Aluminum Dreams: The Making of Light Modernity

  • Mimi Sheller
MIT Press (2014)

It propelled humanity into air and space, transformed communications and fed war machines. Aluminium — in aeroplanes, space capsules, satellites, bombs and baking foil — is welded into the built world. Mimi Sheller's coruscating cultural study reveals how young US chemist Charles Martin Hall and his French counterpart Paul Héroult simultaneously discovered the electrolytic production of aluminium in 1886; how designers were galvanized by its potential for the light and sleek; and how social and environmental problems from bauxite mining and aluminium smelting persist.

Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away

  • Rebecca Goldstein
Pantheon (2014)

Philosopher Rebecca Goldstein probes why Plato — and the philosophical enterprise itself — remains a force in science and culture 2,400 years on. Into a weighty discussion of the Platonic world view Goldstein inserts fictional interludes that see Plato, Chromebook in hand, touring the Googleplex, a neuroscience lab and beyond. Although contrived, this thought experiment usefully casts an eye on our turbocharged century. And it shows what survives of this classical titan: an ability to plumb the deep questions we still grapple with, from the nature of knowledge to morality.

The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era

  • Craig Nelson
Scribner (2014)

Tomes on things atomic are rife — from discoveries by seminal physicists to meltdowns and crumbling nuclear arsenals. Craig Nelson braids the strands into a comprehensive chronicle that is also a wry elegy for an ebbing age. Starting with Wilhelm Röntgen's discovery of X-rays, Nelson gives us the panoply of physicists from Lise Meitner to Leo Szilard; offers a masterful reading of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and takes us through weapons tests, the cold war, Fukushima, and the rest of our long attempt to “live with blessed curses”.

The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human

  • Noah Strycker
Riverhead (2014)

Birds intrigue humanity, and in this research round-up Noah Strycker reveals why — in marvels such as the equal-radius flight paths of flocking starlings and the decontamination chamber that is a vulture's stomach. As he notes, such findings can mirror human realities. Clark's nutcrackers, for instance, can recall the location of 5,000 seed caches. Yet, in captivity some wild species lose substantial hippocampal volume (and memory) within weeks — an echo of the rapid losses found in patients with Alzheimer's disease.

The Insect Cookbook: Food for a Sustainable Planet

Arnold van Huis, Henk van Gurp and Marcel Dicke. Columbia University Press (2014)

The looming squeeze on food security is forcing some scientists to look at the abundance of protein under our feet: insects. Here entomologists Arnold van Huis and Marcel Dicke team up with chef Henk van Gurp for a pragmatic introduction to entomophagy, covering insect farming, nutrition and cuisine. Tarte tatin with chocolate-coated grasshoppers? With 2 billion of us already popping mealworms and more, this is a case of joining the crowd.