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Review: Islands in the Cosmos by Dale A. Russell
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BOOKS & ARTS
Beer necessities
KEYSTONE/CAMERA PRESS
From mass production to home brewing, the science of beer is surely toast-worthy
Froth! by Mark Denny, Johns Hopkins University Press, £13 Reviewed by Andy Coghlan
THANKS to Mark Denny’s entertaining little book on the “science of beer”, I now know that for many years I have taken great delight in drinking yeast excrement. Alcohol, that is. Cheers Mark, I’ll bear that in mind on my next visit to the pub. As Denny points out, alcohol is the waste that yeast cells churn out as they ferment the sugars in grains of malted barley into booze. It is also the biological weapon they have evolved to stop rival bugs stealing their dinner. Froth! is a nice read, garnished with just the sort of wit I’d expect from a British-born beer aficionado. It will be especially useful to home brewers, as it explains step by step how to make the stuff yourself. Some sections 46 | NewScientist | 1 August 2009
contain too much mathematics for my liking, and I found myself beginning to glaze over with every new equation – partly because I’d taken advantage of Denny’s suggested “intermissions” for beer drinking. But some readers may enjoy the hard sums. Top marks to Denny also for slagging off what he calls “macroswill”, the mass-produced, insipid gnat’s urine that so many pub-goers inexplicably mistake for beer. Denny pays homage to beerscience guru Charles Bamforth, whose book Beer is now available in its third edition (Oxford University Press, £16.99). More focused on mass-produced rather than home-made beer, this latest version contains new sections informing readers that in ancient Egypt, beer was also used as a mouthwash, an enema and – wait for it – a vaginal douche. New markets for macroswill? Read both books, if you can. Then head down to the pub for a nice cold glass of excrement.
Chasing shooting stars The Fallen Sky: An intimate history of shooting stars by Christopher Cokinos, Penguin, $27.95 Reviewed by David Shiga
SCRAPS of iron found scattered around what became known as Meteor Crater in Arizona convinced geologist Daniel Barringer that a huge iron meteorite lay buried there. From 1903 to 1929 he spent a fortune trying to dig it up, and was heartbroken when it proved to have been largely vaporised, leaving very little metal behind. Barringer is one of a handful of history’s most passionate meteorite hunters profiled in The Fallen Sky. Their stories, richly told and a delight to read, are interspersed with accounts of the author’s own pilgrimages to major craters and meteorite sites, though at times the autobiographical passages wander too far into oddly personal topics, such as the break-up of his marriage. If you’re looking for depth, rather than a broad history of the science of meteorites, this is the book for you.
Paging Galileo Galileo’s Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson, HarperVoyager, £18.99 Reviewed by Michael Marshall
KIM STANLEY ROBINSON, author of the Mars trilogy, turns his talents to one of science’s great fables. Galileo’s Dream tells the story of Galileo, from his work on mechanics and astronomy to his clash with the church. But there’s a twist: Galileo is contacted by people from the year 3020, who bring him to their time to help
them deal with a mysterious intelligence living on Jupiter’s moon Europa. The Jovian sections are disappointing – rich in ideas, but inconclusive. The futuristic perspective helps put Galileo’s struggles into context, but otherwise adds little. The historical sections, on the other hand, are a triumph, with Robinson’s gifts for characterisation and worldbuilding firmly to the fore. His Galileo is wonderful: brilliant, irascible, sometimes hateful, and always fascinating. The finale is both stirring and melancholic, and a fitting tribute to science’s most famous iconoclast.
A brief history of life Islands in the Cosmos: The evolution of life on land by Dale A. Russell, Indiana University Press, $34.95 Reviewed by Graham Lawton
THE origin and evolution of life is probably the greatest story one can tell. In Islands in the Cosmos, Dale A. Russell does an OK job telling it, despite the fact that it is only meant to be the backdrop to the book’s bigger thesis. Russell’s real agenda is to argue that life becomes progressively fitter and more competitive as time goes on, and that evolution is therefore more predictable (or less contingent) than Stephen Jay Gould and company would have us believe. This is an important debate in evolutionary biology and Russell does well to raise it for discussion. But unfortunately it gets lost in his somewhat plodding one-bloody-thing-afteranother account of the history of life, and the whole project comes across as somewhat ill-conceived. It is also not clear what the book’s title means, nor why it is subtitled “the evolution of life on land” when Russell spends so much time writing about marine life.
BOOKS & ARTS
Beer necessities
KEYSTONE/CAMERA PRESS
From mass production to home brewing, the science of beer is surely toast-worthy
Froth! by Mark Denny, Johns Hopkins University Press, £13 Reviewed by Andy Coghlan
THANKS to Mark Denny’s entertaining little book on the “science of beer”, I now know that for many years I have taken great delight in drinking yeast excrement. Alcohol, that is. Cheers Mark, I’ll bear that in mind on my next visit to the pub. As Denny points out, alcohol is the waste that yeast cells churn out as they ferment the sugars in grains of malted barley into booze. It is also the biological weapon they have evolved to stop rival bugs stealing their dinner. Froth! is a nice read, garnished with just the sort of wit I’d expect from a British-born beer aficionado. It will be especially useful to home brewers, as it explains step by step how to make the stuff yourself. Some sections 46 | NewScientist | 1 August 2009
contain too much mathematics for my liking, and I found myself beginning to glaze over with every new equation – partly because I’d taken advantage of Denny’s suggested “intermissions” for beer drinking. But some readers may enjoy the hard sums. Top marks to Denny also for slagging off what he calls “macroswill”, the mass-produced, insipid gnat’s urine that so many pub-goers inexplicably mistake for beer. Denny pays homage to beerscience guru Charles Bamforth, whose book Beer is now available in its third edition (Oxford University Press, £16.99). More focused on mass-produced rather than home-made beer, this latest version contains new sections informing readers that in ancient Egypt, beer was also used as a mouthwash, an enema and – wait for it – a vaginal douche. New markets for macroswill? Read both books, if you can. Then head down to the pub for a nice cold glass of excrement.
Chasing shooting stars The Fallen Sky: An intimate history of shooting stars by Christopher Cokinos, Penguin, $27.95 Reviewed by David Shiga
SCRAPS of iron found scattered around what became known as Meteor Crater in Arizona convinced geologist Daniel Barringer that a huge iron meteorite lay buried there. From 1903 to 1929 he spent a fortune trying to dig it up, and was heartbroken when it proved to have been largely vaporised, leaving very little metal behind. Barringer is one of a handful of history’s most passionate meteorite hunters profiled in The Fallen Sky. Their stories, richly told and a delight to read, are interspersed with accounts of the author’s own pilgrimages to major craters and meteorite sites, though at times the autobiographical passages wander too far into oddly personal topics, such as the break-up of his marriage. If you’re looking for depth, rather than a broad history of the science of meteorites, this is the book for you.
Paging Galileo Galileo’s Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson, HarperVoyager, £18.99 Reviewed by Michael Marshall
KIM STANLEY ROBINSON, author of the Mars trilogy, turns his talents to one of science’s great fables. Galileo’s Dream tells the story of Galileo, from his work on mechanics and astronomy to his clash with the church. But there’s a twist: Galileo is contacted by people from the year 3020, who bring him to their time to help
them deal with a mysterious intelligence living on Jupiter’s moon Europa. The Jovian sections are disappointing – rich in ideas, but inconclusive. The futuristic perspective helps put Galileo’s struggles into context, but otherwise adds little. The historical sections, on the other hand, are a triumph, with Robinson’s gifts for characterisation and worldbuilding firmly to the fore. His Galileo is wonderful: brilliant, irascible, sometimes hateful, and always fascinating. The finale is both stirring and melancholic, and a fitting tribute to science’s most famous iconoclast.
A brief history of life Islands in the Cosmos: The evolution of life on land by Dale A. Russell, Indiana University Press, $34.95 Reviewed by Graham Lawton
THE origin and evolution of life is probably the greatest story one can tell. In Islands in the Cosmos, Dale A. Russell does an OK job telling it, despite the fact that it is only meant to be the backdrop to the book’s bigger thesis. Russell’s real agenda is to argue that life becomes progressively fitter and more competitive as time goes on, and that evolution is therefore more predictable (or less contingent) than Stephen Jay Gould and company would have us believe. This is an important debate in evolutionary biology and Russell does well to raise it for discussion. But unfortunately it gets lost in his somewhat plodding one-bloody-thing-afteranother account of the history of life, and the whole project comes across as somewhat ill-conceived. It is also not clear what the book’s title means, nor why it is subtitled “the evolution of life on land” when Russell spends so much time writing about marine life.