Category Archives: science

I Contain Multitudes

Posted on October 27, 2017 by smellincoffee

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes WIthin Us and a Grander View of Life © 2016 Ed Yong 268 pages For much of the 20th century, microbes were equivalent with germs – invisible threats that needed to eradicated.  As we move … Continue reading →

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The Disappearing Spoon

Posted on October 25, 2017 by smellincoffee

The Disappearing Spoon© 2010 Sam Kean400 pages A massive poster of the periodic table is as elemental to the image of a science classroom as the rows of graduated cylinders and microscopes,   but there is considerably more to that table … Continue reading →

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Isaac’s Storm

Posted on September 10, 2017 by smellincoffee

Isaac’s Storm: A Man, A Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History© 1999 Erik Larson336 pages First news from Galveston just received by train that could get no closer to the bay shore than 6 mi  where the prairie was … Continue reading →

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A human is a messy receipe

Posted on August 24, 2017 by smellincoffee

“There is an important distinction between a blueprint and a recipe. A blueprint is a detailed, point-for-point specification of some end product like a house or a car. One diagnostic feature of a blueprint is that it is reversible. Give … Continue reading →

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Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

Posted on May 7, 2017 by smellincoffee

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry© 2017 Neil deGrasse Tyson200 pages Astrophysics for People in a Hurry is exactly what it says on the tin, a brief cosmological primer that presents the basics of cosmology, explains the ways we are … Continue reading →

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Garbology

Posted on February 15, 2017 by smellincoffee

Garbology :Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash© 2012 Edward Humes288 pages Readers who are passionate about garbage — a description which includes sanitation workers, victims of SimCity, and ecologists, I assume — will find no shortage of books on the … Continue reading →

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The Future of the Mind

Posted on February 5, 2017 by smellincoffee

The Future of the Mind: the Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind© 2014 Michio Kaku400 pages In The Future of the Mind, physicist Michio Kaku talks with psychologists and neurologists like V.S. Ramachandran (Phantoms in the Brain, … Continue reading →

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A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science

Posted on January 31, 2017 by smellincoffee

The Canon: A whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science© 2007 Natalie Angier293 pages Science is amazing! Why is so much of the writing about it so lame?   Natalie Angier’s The Canon first reviews the principles of scientific thinking … Continue reading →

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Looking ahead & some also-reads

Posted on January 31, 2017 by smellincoffee

I intentionally launched this year off with some fun reading, so we’re off to a good start and there’s more on the way.  Yesterday Amazon held a flash sale for science books, and I picked up a few relatively recent … Continue reading →

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Sapiens

Posted on December 7, 2016 by smellincoffee

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind443 pages© 2014  Yuval Noah Harari In Sapiens, Yuval Harari presents a natural history of the human race from its flowering across Eurasia to a worried reflection on the prospects of of technohumanism. The book’s … Continue reading →

Posted in history, Reviews, science | Tagged , , | 10 Comments