Mushroom

  • Nicholas P. Money
Oxford University Press 224 pp. $24.95 (2011)

Botanist Nicholas Money is unashamedly in thrall to the 'fungal sex organ'. In this brilliant scientific and cultural exploration, these organisms of rot and soil positively sparkle. From biology to medicine, cuisine and recreation, this is a history as convoluted as the systems of fungal filaments that enrich woodlands. A human and mycological cast of thousands throngs the pages — from a 10-kilometre-square colony of honey fungus in Oregon's Malheur National Forest, to Charles McIlvaine, author of One Thousand American Fungi, who fearlessly chomped his way through many of them.

Science on Ice: Four Polar Expeditions

  • Chris Linder
University of Chicago Press 288 pp. £26 (2011)

A century of polar science has seen vast change, not least in the researchers still braving the blizzards and gelid waters. To give an idea of their daily realities, oceanographer and photographer Chris Linder and several embedded journalists followed four Arctic and Antarctic expeditions studying, variously, an Adelie penguin colony, the Bering Sea in spring, the Greenland ice sheet and ocean pack ice in the eastern Arctic. The vivid images — of fishing for zooplankton at dawn, intent ice-breaking crews, Ernest Shackleton's hut at Cape Royds, for instance — enliven a detailed yet accessible chronicle.

Memory: Fragments of a Modern History

  • Alison Winter
University of Chicago Press 312 pp. £19.50 (2011)

Notions of how memory works have shifted wildly over time. Historian Alison Winter traces the evolution of memory sciences through 'fragments', or flashbulb moments. Drawing on sources from neurological research to diaries, she shows how the understanding of memory has deepened, ramified and sometimes taken wrong turns. Case studies include the extreme brain surgery performed by Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield; forensic hypnosis (as used in the book The Manchurian Candidate); psychologist Frederic Bartlett's studies of remembering; and false-memory syndrome.

Small, Gritty, and Green: The Promise of America's Smaller Industrial Cities in a Low-Carbon World

  • Catherine Tumber
MIT Press 192 pp. $24.95 (2011)

Detroit in Michigan may be Motown — an intrepid city founded on car manufacture — but depopulation, ill-conceived infrastructure and the flight of industry have left it devastated. Yet historian and journalist Catherine Tumber sees such urban wastelands as tomorrow's sustainability hubs. Low population density, proximity to farmland, and a skilled workforce could aid the advent of renewable-energy technology. Plucking ideas from 25 small cities in the US Rust Belt, Tumber outlines a plausible route to a 'repurposed' future.

And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut, A Life

  • Charles J. Shields
Henry Holt 544 pp. £20 (2011)

The late Kurt Vonnegut carved out his own literary landscape — blending dystopian tendencies, pitch-dark humour, autobiography and elements of his grounding in chemistry. Authorized biographer Charles J. Shields's exhaustive research does justice to him. Whether it is the dimension-hopping Trafalmadorians, ice-nine (a solid water) or the shenanigans of fictional sci-fi writer Kilgore Trout, Vonnegut used the fantastical to comment astutely on the human condition. His honesty, Shields reminds us, is still needed.