Gribbin, assisted by his occasional co-author Mary, tops himself with this one-volume summary of the current state of scientific knowledge. Author of numerous science books for the layperson (The Search for Superstrings, Symmetry, and the Theory of Everything, 1999), Gribbin steps back to show the broad perspective of what science knows about the universe, from the subatomic level up. After stating the central principle of science (“If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong”), Gribbin begins with the concept of atoms and elements, which led to much of modern science. As useful as the atomic hypothesis was, it wasn—t until Einstein that it was widely accepted as a factual description of reality. By that point, there was a growing body of evidence that the atom itself was a complex entity, made of smaller particles. The activity of one of those particles—the electron—is responsible for all of chemistry. Thence Gribbin leads the discussion to organic chemistry, through the structure of DNA, and thus to genetics and evolution. In such small but closely connected steps, the discussion goes on to geology and the history of the Earth, to astronomy and stellar evolution, all the way to cosmology and the structure of the universe as a whole. Gribbin is quick to make connections among the various sciences he discusses: for example, the simple quantum mechanical reason for the vital fact that ice floats—without which life as we know it would certainly be impossible. He smoothly introduces anecdotes about the scientists responsible for various theories and discoveries, and draws usefully on everyday experience to illustrate his material. And while he provides sufficient detail to give the various subjects immediacy, his eye is always on the big picture—how the world fits together and what it means to each of us. A definitive treatment of the subject, clearly and elegantly written. If you’re going to own just one general science book, you’d do well to make it this one.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-300-08101-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2000
Weisman quietly unfolds his sobering cautionary tale, allowing us to conclude what we may about the balancing act that...
Nicely textured account of what the Earth would look like if humans disappeared.
Disaster movies have depicted the State of Liberty poking out from the ground and empty cities overgrown with trees and vines, but what would really happen if, for one reason or another, every single one of us vanished from the planet? Building on a Discover magazine article, Weisman (Journalism/Univ. of Arizona; An Echo in My Blood, 1999, etc.) addresses the question. There are no shocks here—nature goes on. But it is unsettling to observe the processes. Drawing on interviews with architects, biologists, engineers, physicists, wildlife managers, archaeologists, extinction experts and many others willing to conjecture, Weisman shows how underground water would destroy city streets, lightning would set fires, moisture and animals would turn temperate-zone suburbs into forests in 500 years and 441 nuclear plants would overheat and burn or melt. “Watch, and maybe learn,” writes the author. Many of his lessons come from past developments, such as the sudden disappearance of the Maya 1,600 years ago and the evolution of animals and humans in Africa. Bridges will fall, subways near fault lines in New York and San Francisco will cave in, glaciers will wipe away much of the built world and scavengers will clean our human bones within a few months. Yet some things will persist after we’re gone: bronze sculptures, Mount Rushmore (about 7.2 millions years, given granite’s erosion rate of one inch every 10,000 years), particles of everything made of plastic, manmade underground malls in Montreal and Moscow. In Hawaii, lacking predators, cows and pigs will rule.
Weisman quietly unfolds his sobering cautionary tale, allowing us to conclude what we may about the balancing act that nature and humans need to maintain to survive.Pub Date: July 10, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-312-34729-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2007
PERSPECTIVES
Ackerman writes with a light but assured touch, her prose rich in fact but economical in delivering it. Fans of birds in all...
Science writer Ackerman (Ah-Choo!: The Uncommon Life of Your Common Cold, 2010, etc.) looks at the new science surrounding avian intelligence.
The takeaway: calling someone a birdbrain is a compliment. And in any event, as Ackerman observes early on, “intelligence is a slippery concept, even in our own species, tricky to define and tricky to measure.” Is a bird that uses a rock to break open a clamshell the mental equivalent of a tool-using primate? Perhaps that’s the wrong question, for birds are so unlike humans that “it’s difficult for us to fully appreciate their mental capabilities,” given that they’re really just small, feathered dinosaurs who inhabit a wholly different world from our once-arboreal and now terrestrial one. Crows and other corvids have gotten all the good publicity related to bird intelligence in recent years, but Ackerman, who does allow that some birds are brighter than others, points favorably to the much-despised pigeon as an animal that “can remember hundreds of different objects for long periods of time, discriminate between different painting styles, and figure out where it’s going, even when displaced from familiar territory by hundreds of miles.” Not bad for a critter best known for bespattering statues in public parks. Ackerman travels far afield to places such as Barbados and New Caledonia to study such matters as memory, communication, and decision-making, the last largely based on visual cues—though, as she notes, birds also draw ably on other senses, including smell, which in turn opens up insight onto “a weird evolutionary paradox that scientists have puzzled over for more than a decade”—a matter of the geometry of, yes, the bird brain.
Ackerman writes with a light but assured touch, her prose rich in fact but economical in delivering it. Fans of birds in all their diversity will want to read this one.Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59420-521-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
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