Reviews, Views, and News from an Award-Winning Author
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
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 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
As promised in my recent blog, I am returning with a few suggestions of recent science books that are suitable for gift-giving. I haven’t read all of these in detail, but they are published by reputable publishers and written by credible authors. This is the third of three postings, organized by subject area, this time … Read more
As promised in last week’s blog, our spring roundup of science books continues with three books (or four, depending on how you count them) about catastrophes. It is a topic that is important in my own writing history. My third book Catastrophe! Great Engineering Failure–and Success (1995) was a Selector’s Choice on the National Science … Read more
The arrival of Spring 2018 in my area has been marked by an unusually large outburst of pollen. In the science book world, it has been marked by an outburst of varied, interesting titles. And that is certainly nothing to sneeze at. One of the perks of being a reviewer of long standing is the … Read more
To preserve my objectivity, I have assiduously avoided reading other reviews of Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto by Alan Stern and David Grinspoon. But I would bet euros to eclairs* that an online search would reveal at least one review that includes this sentence: “Alan Stern was born to write … Read more
At the Science Shelf, our favorite dessert is pi. So although it is a week past Pi Day 2018, we offer these recently released book treats to our readers (along with my picture in my Pi Day bowtie). I archive my book reviews at my Science Shelf website, so you may want to visit there … Read more