A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective. - Edward Teller.
Even Kindle readers who read for pleasure like to dip into the heady realm of science nonfiction now and then to keep up with what's happening in a world scientists are still uncovering. Recent additions to Kindle popular science shelves include:
Unlikely Friendships: 47 Remarkable Stories from the Animal Kingdom, by Jennifer S. Holland. Workman Publishing Company, 2011. Print length: 160 p. This title has complex layouts and has been optimized for reading on devices with larger screens such as Kindle DX, Kindle for PC/Mac, and Kindle for iPad. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (6 reviews). Kindle edition $7.95; Paperback $8.37. Text-to-Speech:
"Written by National Geographic magazine writer Jennifer Holland, Unlikely Friendships documents one heartwarming tale after another of animals who, with nothing else in common, bond in the most unexpected ways. A cat and a bird. A mare and a fawn. An elephant and a sheep. A snake and a hamster. The well-documented stories of Koko the gorilla and All Ball the kitten; and the hippo Owen and the tortoise Mzee. And almost inexplicable stories of predators befriending prey - an Indian leopard slips into a village every night to sleep with a calf. A lionness mothers a baby oryx. Ms. Holland narrates the details and arc of each story, and also offers insights into why..." - Amazon.
Don't Cross Your Eyes...They'll Get Stuck That Way!...And 75 Other Health Myths Debunked, by Dr. Aaron E. Carroll and Dr. Rachel C. Vreeman. St. Martin's Griffin, 2011. Print length: 304 p. Amazon customer rating: none yet. Kindle edition $9.99; Paperback $11.19. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"In 2009, Drs. Aaron E. Carroll and Rachel C. Vreeman explored a wide range of myths and misconceptions about our bodies and health in the media sensation, Don't Swallow Your Gum!, featured on The Dr. Oz Show, CNN, and in The New York Times, USA Today, and more. Now, they’re delving into a whole new collection of myths based on the latest scientific research, including: eggs give you high cholesterol, you should stretch before you exercise, kids in day care catch more colds, sit-ups or crunches will flatten your stomach, a glass of warm milk will put you to sleep. ...a perfect balance of authoritative research and breezy humor..." - Amazon.
Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History, by Ben Mezrich. Doubleday, 2011. Print length: 320 p. Amazon customer rating: none yet. Kindle edition $13.99; Hardcover $14.82. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Thad Roberts, a fellow in a prestigious NASA program had an idea - a romantic, albeit crazy, idea. He wanted to give his girlfriend the moon. Literally. Thad convinced his girlfriend and another female accomplice, both NASA interns, to break into an impregnable laboratory at NASA - past security checkpoints, an electronically locked door with cipher security codes, and camera-lined hallways - and help him steal the most precious objects in the world: the moon rocks. But what does one do with an item so valuable that it’s illegal even to own? And was Thad Roberts - undeniably gifted, picked for one of the most competitive scientific posts imaginable, a possible astronaut - really what he seemed? Mezrich has pored over thousands of pages of court records, FBI transcripts, and NASA documents and has interviewed most of the participants in the crime to reconstruct this Ocean’s Eleven–style heist..." - from the hardcover edition.
The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry, by Jon Ronson. Riverhead, 2011. Print length: 288 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (70 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $15.57. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"...a fascinating journey through the minds of madness. Jon Ronson's exploration of a potential hoax being played on the world's top neurologists takes him, unexpectedly, into the heart of the madness industry. An influential psychologist who is convinced that many important CEOs and politicians are, in fact, psychopaths teaches Ronson how to spot these high-flying individuals by looking out for little telltale verbal and nonverbal clues. And so Ronson, armed with his new psychopath-spotting abilities, enters the corridors of power. He spends time with a death-squad leader institutionalized for mortgage fraud in Coxsackie, New York; a legendary CEO whose psychopathy has been speculated about in the press; and a patient in an asylum for the criminally insane who insists he's sane and certainly not a psychopath. Ronson not only solves the mystery of the hoax but also discovers, disturbingly, that sometimes the personalities at the helm of the madness industry are, with their drives and obsessions, as mad in their own way as those they study." - Amazon.
Weeds: In Defense of Nature's Most Unloved Plants, by Richard Mabey. Harper Collins, 2011. Print length: 336 p. Amazon customer rating: none yet. Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $15.80. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"From dandelions to crabgrass, stinging nettles to poison ivy, weeds are familiar, pervasive, widely despised, and seemingly invincible. How did they come to be the villains of the natural world? And why can the same plant be considered beautiful in some places but be deemed a menace in others? In Weeds, renowned nature writer Richard Mabey embarks on an engaging journey with the verve and historical breadth of Michael Pollan. Weaving together the insights of botanists, gardeners, artists, and writers with his own travels and lifelong fascination, Mabey shows how these 'botanical thugs' can destroy ecosystems but also can restore war zones and derelict cities; he reveals how weeds have been portrayed, from the 'thorns and thistles' of Genesis to Shakespeare, Walden, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers; and he explains how kudzu overtook the American South, how poppies sprang up in First World War battlefields, and how 'American weed' replaced the forests of Vietnam ravaged by Agent Orange..." - Amazon.
The Mathematics of Life, by Ian Stewart. Basic Books, 2011. Print length: 368 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (2 reviews). Kindle edition $14.98; Hardcover $16.64 . Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Physical scientists joked about biologists as 'stamp collectors,' and this was not far off until Victorian times, as they happily occupied themselves discovering and describing living things. By 1850, botanists counting flower petals wondered why they almost always came up with 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55 - the well-known series called Fibonacci numbers. Mystical speculation abounded until 20th-century research proved that the dynamics of growing plants forces cells into specific mathematical relationships. Having dipped the reader's toe into his specialty, Stewart (Cows in the Maze: And Other Mathematical Explorations, 2010, etc.) proceeds to deliver a history of biology followed by a tour of current research. Readers with painful memories of high-school algebra will feel reassured because Stewart accessibly explains population growth, speciation, brain function, chaos and game theory, networking, symmetry and even the mechanism that produces animal stripes and spots. An ingenious overview of biology with emphasis on mathematical ideas - stimulating but requiring careful reading despite the lack of equations." - Kirkus Reviews.
Between Expectations: Lessons from a Pediatric Residency, by Meghan Weir. Free Press, 2011. Print length: 288 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (9 reviews). Kindle edition $11.99; Hardcover $16.50. Text-to-Speech: Disabled. 
"The three years of residency - when young doctors who have just graduated from medical school take on their own patients for the first time - are grueling in any specialty. But there is a unique challenge to dealing with patients too young to describe where it hurts, and it is not just having to handle their parents... Dr. Weir takes readers into the nurseries, ICUs, and inpatient rooms of one of the country’s busiest hospitals for children, revealing a world many of us never get to see. Meghan MacLean Weir, M.D. obtained her undergraduate degree in Molecular Biology at Princeton University with work on viral protein expression and then went on to study medicine at Stony Brook..." - Amazon.
How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival, by David Kaiser. W. W. Norton & Company, 2011. Print length: 372 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (2 reviews). Kindle edition $14.14; Hardcover $15.71. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"For physicists, the 1970s were a time of stagnation. Jobs became scarce, and conformity was encouraged, sometimes stifling exploration of the mysteries of the physical world. Dissatisfied, underemployed, and eternally curious, an eccentric group of physicists in Berkeley, California, banded together to throw off the constraints of the physics mainstream and explore the wilder side of science. Dubbing themselves the 'Fundamental Fysiks Group,' they pursued an audacious, speculative approach to physics. They studied quantum entanglement and Bell’s Theorem through the lens of Eastern mysticism and psychic mind-reading, discussing the latest research while lounging in hot tubs. Some even dabbled with LSD to enhance their creativity. Unlikely as it may seem, these iconoclasts spun modern physics in a new direction, forcing mainstream physicists to pay attention to the strange but exciting underpinnings of quantum theory. A lively, entertaining story... David Kaiser is an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology." - Amazon.
The Wild Life of Our Bodies: Predators, Parasites, and Partners That Shape Who We Are Today, by Rob Dunn. Harper Collins, 2011. Print length: 304 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (4 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $16.79. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"In the name of progress and clean living, we scrub much of nature off our bodies and try to remove whole kinds of life - parasites, bacteria, mutualists, and predators - to allow ourselves to live free of wild danger. The truth, though, according to biologist Rob Dunn, is that while 'clean living' has benefited us in some ways, it has also made us sicker in others. We are trapped in bodies that evolved to deal with the dependable presence of hundreds of other species. As Dunn reveals, our modern disconnect from the web of life has resulted in unprecedented effects that immunologists, evolutionary biologists, psychologists, and other scientists are only beginning to understand. Through the stories of visionaries, Dunn argues that we can create a richer nature, one in which we choose to surround ourselves with species that benefit us, not just those that, despite us, survive. Dunn is an assistant professor in the department of biology at North Carolina State University... he has written for National Geographic, Natural History, Scientific American, BBC Wildlife, and Seed magazines." - Amazon.
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Note to readers: The book prices quoted here are the Amazon.com prices in effect at the time of the blog posting. Please follow the links to the individual book to check the current price.
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