Drive and Curiosity: What Fuels the Passion for Science

  • Istvan Hargittai
Prometheus 338 pp. $26 (2011)

What propels scientists towards great breakthroughs? Drive and curiosity are only part of it, argues Hungarian chemist Istvan Hargittai. Personality, motivation and accidents of circumstance led luminaries such as the co-discoverer of DNA structure James Watson, Nobel-prizewinning biochemist Gertrude Elion and theoretical physicist George Gamow to their big discoveries. The snapshot of Frederick Sanger — two-times Nobel prizewinner — is refreshing. The methodical biochemist's regard for doing a steady job, says Hargittai, helped to pave the way to the Human Genome Project.

Models. Behaving. Badly: Why Confusing Illusion with Reality Can Lead to Disaster, on Wall Street and in Life

  • Emanuel Derman
Free Press 240 pp. $26 (2011)

As a theoretical physicist and Wall Street analyst, Emanuel Derman has produced financial models that have become industry standards. But he has long warned that such models, however elegant, are inadequate: human behaviour must be factored in. Derman calls for financial models to be seen as “parallel thought universes” that should be taken with a kilogram of salt. Ranging wittily across philosophy, literature and the arcane world of high finance, Derman's argument is a heady mix of physics, economics and memoir.

Survival of the Beautiful: Art, Science, and Evolution

  • David Rothenberg
Bloomsbury 256 pp. £14.99 (2011)

The colour blue rules for the male satin bowerbird of Australia. The interior decorators of the avian world, they gather plastic, shells and feathers of that hue to adorn their meticulously built stick structures, all to lure a potential mate. This is just one indication, argues philosopher and musician David Rothenberg, that beauty is not random but is intrinsic to life — and that evolution proceeds by sumptuousness, not by utility alone. Rothenberg covers topics such as camouflage, abstraction, the profound impact of art on science and much more to explore his theme.

1Q84: Book One and Book Two/1Q84: Book Three

  • Haruki Murakami
Harvill Secker 624 pp./368 pp. £20/£14.99 (2011)

This Japanese sci-fi blockbuster, now translated into English by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel in two volumes, begins irresistibly. Aomame, a clinically precise assassin, escapes a traffic jam by climbing down an emergency exit — and, like Alice, enters a parallel universe. Meanwhile, mathematics teacher Tengo is rewriting a novel about a two-mooned world ruled by a tribe of 'little people'. Over one year, the lives of Aomame and Tengo slowly converge. Like its near-namesake 1984, it is a dystopian tale of boy meets girl. It is also a fevered, enigmatic journey into alternative realities and near-past Japan.

Endless Appetites: How the Commodities Casino Creates Hunger and Unrest

  • Alan Bjerga
John Wiley 208 pp. £18.99 (2011)

Globalization has spawned a crop-market 'casino' in which rich countries gamble over crop prices while millions go hungry. If it can be overcome, says Alan Bjerga, farmers could feed, clothe and fuel the world. Bjerga meshes number-crunching with research gleaned from trading floors in Chicago and farmers in Nicaragua, Thailand and Kenya. Feeding these countries' hardscrabble hectares into the global market is, he concludes, an achievable way to solve hunger.