Can we be conscious of our consciousness? What doesconsciousness feel like? Is it really a stream of steadily flowing thoughts,images and feelings, or something else altogether? What happens in those lapsesduring highway driving, in which you have no memory of the last 10 kilometres?How is it that most of what goes on in our brains is actually unconscious?And, in the end, do we even need our brain? 
Jay Ingram, renowned science broadcaster and bestselling author,takes us on his most challenging and controversial journey yet—a look at thestate of consciousness. Mixing science, philosophy, history and pop culture,Ingram transforms grey matter into a brilliantly hued, completely understandableexploration of what’s really going on in our conscious and unconscious minds.

Theatre of the Mind: Raising the Curtain on Consciousness

Science & Math

Ingram, Jay

History & Philosophy

HarperCollins, Publishers

For centuries, scientists and charlatans have claimed to know what’s happening tomorrow before tomorrow comes. But how well can we really predict the future? Can past events―Hurricane Katrina, bull markets, the SARS outbreak―help us understand what will happen next? Will scientists ever be able to forecast catastrophes, or will we always be at the mercy of Mother Nature, waiting for the next storm, epidemic or economic crash to thunder through our lives?
In Apollo’s Arrow, Canadian scientist David Orrell looks back at past prognosticators, from the time of the Oracle at Delphi to the rise of astrology to the advent of the nightly news, showing us how scientists (and some charlatans) predicted the future. He asks how today’s scientists can claim to anticipate future weather events when even three-day forecasts prove a serious challenge. Can we predict epidemics? Can we accurately foresee our financial future? Or will we only find out about tomorrow when tomorrow arrives?
The trajectory of an arrow is something that can be determined reasonably accurately from the arrow’s starting position and its velocity using the laws of physics. But if there’s a gust of wind that is not included in the model, then the arrow will depart slightly from its predicted path. Might not be important, unless you happen to be the person waiting at the other end with the apple on your head. 
Studies have shown that social forecasting, scientific and otherwise, is about as accurate as random guessing, despite the vast numbers of highly paid experts employed to do it. If the futurologists of the 1960s had been right, for example, I would probably be writing this in an orbital space station as my personal robot tends to my toenails.―from Apollo’s Arrow

Apollo's Arrow

Orrell, David

Essays & Commentary

HARPER/COLLINS

From seers to scientists, mystics to meteorologists, there have always been peoplewho claim to know what will happen in the future. The Oracle at Delphi, Pythagoras, Newton and the stock analyst on a business report have all endeavoured to look forward in time. But even with recent technological advances and the help of computers and satellites, are we any better at predicting the future now than we were in the distant past? How can scientists claim to foresee future climate events when even three-day forecasts prove a serious challenge?In Apollo’s Arrow, David Orrell looks at the history of prognostication to show how scientists (and charlatans) have tried to forecast the future. He then breaks down the mathematics of what really goes into apredictive model. Orrell has created a compelling, elegantly written history of our future that addresses some of the most important issues of our time.

Harper-perennial

PUBLISHED TO GREAT REVIEWS in Canada, the US and the UK, Ancient Mariner tells the riveting story of how Samuel Hearne―a sailor at 12, a northern explorer at 24, an admirer of Native peoples―became the first European to reach the Arctic coast of North America. Yet, as Ken McGoogan reveals, Samuel Hearne’s place in the history books has been a subject hotly disputed over the past two centuries. This fascinating saga, a skillful blend of literary detective work and finely imagined narrative, delights and surprises as it restores Hearne’s rightful place in history. 
PREVIOUS EDITION: 0-00-200098-9 
 PRAISE FOR ANCIENT MARINER “Brisk, readable books about great Englishmen don’t come much better than this. The story of Samuel Hearne has something for everyone.” The Observer (UK) “Compelling.... [Ancient Mariner] relates an often brutal tale with a surprising amount of grace and poetry.” Publishers Weekly

Ancient Mariner

Biographies & Memoirs

McGoogan, Ken

Historical

Phyllis Bruce Books Perennial

GOVERNOR GENERAL'S AWARD FINALIST Christopher Dewdney takes us on an enchanting hour-by-hour journey through the night. With eloquence and insight, Dewdney explores this dark frontier in its many guises: as it seeps into the habitats of nocturnal creatures, takes its place in our bedtime stories and ancient myths, makes its way into our sleeping bodies. Whether investigating the cosmology of the night or visiting a modern sleep clinic, Dewdney brings a philosopher’s mind, a scientist’s thirst and a poet’s eye to his subject. Highly acclaimed in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K., Acquainted with the Night is bedside reading at its most intimate and illuminating.

Acquainted With The Night

Literature & Fiction

Dewdney, Christopher

History & Criticism

A cutting-edge science book in the style of ‘Fermat’s Last Theorem’ and ‘Chaos’ from an exciting and accessible new voice in popular science writing.
Bio-inspiration is a form of engineering but not in the conventional sense. Extending beyond our established and preconceived notions, scientists, architects and engineers are looking at imitating nature by manufacturing 'wet' materials such as spider silk or the surface of the gecko's foot.
The amazing power of the gecko's foot has long been known – it can climb a vertical glass wall and even walk upside down on the ceiling – but no ideas could be harnessed from it because its mechanism could not be seen with the power of optical microscopes. Recently however the secret was solved by a team of scientists in Oregon who established that the mechanism really is dry, and that it does not involve suction, capillary action or anything else the lay person might imagine. Each foot has half a million bristles and each bristle ramifies into hundreds of finer spatula-shaped projections. The fine scale of the gecko's foot is beyond the capacity of conventional microengineering, but a team of nanotechnologists have already made a good initial approximation.
The gecko's foot is just one of many examples of this new 'smart' science. We also discover, amongst other things, how George de Mestral's brush with the spiny fruits of the cocklebur inspired him to invent Velcro; how the shape of leaves opening from a bud has inspired the design of solar-powered satellites; and the parallels between cantilever bridges and the spines of large mammals such as the bison.
The new 'smart' science of Bio-inspiration is going to produce a plethora of products over the next decades that will transform our lives, and force us to look at the world in a completely new way. It is science we will be reading about in our papers very soon; it is the science of tomorrow's world.

The Gecko’s Foot: How Scientists are Taking a Leaf from Nature's Book

Forbes, Peter

Biological Sciences

The very best journalism from one of Britain’s most admired and outspoken science writers, author of the bestselling Bad Science and Bad Pharma.
In Bad Science, Ben Goldacre hilariously exposed the tricks that quacks and journalists use to distort science. In Bad Pharma, he put the $600 billion global pharmaceutical industry under the microscope. Now the pick of the journalism by one of our wittiiest, most indignant and most fearless commentators on the worlds of medicine and science is collected in one volume.

I Think You’ll Find It’s a Bit More Complicated Than That

Goldacre, Ben

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Fourth Estate

‘Brilliant and fascinating. No one is better at making the recondite accessible and exciting’ Bill Bryson
Britain’s most famous mathematician takes us to the edge of knowledge to show us what we cannot know.
Is the universe infinite?
Do we know what happened before the Big Bang?
Where is human consciousness located in the brain?
And are there more undiscovered particles out there, beyond the Higgs boson?
In the modern world, science is king: weekly headlines proclaim the latest scientific breakthroughs and numerous mathematical problems, once indecipherable, have now been solved. But are there limits to what we can discover about our physical universe?
In this very personal journey to the edges of knowledge, Marcus du Sautoy investigates how leading experts in fields from quantum physics and cosmology, to sensory perception and neuroscience, have articulated the current lie of the land. In doing so, he travels to the very boundaries of understanding, questioning contradictory stories and consulting cutting edge data.
Is it possible that we will one day know everything? Or are there fields of research that will always lie beyond the bounds of human comprehension? And if so, how do we cope with living in a universe where there are things that will forever transcend our understanding?
In What We Cannot Know, Marcus du Sautoy leads us on a thought-provoking expedition to the furthest reaches of modern science. Prepare to be taken to the edge of knowledge to find out if there’s anything we truly cannot know.

What We Cannot Know: From consciousness to the cosmos, the cutting edge of science explained

DU SAUTOY, Marcus

Mathematics

Jennifer Kahn's "Stripped for Parts" was selected as the lead story of this year's Best American Science Writing because, as Dava Sobel, best-selling author of Longitude and Galileo's Daughter, reveals, "it begins with one of the most arresting openings I have ever read." In "Columbia's Last Flight," William Langewiesche recounts the February 1, 2003, space shuttle tragedy, along with the investigation into the nationwide complacency that brought the ship down. K. C. Cole's "Fun with Physics" is a profile of astrophysicist Janet Conrad that blends her personal life with professional activity. In "Desperate Measures," the doctor and writer Atul Gawande profiles the surgeon Francis Daniels Moore, whose experiments in the 1940s and '50s pushed medicine harder and farther than almost anyone had contemplated. Also included is a poem by the legendary John Updike, "Mars as Bright as Venus." The collection ends with Diane Ackerman's "ebullient" essay "We Are All a Part of Nature."
Together these twenty-three articles on a wide range of today's most current topics in science -- from biology, physics, biotechnology, and astronomy, to anthropology, genetics, evolutionary theory, and cognition‚ represent the full spectrum of scientific writing from America's most prominent science authors, proving once again that "good science writing is evidently plentiful" (Scientific American).

The Best American Science Writing 2004

Sobel, Dava.

United States

Ecco

Together these twenty-seven articles on a wide range of today's most current topics in science, from Oliver Sacks, James Gleick, Atul Gawande, and Natalie Angier, among others, represent the full spectrum of scientific writing, proving once again that "good science writing is evidently plentiful" (Scientific American).

The Best American Science Writing 2005

Lightman, Alan

Cohen, Jesse

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books on the Essays & Commentary subject. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Essays & Commentary Books

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books on the Essays & Commentary subject. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Theatre of the Mind: Raising the Curtain on Consciousness

Apollo's Arrow

Apollo's Arrow

Ancient Mariner

Acquainted With The Night

The Gecko’s Foot: How Scientists are Taking a Leaf from Nature's Book

I Think You’ll Find It’s a Bit More Complicated Than That

What We Cannot Know: From consciousness to the cosmos, the cutting edge of science explained

The Best American Science Writing 2004

The Best American Science Writing 2005