Underlands: A Journey Through Britain's Lost Landscape

  • Ted Nield
Granta Books (2014)

“We must get under the skin of the land” to understand a country, avers geologist Ted Nield. In this magisterial homage to Britain's geology — once the bedrock of mining industries that enriched the country's coffers and culture — Nield extracts a wealth of stories from the stones. Around broad areas such as geological formation, quarrying and stone-working, he layers a narrative that mixes memoir, science and industrial history. Studded with delights, such as the discovery of basalt's volcanic origin by eighteenth-century 'rogue' Rudolph Erich Raspe — author of the Baron Munchausen tales.

Nanoscience: Giants of the Infinitesimal

Peter Forbes and Tom Grimsey. Papadakis (2014)

Lucid text and visuals combine to dazzling effect in this introduction to nanotechnology by science writer Peter Forbes and sculptor Tom Grimsey. The field's godfather, they remind us, was physicist Richard Feynman, whose seminal 1959 lecture 'There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom' posited the idea of engineering at the molecular scale. The authors tour the evolution of the discipline, from studies tracing how components self-organize, to nanomaterials such as graphene and aquaplastics (polymers that are 97% water), nano-templated stem cells, quasicrystals and much more.

The Poetic Species: A Conversation with Edward O. Wilson and Robert Hass

Bellevue Literary Press (2014)

The principle of consilience, or the unity of knowledge, infuses this conversation between biologist E. O. Wilson and poet Robert Hass, organized by New York institutions the American Museum of Natural History and Poets House. The eminent duo explore echoes and parallels in their respective fields with eloquent concision, from Wilson's advice to poets (“Colonize science”) to Hass's musings on the interplay of selfish gene and social imperative in imagination.

The Duchess's Shells: Natural History Collecting in the Age of Cook's Voyages

  • Beth Fowkes Tobin
Yale University Press (2014)

How do you study a long-dispersed collection? Scholar Beth Fowkes Tobin faced this curious challenge when delving into the story of eighteenth-century conchologist Margaret Cavendish Bentinck, duchess of Portland. Bentinck's shell collection was the era's largest, yet she died before completing her scientific catalogue, and the lot was sold off. Tobin's feat of historical retrieval reveals the duchess as a field collector generous with funds and findings, preventing yet another 'burial at sea' of a historically important female scientist.

Cumin, Camels, and Caravans: A Spice Odyssey

  • Gary Paul Nabhan
University of California Press (2014)

Globalization began not with Christopher Columbus in 1492, as many suggest, but with unknown Arabic and Jewish spice traders centuries before. So argues agricultural ecologist Gary Paul Nabhan in this heady historical and cultural study of ancient trade routes including the Silk Road, the 'information highways' of old. Centring his discussion on commodities such as frankincense, Nabhan adds pungent pinches of botany and gastronomy, such as a 3,700-year-old recipe incorporating lamb, yogurt, cumin and blood.