All the Boats on the Ocean

  • Carmel Finley
University of Chicago Press (2017) 9780226443379 | ISBN: 978-0-2264-4337-9

As the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reports, 90% of global fish stocks are fully fished or overfished. Science historian Carmel Finley traces that crisis back to the cold war, when the United States, Japan, the Soviet Union and other seafaring nations deployed fishing to stake territorial claims. From the 1970s on, trawling and government subsidies forced an explosion in the industry. Now, with little reduction in subsidized fleets and oceans at risk, Finley sees the future of fisheries hinging on holistic approaches involving fish, fisher and environment.

Irresistible

  • Adam Alter
Bodley Head (2017) 9781847923578 | ISBN: 978-1-8479-2357-8

From Facebook to Fitbit, the digital infiltrates life: many people now spend 100 hours a month on their mobile phones. In this superb study of Internet addiction, Adam Alter anatomizes the cynicism of an industry in which compulsive lures are built into products that billionaire bosses avoid like the plague. Drawing on a trove of neuroscience, he isolates six “ingredients” of behavioural addiction, such as unresolved tension. Commendably, he also offers pragmatic preventive solutions for children and techniques for addicted adults, such as stripping numerical feedback from social-media platforms.

Modern Death: How Medicine Changed the End of Life

  • Haider Warraich
St Martin's (2017) 9781250104588 | ISBN: 978-1-2501-0458-8

Daily exposure to death and the agonies of the bereaved prompted cardiologist Haider Warraich to encapsulate the recent transformation in end-of-life care. The result is rich, splicing harrowing cases from the acute admissions ward into medical history and science as he examines everything from the death of a cell to the impact of death on society. Warraich details resuscitation technologies that are redefining death; delves into the debate over dying at home; explores euthanasia and terminal sedation; and advocates greater openness about all this on the part of physicians.

The Evolution Underground

  • Anthony J. Martin
Pegasus (2017) 9781681773124 | ISBN: 978-1-6817-7312-4

As refuges from cataclysm, nurseries or traps for prey, animal burrows have been central to evolutionary history, and have altered ecosystems and planetary chemistry. Palaeontologist Anthony Martin is an amiably erudite guide to burrowing fauna, from the giant sloth Glossotherium, which thrived in the Pleistocene epoch, to earthworms, naked mole rats — and star tunnellers such as the gopher tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus) and the Patagonian conure (Cyanoliseus patagonus), a parrot that nibbles nesting holes in cliffs. Down the rabbit hole with Martin, Earth becomes one vast, “constantly evolving burrow system”.

Mouthfeel: How Texture Makes Taste Ole G. Mouritsen and Klavs Styrbæk, transl. Mariela Johansen. Columbia University Press (2017)

9780231180764

The 'mouthfeel' of foods — the jawbone-jarring crunch of a crouton or the voluptuous viscosity of melting chocolate — is a key element of taste. Biophysicist Ole Mouritsen and chef Klavs Styrbæk nimbly explore the interplay of food textures and the mouth's somatosensory system. Inspired recipes (fried cod swim bladder, for instance) mesh with science on milk's “surprisingly complicated inner structure” and the 40,000 varieties of rice.