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POPSRead Your Science, please We need to retrain ourselves to pay attention to scientists--they're not bogeymen...and thanks again to the clipper who gaves us edge.org, Jeez i already forgot who, sorry
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POPSMusic in the Mind As he was struggling with physical therapy—and growing increasingly frustrated—his mind was inexplicably filled with the resonant strings of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto
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POPSFresh Air: 'Musicophilia' Examines Music in the Mind Bewildered. I looked around. I saw my own body on the ground. I said to myself, 'Oh shit, I'm dead.' I saw people converging on the body. I saw a woman — she had been standing waiting to use the phone right behind me — position herself over my body, give it CPR. . . . I floated up the stairs — my consciousness came with me. I saw my kids, had the realization that they would be okay. Then I was surrounded by a bluish-white light . . . an enormous feeling of well-being and peace. The highest and lowest points of my life raced by me. No emotion associated with these … pure thought, pure ecstasy. I had the perception of accelerating, being drawn up .. there was speed and direction. Then, as I was saying to myself, 'This is the most glorious feeling I have ever had' — SLAM! I was back."
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POPSOliver Sacks: Certified Rennaisance Man After a long spell of academic inclination towards specialization, it is refreshing to see at least one university leaning back towards recognizing breadth. I've long enjoyed Sacks, not because he writes challenging, detailed pieces - he has placed himself squarely in the current of popular science, or at least, made his science popular. What I admire is his earnest interest in so many subjects, without pretense. He uses his expertise as a window through which to view the stunning breadth of the human landscape, rather than as a microscope to focus on the esoteric minutiae that defines the careers of many less creative, less humanistic researchers.
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POPS25 Greatest Science Books of All Time The Origin of Species (1859) Darwin's masterwork is, undeniably, The Origin of Species , in which he introduced his theory of evolution by natural selection. Prior to its publication, the prevailing view was that each species had existed in its current form since the moment of divine creation and that humans were a privileged form of life, above and apart from nature. Darwin's theory knocked us from that pedestal. Wary of a religious backlash, he kept his ideas secret for almost two decades while bolstering them with additional observations and experiments. The result is an avalanche of detail—there seems to be no species he did not contemplate—thankfully delivered in accessible, conversational prose. A century and a half later, Darwin's paean to evolution still begs to be heard: "There is grandeur in this view of life," he wrote, that "from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
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POPSLevi's memoir beats Darwin to win science book title Took a class on the Shoah in college. I learned so much from Primo Levi. The shortlist Primo Levi The Periodic Table Konrad Lorenz King Solomon's Ring Tom Stoppard Arcadia Richard Dawkins The Selfish Gene Other nominations James Watson The Double Helix Bertolt Brecht The Life of Galileo Peter Medawar Pluto's Republic Charles Darwin Voyage of the Beagle Stephen Pinker The Blank Slate Oliver Sacks A Leg to Stand On
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