{"id":7215,"date":"2017-12-18T14:23:39","date_gmt":"2017-12-18T14:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/?p=7215"},"modified":"2017-12-19T15:04:28","modified_gmt":"2017-12-19T15:04:28","slug":"top-20-books-discovering-worlds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/2017\/12\/18\/top-20-books-discovering-worlds\/","title":{"rendered":"Top 20 books: discovering worlds"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Artist's<\/a>

Artist’s conception of a hypothetical planet covered in water around the binary star system of Kepler-35A and B.{credit}NASA\/JPL-Caltech{\/credit}<\/p><\/div>\n

In terms of job satisfaction, discovering worlds must take the Sachertorte. Sibling astronomers William and Caroline Herschel<\/a>, for instance, rejoiced in a haul that included Uranus, eight comets and several moons gleaned from what William called the \u201cluxuriant garden\u201d of the skies. Their final tally of deep-sky objects, with that of William\u2019s gifted son John<\/a>, numbered in the thousands. I\u2019m sure their minds would be boggled by today\u2019s exoplaneteering exploits \u2014 such as the TRAPPIST-1 system of seven Earth-like planets<\/a> that fully emerged this year.<\/p>\n

In my way, I\u2019m in the business of discovering \u2014 and rediscovering \u2014 worlds. That they\u2019re between two covers and on sale in your local bookshop is neither here nor there. And the 2017 harvest has been rich. We revisited Jonathan Swift\u2019s 1726 Gulliver\u2019s Travels<\/em>, for instance\u00a0<\/em>\u2014 which, Greg Lynall noted in his eye-opening essay<\/a>, is a journey across an unfamiliar Earth\u00a0that even features Swift\u2019s accurate prediction of the moons of Mars<\/a>, 150 years before their detection. (The\u00a0terra incognita<\/em> flavour of this year’s events gave all that particular resonance.)<\/p>\n

As for the new books sifted from the non-stop stream, as always I entered their portals with the open mind of an explorer. Thus, through Caspar Henderson\u2019s A New Map of Wonders<\/em><\/a> we scope the known cosmos with new eyes. In Hetty Saunders\u2019s My House of Sky<\/em><\/a> we sift the psyche of reclusive nature writer J.A. Baker. And in Jonathan Silvertown\u2019s Dinner with Darwin<\/em><\/a>, we see a plateful of food transformed into a repository of dazzling evolutionary stories.<\/p>\n

It has, in short, been an astounding year for those of us engaged in tracking literary planets across the publishing firmament. Here\u2019s my sky survey.<\/p>\n

Improbable Destinies<\/em>, Jonathan Losos. Riverhead.<\/strong> In a \u201cdeep, broad, brilliant\u201d study, the biologist explores how evolutionary solutions, morphological to molecular, repeatedly emerge. (Reviewed here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

A Crack in Creation<\/em>, Jennifer A. Doudna and Samuel H. Sternberg. Houghton Mifflin<\/strong>. A pivotal player in the CRISPR saga delivers her dispatch from the genome-editing frontline. (Reviewed here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Collecting the World<\/em>, James Delbourgo. Allen Lane.<\/strong> A life of Hans Sloane \u2014 medic, Royal Society president, \u2018wondermonger\u2019 and collector extraordinaire \u2014 is limned by an accomplished historian. (Reviewed here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The Death Gap<\/em>, David Ansell. University of Chicago Press. <\/strong>The social epidemiologist lays bare how \u2018structural violence\u2019 in US healthcare fosters disparities in life expectancy. (Reviewed here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The Great Leveller<\/em>, Walter Scheidel. Princeton University Press. <\/strong>\u00a0In a magisterial socio-political chronicle, the historian untangles the deeper roots of inequality. (Reviewed here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The Imagineers of War<\/em>, Sharon Weinberger. Knopf.<\/strong> \u00a0The defence writer delves into the shadowy history of DARPA, the US agency that forecasts \u201cimagined weapons of the future\u201d. (Reviewed here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Miracle Cure<\/em>, William Rosen. Viking.<\/strong> The accomplished writer\u2019s swansong superbly captures the rise of antibiotics, from the discovery of penicillin on a mouldy cantaloupe to the war on resistance. (Reviewed here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The Vaccine Race<\/em>, Meredith Wadman. Viking.<\/strong> A former Nature<\/em> journalist tells the convoluted story of human fetal cell line WI-38, still deployed in vaccine research. (Reviewed here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Deep Thinking<\/em>, Garry Kasparov. PublicAffairs.<\/strong> The chess titan revisits his 1997 match against computer Deep Blue in an \u201cimpressively researched\u201d history of AI. (Reviewed here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The Songs of Trees<\/em>, David George Haskell. Viking.<\/strong> In a sensory tour de force, a biologist documents the exquisite interconnections of arboreal life. (Reviewed here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Rigor Mortis<\/em>, Richard F. Harris. Basic Books.<\/strong> The science journalist jumps into the deep end of biomedicine\u2019s reproducibility crisis. (Reviewed here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Dawn of the New Everything<\/em>, Jaron Lanier. Bodley Head<\/strong>. The virtual-reality pioneer traces the unconventional trajectory of an extraordinary career. (Reviewed here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The Origins of Creativity<\/em>, E.O. Wilson. Liveright.<\/strong> In exploring the wellsprings of creativity, the ecologist calls for a \u201cthird enlightenment\u201d meshing science with the humanities. (Reviewed here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Outside the Asylum<\/em>, Lynn Jones. Weidenfeld & Nicolson.<\/strong> A psychiatrist working in war and disaster zones elucidates both policy implications and the uncommon courage of survivors. (Reviewed here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The Quantum Labyrinth<\/em>, Paul Halpern. Basic Books. <\/strong>A physicist unpicks the intertwined lives of consummate theoreticians and chums Richard Feynman and John Wheeler. (Reviewed here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Life 3.0<\/em>, Max Tegmark. Knopf.<\/strong> The cosmologist peered into possible risks and benefits of evolving AI, from an autonomous-weapons arms race to quark-powered \u2018sphalerizers\u2019. (Reviewed here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

A Mind at Play<\/em>, Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman. Simon & Schuster.<\/strong> A journalist and a political theorist vividly portray information theorist \u2014 and rocket-powered-Frisbee inventor \u2014 Claude Shannon. (Reviewed here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Stalin\u2019s Meteorologist<\/em>, Olivier Rolin. Harvill & Secker. <\/strong>A harrowing account of a Soviet researcher exiled to the Gulag testifies to the endurance of science in the midst of political chaos. (Reviewed here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The Darkening Web<\/em>, Alexander Klimburg. Penguin.<\/strong> The policy expert reports on the new cold war between \u2018free Internet\u2019 and \u2018cybersovereignty\u2019 forces. (Reviewed here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The Seabird\u2019s Cry<\/em>, Adam Nicolson. William Collins.<\/strong> The environmental writer\u2019s inspired survey of 10 seabird species \u2014 albatross to shearwater \u2014 is a paean to life at the edge. (Reviewed here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

For\u00a0<\/strong>Nature<\/strong><\/em>\u2019s full coverage of science in culture, visit www.nature.com\/news\/booksandarts.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In terms of job satisfaction, discovering worlds must take the Sachertorte. Sibling astronomers William and Caroline Herschel, for instance, rejoiced in a haul that included Uranus, eight comets and several moons gleaned from what William called the \u201cluxuriant garden\u201d of the skies. Their final tally of deep-sky objects, with that of William\u2019s gifted son John, numbered in the thousands. I\u2019m sure their minds would be boggled by today\u2019s exoplaneteering exploits \u2014 such as the TRAPPIST-1 system of seven Earth-like planets that fully emerged this year.  Read more<\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3353,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,77,85,25,87,314395],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts","category-evolution","category-history-of-science","category-medical-research","category-ornithology","category-publishing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3353"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}