Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much

Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir. Allen Lane (2013)

Two scientists reveal that scarcity — “having less than you feel you need” — is a central factor in a raft of societal challenges. Economist Sendhil Mullainathan and psychologist Eldar Shafir posit that when we lack money or attention, for example, we obsess about it, leaving us little mental capacity to plan, meet other needs or practise self-control. We can become entrapped and eventually derailed by a vicious cycle. By reframing the dynamic as a mindset rather than a human failing, Mullainathan and Shafir train a new lens on chronic obesity, endemic poverty and desperate loneliness.

Deep Sea and Foreign Going: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Brings You 90% of Everything

  • Rose George
Portobello Books (2013)

Some 746 million bananas (“one for every European”) can fit into the largest container ship, notes journalist Rose George. About 100,000 cargo carriers ply the world's oceans, transporting 90% of our stuff. Yet these metallic Moby Dicks criss-crossing the lawless reaches of international waters can be hotbeds of crime, magnets for piracy and nemeses for sea life. Travelling with George on the Maersk Kendal from Felixstowe in the United Kingdom to Singapore, we are regaled — and horrified — by her salvos of facts. Riveting.

Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

  • Sheri Fink
Crown (2013)

Medical ethics and disaster management take centre stage in this harrowing chronicle of a hospital besieged by Hurricane Katrina. Pulitzer-prizewinning journalist Sheri Fink tells how for five days in August 2005, a botched evacuation left hundreds trapped in the hot, increasingly filthy Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans. A handful of doctors and nurses were then alleged to have injected some of the severely ill with lethal drug doses. Fink reports on the ensuing nightmare with clarity and not a little compassion.

The Secret World of Sleep: The Surprising Science of the Mind at Rest

  • Penelope A. Lewis
Palgrave Macmillan (2013)

The sleeping brain is not at rest: so reveals neuroscientist Penelope Lewis in this nippy primer on the biology and behaviour associated with snoozing. There is much to fascinate, such as the beneficial synaptic clear-outs enacted by slow-wave sleep, and the ascending reticular activating system — brainstem ganglia that send neurotransmitters to the rest of the brain to signal that it is time to wake up. From the latest on narcolepsy to the sleep-inhibiting qualities of smoked meat, this is wide-awake science.

Old Man River: The Mississippi River in North American History

  • Paul Schneider
Henry Holt (2013)

It has been a bath for mammoths, a road for steamboats and a headache for engineers. The mighty Mississippi is a river that defines a nation, its tributaries branching out across the United States from Montana to Pennsylvania. In his natural and cultural history, Paul Schneider takes us from its origins 200 million years ago to its dammed and polluted present. His vast cast of heroes and eccentrics includes nineteenth-century showman Albert Koch, who haphazardly assembled fossils dug from Mississippi mud.