Spook by
The best-selling author of Stiff and Bonk trains her considerable wit and curiosity on the human soul. "What happens when we die? Does the light just go out and that's that--the million-year nap? Or will some part of my personality, my me-ness persist? What will that feel like? What will I do all day? Is there a place to plug in my lap-top?" In an attempt to find out, Mary Roach brings her tireless curiosity to bear on an array of contemporary and historical soul-searchers: scientists, schemers, engineers, mediums, all trying to prove (or disprove) that life goes on after we die.
The Poisoner's Handbook by
Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Deborah Blum follows New York City's first forensic scientists to discover a fascinating Jazz Age story of chemistry and detection, poison and murder. Deborah Blum, writing with the high style and skill for suspense that is characteristic of the very best mystery fiction, shares the untold story of how poison rocked Jazz Age New York City. In The Poisoner's Handbook Blum draws from highly original research to track the fascinating, perilous days when a pair of forensic scientists began their trailblazing chemical detective work, fighting to end an era when untraceable poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime. Drama unfolds case by case as the heroes of The Poisoner's Handbook--chief medical examiner Charles Norris and toxicologist Alexander Gettler--investigate a family mysteriously stricken bald, Barnum and Bailey's Famous Blue Man, factory workers with crumbling bones, a diner serving poisoned pies, and many others. Each case presents a deadly new puzzle and Norris and Gettler work with a creativity that rivals that of the most imaginative murderer, creating revolutionary experiments to tease out even the wiliest compounds from human tissue. Yet in the tricky game of toxins, even science can't always be trusted, as proven when one of Gettler's experiments erroneously sets free a suburban housewife later nicknamed "America's Lucretia Borgia" to continue her nefarious work. From the vantage of Norris and Gettler's laboratory in the infamous Bellevue Hospital it becomes clear that killers aren't the only toxic threat to New Yorkers. Modern life has created a kind of poison playground, and danger lurks around every corner. Automobiles choke the city streets with carbon monoxide; potent compounds, such as morphine, can be found on store shelves in products ranging from pesticides to cosmetics. Prohibition incites a chemist's war between bootleggers and government chemists while in Gotham's crowded speakeasies each round of cocktails becomes a game of Russian roulette. Norris and Gettler triumph over seemingly unbeatable odds to become the pioneers of forensic chemistry and the gatekeepers of justice during a remarkably deadly time. A beguiling concoction that is equal parts true crime, twentieth-century history, and science thriller, The Poisoner's Handbook is a page-turning account of a forgotten New York.
Never Home Alone by
It's the dream scenario for many of us after a long week: having the house completely to ourselves. No partners, no parents, no kids, no pets. But as we settle into the couch, something stirs: maybe a mouse darts out from under a cupboard, or a fly buzzes lazily past the window. We're not actually alone at all. Until quite recently, no one had taken the life that lives with us very seriously: until Rob Dunn and his team decided to take a closer look. Upon investigating the terra incognita of our homes, they discovered that there are nearly 200,000 species living in our bedrooms, kitchens, living areas, bathrooms, and basements. Some of these species can kill us. Some benefit us. And some seem simply benign. But almost all of them were completely unknown--and they've been living alongside us the whole time. In Never Home Alone, biologist Rob Dunn takes us to the edge of biology's latest frontier: our own homes. Every house is a wilderness--from the Egyptian meal moths in our cupboards, to the camel crickets living in the basement, to the antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus waiting on the kitchen counter, thousands of species of insects, bacteria, fungi, and plants live literally under our noses. As we have become increasingly obsessed with cleaning and sterilizing our homes and separating our living spaces from nature, we have unwittingly cultivated an entirely new playground for evolution. Unfortunately, this means that we have created a range of new parasites, from antibiotic-resistant microbes to nearly impossible to kill cockroaches, to threaten ourselves with. At the same time, many of the more helpful organisms--such as microbes that can protect us from autoimmune diseases or promote healthy digestion, or the centipedes that can hunt down those pesky roaches--are caught in the crosshairs. If we're not careful, the "healthier" we try to make our homes, the more likely we'll be putting our own health at risk. A rich natural history and a thrilling scientific investigation, Rob Dunn's Never Home Alone shows us that if are to truly thrive in our homes, we must learn to welcome the unknown guests that have been there the whole time.
Sex on the Brain by
"Sex on the Brain presents a convincing case that we're products of both our biology and our culture - and that the two perform an intricate dance whose steps are, to some extent, ones we can choose." "Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Deborah Blum has synthesized research so new - from the fields of evolutionary biology, anthropology, animal behavior (especially primatology), neuroscience, psychology, and other disciplines - that scientists are just beginning to publish it. She provides the best picture yet of the biological underpinnings of the differences between the sexes." "Examples of what she has discovered include: Men's testosterone levels drop when men are in happy marriages, so dramatically that some scientists speculate that women may use monogamy to control male behavior. On the other hand, new studies show that women in high-stress professions display a rise in testosterone levels (and possibly competitive behaviors). A study done with sweaty T-shirts suggests that a man's scent carries information about his immune system. And women find that scent sexiest when the male immune system is different from their own - which just happens to make for healthy, diverse genetic matches. The exceptions are women using birth control pills, who consistently choose men with the "wrong" immune systems. Some scientists think that many men are attracted to blond women because of a male predisposition to choose youthful mates. Fair hair is generally considered a biological indicator of youth, especially among certain races - since more children than adults are blond."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Gulp by
"America's funniest science writer" (Washington Post) takes us down the hatch on an unforgettable tour. The alimentary canal is classic Mary Roach terrain: the questions explored in Gulp are as taboo, in their way, as the cadavers in Stiff and every bit as surreal as the universe of zero gravity explored in Packing for Mars. Why is crunchy food so appealing? Why is it so hard to find words for flavors and smells? Why doesn't the stomach digest itself? How much can you eat before your stomach bursts? Can constipation kill you? Did it kill Elvis? In Gulp we meet scientists who tackle the questions no one else thinks of--or has the courage to ask. We go on location to a pet-food taste-test lab, a fecal transplant, and into a live stomach to observe the fate of a meal. With Roach at our side, we travel the world, meeting murderers and mad scientists, Eskimos and exorcists (who have occasionally administered holy water rectally), rabbis and terrorists--who, it turns out, for practical reasons do not conceal bombs in their digestive tracts.Like all of Roach's books, Gulp is as much about human beings as it is about human bodies.
Bonk by
The study of sexual physiology--what happens, and why, and how to make it happen better--has been a paying career or a diverting sideline for scientists as far-ranging as Leonardo da Vinci and James Watson. The research has taken place behind the closed doors of laboratories, brothels, MRI centers, pig farms, sex-toy R&D labs, and Alfred Kinsey's attic. Mary Roach, "the funniest science writer in the country" (Burkhard Bilger of The New Yorker), devoted the past two years to stepping behind those doors. Can a person think herself to orgasm? Can a dead man get an erection? Is vaginal orgasm a myth? Why doesn't Viagra help women--or, for that matter, pandas? In Bonk, Roach shows us how and why sexual arousal and orgasm, two of the most complex, delightful, and amazing scientific phenomena on earth, can be so hard to achieve and what science is doing to slowly make the bedroom a more satisfying place.
Behave by
The New York Times bestseller "It's no exaggeration to say that Behave is one of the best nonfiction books I've ever read." --David P. Barash, The Wall Street Journal "It has my vote for science book of the year." --Parul Sehgal, The New York Times "Hands-down one of the best books I've read in years. I loved it." --Dina Temple-Raston, The Washington Post Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal From the celebrated neurobiologist and primatologist, a landmark, genre-defining examination of human behavior, both good and bad, and an answer to the question: Why do we do the things we do? Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: he starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from there, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its evolutionary legacy. And so the first category of explanation is the neurobiological one. A behavior occurs--whether an example of humans at our best, worst, or somewhere in between. What went on in a person's brain a second before the behavior happened? Then Sapolsky pulls out to a slightly larger field of vision, a little earlier in time: What sight, sound, or smell caused the nervous system to produce that behavior? And then, what hormones acted hours to days earlier to change how responsive that individual is to the stimuli that triggered the nervous system? By now he has increased our field of vision so that we are thinking about neurobiology and the sensory world of our environment and endocrinology in trying to explain what happened. Sapolsky keeps going: How was that behavior influenced by structural changes in the nervous system over the preceding months, by that person's adolescence, childhood, fetal life, and then back to his or her genetic makeup? Finally, he expands the view to encompass factors larger than one individual. How did culture shape that individual's group, what ecological factors millennia old formed that culture? And on and on, back to evolutionary factors millions of years old. The result is one of the most dazzling tours d'horizon of the science of human behavior ever attempted, a majestic synthesis that harvests cutting-edge research across a range of disciplines to provide a subtle and nuanced perspective on why we ultimately do the things we do...for good and for ill. Sapolsky builds on this understanding to wrestle with some of our deepest and thorniest questions relating to tribalism and xenophobia, hierarchy and competition, morality and free will, and war and peace. Wise, humane, often very funny, Behave is a towering achievement, powerfully humanizing, and downright heroic in its own right.
Pioneers in Microbiology by
Pasteurization, penicillin, Koch's postulates, and gene coding. These discoveries and inventions are vital yet commonplace in modern life, but were radical when first introduced to the public and academia. In this book, the life and times of leading pioneers in microbiology are discussed in vivid detail, focusing on the background of each discovery and the process in which they were developed -- sometimes by accident or sheer providence.
Stiff by
Stiff is an oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem. For two thousand years, cadavers--some willingly, some unwittingly--have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. They've tested France's first guillotines, ridden the NASA Space Shuttle, been crucified in a Parisian laboratory to test the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, and helped solve the mystery of TWA Flight 800. For every new surgical procedure, from heart transplants to gender reassignment surgery, cadavers have been there alongside surgeons, making history in their quiet way.In this fascinating, ennobling account, Mary Roach visits the good deeds of cadavers over the centuries--from the anatomy labs and human-sourced pharmacies of medieval and nineteenth-century Europe to a human decay research facility in Tennessee, to a plastic surgery practice lab, to a Scandinavian funeral directors' conference on human composting. In her droll, inimitable voice, Roach tells the engrossing story of our bodies when we are no longer with them.
