Harvard University Press - SCIENCE

Desert Tourism

Sun, 1 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Virginie Lefebvre
Aziza Chaouni, With
Deserts are becoming increasingly popular tourist destinations. However, the growth of this tourism niche raises particular challenges, jeopardizing their fragile ecosystems and straining scarce resources. This book seeks to analyze the relationship between tourism and the sustainable development of those territories, addressing issues raised by architecture, landscape design, and planning.
Paperback November 2009

No Small Matter

Sun, 1 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Felice C. Frankel
George M. Whitesides
A small revolution is remaking the world. The only problem is, we can’t see it. This book uses dazzling images and evocative descriptions to reveal the virtually invisible realities and possibilities of nanoscience. This book considers both the benefits and the risks of nano/microtechnology—from the potential of quantum computers and single-molecule genomic sequencers to the concerns about self-replicating nanosystems.An introduction to the science and technology of small things, No Small Matter explains science on the nanoscale.
Hardcover November 2009

Artscience

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

David Edwards
This book is an attempt to show how innovation in the "post-Google generation" is often catalyzed by those who cross a conventional line so firmly drawn between the arts and the sciences. Edwards describes how contemporary creators achieve breakthroughs in the arts and sciences by developing their ideas in an intermediate zone of human creativity where neither art nor science is easily defined.
Paperback October 2009

Culturing Life

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Hannah Landecker
How did cells make the journey from their origin in living bodies to something that can be grown and manipulated on artificial media in the laboratory? This is the question at the heart of Hannah Landecker's book. She shows how cell culture changed the way we think about such central questions of the human condition as individuality, hybridity, and even immortality and asks what it means that we can remove cells from the spatial constraints of the body and "harness them to human intention."
Paperback October 2009

Einstein and Oppenheimer

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Silvan S. Schweber
Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer, two iconic scientists of the twentieth century, belonged to different generations, with the boundary marked by the advent of quantum mechanics. By exploring how these men differed—in their worldview, in their work, and in their day—this book provides powerful insights into the lives of two critical figures and into the scientific culture of their times.
Paperback October 2009

From Clockwork to Crapshoot

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Roger G. Newton
In From Clockwork to Crapshoot, Roger Newton, whose previous works have been widely praised for erudition and accessibility, presents a history of physics from the early beginning to our day--with the associated mathematics, astronomy, and chemistry. His work identifies what may well be the defining characteristic of physics in the twenty-first century.
Paperback October 2009

Am I Making Myself Clear?

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Cornelia Dean
In 1468, on the final night of Carnival in Rome, Pope Paul II sat enthroned above the boisterous crowd, when a scuffle caught his eye. His guards had intercepted a mysterious stranger trying urgently to convey a warning—conspirators were lying in wait to slay the pontiff. Anthony D’Elia offers a compelling, surprising story that reveals a Renaissance world that witnessed the rebirth of interest in the classics, a thriving homoerotic culture, the clash of Christian and pagan values, the contest between republicanism and a papal monarchy, and tensions separating Christian Europeans and Muslim Turks.
Hardcover October 2009

The Lives of the Brain

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

John S. Allen
Though we have other distinguishing characteristics (walking on two legs, for instance, and relative hairlessness), the brain and the behavior it produces are what truly set us apart from the other apes and primates. And how this three-pound organ composed of water, fat, and protein turned a mammal species into the dominant animal on earth today is the story John S. Allen seeks to tell.
Hardcover October 2009

Quantum Leaps

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Jeremy Bernstein
Quantum Leaps is a lively, erudite book on a subject that Bernstein has lived with for most of its history. His experience and deep understanding are apparent on every page. Including recollections of encounters with the theory and the people responsible for it, Jeremy Bernstein’s account ranges from the cross-pollination of quantum mechanics with Marxist ideology and Christian and Buddhist mysticism to its influence on theater, film, and fiction.
Hardcover October 2009

The Earwig's Tail

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:00:00 EDT

May R. Berenbaum
Throughout the Middle Ages, enormously popular bestiaries presented people with descriptions of rare and unusual animals, typically paired with a moral or religious lesson. In The Earwig’s Tail, entomologist May Berenbaum and illustrator Jay Hosler draw on the powerful cultural symbols of these antiquated books to create a beautiful and witty bestiary of the insect world.
Hardcover September 2009

Sexual Coercion in Primates and Humans

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Martin N. Muller
Edited by Richard W. Wrangham
In only a few species do males strategically employ violence to control female sexuality. Why are females routinely abused in some species, but never in others? And can the study of such unpleasant behavior help us to understand the evolution of men’s violence against women? The book presents extensive field research and analysis to evaluate sexual coercion in a range of species—including all of the great apes and humans—and to clarify its role in shaping social relationships among males, among females, and between the sexes.
Hardcover June 2009

The Annotated Origin

Sat, 30 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Charles Darwin
Introduction and notes by James T. Costa
Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species is one of the most important and yet least read scientific works in the history of science. The Annotated Origin is a facsimile of the first edition of 1859, and is accompanied by James T. Costa’s marginal annotations, drawing on his extensive experience with Darwin’s ideas in the field, lab, and classroom. This edition makes available an accessible and practical resource for anyone reading the Origin for the first time or for those who want to reread it with the insights and perspective that a working biologist can provide.
Hardcover May 2009

On the Origin of Stories

Sat, 30 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Brian Boyd
Brian Boyd explains why we tell stories and how our minds are shaped to understand them. After considering art as adaptation, Boyd examines Homer’s Odyssey and Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who! demonstrating how an evolutionary lens can offer new understanding and appreciation of specific works. Published for the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of Origin of Species, Boyd’s study embraces a Darwinian view of human nature and art, and offers a credo for a new humanism.
Hardcover May 2009

A Guinea Pig's History of Biology

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Jim Endersby
Endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved," Darwin famously concluded The Origin of Species, and for confirmation we look to … the guinea pig? How this curious creature and others as humble (and as fast-breeding) have helped unlock the mystery of inheritance is the unlikely story Jim Endersby tells in this book. The result is a quirky, enlightening, and thoroughly engaging perspective on the history of heredity and genetics, tracing the slow, uncertain path—complete with entertaining diversions and dead ends—that led us from the ancient world's understanding of inheritance to modern genetics.
Paperback May 2009

Starved for Science

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Robert Paarlberg
Foreword by Norman Borlaug
Foreword by Jimmy Carter
In Starved for Science Paarlberg explains why poor African farmers are denied access to productive technologies, particularly genetically engineered seeds with improved resistance to insects and drought. He traces this obstacle to the current opposition to farm science in prosperous countries.
Paperback May 2009

Supercontinent

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Ted Nield
This book explores the the Supercontinent cycle, a geological cycle so vast that our species will probably be extinct long before the current one ends. And yet this cycle, the grandest pattern in Nature, may well be the fundamental reason any complex life at all exists. Nield introduces readers to some of the most exciting science of our time, describing how geologists first guessed at these vanishing landmasses and came to appreciate the significance of the fusing and fragmenting of supercontinents.
Paperback May 2009

The Fruit, the Tree, and the Serpent

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Lynne A. Isbell
The worldwide prominence of snakes in religion, myth, and folklore underscores our deep connection to the serpent—but why, when so few of us have firsthand experience? The surprising answer, this book suggests, lies in the singular impact of snakes on primate evolution. Predation pressure from snakes, Lynne Isbell tells us, is ultimately responsible for the superior vision and large brains of primates—and for a critical aspect of human evolution.
Hardcover April 2009

Fresh

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Susanne Freidberg
That rosy tomato perched on your plate in December is at the end of a great journey—not just over land and sea, but across a vast and varied cultural history. This is the territory charted in Fresh. Freidberg takes six common foods from the refrigerator to discover what each has to say about our notions of freshness. Local livelihoods; global trade; the politics of taste, community, and environmental change: all enter into this lively, surprising, yet sobering tale about the nature and cost of our hunger for freshness.
Hardcover April 2009

A Cultural History of Modern Science in China

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Benjamin A. Elman
In A Cultural History of Modern Science in China, Elman has retold the story of the Jesuit impact on late imperial China, circa 1600-1800, and the Protestant era in early modern China from the 1840s to 1900 in a concise and accessible form ideal for the classroom.
Paperback April 2009

Monkey Trials and Gorilla Sermons

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Peter J. Bowler
Bowler doesn't minimize the hostility of many of the faithful toward evolution, but he reveals the less well-known existence of a long tradition within the churches that sought to reconcile Christian beliefs with evolution by finding reflections of the divine in scientific explanations for the origin of life. By tracing the historical forerunners of these rival Christian responses, Bowler provides a valuable alternative to accounts that stress only the escalating confrontation.
Paperback April 2009

Comeuppance

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

William Flesch
With Comeuppance, Flesch delivers the freshest, most generous thinking about the novel since Walter Benjamin wrote on the storyteller and Wayne C. Booth on the rhetoric of fiction. In clear and engaging prose, Flesch integrates evolutionary psychology into literary studies, creating a new theory of fiction in which form and content flawlessly intermesh.
Paperback March 2009

Ecology and the Environment

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Donald K. Swearer
Foreword by Dan Schrag
In this slim volume, seven world-class scholars discuss the wide range of perspectives that the fields of literature, history, religion, philosophy, environmental ethics, and anthropology bring to the natural environment and our place in it. The book represents a continuation of the Center for the Study of World Religions’ highly regarded Religions of the World and Ecology series.
Paperback March 2009

Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Ronald L. Numbers
Ronald Numbers has recruited the leading scholars in this new history of science to puncture the myths, from Galileo’s incarceration to Darwin’s deathbed conversion to Einstein’s belief in a personal God who “didn’t play dice with the universe.” Each chapter in Galileo Goes to Jail shows how much we have to gain by seeing beyond the myths.
Hardcover March 2009

Life in Space

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Lucas John Mix
A truly interdisciplinary endeavor, astrobiology looks at the evidence of astronomy, biology, physics, chemistry, and a host of other fields. A grand narrative emerges, beginning from the smallest, most common particles yet producing amazing complexity and order. Lucas Mix is a congenial guide through the depths of astrobiology, exploring how the presence of planets around other stars affects our knowledge of our own planet; how water, carbon, and electrons interact to form life as we know it; and how the processes of evolution and entropy act upon every living thing.
Hardcover March 2009

Monad to Man

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Michael Ruse
In interviews with today's major figures in evolutionary biology--including Stephen Jay Gould, E. O. Wilson, Ernst Mayr, and John Maynard Smith--Ruse offers an unparalleled account of evolutionary theory, from popular books to museums to the most complex theorizing, at a time when its status as science is under greater scrutiny than ever before.
Paperback March 2009

Naming Infinity

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Loren Graham
Jean-Michel Kantor
In 1913, Russian imperial marines stormed an Orthodox monastery at Mt. Athos, Greece to haul off monks engaged in a dangerously heretical practice known as Name Worshipping. Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor take us on an exciting mathematical mystery tour as they unravel a bizarre tale of political struggles, psychological crises, sexual complexities, and ethical dilemmas. The men and women of the leading French and Russian mathematical schools are central characters in this absorbing tale that could not be told until now. Naming Infinity is a poignant human interest story that raises provocative questions about science and religion, intuition and creativity.
Hardcover March 2009

Twentieth-Century New England Land Conservation

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Charles H. W. Foster
Written by and about New Englanders, this book is relevant to those attempting to address conservation problems on a regional basis. The stories told here are of people using what they had, setting to work to remedy these conditions, and doing so successfully. At a time of growing concern for the environment both locally and globally, theirs is a story certain to inform and inspire the next generation of conservation leaders.
Hardcover March 2009

Whiff

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

David Edwards
Illustrated by Junko Murata
Whiff is the new novel by David Edwards (Séguier). It derives from an actual experiment performed in Paris at the art and science innovation center, Le Laboratoire. In this latest experiment, the double-Michelin-starred chef Thierry Marx collaborated with the colloidal scientist Jérôme Bibette to introduce a new way of encapsulating flavors. Wishing to present these delectable capsules in an unusual way, Edwards and a group of students developed a new way of eating by aerosol, called whiffing. Whiff is also accompanied by the first “whiffing” recipes.
Paperback March 2009

Endocrinology of Social Relationships

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Edited by Peter T. Ellison
Edited by Peter B. Gray
This book, a rare melding of human and animal research and theoretical and empirical science, ventures into the most interesting realms of behavioral biology to examine the intimate role of endocrinology in social relationships.
Hardcover February 2009

Evolution

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Edited by Michael Ruse
Edited by Joseph Travis
Foreword by Edward O. Wilson
Spanning evolutionary science from its inception to its latest findings, from discoveries and data to philosophy and history, this book is the most complete, authoritative, and inviting one-volume introduction to evolutionary biology available.
Hardcover February 2009

Organization of Insect Societies

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Edited by Jürgen Gadau
Edited by Jennifer Fewell
Foreword by Edward O. Wilson
In this volume, an international group of scientists has synthesized their collective expertise and insight into a newly unified vision of insect societies and what they can reveal about how sociality has arisen as an evolutionary strategy.
Hardcover February 2009

The Question of Animal Culture

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Edited by Kevin N. Laland
Edited by Bennett G. Galef
The issue of animal culture is hotly debated. Laland and Galef have gathered key voices in the often rancorous debate to summarize the views along the continuum from “Culture? Of course!” to “Culture? Of course not!” The result is essential reading for anyone interested in the validity of animal culture, and what it might say about our own.
Hardcover February 2009

Living at Micro Scale

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

David B. Dusenbery
It isn’t easy being small. Dusenbery uses straightforward physics to demonstrate the constraints on the size, shape, and behavior of tiny organisms. While recounting the historical development of the basic concepts, he unearths a corner of microbiology rich in history, and full of lessons about how science does or does not progress.
Hardcover February 2009

The Mermaid’s Tale

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Kenneth M. Weiss
Anne V. Buchanan
Although relentless competitive natural selection is widely assumed to be the primary mover of evolutionary change, this book shows how life more generally works on the basis of cooperation. The book reveals that the focus on competition and cooperation is largely an artifact of the compression of time—a distortion that dissolves when the nature and origins of adapted life are viewed primarily from developmental and evolutionary time scales.
Hardcover February 2009

Prairie Dogs

Mon, 2 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

C. N. Slobodchikoff
Bianca S. Perla
Jennifer L. Verdolin
Slobodchikoff and colleagues synthesize the results of their long-running study of Gunnison’s prairie dogs (Cynomys gunnisoni), one of the keystone species of the short-grass prairie ecosystem. By examining the complex factors behind prairie dog decline, we can begin to understand the problems inherent in our adversarial relationship with the natural world.
Hardcover February 2009

El Niño, Catastrophism, and Culture Change in Ancient America

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST

Edited by Daniel H. Sandweiss
Edited by Jeffrey Quilter
This book summarizes research on the nature of El Niño events in the Americas and details specific historic and prehistoric patterns in Peru and elsewhere.
Hardcover January 2009

The Sea, Volume 15, Tsunamis

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST

Edited by Eddie N. Bernard
Edited by Allan R. Robinson
The world’s foremost experts write about the dynamics of geophysical processes involved in tsunami generation, propagation, and inundation, along with the statistical and geophysical properties of tsunami recurrence, and their application to tsunami forecasts and warnings.
Hardcover January 2009

The Accidental Mind

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

David J. Linden
A guide to the strange and often illogical world of neural function, this book shows how the brain is not an optimized, general-purpose problem-solving machine, but rather a weird agglomeration of ad-hoc solutions that have been piled on through millions of years of evolutionary history.
Paperback December 2008

Men

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Richard G. Bribiescas
Men presents a new approach to understanding the human male by drawing upon life history and evolutionary theory.
Paperback December 2008