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Tag: Popular science

  • The Gene: An Intimate History

    The Gene, published in 2016, is a history of heredity from ancient speculation to the present. Siddhartha Mukherjee follows Gregor Mendel's pea experiments, Darwin's theory, the rediscovery of Mendel's laws, the discovery of DNA's structure, gene cloning and sequencing, the Human Genome Project and the arrival of tools that can edit genomes directly.

    The book does not shy away from the dark chapters: the eugenics movements in Britain and the United States, forced sterilisations and the Nazi programmes of murder justified in the name of heredity. Mukherjee uses them to frame present-day questions about genetic testing, the genetics of gender, sexuality, intelligence and temperament, and the ethics of altering human embryos.

    Running through the science is a personal thread: several members of the author's family in Calcutta suffered from schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, and he asks what that inheritance means for him and his children. The book is long but elegantly written, and it complements his earlier history of cancer.

    Book details

    AuthorSiddhartha Mukherjee
    First published2016
    Original languageEnglish
    GenrePopular science
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)590

    Themes

    • Heredity
    • History of genetics
    • Eugenics
    • Gene editing ethics
    • Mental illness in families

    Who should read it

    Readers who want to understand genetics and its ethical stakes through a blend of history and memoir.

  • The Emperor of All Maladies

    The Emperor of All Maladies, published in 2010, is subtitled A Biography of Cancer. Siddhartha Mukherjee, an oncologist, began writing it during his fellowship training, prompted by a patient who wanted to know what she was fighting. The book tells the story of the disease and of human attempts to understand and treat it.

    Mukherjee travels from an Egyptian physician's account of a breast tumour and the theories of Hippocrates and Galen to the radical mastectomies of William Halsted, the first childhood leukaemia remissions achieved by Sidney Farber with chemotherapy, the lobbying by Mary Lasker that led to the American war on cancer, the long fight to link smoking with lung cancer, and the discovery of oncogenes that led to targeted drugs such as Gleevec and Herceptin.

    Woven among these histories are the stories of his own patients, which keep the human stakes in view. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2011 and was adapted into a documentary series. It is notable for explaining complex biology clearly while conveying both the progress and the humility the disease demands.

    Book details

    AuthorSiddhartha Mukherjee
    First published2010
    Original languageEnglish
    GenrePopular science
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)570
    AwardsPulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction 2011

    Themes

    • History of medicine
    • Cancer research
    • Patient experience
    • Chemotherapy and targeted therapy
    • Public health and tobacco

    Who should read it

    Patients, families, medical students and anyone wanting to understand cancer's history and science.

  • Outliers

    Outliers: The Story of Success, published in 2008, challenges the idea that high achievers rise purely through talent and effort. Malcolm Gladwell argues that we need to look at where they come from: their families, cultures, generations and the hidden advantages that came their way.

    Examples include Canadian hockey players whose birth months gave them an edge in youth leagues, Bill Gates and the Beatles, whose rare access to practice made deep mastery possible, and the popular claim of roughly ten thousand hours to reach expertise. Gladwell also discusses a brilliant man whose upbringing left him unable to navigate institutions, the cultural roots of plane crashes in cockpit communication, and rice farming as a source of a strong work ethic.

    The book ends with Gladwell's own Jamaican family history, showing how chance and opportunity shaped it. As with his other books, critics fault its tidy stories and selective use of research, and the ten-thousand-hour idea has been oversimplified in popular retellings. Still, its core message, that success is partly a collective and structural matter, has had wide influence.

    Book details

    AuthorMalcolm Gladwell
    First published2008
    Original languageEnglish
    GenrePopular science
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)300

    Themes

    • Success and opportunity
    • Deliberate practice
    • Cultural legacy
    • Timing and luck
    • Inequality

    Who should read it

    Readers, parents and educators who want to rethink how talent and achievement really develop.

  • Homo Deus

    Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow appeared in Hebrew in 2015 and in English in 2016. Harari begins by arguing that for the first time in history, famine, epidemic disease and large-scale war have become manageable problems for much of humanity, and he asks what goals will replace them. His answer is that elites will seek immortality, lasting happiness and godlike powers through biotechnology and computing.

    The middle of the book examines humanism, the belief system that places individual human feelings and choices at the centre of meaning, and its liberal, socialist and evolutionary variants. Harari then suggests that advances in life sciences and artificial intelligence may undermine humanism by showing that organisms are algorithms and that external systems can know us better than we know ourselves.

    He sketches an emerging creed he calls dataism, in which information flow itself becomes the supreme value. Harari presents these as possibilities rather than predictions, intended to widen debate. The book is speculative and often unsettling, and it pairs naturally with Sapiens as a thought experiment about where the story might go next.

    Book details

    AuthorYuval Noah Harari
    First published2015
    Original languageHebrew
    Translated byYuval Noah Harari
    GenrePopular science
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)450

    Themes

    • Future of humanity
    • Artificial intelligence
    • Humanism
    • Dataism
    • Biotechnology and immortality

    Who should read it

    Readers who enjoyed Sapiens and want a provocative look at how technology might reshape human values.

  • A Brief History of Time

    Published in 1988, A Brief History of Time set out to explain the frontiers of cosmology to general readers. Hawking was told that every equation would halve his sales, so the book contains only one, Einstein's relation between mass and energy. It went on to stay on bestseller lists for years and sold many millions of copies.

    Hawking moves from early ideas of the universe, through Newton and Einstein's theories of gravity and relativity, to the expanding universe and the big bang. He explains quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle, the life and death of stars, and black holes, including his own discovery that they should emit radiation. Later chapters consider the arrow of time, wormholes and the quest to unite relativity with quantum theory.

    The book is short but dense, and many readers find its middle chapters challenging. Its appeal lies in the clarity of its big questions and in Hawking's personal voice, including his hope that a complete theory might one day let us understand why the universe exists. An illustrated edition and the later A Briefer History of Time aimed to make it more accessible.

    Book details

    AuthorStephen Hawking
    First published1988
    Original languageEnglish
    GenrePopular science
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)210

    Themes

    • Origin of the universe
    • Black holes
    • Nature of time
    • Quantum theory and gravity
    • Unified theory

    Who should read it

    Anyone curious about cosmology who wants the big ideas explained by one of the scientists who shaped them.

  • The Selfish Gene

    The Selfish Gene, published in 1976, popularised a gene-centred view of evolution developed by biologists such as W. D. Hamilton, George Williams and Robert Trivers. Dawkins argues that genes are the fundamental units of natural selection, and that organisms can be seen as survival machines built by genes to propagate copies of themselves.

    The selfishness is metaphorical: genes have no intentions, but those that happen to build bodies and behaviours favouring their own replication become more common. From this starting point Dawkins explains puzzles such as why animals help relatives, how cooperation can evolve through reciprocity, why parents and offspring or males and females may have conflicting interests, and how game theory helps model aggression.

    In a final chapter he coins the word meme for units of cultural transmission, such as tunes, ideas or fashions, which spread by imitation. The book's clarity and vivid metaphors made it one of the most influential science books of the century, though its title has often been misread as a claim that people are inherently selfish. Later editions add notes and new chapters responding to critics.

    Book details

    AuthorRichard Dawkins
    First published1976
    Original languageEnglish
    GenrePopular science
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)360

    Themes

    • Natural selection
    • Gene-centred evolution
    • Altruism and kin selection
    • Game theory
    • Memes and culture

    Who should read it

    Readers who want a clear, rigorous understanding of how evolution shapes behaviour.

  • Cosmos

    Cosmos, published in 1980 alongside the PBS television series of the same name, takes readers on a journey from the edge of the observable universe to the inside of a living cell. Carl Sagan, an astronomer and planetary scientist, weaves together astronomy, biology, chemistry and history in thirteen chapters that mirror the episodes.

    Topics include the origin of the elements in stars, the evolution of life on Earth, the exploration of Mars and the outer planets by robotic probes, the possibility of extraterrestrial civilisations and the scale of space and time. Sagan also tells the stories of scientists such as Eratosthenes, Kepler, Huygens and Einstein, and laments the destruction of the Library of Alexandria as a symbol of lost knowledge.

    His writing is lyrical, humane and urgent, combining wonder with warnings about nuclear war and environmental damage, and with a passionate defence of scientific thinking. The book became one of the best-selling science books ever published in English and won a Hugo Award, and it continues to inspire people to study science.

    Book details

    AuthorCarl Sagan
    First published1980
    Original languageEnglish
    GenrePopular science
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)370
    AwardsHugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book 1981

    Themes

    • Scale of the universe
    • History of science
    • Origin of life
    • Search for extraterrestrial life
    • Scientific thinking

    Who should read it

    Anyone of any age who wants to feel the wonder of the universe and the human story of discovering it.