The Address Book: Our Place in the Scheme of Things

  • Tim Radford
Fourth Estate 272 pp. £16.99 (2011)

As children, many of us will have written down a long version of our address — with our street, home town and country followed by planet Earth, the Solar System, the Universe. In his latest book, science journalist Tim Radford muses on our relationship with locations at increasing scales, asking how they become part of our identities and why we make strong associations with certain places. Starting with his perspective on his possessions, house and town, Radford's horizons expand to encompass the place of humans on the planet, in our Galaxy and in the Universe.

Born Liars: Why We Can't Live without Deceit

  • Ian Leslie
Quercus 352 pp. £12.99 (2011)

Most people say they dislike liars, but we have all told untruths. We may consciously tell a white lie, assuring a friend that an outfit suits them when we know it doesn't. Or we may fool ourselves by adhering to unrealistic beliefs, such as that we will always be healthy so it is fine to smoke. But lies are not necessarily bad, says writer Ian Leslie. Although most people feel psychological discomfort when they tell falsehoods, deceit has positive benefits. As well as playing a part in advertising, politics, sport and war, it is central to human character, he argues, and has evolutionary advantages.

Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity

  • Raymond Tallis
Acumen 416 pp. £25 (2011)

Human consciousness and behaviour are more complex than can be explained by our brains alone, argues clinical neuroscientist Raymond Tallis in his provocative book. Although he acknowledges that neuroscience has made great strides in recent decades towards understanding how the brain works, he suggests that some scientists have over-reached themselves in believing that everything from art to religious belief can be explained in neural terms. Such 'neuromania' is misleading, he believes.

The Crafting of the 10,000 Things: Knowledge and Technology in Seventeenth-Century China

  • Dagmar Schäfer
University of Chicago Press 352 pp. $45 (2011)

The demise of China's Ming Dynasty in the seventeenth century was accompanied by a surge in publications detailing the state of knowledge and technology. One of the most significant was Song Yingxing's 1637 volume Tiangong kaiwu, or The Exploitation of the Works of Nature. It documented the production of materials and goods, from yeast, wine and ink to paper, boats and firearms. In this book, historian Dagmar Schäfer sets Song's encyclopedia within the broader commercial and cultural context of Ming China.

Compassion, by the Pound: The Economics of Farm Animal Welfare

F. Bailey Norwood and Jayson L. Lusk. Oxford University Press 416 pp. $45 (2011)

Economic assessments have been largely missing from debates on the welfare of farm animals. Agricultural economists Bailey Norwood and Jayson Lusk rectify that in this volume by evaluating the value of organic eggs, free-range pork and the use of antibiotics in farm animals. Consumers are willing to bear the extra costs for greater animal welfare in food production, they find, but the price in some cases is reduced efficiency, which requires more animals to be used.