Reviews, Views, and News from an Award-Winning Author
Fred Bortz 
Next Tuesday, August 31 at 7 p.m. Eastern on Zoom, Dr. Heidi B. Hammel will bring you up to date on Uranus and Neptune, discussing her results from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Keck 10-m telescope, and many other observatories. Dr. Hammel will also review the plans for ice giant system exploration with NASA’s newest … Read more
This blog marks a transition for me. For more than 20 years, I have been reviewing science books written for the library and bookstore crowd. For a few of those years, I even managed a four-figure supplemental income from selling my reviews to major metropolitan newspapers. Then, one-by-one, book review pages began to disappear or … Read more
When I posted my last science book roundup, few of us knew what was about to come. We had heard about a novel coronavirus and an outbreak of a new disease called COVID-19 in China, but only those well-versed in epidemiology or the history of previous pandemics expected to see so much of the economy … Read more
As I begin collecting titles for an early 2020 science book roundup, I have four left over from 2019, three from the life sciences and one celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of arguably the greatest human and technological achievement of the twentieth century. That achievement, as you probably have guessed, was the first human landing on … Read more
As my regular readers know, I am happy to be getting back to blogging after a hiatus due to complications following cataract surgery. This is the second catch-up blog about books for lovers of science and technology. This one covers four books about math and mathematicians and one about the nature of science itself.. My … Read more
After a long hiatus due to unexpected complications from cataract surgery, I am able to get back to my roundups of science books covering the second half of 2019. To keep these posts of manageable size, I will group books by topic or theme. In this one, we will focus on human traits as seen … Read more
My Science Book Roundups will be returning soon as I deal with “Adventures in Vision” resulting from continuing complications post-cataract surgery. Thanks for your patience, and stay tuned!
As an ongoing feature of my blog, here is my Science Book roundup for April and May of 2019. I will occasionally publish full reviews of titles that I consider particularly important. My usual caveat: For my Roundups, I don’t read all of the books in detail, but they are published by reputable publishers and … Read more
A Bright Future: How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow by Joshua S. Goldstein and Staffan V. Qvist (New York: Public Affairs, January 2019) Reviewed for The Science Shelf by Fred Bortz Despite disinformation campaigns by politically and financially well-connected groups, mainly in the United States, it is clear that … Read more
My catch-up science book blogging continues with a selection of titles released in the first three months of 2019 My usual caveat: I haven’t read all of these in detail, but they are published by reputable publishers and written by credible authors. I have browsed them enough to recommend picking them up from a library … Read more