The Evolution of Beauty

  • Richard O. Prum
Doubleday (2017) 9780385537216 | ISBN: 978-0-3855-3721-6

Charles Darwin called it “the taste for the beautiful”. But the theory of sexual selection (reproductive competition pivoting on, say, iridescent plumage) is fiercely debated. In this study, ornithologist Richard Prum seeks to reintegrate it into Darwin's great legacy. Prum, whose research has taken him from Suriname's 'moonwalking' golden-headed manakin (Ceratopipra erythrocephala) to the “shockingly violent” sex lives of ducks, posits that beauty and desire coevolved, and that because individuals can make maladaptive mating choices, evolution is odder than adaptation can explain.

Face Value: The Irresistible Influence of First Impressions

  • Alexander Todorov
Princeton University Press (2017) 9780691167497 | ISBN: 978-0-6911-6749-7

First impressions and snap judgements are not trivial: they can overturn elections and make or break careers. Drawing on cognitive and computer science, this weighty, well-illustrated study by psychologist Alexander Todorov journeys under the skin to reveal how 'face-reading' — as in the old pseudoscience of physiognomy — has given way to a scientific understanding of perceptual bias vis-à-vis the visage. Todorov unpeels the responses of newborns to “faceness”, the hunt for face-selective neurons, the chameleonic self-portraiture of artist Cindy Sherman and more.

Grave New World: The End of Globalization, the Return of History

  • Stephen D. King
Yale University Press (2017) 9780300218046 | ISBN: 978-0-3002-1804-6

As cooperative relationships between nation states shift, seven decades of modern globalization could run aground. So argues economist Stephen King in this in-depth survey examining the new world order in light of the old, from the Ottoman Empire to German unification. He analyses the economic impacts of issues such as migration and the teetering reputations of international institutions, looks critically at technocratic trends — and asserts that with China on the rise and an increasingly fragmented geopolitical landscape, “globalization is up for grabs”.

Polonium in the Playhouse

  • Linda Carrick Thomas
Trillium (2017) 9780814213384 | ISBN: 978-0-8142-1338-4

How did an indoor tennis court in Dayton, Ohio, become central to the building of the first atomic bomb? Journalist Linda Carrick Thomas chronicles how in the 1940s, chemist Charles Allen Thomas (her grandfather) co-opted the court as a secret polonium-processing facility for the Manhattan Project, while choreographing plutonium operations across its many sites. Rich in scientific detail and sidelights, such as the chemist's eye-witness account of the 1945 Trinity test and the story of scientist-spy George Koval, whose Dayton intel enabled the Soviets to build their own bomb postwar.

Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery

  • Henry Marsh
Weidenfeld & Nicolson (2017) 9781474605892 9781474603867 | ISBN: 978-1-4746-0589-2

The horde of physicians now penning memoirs suggests an insatiable demand for expert gut-spilling. And that is no bad thing, given how articulate so many of them are. Henry Marsh, a neurosurgeon for 30 years, is in the front ranks. This thoughtful account (his second, after Do No Harm; W&N, 2014) charting retirement and surgical work in Nepal and Ukraine brims with insights — not only on the fraught nexus of scalpel and brain, but on the complexities of ageing and the pleasures of beekeeping, tree-planting and carpentry.