Four books arrived this week that may interest you and your friends.
Below the jump, I mention the books that I received recently, either as gifts or as review copies, or that I purchased somewhere. These are the books that I may review in more depth later, either here or in print somewhere in the world.
When I get new books, I like to share them with people. Unfortunately, you are all so far away, so I cannot host a book party in my crib where you can look then over, so I'll do the next best thing. I'll host a book party on my blog each Friday of the week when I either purchase books or when they arrive in the mail. In this New Book Party, I will try to be your eyes by presenting my quick "first impression" -- almost as if we are browsing the shelves in a bookstore -- and I'll also provide relevant videos about the book and links so you can get a copy of your own.
Books that arrived this week:
Publisher's synopsis Almanac is a collection of lyrical and narrative poems that celebrate, and mourn the passing of, the world of the small family farm. But while the poems are all involved in some way with the rural Midwest, particularly with the people and land of the northwestern Illinois dairy farm where Austin Smith was born and raised, they are anything but merely regional. As the poems reflect on farm life, they open out to speak about childhood and death, the loss of tradition, the destruction of the natural world, and the severing of connections between people and the land.
This collection also reflects on a long poetic apprenticeship. Smith's father is a poet himself, and Almanac is in part a meditation about the responsibility of the poet, especially the young poet, when it falls to him to speak for what is vanishing. To quote another Illinois poet, Thomas James, Smith has attempted in this book to write poems "clear as the glass of wine / on [his] father's table every Christmas Eve." By turns exhilarating and disquieting, this is a remarkable debut from a distinctive new voice in American poetry.
My first impression: I've been reading this book, one poem per day, for a few weeks now. Although I didn't particularly relate to the poems about family, the poems about farm life -- especially the poem about how to euthanise a horse -- stayed with me for quite awhile.
Publisher's synopsis Zero, zip, nada, zilch. It's all too easy to ignore the fascinating possibilities of emptiness and non-existence, and we may well wonder what there is to say about nothing. But scientists have known for centuries that nothing is the key to understanding absolutely everything, from why particles have mass to the expansion of the universe -- so without nothing we'd be precisely nowhere.
Absolute zero (the coldest cold that can exist) and the astonishing power of placebos, light bulbs, superconductors, vacuums, dark energy, 'bed rest' and the birth of time -- all are different aspects of the concept of nothing. The closer we look, the bigger the subject gets. Why do some animals spend all day doing nothing? What happens in our brains when we try to think about nothing?
With chapters by 20 science writers, including top names such as Ian Stewart, Marcus Chown, Nigel Henbest, Michael Brooks, Paul Davies and David Fisher, this fascinating and intriguing book revels in a subject that has tantalised the finest minds for centuries, and shows there's more to nothing than meets the eye.
My first impression: For being a book about nothing, this book is really quite something. It has six chapters, each of which explores some aspect of nothingness, and is comprised of between three and five essays by different authors, all of which can be read between subway stops. I deliberately chose to read the essays by the book's female contributors and they were all delightful. For example, Valerie Jamieson's essay, "Boring-ology: a happy tedium", which describes her search for the most tedious activities known to humans -- watching grass grow, watching paint dry and the like -- was quite fun. Other informative and well-written essays include "Wastes of Space?" where author Laura Spinney chases down the evolutionary reasons that humans have vestigial structures -- wisdom teeth, appendix, coccyx; Helen Pilcher's "When mind attacks body" where she investigates how voodoo gets its power to kill; and Jo Marchand's essay, "Heal Thyself", investigates the power of the placebo effect and of positive thinking to tap into our inner medicine chest to speed healing, slow aging and reduce stress. This engaging book is worth reading, either in one big gulp or in a series of shorter intervals.
Publisher's synopsis Why are we influenced by the behaviour of complete strangers? Why does the brain register similar pleasure when I perceive something as 'fair' or when I eat chocolate? Why can we be so profoundly hurt by bereavement? What are the evolutionary benefits of these traits? The young discipline of 'social cognitive neuroscience' has been exploring this fascinating interface between brain science and human behaviour since the late 1990s.
Now one of its founding pioneers, Matthew D. Lieberman, presents the discoveries that he and fellow researchers have made. Using fMRI scanning and a range of other techniques, they have been able to see that the brain responds to social pain and pleasure the same way as physical pain and pleasure; and that unbeknown to ourselves, we are constantly 'mindreading' other people so that we can fit in with them. It is clear that our brains are designed to respond to and be influenced by others. For good evolutionary reasons, he argues, we are wired to be social.
The implications are numerous and profound. Do we have to rethink what we understand by identity, and free will? How can managers improve the way their teams relate and perform? Could we organize large social institutions in ways that would work far better? And could there be whole new methods of education?
My first impression: Now this is an interesting and thought-provoking book. I read chapter four, "The cost of free will", and was intrigued by the studies cited and the ideas the research findings appeared to support. The chapter ends with an interesting quote that gives me (as an atheist) some interesting ideas to mull over:
Finally, just because something doesn't really exist doesn't mean that believing that it does is pointless. Fantasy doesn't really exist but the world would be a much more impoverished place without storytelling. (p. 153.)
Publisher's synopsis Everyone knows that transplantation can save and transform lives, but thousands die every year on waiting lists because there are not enough organs available. If more people could be persuaded to donate, more lives could be saved. But is individual reluctance to donate the root of the problem? Individual choices are made against the background of prevailing laws, conventions and institutions, and many of those present direct or indirect obstacles to organ procurement, from both the living and the dead. If any of those cannot be justified, the deaths they cause are similarly unjustified.
In The Ethics of Transplants, Janet Radcliffe Richards, a leading moral philosopher and author of The Sceptical Feminist and Human Nature after Darwin, casts a sharp critical eye over these institutional barriers to organ procurement, and the logic of the arguments offered in their defence. Her incisive reasoning forces us to confront the implications of unexamined intuitions, leads to several unexpected conclusions, and in doing so demonstrates the crucial importance of clear thinking in public debate.
My first impression: Since medical technology has advanced to a point where organ transplants are not uncommon, this raises a suite of important ethical considerations. The author, a philosopher, is mainly targeting readers who have little or no knowledge of philosophy. She outlines her arguments and caveats for obtaining organs that are suitable for transplant -- but she does not discuss the issues associated with who should get those limited organs nor how we should choose recipients. This interesting book is thought-provoking and would be a useful guide for medical doctors and other health-care workers as they develop their own ethical guidelines for organ transplants.
What book(s) are you reading? How far are you along in the book? What do you think of it so far? Do you think your book is worth recommending to others?
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GrrlScientist can also be found here: Maniraptora. She's very active on twitter @GrrlScientist and sometimes lurks on social media: facebook, G+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
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