The Killing of the Countryside

  • Graham Harvey
Vintage, £7.99

Looks at the current state of farming in Britain, and makes the case for a sustainable future.

The Complete Fables of Aesop

Translated by Olivia and Robert Temple, with an introduction by Robert Temple. Penguin, £5.99, $8.95

First English translation ever to make available the complete corpus of 358 fables. The stories provide fascinating glimpses of ordinary life in ancient Greece, and include satirical tales of alien creatures — apes, camels, lions and elephants — which presumably originated in Libya and Egypt.

The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory

  • David J. Chalmers
Oxford University Press, £9.99

“Chalmers's dualism is a very mild one and does not invoke any spooky soul-stuff”, C. Koch, Nature 381, 123 (1996).

The Machinery of Life

  • David S. Goodsell
Copernicus, $19.50

“The drawings are among the most instructive one can find in structural biology, and the mechanisms of life are elegantly explained⃛. The genius of the book is in its simplicity⃛. Important insights are stated succinctly and boldly⃛. The most elegant mechanisms are presented in an easily accessible but consistently informative way”, H. P. Erickson, Nature 365, 306 (1993).

Darwin's Dreampond: Drama in Lake Victoria

  • Tijs Goldschmidt
MIT Press, $15

“Goldschmidt was part of the Dutch haplochromine ecology survey team that devoted more than 20 years to collecting baseline ecological, morphological, taxonomic and fisheries data on the cichlids, which provide the basic protein source for the people around Lake Victoria⃛. [His] book is both unusual and eminently readable. He alternates between personal narrative⃛ and scientific passages”, Axel Meyer, Nature 383, 590 (1996).

Hal's Legacy: 2001's Computer as Dream and Reality

Edited by:
  • David G. Stork
, with a foreword by Arthur C. Clarke. MIT Press, $17.50

Brings together science and pop culture. Contributions by various scientists include essays on supercomputer design with regard to speech synthesis, common-sense reasoning, emotions, lip reading and chess playing.