The Extreme Life of the Sea

Stephen R. Palumbi and Anthony R. Palumbi. Princeton University Press (2014)

Marine biologist Stephen R. Palumbi and writer Anthony R. Palumbi survey an impressive catch of extreme oceanic species, from the oldest to the deepest-dwelling. They are inspired guides, weaving evolutionary and geological backstories into accounts of wonders such as the exquisite architecture of sharks' teeth. And they pull no punches in depicting potential futures with devastated oceans dominated by “bacteria, jellyfish and tar-like algae”. A brilliant use of the rich store of research into Earth's largest habitat.

Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America

  • Annie Jacobsen
Little, Brown (2014)

An ethical murk can hang over science in service to the state, as Annie Jacobsen reveals in this chilling history. Operation Paperclip united Nazi science and US cold-war interests, bringing 1,600 German technologists to the United States after the Second World War to work on intelligence and weapons research, despite protests from the likes of Einstein. Jacobsen focuses on 21 scientists, including rocket pioneer and Third Reich insider Wernher von Braun, and reveals disturbing evidence of Paperclip's legacy in US science and medicine.

Cancer Virus: The story of Epstein–Barr Virus

Dorothy H. Crawford, Alan Rickinson and Ingólfur Johannessen. Oxford University Press (2014)

Fifty years ago, the discovery of a virus that triggers cancer in humans rocked the medical world. In this pithy, pacy study, the Epstein–Barr virus is biographized by three scientists who work on it — Dorothy H. Crawford, Alan Rickinson and Ingólfur Johannessen. Starting with the discovery of Burkitt's lymphoma in the 1950s and the isolation of the virus by Michael Anthony Epstein and Yvonne Barr in 1964, they follow its trail to effects in China and the labs where it has proven research gold for molecular biologists and geneticists.

The Wives of Los Alamos: A Novel

  • TaraShea Nesbit
Bloomsbury (2014)

Behind the men behind the Los Alamos nuclear-research programme were women whose story has been waiting to be told. TaraShea Nesbit has done it lyrically in this novel. Written in the collective voice of “the wives” — international, often highly educated women — this chronicle of the Manhattan Project's secret wartime base in New Mexico unfurls as they lived it, distorted by necessary lies. Their strange existence as housewives, “calculators” or lab technicians forms a vivid foreground to the building of the bombs that finished the Second World War, with Nesbit deftly capturing the claustrophobic surreality of it all.

Ha!: The Science of When We Laugh and Why

  • Scott Weems
Basic Books (2014)

Mirth, points out cognitive neuroscientist Scott Weems, is still something of a conundrum — but one well worth cracking. His journey through the jovial looks in turn at what it is, what it is for and why we should cultivate it. We encounter British psychologist Richard Wiseman's LaughLab and its findings (Americans laugh at insults; Europeans savour the absurd), the power of conflict and messy thinking, the speculation that atheists are funnier, the beneficial impact of laughter on pain tolerance, and more.