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This is a continuation of the following thread, which has been closed:

/topic/show/...

I recently finished The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention by Guy Deutscher. I enjoyed it, but I think it's not to everyone's taste. Both very detailed, and overly broad. Here is my review.

I just finished Naturalist by Edward O. Wilson. His autobiography is fascinating, enlightening, wondrous and graceful. Science and scientists are revealed to be contentious, brilliant and not infallible. His descriptions of other famous scientists are entertaining and surprising. I highly recommend this book.

tana wrote: "I just finished Naturalist by Edward O. Wilson. His autobiography is fascinating, enlightening, wondrous and graceful. Science and scientists are revealed to be contentious, brilliant and not infal..."

oo, oo, oo. That is the perfect kind of review for me. Teasers with enthusiastic jumping up and down, metaphorically speaking. I'm on my way to check it out. Thanks!

tana wrote: "I just finished Naturalist by Edward O. Wilson. His autobiography is fascinating, enlightening, wondrous and graceful. Science and scientists are revealed to be contentious, brilliant and not infal..."

I'm a fan of EO Wilson. I read The Social Conquest of Earth. Thought the structure was a bit disorganized, but the points he made had a big impact about how I think about human evolution.

Betsy wrote: "I recently finished The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention by Guy Deutscher. I enjoyed it, but I think it's not to everyone's ..."

I really liked that book. Very similar to John McWhorter's The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language.

I corresponded with the author a bit. He seems to have lost interest in linguistics since becoming more involved with his daughter Alma's music career.

Just finished The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate �� Discoveries from a Secret World. It's an up-to-date book about trees. The author is a Germany forester turned scientist. Here is my Review.

Like Tolkien, “I am at home among trees.�� It turns out Tolkien got two things right:
1. Trees live on the slow lane
2. Trees do communicate with each other (although they certainly can't walk like Treebeard)

Camelia Rose wrote: "Just finished The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate �� Discoveries from a Secret World. It's an up-to-date book about trees. The author is a Germany forester..."

We read this book as a group for May 2017. I agree, it's a wonderful book. Very illuminating and thought provoking.

Here's the discussion thread: /topic/show/...

I’m currently reading An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives by Matt Richtel. He introduces us to how our immune systems work. I’m about 25% through the book right now and I’m really enjoying it. This would probably make a good book read for this group.

Candice

Candice wrote: "I’m currently reading An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives by Matt Richtel. He introduces us to how our immun..."

That's too new to nominate this month, but several months down the road you could nominate it.

Just finished reading "Bonk" by Mary Roach and found it to be both an entertaining and enlightening read about the science of sex. The lady never disappoints.

Susan wrote: "Just finished reading "Bonk" by Mary Roach and found it to be both an entertaining and enlightening read about the science of sex. The lady never disappoints."

Agreed, although "Bonk" is one of her very best, IMO. I didn't find "Spook" or "Grunt" nearly as good.

Jim wrote: "Susan wrote: "Just finished reading "Bonk" by Mary Roach and found it to be both an entertaining and enlightening read about the science of sex. The lady never disappoints."

Agreed, although "Bonk..."

Haven't read either of them, though I was planning on reading "Grunt" soon. I've read "Gulp" and "Packing for Mars" apart from some of her articles and enjoyed them all.

Susan wrote: "Haven't read either of them, though I was planning on reading "Grunt" soon. I've read "Gulp" and "Packing for Mars" apart from some of her articles and enjoyed them all."

I highly recommend Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. I think I've read all her books & reviewed them. If you want to look at them in my books & read the reviews they're here:
/review/list...

I recently read The River That Flows Uphill: The Journey from the Big Bang to the Big Brain by William Calvin and it was exhilarating!

I finally finished the behemoth that is The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. Like many others, I love this book and I highly recommend it. Quite dense, but not so much that is impossible to understand or enjoy.

I do have The Gene: An Intimate History, but will be waiting a bit to read it. It's also a big might tome.

I'm not sure that The Man Who Climbs Trees is really a science book. It's the autobiography of James Aldred who has climbed, photographed, & helped film many nature shows, but always in the background. It was really interesting & gives me a new appreciation for any nature show. I gave it a 5 star review here:
/review/show...

I recently finished reading Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live by Marlene Zuk. The book explains why there is no need to mimic the diets of prehistoric hunter-gatherers by eating lots of meat. They probably ate mostly plant food, occasionally supplemented with meat, and in addition, humans have actually evolved since the agricultural revolution. Here is my review.

Actually read Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans about a year ago, but just recently read it again in preparation for a trip to southern France.

Fellow paleoanthropology nerds should like it.

Here's my review:

/review/show...

Did it mention how the paintings are placed on walls where the best sound quality was located? It made the first known sound system. And the curve of the wall made the figures dance and run in torchlight. First light show? first movie? with drugs? lol
Learned from Steven Johnson's How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World
That made me very happy to speculate.
Enjoy your trip! Let us know about it when you return, please.

I believe it did mention that for one of the caves, probably Chauvet since it is quite large. Lascaux is more like a tunnel. I've only been to the latter. I hope to visit more of the smaller caves this summer including Cro Magnon for which the people are named.

Until Chauvet was discovered in 1994 it was thought that high-quality, anatomically correct cave paintings didn't show up until about the time of Lascaux, circa 17,000 bce. But Chauvet doubled that and its paintings are beautiful and amazing.

Beautiful. Thanks, Steve. I just noticed it's written by Brian Fagan. Quite a body of work he has written. I've downloaded Human Prehistory and the First Civilizations, because I liked his Little Ice Age so well.
So, I'm looking forward to this one, too.

Just finished Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond. Enjoyed it quite a bit.

The Naturalist: Theodore Roosevelt and His Adventures in the Wilderness was really good. It's a side of Roosevelt that's often overlooked, shadowed either by his work with the parks or hunting. I gave it a 4 star review here:
/review/show...

In June I finished reading Never Home Alone: From Microbes to Millipedes, Camel Crickets, and Honeybees, the Natural History of Where We Live by Rob Dunn. It is very good and also an enlightening read about our homes, our bodies and how diversity is so important right now. I highly recommend it.

I finished Free Will Explained: How Science and Philosophy Converge to Create a Beautiful Illusion earlier this month. I would consider this primarily a book on philosophy with some science sprinkled in. Overall, I thought there were some good explanations but I disagreed with Barkers conclusion. My review is here: /review/show...

Camelia Rose wrote: "Just finished The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. A lot of hard statistics of Climate Change, and you should be worried. As a pessimist, I find it strangely uplifting.

My ..."

The link in your comment is to the book page, not your review. For those who are interested, here is Camelia Rose's review.

Wild Sex: The Science Behind Mating in the Animal Kingdom is a fascinating tour of sex from tiny insects up to whales from a variety of angles. I gave it a 5 star review here:
/review/show...

I'd expect Benedict Cumberbatch to be a great narrator. Thanks for the review.

Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong a really good book, but I didn't care for the title or description. Except in one case (psychiatry) science didn't go wrong, people, society, & institutions did. They took what they wanted or fit their biases. I gave it a 4 star review here:
/review/show...

Science Matters: Achieving Scientific Literacy is a good overview of the basics. It really filled in some of the blanks that I've developed over the decades since I was last in school. Even though I read a lot of popular science books & articles, some subjects interest me more than others. I highly recommend it to everyone & gave it a 5 star review here:
/review/show...

Jim wrote: "Science Matters: Achieving Scientific Literacy is a good overview of the basics. It really filled in some of the blanks that I've developed over the decades since I was last in school...."
Thanks for sharing! Sounds interesting book.

Finished Astrophysics for People in a Hurry ŷ������ 2017 choice award and it had been on my TBR list since then. Short and entertaining.
My review

Camelia Rose wrote: "Finished Astrophysics for People in a Hurry ŷ������ 2017 choice award and it had been on my TBR list since then. Short and entertaining.
My review"

I gave it a 4 star review, too. The last chapter didn't really fit - more his philosophy than science - but it was really good & I agreed with him.

I just finished reading The Epigenetics Revolution & it was often over my head, but interesting. Heck, going into it, I didn't even have the proper definition of epigenetics in mind. Carey did a good job of making the subject more understandable & accessible to me, so I gave it a 4 star review here:
/review/show...

I won't say I understand it. Doesn't seem as if anyone does fully. They're getting a handle on some parts of it, though. One of the more interesting aspects is that Lamarck is turning out to be right in some instances. She gave some great examples from the Dutch Hunger Winter & how that has affected the grandkids of the survivors. I wasn't as surprised by this revelation as I could have been since I'd read an interesting article about the 'Unified Evolution Theory' which also mentions it. You can find it here:

Jim wrote: "I just finished reading The Epigenetics Revolution & it was often over my head, but interesting. Heck, going into it, I didn't even have the proper definition of epigenetics in mind..."

The group read that in March 2014. Here is the discussion thread: /topic/show/...

Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI is 25 essays by experts that work with & in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Their takes are all over the place & really interesting. My review includes the ToC which has their names & a brief blurb on each one. Highly recommended.
/review/show...

Just finished The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World. It's an interesting book on how a doctor figured out how cholera was spread in the 1850s, and how a priest helped him prove his hypothesis. In the beginning it was hard to put down; the end dragged a bit but it is a worthwhile read.

Nancy wrote: "Just finished The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World. It's an interesting book on how a doctor figured ..."

I really enjoyed that book. More than many did. We read it as a group for June 2015. Here is the discussion thread.

Thank you, somehow I missed reading it with the group but did get my hands on the book. I DID enjoy it, just thought it could have done without some of the ending. Like others, I found the scavengers very interesting!

Just finished Fantastic Fungi: How Mushrooms Can Heal, Shift Consciousness, and Save the Planet
An overview of fungi kingdom, not entirely scientific (one chapter about mushroom recipes), no in-depth discussion, but I find it worth reading, for it has changed my view on fungi.
My review

I just finished Scatterbrain : How the mind's mistakes make humans creative, innovative and successful by Henning Beck. This neuroscience book is both informative and fun to read. It might be good for a group book read, once it has been out longer.

Out There: A Scientific Guide to Alien Life, Antimatter, and Human Space Travel by Michael Wall was a fun, Sunday Supplement view. Very well narrated & a lot of fun, if nothing new to me. I gave it a 4 star review here:
/review/show...

Candice wrote: "I just finished Scatterbrain : How the mind's mistakes make humans creative, innovative and successful by Henning Beck. This neuroscience book is both informative a..."
That sounds interesting. I just bought one (have not started it yet) called Brain Bugs: How the Brain's Flaws Shape Our Lives
Have you read this one, and if so, how does it compare?

Nancy wrote: "How does it compare?��

I haven’t read Brain Bugs: How the Brain's Flaws Shape Our Lives. I have read several books on neuroscience and Scatterbrain : How the mind's mistakes make humans creative, innovative and successful is my favorite. I loved the writing style and I learned many useful and practical suggestions.

Candice

I read Brain Bugs: How the Brain's Flaws Shape Our Lives & really liked it. I reviewed it here:
/review/show...

Jim wrote: "I read Brain Bugs: How the Brain's Flaws Shape Our Lives & really liked it. I reviewed it here:
/review/show..."

I remember that review, I think that's what made me put it on my "to read" list!

Just finished Volume Control: Hearing in a Deafening World, a book on hearing and hearing loss. Very informative. It also explains why traditional hearing aids so expensive and how traditional manufactures refuse to change it. There is one chapter about high-tech hearing enhancing gadgets.
My review

Jim wrote: "I read Brain Bugs: How the Brain's Flaws Shape Our Lives & really liked it. I reviewed it here:
/review/show..."

Adding that to my list. Realized that I already have Dean's other book Your Brain is a Time-machine on my list.

Camelia Rose wrote: "Just finished Volume Control: Hearing in a Deafening World, a book on hearing and hearing loss. Very informative. It also explains why traditional hearing aids so expensive and how ..."

That looks interesting. It always amazes me how so many important things have fallen through the cracks & aren't as well known as I'd think they would be.

I'm currently in the middle of reading Purcell's *E&M* and Royden's *Analysis*. Will probably start cracking open Katz's book on Math in the Ancient world. Reading some other more popular works like Silver's *Signal and Noise* and Dartnell's *The Knowledge*. Working on all of this in parallel, it's probably all I'll do over my winter break.

I've read the most into Silver's book. It's a great emphatic lesson in being very careful with data, entertaining, informative.

Dartnell's is interesting but I feel like I don't quite get operational knowledge like I was sort of expecting. Still interesting and entertaining enough.

Purcell's is not my favorite, I think I read Griffith's a few chapters in, about a year ago, and liked it better. Purcell seems to think more the way a Physicist thinks and less the way a Mathematician thinks, and for me personally that's harder to read.

Everything else I haven't read enough to say much on.