Survivors: The Animals and Plants that Time Has Left Behind

  • Richard Fortey
Harper Press 400 pp. £25 (2011)

Cataclysms come and go, but the stromatolites of Western Australia have sat them out for more than 2 billion years. These organic cushion-like structures with cyanobacterial wigs lead palaeontologist Richard Fortey's cast of survivors still dangling from the tree of life. He roves from hordes of horseshoe crabs in Delaware Bay on the northeast US coast to New Zealand's velvet worms and beyond, each fascinating organism a focus for broader thoughts on evolutionary history. Decades spent “looking at thoroughly dead creatures” have not dimmed Fortey's ability to bring these relics to life.

My Beautiful Genome: Discovering Our Genetic Future, One Quirk at a Time

  • Lone Frank
Oneworld 320 pp. £10.99 (2011)

As consumer-led genomics ramps up, questions of ethics and efficacy proliferate. Neurobiologist Lone Frank looks at how exposing our DNA affects our lives. Having interviewed James Watson and covered the rise of personal genomics from 2008, Frank puts her own genes to the test. She charts the range of applications — deep ancestry, disease, behaviour and personality, mental illness and partner compatibility — and concludes that, far from being a straitjacket, unveiling our 'invisible self' liberates, connects and reassures.

1493: How Europe's Discovery of the Americas Revolutionized Trade, Ecology and Life on Earth

  • Charles C. Mann
Granta 544 pp. £14.99 (2011)

Journalist Charles Mann chronicles how Christopher Columbus' second New World expedition in 1493 triggered a global upheaval. European vessels left sheep, rats and lethal viruses in the New World and carried tomatoes, tobacco and maize (corn) to the Old. Millions of people died from introduced diseases and ecosystems convulsed. A world economy emerged, propelled by trade in commodities from silk to slaves. Drawing on new research, Mann reframes the past 500 years to riveting effect.

The Genius in my Basement: The Biography of a Happy Man

  • Alexander Masters
Fourth Estate 352 pp. £8.99 (2011)

In 2007, writer Alexander Masters — author of Stuart: A Life Backwards (2006) — lived above the distinguished mathematician Simon Phillips Norton in Cambridge, UK. Norton helped to devise the 'monstrous moonshine' conjecture, about a mathematical symmetry group in thousands of dimensions known as the Monster; he is also an eccentric who obsesses about buses and Bombay mix. Masters, with his background in maths and physics, has written a fond yet merciless portrait that attempts both to dissect the Monster and to do justice to an extraordinary character.

The Quest for Frank Wild

  • Angie Butler
Jackleberry Press 224 pp. £25 (2011)

Antarctic exploration is synonymous with heroes such as Ernest Shackleton, Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen. Few of us have heard of Frank Wild, Shackleton's 'right-hand man', who had pivotal roles in five Antarctic expeditions and is one of only two men to be awarded a Polar Medal with four bars. After seven years tracking Wild's fate, writer Angie Butler redresses the balance. Her account of his life includes a coup: Wild's memoir of four expeditions, including Nimrod and Endurance, is published here for the first time.