The Life of Super-Earths: How the Hunt for Alien Worlds and Artificial Cells Will Revolutionize Life on Our Planet

  • Dimitar Sasselov
Basic Books 240 pp. $24.95 (2012)

Planet hunters have been busy bagging their quarries since 1995: known extrasolar planets now number around 600. In this short, sharp look at the subset called 'super-Earths' — rocky or oceanic, but more massive than Earth — astronomer Dimitar Sasselov gives us the science and the speculation about life on other worlds. He suggests that the Copernican revolution, which demoted Earth from its position at the centre of everything, could be brought full circle by new findings from synthetic biology and planetary science.

Babel No More: The Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Language Learners

  • Michael Erard
Free Press 320 pp. $25.99 (2012)

Polyglottism has always amazed. But are hyperpolyglots — who speak many languages — neurological oddities, swots or genetically predisposed? Writer Michael Erard's tale of tongues includes such figures as Bolognese priest Giuseppe Mezzofanti, alleged master of 40 languages, and British explorer Richard Burton, who spoke 29 (and 11 dialects). Erard examines sections of multilinguists' brains and tracks down today's hyperpolyglots. He concludes that they are a “neural tribe” — ambitious and willing to reshape their brains.

Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition

  • Robert N. Proctor
University of California Press 779 pp. $49.95 (2012)

A century of hype has made tobacco the most popular drug on Earth. Although smokers may feel they are working the glamour of film noir, the facts about this lethal habit just get grimmer. For his monumental and sobering indictment, science historian Robert Proctor dug through piles of recently released industry documentation to uncover the activities that lured many scientists into its mill of denial. A tale of giant profits, decades of secrecy over the links with cancer, useless filters and more.

The Sacred Headwaters: The Fight to Save the Stikine, Skeena, and Nass

Wade Davis and Carr Clifton. Greystone Books 160 pp. $45 (2012)

Splayed next to southern Alaska, Canada's Sacred Headwaters region is a vast panorama of mountains, salmon rivers and canyons criss-crossed with the trails of caribou, grizzlies and mountain goats. Thousands of First Nations people live there. But as anthropologist and ethnobotanist Wade Davis explains, it could become a war zone. Corporations are queuing up to develop the region, halted only by First Nations activists and a government moratorium that lasts until 2013. Carr Clifton's haunting photographs evoke what's at stake.

The End of Illness

  • David B. Agus
Simon & Schuster 352 pp. £14.99 (2012)

The billions of dollars spent on medical research have failed to vanquish cancer and other serious diseases. Solutions, argues medical oncologist David Agus, depend on a systemic, whole-body approach rather than a reductionist one. Emphasizing prevention and tailored treatment, Agus advocates the combination of techniques such as proteomics with pragmatic routines based on robust research. Avoiding risky habits and introducing lifestyle changes such as taking aspirin are small steps that could pay dividends, he says.