Do Fathers Matter?: What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We've Overlooked

  • Paul Raeburn
Farrar, Straus & Giroux (2014)

When science journalist Paul Raeburn first assessed the available research on fathers, he found the pickings decidedly slim. Scientists are now redressing the balance, and Raeburn has rounded up key findings in developmental psychology, evolutionary biology, genetics and neuroscience. Prepare for a bracing walk through the myriad ways fathers matter, from the “genomic battle of the sexes” that can lead to differing syndromes in offspring, to a father's 'destabilizing' — and hence stimulating and educative — play with his children.

The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning

  • Marcelo Gleiser
Basic Books (2014)

Among the bright knowns of science are countless unknowns, untouched by the most exquisitely calibrated, powerful instruments yet invented. Physicist Marcelo Gleiser sets out to explore the extent to which we can make sense of reality. He maps humanity's “island of knowledge” from pre-Socratic cosmology to quantum mechanics. And he marks how mysteries proliferate with each finding — a perpetual blur in our cosmic view that, like mathematician Kurt Gödel's work on incompleteness, spurs scientific creativity.

The Consolations of Economics: How We Will All Benefit from the New World Order

  • Gerard Lyons
Faber and Faber (2014)

The economic conflagration of 2008 inspired plenty of bravura ideas on how to fireproof the future. Economist Gerard Lyons, who saw it all coming, offers a gloom-free reading of causes and correctives, and predicts global growth led by multiple economies. Drawing on key case studies and long experience with China, he examines world economic drivers, 'soft' and 'hard' power (a country's influence exerted through cultural appeal, or by military or economic means), and the economic goals and strategies that foster global stability.

Gotham Unbound: The Ecological History of Greater New York

  • Ted Steinberg
Simon & Schuster (2014)

How did Mannahatta, a wild expanse of hills and mudflats on North America's Atlantic coast, become the high-density, concrete-coated city of New York? Ted Steinberg's environmental history traces the stages from Henry Hudson's 1609 discovery of a “drowned estuary” to the ravages of Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Centuries of extreme land-use changes — reclaiming underwater terrain, levelling hills, draining lakes and crafting ersatz terra firma from landfill — have created an ecologically scarred city vulnerable to further storms. Other coastal megacities should take heed.

Human Evolution: A Pelican Introduction

  • Robin Dunbar
Pelican Books (2014)

The British Academy's 'Lucy to Language' project has spawned major sociobiological findings, most recently aired in Thinking Big by Robin Dunbar, Clive Gamble and John Gowlett (see Nature 509, 284–285; 2014). Dunbar draws on that research — in particular the social-brain hypothesis and time-budget models — for this solid primer on human evolution under the relaunched Pelican imprint. On the journey from the australopithecines to the Neolithic and what followed, Dunbar is an accomplished guide.