Brain Storms: The Race to Unlock the Mysteries of Parkinson's

  • Jon Palfreman
Farrar, Straus & Giroux (2015) 9780374116170 9781846044946 | ISBN: 978-0-3741-1617-0

In 2011, journalist Jon Palfreman was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. The progressive neurodegenerative condition, characterized by tremors and muscular rigidity, affects 7 million people worldwide. In this lucid overview, Palfreman interlaces the history of research into the disease — linked, like Alzheimer's, to a rogue protein — with therapeutic approaches from deep brain stimulation to the drug L-DOPA. Extraordinary case studies abound, such as that of a man who can ride a bicycle but not walk, and dancer Pamela Quinn, who has devised workarounds that 'trick' the body into movement.

Places of the Heart: The Psychogeography of Everyday Life

  • Colin Ellard
Bellevue Literary (2015) 9781942658009 | ISBN: 978-1-9426-5800-9

Why would a street evoke unease, or a shopping centre the desire to spend? Psychologist Colin Ellard explores the intersection of neuroscience and urban design for answers. Meshing recent findings with thoughtful appraisals of their implications, Ellard looks at spaces and the awe, lust, boredom, affection or anxiety that they trigger. He is richly insightful, particularly on digital encroachments into the experience of place: can augmented-reality gear ever vie with the hair-prickling thrill of being there? Ellard argues that virtual immersion could take a “metaphysical toll”; it is hard not to agree.

Elephants and Kings: An Environmental History

  • Thomas R. Trautmann
University of Chicago Press (2015) 9780226264363 | ISBN: 978-0-2262-6436-3

The intelligence, majestic presence and physical prowess of the Asian elephant was not lost on India's monarchs. As historian Thomas Trautmann shows in this scholarly environmental history, the beast's usefulness in warfare and its prodigious dietary needs ensured royal protection for swathes of forest in ancient India, where the wild animals were captured for specialized training. That the country still has 30,000 elephants is a testament to their enduring place in the collective imagination; but as Trautmann argues, India's surviving patchwork of 31 elephant reserves may not sustain them.

Why You Can Build it Like That: Modern Architecture Explained

  • John Zukowsky
Thames & Hudson (2015) 9780500291788 | ISBN: 978-0-5002-9178-8

From the squat circularity of New York City's Guggenheim Museum to Abu Dhabi's swooning, tornado-shaped Capital Gate skyscraper, extreme architecture is here to stay. This illustrated roll call by architectural historian John Zukowsky zips through 100 “iconic and iconoclastic” structures of the past 50 years — shapely, hideous or energizingly weird. Norman Foster's Spaceport America in New Mexico, for instance, resembles a giant horseshoe crab in thin-shelled concrete, whereas Myron Goldsmith's McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope in Arizona is a minimalist ode to the right angle.

Nature and Wealth: Overcoming Environmental Scarcity and Inequality

  • Edward B. Barbier
Palgrave Macmillan (2015) 9781137403384 | ISBN: 978-1-1374-0338-4

In this cogent analysis, economist Edward Barbier reveals an economic landscape of degraded environments and social inequality. The culprit, he argues, is a structural imbalance in which natural resources are overexploited and human capital is undersupplied. Examining current challenges such as ecological scarcity, he concludes that a strategy to rebalance natural and human capital is the way forward, however difficult.