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Quakeland: On the Road to America's Next Devastating Earthquake (Dutton, August 29, 2017).
Understanding Higgs Bosons (Exploring the Subatomic World series, Cavendish Square, 2016), I couldn't resist including
Mass: The Quest to Understand Matter from Greek Atoms to Quantum Fields by noted British science author Jim Baggott (Oxford University Press, September 4, 2017). Baggott brings the same story-telling skills that I describe in my review of his earlier book The Quantum Story to a subject that some might expect to be heavy. It isn't light reading (puns again intended), but it is engaging and edifying.
The Taking of K-129: How the CIA used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in Historyby journalist Josh Dean (Dutton, September 5, 2017)? The author's nose for a good story and careful research, including numerous first-person interviews, produces a true-life thriller about how the CIA developed and launched a plan to steal a sunken Russian nuclear submarine carrying nuclear missiles and codes even as the Soviet government watched.
Darwin's Backyard: How Small Experiments Led to a Big Theory by James T. Costa. Readers will discover how Darwin's curiosity carried him from childhood to old age, always asking productive questions and always open to new ways of looking at living organisms and nature. This book caught my attention for two reasons. First, like my children's weather book,
Dr. Fred's Weather Watch: Create and Run Your Own Weather Station (with Dr. J. Marshall Shepherd, McGraw-Hill, 2000, revised edition by Starwalk Kids Media, 2014), it includes do-it-yourself projects. Second, I recently had an opportunity to revise and update another author's previous biography of Darwin to produce
Charles Darwin and the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection (Revolutionary Discoveries of Scientific Pioneers series, Rosen, 2014).
What It's Like to be a Dog: And Other Adventures in Animal Neuroscience (Basic Books, September 5, 2017). Looking inside of a living, alert animal's brain is not easy, but inspired by the dogs trained to jump out of helicopters during the capture of Osama bin Laden, Berns realized that "man's best friend" could be trained to go into an MRI scanner. That is only the beginning of his exploration, which also includes looking into the minds of sea lions trained to dance, dolphins using their sonar senses, and a reconstruction of the brain of the Tasmanian tiger to explain why it disappeared.
Significant Figures: The Lives and Work of Great Mathematicians (Basic Books, September 12, 2017). In a series of 25 chronological chapters profiling mathematicians and their work from Aristotle to the current century, "Significant Figures," writes Stewart, "investigates the almost mythical process that brings new mathematics into being. Mathematics doesn't arise in a vacuum: it's crated by people. Among them are some with astonishing originality and clarity of mind, the people we associate with great breakthroughs--the pioneers, the trailblazers, the significant figures." Readers who know Stewart's work will eagerly engage with this title.