Book Ideas?

I've got one book left that I'm reading...anyone else have any suggestions for books? (Especially if it's one you'd like me to review.) Unless I discover a new stack of books I've never read, I'll go on an automatic repeat cycle for some of my favorites. My preference is the pop-science and history of science genre, but I'm open to all suggestions.

Happy Father's Day!

The Secret Life of Germs

I made the very poor choice of reading this mostly in the airport and on the train. Don't do that. You start to get paranoid about everything you touch, which is not an enjoyable way of taking a trip.

The Secret Life of Germs by Dr. Philip Tierno is a fast read. It's definitely written in an overly dramatic style. He has a bunch of hypothetical situations that could occur, but he writes them with the knowledge that he's doing it to illustrate his point. His sense of humor about these particular situations is definitely appreciated.

It's a fun/slightly horrifying book to read. Dr. Tierno makes a lot of good points throughout the book. Probably the scariest point that he emphasizes every chance he can get is that a public hand washing campaign would save a great deal of lives. However, it gets a little tiresome after the 50th time we've heard this particular fact. It's also written so that each chapter ends with about a page of his germ-fighting facts---good for reference, irritating for reading through.

If I were to give someone who knew absolutely nothing about biology a book about biology, this is probably one of my top five picks. I'll give it a 4/5 for an interesting and fun, if slightly preachy, read.

Am I Making Myself Clear?

From the title of this book, it looked more like a book for scientists to talk to their non-scientist cohorts.

Actually, Am I Making Myself Clear? is a guide written by Cornelia Dean, former science editor of the New York Times. In it, she details the best way for scientists to communicate with the press.

It's a great book. Even though it has very little relevance to my career at this stage, I really enjoyed hearing the nature of the interactions between the press and science.

A fair amount of the book showcases Ms. Dean's frustration with the fact that scientists and journalists view each other as "boring and overly concerned with details" and "completely not concerned with the process or important details. Ms. Dean seems to be frustrated by the fact that along with funding being slashed, these two groups cannot seem to find any common ground. This leads to very little of the important information that scientists can provide being passed on to the public by journalists.

I don't want to go through too much of the book---it's mostly tips for each different type of media interaction that scientists might encounter.

I would definitely recommend this book. It's not very useful for someone at this stage of my career, but it was definitely really interesting to see the media viewpoint on scientists. I'll give it a 4/5---here's to hoping this book will become really useful to me in the future!

Supersense.

No one's stopping me! Book review time. This will be short since I have to get back to apt hunting online (weeee).

Supersense, a book by cognitive psychologist Bruce Hood, covers the development of human belief in the supernatural world.

I liked it, with a few exceptions.

First of all, he got stellar reviews from all of the people who he quotes in the book. Which is fine. But when you're surrounding these other scientists quotes with "so and so's fantastic study" and "Dr. Fantastic has this interesting study" it's a little sketch.

He also writes his book in a very different way. Dr. Hood talks directly to his audience, posing tons of rhetorical questions. It's a little odd.

Dr. Hood writes a very appealing book. However, I never really got into it. I don't know why. I thought I'd enjoy the subject. To be honest, it's probably related to the fact that I never really warmed to psychology. Especially studies that involve babies. They just seem rather odd to me. For example, to show that babies will imbue human characteristics into non-human things, they set a baby on the floor and moved a hat that was attached to a little robotic component that the scientists were controlling. When the hat beeped, the baby made noise. When the hat moved, the babies moved.

Yes, this gives more evidence for some point. But whose idea was it? This book has a tons of studies that are similar in the "baby studies" nature.

I'd give it a 3/5. Not too bad, not too good. Read it if you have some time to kill.

Avoid Boring People

Still on the vacation, so I'm scrambling to put up all of the books I've read.

Alrighty, so I have avoided Nobel prize winner James Watson's Avoid Boring People. I have been incredibly biased towards him ever since I learned about his treatment of Rosalind Franklin, and have refused to give him a second chance. I thought that he was a sexist jackass.

I stumbled upon this book for about the 4th time in the last two years and decided that I should finally give him a chance.

Frankly, it wasn't worth it. Watson portrays almost everyone---including himself---as the stereotypical Harvard tool that I've run into many a time. Every single description of a woman starts with her physical appearance ("the blond" is a common theme). He describes many of his lab techs as women who unfortunately had boyfriends. About 25% of this book is his description of his failure to "get" the woman who he has his eye on. Intelligence in women is portrayed as an afterthought.

His particularly infuriating last chapter revolves around his defense of the marks made by the Harvard president on women in science. (It's essentially "There are differences in men and women's brains! Why is everyone so mad? Also, my former student [Nancy Hopkins, prof at MIT] shouldn't outrage herself like that. It's not to her credit as a scientist.)

The book is written in an odd format: first Watson describes a particular period of his scientific career, and then a list of his advice is found at the end of each chapter. This particular way of presenting his advice is more of a textbook style format, which isn't fun to read. He does have a chatty, enjoyable style of writing. However, it's not enough to save this book.

I'll give it a 1/5. Flip to the back (where he has all of his hints in a list) in the bookstore, read and take what you like from it, put it down, and don't even bother reading it.

Pandora's Keepers

As I said in my last post, I've had a lot of time for reading.

How I choose my books to purchase is based on approximately three different questions:
1) Does it sound like it'll be interesting? (I've been on a science history/pop-science kick for the past few years.)
2) Is it used or on sale? (An important question for my limited budget.)
3) Will I cry due to the terrible writing or will I spasm due to over-simplifications?

Pandora's Keepers was a book that I thought sounded interesting, was on sale, and the writing seemed pleasant. For whatever reason, I left it on my shelf for about a year. When packing for the vacation, I threw it into my backpack.

When opening up this book on the plane, I was drawn in immediately and regretted leaving this book on a shelf for a full year. Brian VanDeMark has mostly written books on Vietnam, but this book centers on the drama involving the nine primary scientists who worked on the atomic bomb in the US. He paints intimate portraits of each scientist, giving the reader a chance to see the strengths and weaknesses of each personality. As I passed through the book, I felt emotionally involved in each step of the project.

It's hard to give a review that does justice to this particular book. While VanDeMark definitely has his own bias throughout the book, which is very apparent in his treatment of the Oppenheimer affair, it's difficult to fault him for this bias. He gives a fair picture of almost all of the scientists, and does a good job of weaving together a dramatic, interesting story.

The major flaw that I found with this book was at the end. VanDeMark has a chapter that is essentially his views on nuclear weapons. For whatever reason, it left a bad taste in my mouth. While his opinion on this subject is pretty clear throughout the book, I didn't enjoy his argument.

Despite this last chapter, I'd definitely recommend this book. If you're looking for an informative, interesting account of the scientists of the atomic bomb, read this book. I'll give it a 4.5/5---it would have been a 5 without the last chapter!

Musicophilia.

I've decided to share my opinion on my reading materials. Just for fun. I mean, hey, it's my blog!

Ok, so I just finished Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks.

Let me first preface my opinion with the fact that I am not a neuroscientist. I really don't know much about the brain other than what I learned in introductory biology.

Dr. Sacks has a very distinct writing style. I've read him before, and enjoyed it. I have always gotten the sense that he was always told by his editor, "Oliver, are you serious? Tone the snob down." However, that delightful hint of snob definitely is fun to read. And it certainly doesn't get in the way of his natural compassion and curiosity that are easy to see when he discusses his patients.

Musicophilia is fascinating. Sacks recounts many different types of cases where music was a blessing, a curse, or an innate gift to those with neurological problems. My favorite chapter was about patients that have Williams syndrome---a small deletion in a chromosome leads to many issues (the inability to identify geometric patterns, low IQ, distinct facial features, etc.) and amazing innate musical ability.

However, the book isn't the best showing for Sacks. I feel like half of the book he refers to his other books in which he details either similar or the same case. Yes, we get it, you wrote other books. But it feels like an informative documentary that keeps on getting interrupted by commercials. The overall storytelling nature that I enjoyed in the other book I read by Sacks (The Island of the Colorblind) is found only within the individual chapters. That's great when you just want to read one chapter at a time, but it feels somewhat jarring when you're reading larger chunks of the book.

Overall, I'd say read it. If you don't know anything about neuroscience, it's fine---he does a good job of explaining the basics. And the stories are unreal. I would judge it to be a 3.5/5---borrow it from the library, but don't buy it.