibliographic Information

Bibliographic information refers to the essential elements of a work if you were to cite it in a paper [i.e., author, title, date of publication, etc.]. Provide the essential information about the book using the writing style [e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago] preferred by your professor or used by the discipline of your major . Depending on how your professor wants you to organize your review, the bibliographic information represents the heading of your review. In general, it would look like this:

[Complete title of book. Author or authors. Place of publication. Publisher. Date of publication. Number of pages before first chapter, often in Roman numerals. Total number of pages]. The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle over American History . By Jill Lepore. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010. xii, 207 pp.)

Reviewed by [your full name].

II. Scope/Purpose/Content

Begin your review by telling the reader not only the overarching concern of the book in its entirety [the subject area] but also what the author's particular point of view is on that subject [the thesis statement]. If you cannot find an adequate statement in the author's own words or if you find that the thesis statement is not well-developed, then you will have to compose your own introductory thesis statement that does cover all the material. This statement should be no more than one paragraph and must be succinctly stated, accurate, and unbiased.

If you find it difficult to discern the overall aims and objectives of the book [and, be sure to point this out in your review if you determine that this is a deficiency], you may arrive at an understanding of the book's overall purpose by assessing the following:

Scan the table of contents because it can help you understand how the book was organized and will aid in determining the author's main ideas and how they were developed [e.g., chronologically, topically, historically, etc.].
Why did the author write on this subject rather than on some other subject?
From what point of view is the work written?
Was the author trying to give information, to explain something technical, or to convince the reader of a belief’s validity by dramatizing it in action?
What is the general field or genre, and how does the book fit into it? If necessary, review related literature from other books and journal articles to familiarize yourself with the field.
Who is the intended audience?
What is the author's style? Is it formal or informal? You can evaluate the quality of the writing style by noting some of the following standards: coherence, clarity, originality, forcefulness, accurate use of technical words, conciseness, fullness of development, and fluidity [i.e., quality of the narrative flow].
How did the book affect you? Were there any prior assumptions you had about the subject that were changed, abandoned, or reinforced after reading the book? How is the book related to your own personal beliefs or assumptions? What personal experiences have you had related to the subject that affirm or challenge underlying assumptions?
How well has the book achieved the goal(s) set forth in the preface, introduction, and/or foreword?
Would you recommend this book to others? Why or why not?

III. Note the Method

Support your remarks with specific references to text and quotations that help to illustrate the literary method used to state the research problem, describe the research design, and analyze the findings. In general, authors tend to use the following literary methods, exclusively or in combination.

Description : The author depicts scenes and events by giving specific details that appeal to the five senses, or to the reader’s imagination. The description presents background and setting. Its primary purpose is to help the reader realize, through as many details as possible, the way persons, places, and things are situated within the phenomenon being described.
Narration : The author tells the story of a series of events, usually thematically or in chronological order. In general, the emphasis in scholarly books is on narration of the events. Narration tells what has happened and, in some cases, using this method to forecast what could happen in the future. Its primary purpose is to draw the reader into a story and create a contextual framework for understanding the research problem.
Exposition : The author uses explanation and analysis to present a subject or to clarify an idea. Exposition presents the facts about a subject or an issue clearly and as impartially as possible. Its primary purpose is to describe and explain, to document for the historical record an event or phenomenon.
Argument : The author uses techniques of persuasion to establish understanding of a particular truth, often in the form of addressing a research question, or to convince the reader of its falsity. The overall aim is to persuade the reader to believe something and perhaps to act on that belief. Argument takes sides on an issue and aims to convince the reader that the author's position is valid, logical, and/or reasonable.

IV. Critically Evaluate the Contents

Critical comments should form the bulk of your book review . State whether or not you feel the author's treatment of the subject matter is appropriate for the intended audience. Ask yourself:

Has the purpose of the book been achieved?
What contributions does the book make to the field?
Is the treatment of the subject matter objective or at least balanced in describing all sides of a debate?
Are there facts and evidence that have been omitted?
What kinds of data, if any, are used to support the author's thesis statement?
Can the same data be interpreted to explain alternate outcomes?
Is the writing style clear and effective?
Does the book raise important or provocative issues or topics for discussion?
Does the book bring attention to the need for further research?
What has been left out?

Support your evaluation with evidence from the text and, when possible, state the book's quality in relation to other scholarly sources. If relevant, note of the book's format, such as, layout, binding, typography, etc. Are there tables, charts, maps, illustrations, text boxes, photographs, or other non-textual elements? Do they aid in understanding the text? Describing this is particularly important in books that contain a lot of non-textual elements.

NOTE: It is important to carefully distinguish your views from those of the author so as not to confuse your reader. Be clear when you are describing an author's point of view versus expressing your own.

V. Examine the Front Matter and Back Matter

Front matter refers to any content before the first chapter of the book. Back matter refers to any information included after the final chapter of the book . Front matter is most often numbered separately from the rest of the text in lower case Roman numerals [i.e. i - xi ]. Critical commentary about front or back matter is generally only necessary if you believe there is something that diminishes the overall quality of the work [e.g., the indexing is poor] or there is something that is particularly helpful in understanding the book's contents [e.g., foreword places the book in an important context].

Front matter that may be considered for evaluation when reviewing its overall quality:

Table of contents -- is it clear? Is it detailed or general? Does it reflect the true contents of the book? Does it help in understanding a logical sequence of content?
Author biography -- also found as back matter, the biography of author(s) can be useful in determining the authority of the writer and whether the book builds on prior research or represents new research. In scholarly reviews, noting the author's affiliation and prior publications can be a factor in helping the reader determine the overall validity of the work [i.e., are they associated with a research center devoted to studying the problem under investigation].
Foreword -- the purpose of a foreword is to introduce the reader to the author and the content of the book, and to help establish credibility for both. A foreword may not contribute any additional information about the book's subject matter, but rather, serves as a means of validating the book's existence. In these cases, the foreword is often written by a leading scholar or expert who endorses the book's contributions to advancing research about the topic. Later editions of a book sometimes have a new foreword prepended [appearing before an older foreword, if there was one], which may be included to explain how the latest edition differs from previous editions. These are most often written by the author.
Acknowledgements -- scholarly studies in the social sciences often take many years to write, so authors frequently acknowledge the help and support of others in getting their research published. This can be as innocuous as acknowledging the author's family or the publisher. However, an author may acknowledge prominent scholars or subject experts, staff at key research centers, people who curate important archival collections, or organizations that funded the research. In these particular cases, it may be worth noting these sources of support in your review, particularly if the funding organization is biased or its mission is to promote a particular agenda.
Preface -- generally describes the genesis, purpose, limitations, and scope of the book and may include acknowledgments of indebtedness to people who have helped the author complete the study. Is the preface helpful in understanding the study? Does it provide an effective framework for understanding what's to follow?
Chronology -- also may be found as back matter, a chronology is generally included to highlight key events related to the subject of the book. Do the entries contribute to the overall work? Is it detailed or very general?
List of non-textual elements -- a book that contains numerous charts, photographs, maps, tables, etc. will often list these items after the table of contents in the order that they appear in the text. Is this useful?

Back matter that may be considered for evaluation when reviewing its overall quality:

Afterword -- this is a short, reflective piece written by the author that takes the form of a concluding section, final commentary, or closing statement. It is worth mentioning in a review if it contributes information about the purpose of the book, gives a call to action, summarizes key recommendations or next steps, or asks the reader to consider key points made in the book.
Appendix -- is the supplementary material in the appendix or appendices well organized? Do they relate to the contents or appear superfluous? Does it contain any essential information that would have been more appropriately integrated into the text?
Index -- are there separate indexes for names and subjects or one integrated index. Is the indexing thorough and accurate? Are elements used, such as, bold or italic fonts to help identify specific places in the book? Does the index include "see also" references to direct you to related topics?
Glossary of Terms -- are the definitions clearly written? Is the glossary comprehensive or are there key terms missing? Are any terms or concepts mentioned in the text not included that should have been?
Endnotes -- examine any endnotes as you read from chapter to chapter. Do they provide important additional information? Do they clarify or extend points made in the body of the text? Should any notes have been better integrated into the text rather than separated? Do the same if the author uses footnotes.
Bibliography/References/Further Readings -- review any bibliography, list of references to sources, and/or further readings the author may have included. What kinds of sources appear [e.g., primary or secondary, recent or old, scholarly or popular, etc.]? How does the author make use of them? Be sure to note important omissions of sources that you believe should have been utilized, including important digital resources or archival collections.

VI. Summarize and Comment

State your general conclusions briefly and succinctly. Pay particular attention to the author's concluding chapter and/or afterword. Is the summary convincing? List the principal topics, and briefly summarize the author’s ideas about these topics, main points, and conclusions. If appropriate and to help clarify your overall evaluation, use specific references to text and quotations to support your statements. If your thesis has been well argued, the conclusion should follow naturally. It can include a final assessment or simply restate your thesis. Do not introduce new information in the conclusion. If you've compared the book to any other works or used other sources in writing the review, be sure to cite them at the end of your book review in the same writing style as your bibliographic heading of the book.

Book Reviews. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Book Reviews. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Gastel, Barbara. "Special Books Section: A Strategy for Reviewing Books for Journals." BioScience 41 (October 1991): 635-637; Hartley, James. "Reading and Writing Book Reviews Across the Disciplines." Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 57 (July 2006): 1194–1207; Lee, Alexander D., Bart N. Green, Claire D. Johnson, and Julie Nyquist. "How to Write a Scholarly Book Review for Publication in a Peer-reviewed Journal: A Review of the Literature." Journal of Chiropractic Education 24 (2010): 57-69; Nicolaisen, Jeppe. "The Scholarliness of Published Peer Reviews: A Bibliometric Study of Book Reviews in Selected Social Science Fields." Research Evaluation 11 (2002): 129-140;.Procter, Margaret. The Book Review or Article Critique. The Lab Report. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Reading a Book to Review It. The Writer’s Handbook. Writing Center. University of Wisconsin, Madison; Scarnecchia, David L. "Writing Book Reviews for the Journal Of Range Management and Rangelands." Rangeland Ecology and Management 57 (2004): 418-421; Simon, Linda. "The Pleasures of Book Reviewing." Journal of Scholarly Publishing 27 (1996): 240-241; Writing a Book Review. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Writing Book Reviews. Writing Tutorial Services, Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning. Indiana University.

Writing Tip

Always Read the Foreword and/or the Preface

If they are included in the front matter, a good place for understanding a book's overall purpose, organization, contributions to further understanding of the research problem, and relationship to other studies is to read the preface and the foreword. The foreword may be written by someone other than the author or editor and can be a person who is famous or who has name recognition within the discipline. A foreword is often included to add credibility to the work.

The preface is usually an introductory essay written by the author or editor. It is intended to describe the book's overall purpose, arrangement, scope, and overall contributions to the literature. When reviewing the book, it can be useful to critically evaluate whether the goals set forth in the foreword and/or preface were actually achieved. At the very least, they can establish a foundation for understanding a study's scope and purpose as well as its significance in contributing new knowledge.

Distinguishing between a Foreword, a Preface, and an Introduction . Book Creation Learning Center. Greenleaf Book Group, 2019.

Locating Book Reviews

There are several databases the USC Libraries subscribes to that include the full-text or citations to book reviews. Short, descriptive reviews can also be found at book-related online sites such as Amazon , although it's not always obvious who has written them and may actually be created by the publisher. The following databases provide comprehensive access to scholarly, full-text book reviews:

ProQuest [1983-present]
Book Review Digest Retrospective [1905-1982]

Some Language for Evaluating Texts

It can be challenging to find the proper vocabulary from which to discuss and evaluate a book. Here is a list of some active verbs for referring to texts and ideas that you might find useful:

account for
demonstrate
distinguish
investigate

Examples of usage

"The evidence indicates that..."
"This work assesses the effect of..."
"The author identifies three key reasons for..."
"This book questions the view that..."
"This work challenges assumptions about...."

Paquot, Magali. Academic Keyword List. Centre for English Corpus Linguistics. Université Catholique de Louvain.

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Why We Choose Not to Eat

By Molly Fischer

Illustration of a table setting the ceramic plates are empty but have the impressions of food

Eleven years ago, a startup promised to solve the problem of food. Soylent was a venture-capital-funded meal-replacement product composed of such ingredients as soy protein and maltodextrin; it could be consumed as a convenient shake, and it provided a way of getting calories into a body without all the bother of cooking, chewing, or tasting very much. It also inspired a certain amount of skepticism. One could be forgiven for wondering (and many did) whether the new product—a fortified beverage that you could drink instead of eating a meal—wasn’t basically SlimFast.

A crucial difference here was branding. SlimFast was understood as a diet drink for vain women with nothing better to do than worry about how they looked; Soylent, meanwhile, was a life hack for body-optimizing tech bros with more important things to think about than lunch. Its popularity offered an early inkling of a broader trend. In the late twenty-tens, men in Silicon Valley discovered the allure of not eating—and the combination of self-tracking apps and elaborate rules about when and what to consume produced habits otherwise associated with red-carpet crash dieting. Jack Dorsey , the monkish Twitter co-founder, tweeted, in 2019, that he’d “been playing with fasting for some time” and eating only one meal a day. As with Soylent, these practices had been removed from the embarrassing and inevitably gendered realm of body image and weight-loss culture; instead, they were steps on the path to an enlightened state of productivity. Intermittent fasting was of a piece with an interest in manful self-improvement via stoicism.

This vogue is the backdrop for John Oakes’s “ The Fast: The History, Science, Philosophy, and Promise of Doing Without ,” a recent addition to the library of research-fortified pop-sci self-help. Oakes does not dwell on fasting’s recently trendy iterations—his book discusses neither Dorsey nor the wellness doyenne Gwyneth Paltrow —but, still, he addresses an audience primed to see skipping meals as an interesting and even ennobling pursuit. Oakes’s own experience undertaking a weeklong fast gives a frame to the book. Bodily transformation is not his goal; “I don’t own a weight scale,” he volunteers at the beginning, insistent to the point of redundancy. Nor is he trying to biohack his way to productivity, exactly. What he is after instead is “a personal exorcism”—something that might provide a sense of “profound cleansing” and also “perhaps illusory control” over his body. A fast also promises, or so the reader suspects, some relief from boredom. Oakes’s experiment takes place in the draggy aftermath of COVID restrictions; he writes that he has been “sheltering in place” and mentions going to a movie theatre for the first time in more than a year. In fasting, “I simply wanted to shuck my then current mental state in favor of something else, anything else, even if only for a few days,” he writes. By his fast’s third day, the smell of a sliced cucumber is enough to excite him. By the fourth, he is fantasizing about diving into the “stormy sea green” of a salad’s leaves.

As Oakes makes abundantly clear, there is a long history of voluntarily forgoing food for reasons that have nothing to do with appearance. “The fast of Achilles after the death of his companion Patroclus is a furious sacrifice to the gods,” he writes. His survey includes hunger strikers, hucksters, and mystics; Confucius , Plato, St. Augustine , Franz Kafka , and Mark Twain all show up. The approach that he takes is so expansive as to encompass what he calls “fasting beyond food”—for example, he visits an anechoic chamber (where sound levels can be muted to negative thirteen decibels) and reflects on John Cage . In Oakes’s usage, “fasting” stands for gestures of deliberate negation and refusal more generally. A boycott, he proposes, is “a variant of fasting in that it requires specific, physical actions of self-restraint.” Lysistrata’s sex strike comes up, as does Bartleby, the Scrivener.

The biology of fasting is one part of the story that Oakes has to tell, and though he details the health risks of not eating, his interest gravitates toward possible salutary effects on perception and mental acuity. Recounting Cesar Chavez ’s fasts as the leader of striking farmworkers, Oakes quotes Chavez’s description of a transformation that he finds takes place on a fast’s third or fourth day. “My mind clears; it is open to everything,” Chavez once told the writer Peter Matthiessen. “After a long conversation, for example, I could repeat word for word what had been said.” Regarding his own fast, Oakes writes, “sad to report, in my case, my memory never improved, but by about day three I did feel quite serene.” Each of the book’s chapters begins with a brief, diaristic account of his weeklong effort as it unfolds, with particular attention to his senses, energy, and focus. “In eating nothing, I feel more substantive than ever,” he writes on Day One. “I feel like someone gasping in amazement at the night sky: Everything seems new, unexplored.”

A fast, Oakes writes, is as much mental as physical: “There is no better way to explore the power of one’s mind than to deny the body’s imperative.” But the mind-body divide comes with historical baggage, as Emmeline Clein writes in “ Dead Weight: Essays on Hunger and Harm ,” another recent book about not eating:

For figures like Plato, Augustine, and Descartes, transcending the dichotomy between mind and body—what Descartes called dualism—was humanity’s ultimate challenge. . . . In their quest to unshackle mind from body, the philosopher-kings needed somewhere to trace their disgusting, desirous urges back to, a vessel for shame and blame. They found one in a figure they saw as the epitome of the bodily, a sexual receptacle that also offered food: woman.

Oakes touches on this aspect of the intellectual and spiritual lineage that he traces—he and Clein both discuss St. Jerome, for whom misogyny and asceticism were tightly intertwined. “Dead Weight,” though, considers what it’s like to be on the receiving end of that contempt, and to starve the body in response. The book is a personal testimony and cultural analysis on the subject of disordered eating. (It argues, for one thing, that such diagnoses as anorexia, bulimia, and binge-eating disorder often blur.) Clein first developed an eating disorder in middle school, and she connects her condition to a growing understanding of the long tradition holding women’s bodies as vessels for shame and blame. She describes preparing for her bat mitzvah and studying her Torah portion alongside Tumblr. “Judaism teaches that reading is devotion, study sacred,” she writes. “On the internet, girls told me the commandments they lived by.” Girlhood, in her telling, is “less a gender or an age and more an ethos or an ache”—and, in that spirit, her tendency is to refuse tidy binaries. For Oakes, “fasting signals precedence of mind over matter, demanding careful assessment of the most normal of acts.” For Clein, eating or not eating is hardly so simple; a disorder might begin with the desire for control over an unruly body, but “careful assessment” can give way to compulsion, and a certain irresistibly clear logic persists even in the grip of disease.

“The Fast” does not ignore disordered eating altogether. In Oakes’s wide-eyed inquiry, though, the specific tangle of pressures and pathology that bind food, weight, and gender is not a central concern. “Anorexia is an eating disorder that is difficult to cure and can be deadly,” he writes. “It hovers, or should hover, over every discussion of fasting.” This comes about twenty pages before the end of “The Fast,” near the beginning of a final chapter that quotes a handful of doctors and other authorities. “While we must be alert to its incidence, this disease should not keep us from exploring the gifts that fasting has to offer, in spiritual terms and very likely in physical ones as well,” Oakes concludes. He notes that “women in particular suffer from an unending avalanche of exhortations to be thin,” but finds such cultural explanations “too pat” and prefers to regard anorexia as “a complex, heritable phenotype.”

The messaging that Oakes dismisses is the terrain of Clein’s book. Her version of girlhood is an “ever-gnawing void [that] can make you want a body to match, one that looks as hungry as your heart is,” she writes, in the book’s prologue. “Sobbing and throbbing, a lot of the most beloved icons of girl culture are very, very sad, and very, very skinny.” Her book leans on a canon, too, albeit a narrower one. It includes “Gossip Girl,” “ The O.C. ,” “Girl, Interrupted,” Chris Kraus , Ottessa Moshfegh , and tabloid coverage of Nicole Richie , along with a parade of fictional and nonfictional eating-disorder narratives with titles like “ Thin Girls ,” “ Empty ,” “ Famished ,” “ Thin ,” and “ Wasted .” (These latter works play an established role in the conditions’ annals: patients on the lookout for tips and techniques often treat them as guidebooks.)

Where Clein and Oak discuss the same authors and texts, she reads them differently. She embraces Simone Weil—“the philosopher, activist, and faster,” per Oakes—on a first-name basis, as “Simone the disgusting, the obscured, the anxious, the frustrating, the scream, the sob, the cycle, the infinite.” To Clein, Weil’s voice calls to mind those found on “pro-ana” (that is, pro-anorexia) blogs: “She insults herself for laziness and inertia, claiming to sully the earth with her misery, sounding for all intents and purposes like the self-recriminating online anorexics calling themselves lazy, worthless.” In a canny piece of media criticism, Clein raises an eyebrow at the extensive press coverage that vilified such blogs and their social-media successors. Were the teen-age girls posting photos of emaciated celebrities really more “pro-ana” than the magazines and brands that commissioned the photos in the first place? These girls “are simply reading the room they’ve been locked into,” she writes.

Not eating is an act of will: Oakes describes it as “a rejection of passivity” and “an affirmation of the right and ability to self-direction.” To some extent, he is defining his terms. Fasting, as he wishes to write about it, “must be voluntary” and not the result of a famine (or a mental-health condition). But a book about choosing not to eat necessarily raises the question of why anyone makes this choice. A body is where science, subjectivity, and the social world collide; what people do and don’t choose to do with their bodies can become a matter of fraught scrutiny. Such choices do not take place in a vacuum, nor are they always easily made and unmade. Oakes acknowledges that the lines between rational choice and compulsion are not always clear—one study he cites, small but suggestive, found that men and women who engaged in intermittent fasting scored higher than others on a diagnostic questionnaire for eating disorders. He seems to feel securely exempt from these ambiguities, though. “What a relief not to feel I need to devour the contents of the refrigerator, almost as though I’ve gained some perspective on eating,” Oakes writes, upon concluding his fast. “I realize that even now I eat out of habit: it is something I am supposed to do.” He anticipates fasting again in the future, having “reaffirmed that (1) [he] can comfortably last a week without eating, and (2) routine can be the enemy of rationality and self-control.” Clein, likewise, relates an early moment of triumph. “I watched my body shrink in the mirror, proud to discover how powerful my mind was,” she writes, of the period before she received her diagnosis.

The prose in “Dead Weight” can verge on bruise-purple, and a running economic analogy strains. (“Like capitalism, eating disorders evolve and adapt and refuse to be killed,” Clein writes at one point.) But Clein succeeds in delivering a persuasive answer to the essential question that both she and Oakes raise: Why? What inspires and sustains the choice not to eat, and how does it feel? The forces she describes—manifested at middle-school lunch tables and on TV screens, in hospital wards and online—come to life, in all their queasy and inexorable power. Her story may not be universal, but it has the virtue of addressing one reason that a great many people today believe they should choose not to eat: overwhelming medical and cultural pressure toward weight loss. Oakes grasps for heft on behalf of his subject (“the ultimate faster was King Lear, who cast off everything”), but a book about not eating that largely sidesteps this pressure feels a little weightless. ♦

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9 New Books We Recommend This Week

Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.

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Parenting and its attendant anxieties underlie a number of our recommended books this week, from Jonathan Haidt’s manifesto against technology in the hands of children to Emily Raboteau’s essays about mothering in an age of apocalypse to Clare Beams’s novel about a haunted hospital for expectant mothers.

Also up: a double biography of the Enlightenment-era scientists and bitter rivals who undertook to catalog all of life on Earth, a book arguing that the ancient Greeks’ style of debate holds valuable lessons for the present, and a surprising history of America before the Civil War that shows how German philosophers helped shape abolitionist thinking. In fiction, we recommend an Irish novel about a bungled kidnapping, a political novel based on Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign and a three-part novel of ideas about the hidden costs of our choices. (That one also deals with parenting anxieties, in its way.) Happy reading. — Gregory Cowles

EVERY LIVING THING: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life Jason Roberts

Most of us have heard of the 18th-century taxonomist Carl Linnaeus and his systems of categorization; less familiar is his rival, the French mathematician and naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon. In Roberts’s view, this is an injustice with continued repercussions for Western views of race. His vivid double biography is a passionate corrective.

“Roberts stands openly on the side of Buffon, rather than his ‘profoundly prejudiced’ rival. He’s frustrated that human society and its scientific enterprise ignored the better ideas — and the better man.”

From Deborah Blum’s review

Random House | $35

THE ANXIOUS GENERATION: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness Jonathan Haidt

In “The Coddling of the American Mind,” Haidt took a hard stand against helicopter parenting. In this pugnacious follow-up, he turns to what he sees as technology’s dangers for young people. Haidt, a digital absolutist, cedes no ground on the issue of social media. Sure to provoke both thought and discussion, his book rejects complacency.

“Erudite, engaging, combative, crusading. … Parents, he argues, should become more like gardeners (to use Alison Gopnik’s formulation) who cultivate conditions for children to independently grow and flourish.”

From Tracy Dennis-Tiwary’s review

Penguin Press | $30

AN EMANCIPATION OF THE MIND: Radical Philosophy, the War Over Slavery, and the Refounding of America Matthew Stewart

In this absorbing intellectual history of the lead up to the Civil War, Stewart shows how German philosophers like Ludwig Feuerbach and Karl Marx influenced the American abolition movement.

“Engaging and often surprising. … Two decades before the outbreak of war, abolitionism was still a skulking pariah, a despised minority in the North as well as the South. The abolitionists clearly needed help. Enter the Germans.”

From S.C. Gwynne’s review

Norton | $32.50

CHOICE Neel Mukherjee

Narratives linked to a frustrated London book editor explore the gap between wealth and poverty, myopia and activism, fact and fiction, in an exquisitely droll heartbreaker of a novel.

“Full of characters deciding how much truth to tell. … To be in the company of his cool, calm, all-noticing prose is to experience something like the helpless wonder his characters experience.”

From Jonathan Lee’s review

Norton | $28.99

THE ANCIENT ART OF THINKING FOR YOURSELF: The Power of Rhetoric in Polarized Times Robin Reames

To bridge our nation’s political divide, we must learn to argue not less but better, contends Reames, a professor of rhetoric, in this wryly informative primer on ancient Greek and Roman oratorical techniques and the Sophists and sages who mastered them.

“Reames’s conceit for the book is intriguing. … In our era of Fox News and chants of ‘from the river to the sea,’ it is difficult not to gaze in admiration upon a people so committed to soberly debating ideas rather than settling for sloganeering.”

From John McWhorter’s review

Basic Books | $30

LESSONS FOR SURVIVAL: Mothering Against “The Apocalypse” Emily Raboteau

The perils — political, racial, climatic — multiply fast in this collection of elegant and anguished essays, by Raboteau, a writer and mother struggling to retain hope for the future while bearing witness to the encroaching threats all around her.

“A soulful exploration of the fraught experience of caretaking through crisis. … Her central concern is how to parent responsibly in perilous times, when the earth is warming, the country is divided and even the grown-ups feel lost and afraid.”

From Tiya Miles’s review

Holt | $29.99

THE GARDEN Clare Beams

Maternal body horror finds its eerie apotheosis in Beams’s pleasingly atmospheric novel, in which an isolated home for expectant mothers circa 1948 turns out to contain more life-giving powers than its medical staff lets on. (If you’re thinking “Pet Sematary” meets “Rosemary’s Baby” with a literary sheen, carry on.)

“The genius of the novel is the way Beams continually intertwines fictional elements with true-to-life obstetric practices. … Humor blooms at the least expected junctures. [But] make no mistake, this is a serious story.”

From Claire Oshetsky’s review

Doubleday | $28

WILD HOUSES Colin Barrett

In Barrett’s debut novel, a poorly planned kidnapping upends the lives of several young characters in a rural Irish town. Barrett, the author of two standout story collections, shifts gracefully between the kidnappee, who’s being held in a basement by two unstable brothers, and his intrepid girlfriend, who sets out to find him.

A “heartbreaker of a debut. … The lives of a small collective of mournful souls become vibrant before us, and their yearning is depicted with wistfulness, no small amount of humor and one dangerously ill-tempered goat.”

From Dennis Lehane’s review

Grove | $27

GREAT EXPECTATIONS Vinson Cunningham

In this impressive first novel, a Black campaign aide coolly observes as aspiring power players angle to connect with a candidate who more than resembles Barack Obama.

“Dazzlingly written. … Captures the grind and the mundanity of the campaign with precision and humor.”

From Damon Young’s review

Hogarth | $28

Explore More in Books

Want to know about the best books to read and the latest news start here..

How did fan culture take over? And why is it so scary? Justin Taylor’s novel “Reboot” examines the convergence of entertainment , online arcana and conspiracy theory.

Jamaica Kincaid and Kara Walker unearth botany’s buried history to figure out how our gardens grow.

A new photo book reorients dusty notions of a classic American pastime with a stunning visual celebration of black rodeo.

Two hundred years after his death, this Romantic poet is still worth reading . Here’s what made Lord Byron so great.

Harvard’s recent decision to remove the binding of a notorious volume in its library has thrown fresh light on a shadowy corner of the rare book world.

Bus stations. Traffic stops. Beaches. There’s no telling where you’ll find the next story based in Accra, Ghana’s capital . Peace Adzo Medie shares some of her favorites.

Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

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Best science books of 2020

Tidy bedrooms, how to deal with future pandemics, the human side to Stephen Hawking and pictures in the sand

I n one of many unexpected outcomes of 2020, “the science” has become big news. Politicians are claiming it, protesters are disputing it, and all of a sudden everyone is an expert on superspreader events, RNA vaccines and what happens at the bottom of an Excel spreadsheet. It’s hard to know who to trust, and it’s more important than ever that the public has a basic understanding of what “science” says, so we are less likely to be deceived. Fortunately, a number of excellent writers are here to make it accessible, absorbing and staggeringly informative.

The topical Outbreaks and Epidemics by Meera Senthilingam (Icon), for example, is crammed with information on the history and context of diseases we think we know about. It explains how effective track and trace, combined with a thorough vaccination programme, was crucial in the eradication of smallpox, and why climate crisis and drug resistance make future pandemics more likely. It further shows how politics affects the way we treat disease: the chapter on tuberculosis is titled “What happens when nobody cares”. It even manages a last-minute update about Covid-19. (We could have been a lot more ready if we’d really wanted to be.)

Adam Kucharski’s The Rules of Contagion (Wellcome Collection) also offers great explanations of the R-number, herd immunity and mathematical modelling, but its aim is to apply the principles of epidemiology to other “infections” – from financial contagion, gun violence and the ice-bucket challenge to marketing, innovation and culture. We know now that the pre-2008 banking system had “massive potential for superspreading”, for example, and we can use “public health” theories to combat knife crime. It also demonstrates why scientific models can’t entirely account for the spread of disease. After losing a fortune in the South Sea Bubble, Isaac Newton apparently complained: “I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people.”

The weirdness of people is the inspiration for Explaining Humans by Dr Camilla Pang (Viking), a biochemist who has autism spectrum disorder and ADHD. She describes the book, which won the 2020 Royal Society prize, as “the manual I … always needed” to understand human behaviour and how to fit in, and it does an extraordinary job of explaining how Bayes’s theorem applies to relationships, what game theory can teach us about etiquette, and why a tidy bedroom is an affront to the second law of thermodynamics. It also introduces complex ideas to non-scientists in a warm and memorable way, while celebrating and demystifying neurodiversity: “ASD and ADHD are my qualifications every bit as much as my PhD,” Pang argues.

The Great Pretender (Canongate) was also inspired by a personal story. Its author, Susannah Cahalan, was diagnosed as having schizophrenia and almost got lost in the mental health system, until a persistent doctor found a physical diagnosis for her condition and she was cured. Her subsequent questioning of the division between “mental” and “physical” illness led her to uncover a famous study from 1973, in which a group of mentally healthy researchers presented themselves at psychiatric hospitals, complaining they could hear voices, and were diagnosed as having serious psychiatric illnesses. The experiment rocked the world of psychiatry, but Cahalan’s research suggests that all was not as it seemed. The book is a fantastic scoop, a fascinating history of psychiatry and a powerful argument for why science is often about challenging accepted wisdom.

Linda Scott doubtless had some personal reasons for writing The Double X Economy : The Epic Potential of Women’s Empowerment (Faber), but the result is one of the most objective, data-led, rigorously scientific and morally persuasive books of the year. Scott’s argument is simple: “Equal economic treatment for women would put a stop to some of the world’s costliest evils, while building prosperity for everyone.” She backs it up with economic, environmental and evolutionary science while proposing “concrete, reasonable and effective action”. Never before has an analysis of supply-chain economics resulted in so many fists in the air. This is a book that will make people think, and act.

A galaxy photographed by the Hubble telescope … Hawking’s biography digresses into favourite subjects such black holes.

One of the most touching biographies of the year shows the human side of the great physicist Stephen Hawking , as seen by his friend and collaborator Leonard Mlodinow (Allen Lane). With admirably easy-to-grasp digressions into favourite subjects such as Einstein, dark energy and black holes, Mlodinow tells us about Hawking the man. We learn that he didn’t like physics at school because Newton was boring and how he “was nourished by love as much as physics”. He also stored in his computer’s voice the canned phrase, “Thanks, but did you finish it?”, for fans who approached him to compliment his book.

Samanth Subramanian’s biography of JBS Haldane, A Dominant Character (Atlantic), reveals another flawed and brilliant scientist. A geneticist who helped to define our understanding of evolutionary biology, Haldane was described by Arthur C Clarke as “the most brilliant scientific populariser of his generation”, and by a student as “the last man who knew all there was to be known”, but he also excused Stalin’s attacks on scientists and science. The book shows how politics and science are often bound up together, and the dangers of allowing political principles to corrupt scientific ideas. It’s deliciously full of danger, adventure and scandal.

Perhaps the most unusual science book of the year is Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta (Text), which he describes as “a series of yarns with diverse people who all make me feel uncomfortable”. Yunkaporta examines subjects such as food, medicine, gender relations and financial and environmental systems by using visual symbols to represent his thinking – he carves objects, and draws pictures in sand. “I’m not reporting on Indigenous Knowledge systems for a global audience’s perspective,” he says. “I’m examining global systems from an Indigenous Knowledge perspective.” It’s a dramatically new (to some) and absorbing way of engaging with the world, and stops just short of exasperation with self-important “western science”. “Silly thinking is something everybody is guilty of from time to time,” Yunkaporta writes. “It is forgivable as long as you’re still listening.” It illustrates perfectly that there is no such thing as “ the science”, that we should question anyone who tries to claim scientific thought as their own, and that intellectual curiosity is everything.

Best books of the year
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April 29, 2024

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Book Review: ‘Crow Talk’ provides a path for healing in a meditative and hopeful novel on grief

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Crows have long been associated with death, but Eileen Garvin’s novel “Crow Talk” offers a fresh perspective; creepy, dark and morbid becomes beautiful, wondrous and transformative.

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“Crow Talk” provides a path for healing in a meditative and hopeful novel on grief, largely set in secluded Beauty Bay on idyllic Lake June. It’s where Frankie spent the long summer days of her childhood, where she first learned to listen to birds and began her lifelong pursuit of studying them with her handy field book of Pacific Northwest birds — a gift from her beloved father — always at her side.

Now she’s well past the field guide and working on her master’s thesis. But between problems at school, her mother’s icy distance, and no longer being able to confide in her father and get his advice, Frankie is adrift. She seeks refuge at the family’s little cabin in the Washington woods.

This cover image released by Dutton shows

Meanwhile, Anne is dealing with her own loss. Finding herself unable to write music and on leave from her teaching job, she goes with her husband and their son for a late-season stay at their cabin on Beauty Bay. There, they nervously await the results from a study on their 5-year-old, Aiden, who has mysteriously stopped talking.

Doors begin to open when Frankie takes in an injured crow, drawing Aiden and Anne’s intrigue. Their crow talk could be the catalyst they need for growth and healing.

The novel begins like a meditation, bringing you to a calm place and gently pulling you back when the thoughts of the narrator start to drift. It’s a strange way to kick things off — very little is happening — but it’s soothing. The way the lake looks and sounds, the movements of mundane morning tasks, are intercut with memories that eventually expose the roots and depths of Anne’s and Frankie’s predicaments. Unready to face their sorrow and unable to share their grief, it’s not until almost halfway in that Frankie and Anne finally reveal exactly what they’re mourning.

Flipping between the three, Aiden’s chapters are the most beautiful and intriguing. The short, often mythical interpretations of what’s going on around him draw on his beloved fairy tale book, offering a peek into the way he sees himself and the world, drawing comparisons between Aiden and the crows.

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Like Aiden, crows are incredibly smart and have a lot to say, if only we could understand them.

The author freely mixes fiction and reality, like the made-up June Lake at the foot of the real Mount Adams in Washington. She also writes from experience, inspired by her own childhood lake house and forest adventures. Garvin’s sister, Margaret, was diagnosed with autism, and the secluded cabin provided her and her family some comfort. This personal experience shines in the love and care for Aiden’s character, who is written as more than his diagnosis and always fully human and capable.

“Crow Talk” is a study of grief, friendship, and navigating loss; a cottagecore book that is at once cozy reading and emotionally challenging. Garvin rewards readers with an uplifting ending for a uniquely comforting novel.

AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews

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You are what you drink, what does science say about the ingredients in functional beverages.

Functional beverages — or drinks promoted as offering mental or physical benefits beyond hydration — are growing in popularity around the world. Hundreds of companies have jumped into the market, hoping to get some buzz with trendy and sometimes unfamiliar ingredients.

Here are some of the latest ones found in functional beverages and what scientists say about them.

Bottles of kombucha tea on sale in Paris in 2022.

What are they? Plants and mushrooms that may help your body respond to stress, anxiety and fatigue or enhance feelings of well-being. Examples include American and Asian ginseng (an herb), ashwagandha (an evergreen shrub), eleuthero (a shrub), Rhodiola rosea (a flowering plant) and chaga (a mushroom).

What does the science say? The Cleveland Clinic says adaptogens are known to trigger chemical reactions that can return the body to a more balanced state. Side effects from adaptogens are rare but depend on the plant. Studies show that adaptogens work best for a short duration (less than six months) because the body can build a resistance to them, making them ineffective over time.

The symbiosis of yeast and bacteria called kombucha to prepare the Kombucha tea, a fermented tea from China, in Paris in 2022.

What are they? Also known as “smart drugs,” nootropics are substances that can improve human thinking, learning and memory. Among the most common nootropics are caffeine, L-theanine (an amino acid found in tea), creatine (an amino acid naturally found in meat and fish), Bacopa monnieri (an herb), Gingko biloba (a tree) and lion’s mane (a mushroom). Some adaptogens may also have nootropic properties, like ashwagandha.

What does the science say? In a study last year in the journal Plants, researchers said that most plant-based nootropics are not immediately effective after a single dose and must be taken for an extended period before any measurable improvement occurs. One problem in research on these natural substances has been standardizing the form they are taken in and the dosage, the study said. Side effects are rare and usually mild, but users should consider their overall health and whether nootropics could affect any other medications before ingesting them.

PROBIOTICS AND PREBIOTICS

What are they? Probiotics are foods or supplements that contain live microorganisms intended to maintain or improve the “good” bacteria in a person’s gut or other parts of the body. They are naturally found in fermented foods like yogurt, kefir, cottage cheese, kombucha and sauerkraut. Prebiotics are food for the bacteria and other organisms that live in the gut. Prebiotics can be found in whole grains, bananas, greens, onions, garlic, soybeans and artichokes.

What does the science say? The Cleveland Clinic says probiotics, in theory, work alongside the beneficial microbes in the human body to fight off harmful bacteria, fungi, viruses and parasites. Researchers know that unhealthy microbiomes can contribute to chronic diseases like irritable bowel syndrome. They may also influence mood, pain tolerance and fatigue. The Cleveland Clinic and the Mayo Clinic say there is a lot of active research into the microbiome and the impact of probiotics and prebiotics, but not enough evidence to draw solid conclusions about their effectiveness. Side effects are rare except for people with weak immune systems, whose bodies might not be able to fight off a probiotic that inadvertently contains harmful microbes.

What is it? CBD, or cannabidiol, is an active ingredient in cannabis. While it is one of hundreds of components in marijuana, CBD doesn’t cause a high by itself. CBD has been used to treat epilepsy and may also help alleviate anxiety, insomnia, chronic pain and addiction. Side effects could include nausea, fatigue and irritability.

What does the science say? In an article published in April, Harvard Medical School said CBD appears to be a helpful, relatively non-toxic option for managing anxiety and other issues. But it said more research is needed to pinpoint effective doses.

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Notes from Central Taiwan: Old habits die hard

Last week, Viola Zhou published a marvelous deep dive into the culture clash between Taiwanese boss mentality and American labor practices at the Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) plant in Arizona in Rest of World. “The American engineers complained of rigid, counterproductive hierarchies at the company,” while the Taiwanese said American workers aren’t dedicated. The article is a delight, but what it is depicting is the clash between a work culture that offers employee autonomy and at least nods at work-life balance, and one that runs on hierarchical discipline enforced by chickenshit. And it runs on chickenshit because chickenshit is a cultural

By Michael Turton

Donovan’s Deep Dives: Introducing the powerful DPP factions

My previous column Donovan’s Deep Dives: The powerful political force that vanished from the English press on April 23 began with three paragraphs of what would be to most English-language readers today incomprehensible gibberish, but are very typical descriptions of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) internal politics in the local Chinese-language press. After a quiet period in the early 2010s, the English press stopped writing about the DPP factions, the factions changed and eventually local English-language journalists could not reintroduce the subject without a long explanation on the context that would not fit easily in a typical news article. That previous

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Book review: A ‘love letter to Formosa’

It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your

By Thomas Bird

Legendary lake

Years ago, I was thrilled when I came across a map online showing a fun weekend excursion: a long motorcycle ride into the mountains of Pingtung County (屏東) going almost up to the border with Taitung County (台東), followed by a short hike up to a mountain lake with the mysterious name of “Small Ghost Lake” (小鬼湖). I shared it with a more experienced hiking friend who then proceeded to laugh. Apparently, this road had been taken out by landslides long before and was never going to be fixed. Reaching the lake this way — or any way that would

By Tyler Cottenie

Locus Online

The Magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field

Gary K. Wolfe Reviews The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djèlí Clark

Like Chekhov’s famous gun, it seems to be an unstated principle among writers as diverse as Robert Ludlum and Octavia E. Butler that a character suffering from total amnesia in the first act is in for some world-shaking revelations by the third. The same is true of P. Djèlí Clark’s The Dead Cat Tail Assassins , but while a few familiar mystery elements help propel Clark’s fast-moving plot, his setting and characters are entirely his own. For one thing, the central figure Eveen, is dead. Resurrected by an assassin’s guild as a result of an agreement made in life – though she retains no memories from that life–she now serves the goddess Aeril as part of a professional team calling themselves the Dead Cat Tail Assassins. While their rules are pretty rigid for carrying out contract killings – or ‘‘shipping,’’ as they call it – Eveen has earned the nickname Eviscerator because of a particular violent killing of a child murderer. Like a good noir protagonist, she tends to stretch the rules, is quick with cynical wisecracks, and is a bit too blithe about violence and even torture to be entirely sympathetic. Her new assignment, though, leads to some revelations that test her loyalty to her guild and her rather fearsome goddess.

Since one of the major plot turns comes rather early in the story, it might be prudent to just skip ahead to the main mystery, which involves Eveen and a handful of allies, including her friend and handler Fennis and a somewhat disoriented younger woman named Sky, to discover who is really behind Eveen’s latest (and distinctly problematical) assignment, and why. This leads them through an escalating series of discoveries and confrontations, some even involving timeslips and a version of the grandfather paradox, which begin to expose some deep secrets of Tal Abisi, the bustling, crime-ridden port city which serves not only as the setting, but very nearly as a character in itself. The city is celebrating its annual Festival of the Clockwork King, and the richness of detail that Clark provides gives the whole thing something of the flavor of a hardboiled mystery set in New Orleans during Mardi Gras – the distractions of the city and the festival inevitably complicate the investigation but are so fascinating in their own right that many readers might be hoping for more Tal Abisi in future stories.

But Clark is adept at balancing his central mystery with quirky character development and enough witty details to suggest that Tal Abisi has its own versions of science and pop culture. Action at a distance is referred to as ‘‘quantum thaumaturgy,’’ and Eveen is enamored of an awful series of potboiler adventure novels about Asheel the Maniac Hunter. In short, Tal Abisi is far more textured than a generic fantasy stage setting, just as Eveen is far more complex than most of those lurking assassins who have become nearly an archetype of fantasy novels and games. Prickly as she may be, we end up thinking we’d like to know about her (just as she’d like to know more about herself ), and to spend a bit more time exploring the colorful mean streets of Tal Abisi.

This review and more like it in the March 2024 issue of Locus .

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