New Books in Science
New Books Network
Interviews with Scientists about their New BooksSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science
Episodes
Mentioned books
Sep 8, 2013 • 1h 11min
Michael Ruse, “The Gaia Hypothesis: Science on a Pagan Planet” (University of Chicago Press, 2013)
In The Gaia Hypothesis: Science on a Pagan Planet (University of Chicago Press, 2013), Michael Ruse offers a fascinating history of the Gaia Hypothesis in the context of the transformations of professional and public engagements with science and technology in the 1960s. Based on an archive that spans texts, oral... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science
Aug 23, 2013 • 1h 9min
Hannah S. Decker, “The Making of DSM-III: A Diagnostic Manual’s Conquest of American Psychiatry” (Oxford UP, 2013)
Like it or not, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) has an enormous influence in deciding what qualifies as a mental health disorder in the United States and beyond. The each revision of the DSM directly influences people’s lives, guides treatment, and has important legal and economic consequences. In... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science
Jul 29, 2013 • 1h 9min
David Munns, “A Single Sky: How an International Community Forged the Science of Radio Astronomy” (MIT Press, 2012)
How do you measure a star? In the middle of the 20thcentury, an interdisciplinary and international community of scientists began using radio waves to measure heavenly bodies and transformed astronomy as a result. David P. D. Munns‘s new book charts the process through which radio astronomers learned to see the... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science
Jul 5, 2013 • 1h 10min
Nathaniel Comfort, “The Science of Human Perfection: How Genes Became the Heart of American Medicine” (Yale UP, 2012)
“This is a history of promises.”So begins Nathaniel Comfort‘s gripping and beautifully written new book on the relationships between and entanglements of medical genetic and eugenics in the history of the twentieth century. Based on a rich documentary and oral history archive, The Science of Human Perfection: How Genes Became the Heart... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science
Jun 22, 2013 • 1h 10min
Maki Fukuoka, “The Premise of Fidelity: Science, Visuality, and Representing the Real in 19th-Century Japan” (Stanford UP, 2012)
Zograscope. Say it with me: zograscope. ZooooOOOOOoooograscope. There are many optical wonders in Maki Fukuoka’s new book The Premise of Fidelity: Science, Visuality, and Representing the Real in 19th-Century Japan (Stanford University Press, 2012), the zograscope not least among them. The book opens with Fukuoka’s account of stumbling upon a manuscript of... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science
Jun 4, 2013 • 53min
Brian Clegg, “Dice World: Science and Life in a Random Universe” (Icon Books, 2013)
The book discussed in this interview is Dice World: Science and Life in a Random Universe (Icon Books, 2013), by Brian Clegg, an acclaimed British writer of books on science for the general public. Brian has a knack for taking concepts that seem abstruse and explaining them in ways that... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science
May 15, 2013 • 1h 4min
Helen Longino, “Studying Human Behavior: How Scientists Investigate Aggression and Sexuality” (University of Chicago Press, 2013)
What explains human behavior? It is standard to consider answers from the perspective of a dichotomy between nature and nurture, with most researchers today in agreement that it is both. For Helen Longino, Clarence Irving Lewis Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University, the “both” answer misses the fact that the... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science
May 7, 2013 • 52min
Victor Stenger, “God and the Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Religion” (Prometheus, 2012)
Are science and religion compatible, or are they fundamentally different ways of viewing the world? In the book,God and the Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Religion(Prometheus, 2012), physicist Victor Stenger uses his knowledge of science to argue that the latter option is the case. Though acknowledging that... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science
Apr 22, 2013 • 57min
Marlene Zuk, “Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live” (Norton, 2013)
The Hebrews called it “Eden.” The Greeks and Romans called it the “Golden Age.” The philosophes–or Rousseau at least–called it the “State of Nature.” Marx and Engels called it “Primitive Communism.” The underlying notion, however, is the same: there was a time, long ago, when things were much better than... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science
Apr 17, 2013 • 1h 10min
Kathleen M. Vogel, “Phantom Menace or Looming Danger?: A New Framework for Assessing Bioweapons Threats” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2012)
Kathleen M. Vogel‘s new book is enlightening and inspiring. Phantom Menace or Looming Danger?: A New Framework for Assessing Bioweapons Threats (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012) uses an approach grounded in deep ethnographic analysis of exemplary case studies to explore the recent and contemporary practices performed by US governmental and... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science
