On Second Thought: Outsmarting Your Mind’s Hard-Wired Habits by Wray Herbert I’ve read so much pop science on neurology that I’m always skeptical that a book will surprise and delight me with new information, and I’m delighted to say that this book does. Herbert wins by focusing on heuristics, an important idea that is usually …
Tag: science
Jul 12
Book Review: And the Band Played On
And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts This book has just about everything I like in a non-fiction. It’s got science, medicine, high stakes, historical significance, and modern relevance. Trying to figure out why it wasn’t more compelling to me, I had to look no further than the …
Jun 04
Book Review: 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense
13 Things That Don’t Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time by Michael Brooks I got this as an audiobook, and I almost stopped listening to it because it begins with astrology and goes straight to quantum physics–my two least favorite fields of science. My friend advised me to continue listening, and …
Mar 20
Book Review: The Emperor of All Maladies
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee My friend recommended this book, and I so value the strength of her recommendation that I bought it as an audiobook despite the daunting 20 hour length. It did occur to me that a book about cancer is perhaps not the best book for a hypochondriac to …
Mar 04
Book Review: The Poisoner’s Handbook
The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum I feel like this book was written just for me: history, science, and murder mysteries all wrapped up in a fascinating and informative non-fiction book about forensic medicine. I got this as an audiobook, which was good …