The Ground Beneath Us

  • Paul Bogard
Little, Brown (2017) 9780316342261 | ISBN: 978-0-3163-4226-1

Science writer Paul Bogard chronicled the invasion of nocturnal darkness by light pollution in The End of Night (Little, Brown, 2013; see T. Radford Nature 499, 26–27; 2013). Here he delves into another overlooked resource — soil. This “wonderland” may be packed with one-third of all organisms, but we treat it like dirt: much of Manhattan is entombed under 125 million tonnes of materials. Bogard reminds us of the riches underfoot, from New York's Central Park soil biome, which teems with thousands of freshly discovered species, to terrestrial pitstops that keep migrating birds on the wing.

Life on Ice: A History of New Uses for Cold Blood

  • Joanna Radin
University of Chicago Press (2017) 9780226417318 | ISBN: 978-0-2264-1731-8

“These frozen populations, these time-travelling resources” — so medical historian Joanna Radin describes the estimated 600 million human tissue specimens biobanked for US medical research. Her sharply original history focuses on serum collected from indigenous communities and frozen during the cold war. Some samples have had a starry afterlife: one from the Belgian Congo, taken in 1959, later became the oldest trace of HIV/AIDS on record. Radin sweeps from the emergence of cryonics to the rise of genomics — and from burning ethical debates over indigenous rights to ancestral remains.

Bee Quest

  • Dave Goulson
Jonathan Cape (2017) 9781911214137 | ISBN: 978-1-9112-1413-7

Entomologist Dave Goulson journeyed as far as Patagonia to track down populations of the world's rarest bumblebees. The result is this fun serial travelogue and ode to diverse countryside. But Goulson is no misty-eyed nostalgic; he notes that subsidizing traditional farming practices could create “a Disneyesque parody of rural life”. He ends on steps to bring insects back to cities, and the conviction that nature left alone recovers. In a world skewed towards saving photogenic mammals, Goulson extols the intrinsic importance of insects, rather than their economic value.

Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs

Michael T. Osterholm and Mark Olshaker. Little, Brown (2017)

9780316343695

The real war on terror is the fight against pandemics — foes that can devastate entire regions at speed. Here, epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, with Mark Olshaker, describes science at that fraught frontline. A veteran of campaigns against SARS and Ebola, Osterholm draws on medical history and bruising personal experience to examine challenges ranging from political complacency to the microbial free-for-all of globalization. A 'tabletop exercise' imagining the impact of a virulent influenza epidemic today, and a clear plan for a global crisis response, give added weight to this call to arms.

Wild Nights: How Taming Sleep Created Our Restless World

  • Benjamin Reiss
Basic (2017) 9780465061952 | ISBN: 978-0-4650-6195-2

Sleep is a culturally fluid phenomenon, reveals Benjamin Reiss in this marvellous scientific and literary study. He deftly interweaves multiple threads, from the industrial manipulation of time to the near-hibernation of snowbound Russian peasants in 1900, Henry David Thoreau's clock-free sojourn at Walden Pond, and the 50-cup-a-day coffee habit of French novelist Honoré de Balzac. Sleep fascinates, Reiss reminds, because it is so many things: common denominator, “hidden dimension”, field of dreams.