A varied, insightful collection, albeit one steeped in scientific arcana, this will appeal to a select few.
A comprehensible, inviting journey into the inner lives of scientists and the relation of the “merely personal” to outsized realms of thought, from chess computers to cosmology.
Bernstein (Dawning of the Raj, 2000, etc.) pioneered attempts in the 1960s and ’70s to bring cutting-edge scientific thought to the mainstream; he notes that, initially, his articles for the New Yorker (where he was a staff writer from 1961 to 1993) were published anonymously to avoid an intellectual blackballing. This well-executed anthology of unpublished pieces and encores from venues like American Scholar and Commentary concentrates Bernstein’s endeavors to clarify both hard-scientific and philosophical inquiries. He steers somewhat elaborate essays back to the titular concept, derived from Einstein’s notion that the emotional, social lives of great scientists were of little concern relative to their discoveries. Despite his veneration of Einstein, Bernstein takes issue with this, confronting the resonance of scientists’ personal odysseys in a variety of forums. He begins by revisiting the chaotic 1972 Spassky-Fischer chess match (which he’d covered in an aborted Playboy article), comparing it with the existential trauma visited upon human excellence by the 1997 defeat of Gary Kasparov by IBM’s Deep Blue. “Tom Stoppard’s Quantum” provides an original exploration of the incursion of controversial theories into such cultural arenas as the theater, and the inaccurate yet trenchant ways in which they become re-worked. In “Enough Einstein?,” he wryly considers biographical problems regarding this famously private genius, discussing competing positions from the lurid to the insightful, as well as the clash of personalities involved in preserving Einstein’s thought and his estate, which were at odds. “The Merely Very Good” again relates physics and the arts, with touching consideration of the fates of those in both fields who are inevitably eclipsed by genius. Other essays offer moral exploration regarding compromised figures of the nuclear age, including Robert Oppenheimer’s post–Manhattan Project fall from grace, and those who contributed to or abstained from the Nazi atomic effort.
A varied, insightful collection, albeit one steeped in scientific arcana, this will appeal to a select few.Pub Date: April 6, 2001
ISBN: 1-56663-344-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ivan Dee/Rowman & Littlefield
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An authoritative, engaging study of plant life, accessible to younger readers as well as adults.
A neurobiologist reveals the interconnectedness of the natural world through stories of plant migration.
In this slim but well-packed book, Mancuso (Plant Science/Univ. of Florence; The Revolutionary Genius of Plants: A New Understanding of Plant Intelligence and Behavior, 2018, etc.) presents an illuminating and surprisingly lively study of plant life. He smoothly balances expansive historical exploration with recent scientific research through stories of how various plant species are capable of migrating to locations throughout the world by means of air, water, and even via animals. They often continue to thrive in spite of dire obstacles and environments. One example is the response of plants following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Three decades later, the abandoned “Exclusion Zone” is now entirely covered by an enormous assortment of thriving plants. Mancuso also tracks the journeys of several species that might be regarded as invasive. “Why…do we insist on labeling as ‘invasive’ all those plants that, with great success, have managed to occupy new territories?” asks the author. “On a closer look, the invasive plants of today are the native flora of the future, just as the invasive species of the past are a fundamental part of our ecosystem today.” Throughout, Mancuso persuasively articulates why an understanding and appreciation of how nature is interconnected is vital to the future of our planet. “In nature everything is connected,” he writes. “This simple law that humans don’t seem to understand has a corollary: the extinction of a species, besides being a calamity in and of itself, has unforeseeable consequences for the system to which the species belongs.” The book is not without flaws. The loosely imagined watercolor renderings are vague and fail to effectively complement Mancuso’s richly descriptive prose or satisfy readers’ curiosity. Even without actual photos and maps, it would have been beneficial to readers to include more finely detailed plant and map renderings.
An authoritative, engaging study of plant life, accessible to younger readers as well as adults.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63542-991-6
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Loads of good explaining, with reminders, time and again, of how much remains unknown, neatly putting the death of science...
Bryson (I'm a Stranger Here Myself, 1999, etc.), a man who knows how to track down an explanation and make it confess, asks the hard questions of science—e.g., how did things get to be the way they are?—and, when possible, provides answers.
As he once went about making English intelligible, Bryson now attempts the same with the great moments of science, both the ideas themselves and their genesis, to resounding success. Piqued by his own ignorance on these matters, he’s egged on even more so by the people who’ve figured out—or think they’ve figured out—such things as what is in the center of the Earth. So he goes exploring, in the library and in company with scientists at work today, to get a grip on a range of topics from subatomic particles to cosmology. The aim is to deliver reports on these subjects in terms anyone can understand, and for the most part, it works. The most difficult is the nonintuitive material—time as part of space, say, or proteins inventing themselves spontaneously, without direction—and the quantum leaps unusual minds have made: as J.B.S. Haldane once put it, “The universe is not only queerer than we suppose; it is queerer than we can suppose.” Mostly, though, Bryson renders clear the evolution of continental drift, atomic structure, singularity, the extinction of the dinosaur, and a mighty host of other subjects in self-contained chapters that can be taken at a bite, rather than read wholesale. He delivers the human-interest angle on the scientists, and he keeps the reader laughing and willing to forge ahead, even over their heads: the human body, for instance, harboring enough energy “to explode with the force of thirty very large hydrogen bombs, assuming you knew how to liberate it and really wished to make a point.”
Loads of good explaining, with reminders, time and again, of how much remains unknown, neatly putting the death of science into perspective.Pub Date: May 6, 2003
ISBN: 0-7679-0817-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
BOOK TO SCREEN
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