Dambisa Moyo Little, Brown (2018)
Does the “new normal” in many democracies, from high unemployment to political turmoil, make them poor models for sustainable growth? In this trenchant analysis, economist Dambisa Moyo explores that provocative question. She examines growth across the political spectrum, from China to the United States, and probes entangled challenges such as debt and protectionism. Unsurprisingly, she points to an urgent need for political reform. Her blueprint for that (including civics courses for the electorate) is ambitious, but, as she asserts, “All the easy choices are behind us”.
Helen Scales Bloomsbury Sigma (2018)
Marine biologist Helen Scales’s Spirals in Time (2015) opened up a whorled wonderland of marine molluscs. This gifted writer now deep-dives into piscine realms. Scales, whose research has spanned the South China Sea and Australia’s Ningaloo coral reef, weaves the history of ichthyology with explorations of adaptations, such as how glycoproteins act like ‘antifreeze’ in the blood, and why shoaling saves energy. Perhaps most beguiling are the hums and pops of fish ‘calls’, which the creatures sense through the lateral line — a series of organs that effectively turn their bodies into giant ears.
Trevor Cox Bodley Head (2018)
On average, humans utter 500 million words over a lifetime. And it’s a crazily complex process, as acoustic engineer Trevor Cox reveals in this intensive survey. Speaking involves “anatomical gymnastics” linked to multiple brain regions; hearing is a subtle decoding of tone, timbre and sense. Cox’s investigation sweeps from the putative protolanguage of human ancestor Homo heidelbergensis to the likelihood of creative algorithmic discourse. In between, he looks at the infant’s acquisition of language, the neuroscience of beatboxing (vocally mimicking percussion instruments) and much more.
Dale Peterson University of California Press (2018)
In July 1969, Ruth Davis — a volunteer at Jane Goodall’s chimpanzee research centre in Gombe, Tanzania — disappeared. Her body was found below a waterfall six days later. Goodall biographer Dale Peterson probes the tragedy and its convoluted context in forensic detail, casting back and forth from the centre’s primatological findings to the human stories of its researchers. Peterson’s engrossing, sometimes dizzyingly kaleidoscopic narrative is bookended by nuanced analyses of how Davis might have died, and the aftershocks that still rock those who knew her best.
David Scott Kastan and Stephen Farthing Yale University Press (2018)
Artistic innovator Paul Cézanne accurately noted that colour is a collaboration between mind and world. So remind literary scholar David Scott Kastan and artist Stephen Farthing in this vivid and erudite tour of a phenomenon that entwines microphysics and electromagnetics with human physiology and cognition. Their march through ten hues drives home why much of culture is deep-dyed in colour, from political affiliations (think the Greens, or Ireland’s Orange Order) to blue notes in music, “uncanny microtonal slides and bends” expressive of emotional subtleties.
