Life Atomic: A History of Radioisotopes in Science and Medicine

  • Angela N. H. Creager
University of Chicago Press (2013)

The Manhattan Project's impact reverberated beyond the atomic bomb, reveals Angela Creager in this lucid scientific history. It paved the way for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee to mass-produce radioisotopes — elemental variants that emit radiation — for peacetime use. These newly abundant products of the “physicists' war” transformed biology, particularly as molecular tracers in processes such as protein synthesis. Creager deploys radioisotopes as “historical tracers” to explore shifts in medicine, perceptions of cancer risk and the porous “civilian-military divide”.

Space Has No Frontier: The Terrestrial Life and Times of Sir Bernard Lovell

  • John Bromley-Davenport
Bene Factum (2013)

He made waves in radio astronomy, founded the UK-based Jodrell Bank Observatory and was an 'incidental' cold-war spy. Bernard Lovell, who died aged 98 in 2012, emerges as complex and brilliant in John Bromley-Davenport's biography. There is much to savour, from Jodrell Bank's use both in anti-Soviet defence and in tracking the Soviet satellite Sputnik; Lovell's risky, newly revealed 1963 visit to the Soviet Deep Space Network; and the observatory's latest role as control centre for the Square Kilometre Array radio telescopes.

The Long and the Short of It: The Science of Life Span and Aging

  • Jonathan Silvertown
University of Chicago Press (2013)

Ecologist Jonathan Silvertown revivifies an old story in this primer on the science of ageing. His look at lifespan centres on a “Methuselah's menagerie” of bats, naked mole rats, ocean quahogs and humans — in whom cancer is often the price of longevity. He skips from heredity to semelparity (“once-only” reproduction followed by death), drawing on studies of everything from the Japanese hump earwig to human twins. The result is packed with cultural allusions and useful scientific shorthand: if whales lived at the metabolic rate of shrews, for instance, they “would boil the ocean around them”.

Candy: A Century of Panic and Pleasure

  • Samira Kawash
Faber & Faber (2013)

That Halloween haul is a tricky treat. Once reviled as an intoxicant and trigger for lust, candy is now attacked as biochemically dangerous. It is also, as Samira Kawash reveals, a fascinating strand of US cultural history. Sweets evolved from a luxury into the first junk food as, from the 1850s onwards, mass-production technology and sugar chemistry transformed the confectionery industry and built empires such as Mars. Now, argues Kawash, the hidden 'candification' of processed foods with corn syrup presents a bigger health hazard than the lollipop — so blatantly sugary that it is easy to avoid.

Octopus! The Most Mysterious Creature in the Sea

  • Katherine Harmon Courage
Current (2013)

Three hearts, eight arms and blue blood — the bizarre appeal of the octopus holds us in a sucker-like grip. They can change colour in three-tenths of a second, thanks to skin sacs called chromatophores. Their arms hold two-thirds of their brain capacity. They can play, use tools, solve mazes and open child-proof bottles. Katherine Harmon Courage's reportage on what the mollusc is teaching us about robotics, invertebrate intelligence and camouflage is excellent, but sits oddly with the interspersed octopus recipes.