Books & Arts in 2017

Margaret Catley-Carlson plunges into a study of a dwindling resource — groundwater.

Barbara Kiser reviews five of the week's best science picks.

Ann Finkbeiner scrutinizes a biography of supremely inventive particle physicist Richard Garwin.

Roger Kneebone explores how lacemakers, glass artists and percussionists are sharing skills with researchers.

Richard B. Norgaard is troubled by the incrementalism of Jeffrey Sachs's modest new plan for the US economy.

Ewen Callaway extols a study on the creation of a cell line key to combating rubella.

Andreas Albrecht ponders a study of the physicists who grapple with the origins of the Universe.

Barbara Kiser reviews five of the week's best science picks.

Dan Jones relishes the philosopher's latest exploration of minds and memes.

Davide Castelvecchi applauds an inside story on the discovery of gravitational waves.

Barbara Kiser reviews five of the week's best science picks.

Insoo Hyun weighs up a treatise exploring the ethical deliberations surrounding embryo research.

Rogers Hollingsworth traces the European influence on US research universities that began some 150 years ago.

Barbara Kiser reviews five of the week's best science picks.

On Arthur C. Clarke's centenary, Andrew Robinson lauds a prescient, original writer.

Barbara Kiser reviews five of the week's best science picks.

Paul A. Lombardo applauds a shocking study detailing the Allies' Second World War experimentation with chemical weapons on their own troops.

Russell Poldrack assesses a primer on the implications of advances in brain imaging.

Elizabeth Leane surveys the extraordinary influence of the physicist's first foray into popular-science publishing.

Robots, DNA and electricity bask in the limelight, as Blade Runner reboots, Kazakhstan gets energetic and a 'space tapestry' rolls out. It's quite a year — and key anniversaries hit, too, for Canada, the anthropology dynamo the Peabody Museum and architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Nicola Jones reports.