Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception

George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller. Princeton Univ. Press (2015)

9780691168319

In this acerbic dissection of free-market economics, Nobel-prizewinning economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller trash the “invisible hand” theory, which claims that self-interest promotes social benefits. They reveal market economies as rife with trickery — “phishing” luring “phools” to make poor choices. The two pool their economic wisdom to analyse arenas from food buying and politics to the financial crisis that has plagued us since 2008. A needed call for sceptical economics and financial mindfulness.

On the Wing: Insects, Pterosaurs, Birds, Bats and the Evolution of Animal Flight

  • David E. Alexander
Oxford Univ. Press (2015) 9780199996773 | ISBN: 978-0-1999-9677-3

How do dragonflies, vultures or fruit bats fly? Biomechanics specialist David Alexander reveals all in this study of flight and the evolution of wings in pterodactyls, bats, birds and insects. Aloft with Alexander, we learn how pilots have observed phalanxes of swans flying at 8,000 metres, and how the gargantuan pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus northropi probably got off the ground. Alexander analyses aerial predation, sex, combat, sleep and even egg-laying; picks at the puzzle of bats' evolutionary relationships; and much more.

American Zoo: A Sociological Safari

  • David Grazian
Princeton Univ. Press (2015) 9780691164359 | ISBN: 978-0-6911-6435-9

Cultural sociologist David Grazian once studied urban nightlife. Turning to another brand of contained wildness, he immersed himself in zoos. As a volunteer, he clipped a ferret's toenails, bathed tortoises and logged “more working hours of animal husbandry and faecal cleanup” than most professors can boast. His trek through 26 US zoos has yielded a powerful portrait of these conservation-hotspots-cum-living-labs — which end up telling us more about ourselves than about the animals. Peppered with delicious details, such as one zoo's use of the film Austin Powers for animal “enrichment”.

The Quotable Feynman

Edited by:
  • Michelle Feynman
Princeton Univ. Press (2015) 9780691153032 | ISBN: 978-0-6911-5303-2

The Nobel-prizewinning, bongo-playing, exuberant and brilliant physicist Richard Feynman died in 1988. His contributions to science (including the theory of quantum electrodynamics) and science popularization ensure a lasting fame (R. Phillips Nature 504, 30–31; 2013). His daughter Michelle has mined interviews, articles, books and lectures for this collection of quotes on everything from poetry to politics. Feynman's depth and zing leap from the page, as in: “What I am trying to do is bring birth to clarity, which is really a half-assedly thought-out pictorial semi vision thing.”

Cosmos: The Infographic Book of Space

Stuart Lowe and Chris North. Aurum (2015)

9781781314500

Infographics remain on a roll, offering visual insight into abstruse regions of human knowledge. Astronomers Stuart Lowe and Chris North really lift off in this graphic exploration of all things space. Their depictions of year-by-year spaceflights and space junk shock through sheer numbers, while their takes on interplanetary missions, moons in the Solar System and particularly the polarization of the Milky Way — like a cosmic finger-painting in palest mauve — deliver the facts with aesthetic brio.