That's Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion

  • Rachel Herz
W. W. Norton 288 pp. $26.95 (2012)

The emotion of disgust has its evolutionary roots in avoiding poisonous food, notes psychologist Rachel Herz. It has penetrated many areas of human life, as shown by lawyers' and politicians' efforts to incite disgust about their opponents. But that doesn't explain why the things that one culture or individual finds repulsive — such as sea-urchin sushi or horror films — are delightful to another. In her lively tour of vileness, Herz argues that disgust is in the mind of the beholder, and explains how studies of Huntington's disease pinpointed the brain areas involved in this emotion.

Simplexity: Simplifying Principles for a Complex World

Alain Berthoz (translated by Giselle Weiss.) Yale University Press/Éditions Odile Jacob 288 pp. $38 (2012)

Living things navigate their complex worlds superbly, making tasks such as walking — which thwart the most sophisticated machines — look like child's play. Simplexity, says physiologist Alain Berthoz, allows life to achieve such feats. It involves transforming “a rich combination of simple rules” into a model of reality that aids action and decision-making, yet respects complexity. Berthoz uses examples from perception, locomotion and neuroscience, but argues that simplexity is at work on all levels, from cells to societies and even in love.

The Ice Balloon: S. A. Andrée and the Heroic Age of Arctic Exploration

  • Alec Wilkinson
Alfred A. Knopf 256 pp. $25.95 (2012)

In 1897, the Swedish explorer Salomon August Andrée sought to use a hydrogen balloon to become the first man to reach the North Pole. Alec Wilkinson's tenth book opens in 1930 with the discovery of Andrée's corpse on a remote Arctic island. It recounts the ill-fated journey through the diaries and photographs of Andrée and his two companions. Wilkinson shows how science and exploration went hand in hand, and how Arctic explorers were celebrities, with the balloonists meriting waxworks in Madame Tussauds museum.

Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room

  • David Weinberger
Basic Books 256 pp. $25.99 (2012)

Once, says philosopher David Weinberger, experts mastered knowledge and controlled what the rest of us made of it. Now, disciplines such as climate science and molecular biology contain too much data for humans to parse or for theories to explain. Instead, the network is the expert, and anyone can join in. This is creating new forms of communication for science, both educating more people and enabling us to be more emphatically wrong.

Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Co-operation

  • Richard Sennett
Allen Lane 336 pp. £25 (2012)

Societies are increasingly complex. Yet we stall at mingling with other 'tribes', a trend exacerbated by politicians calling for cultural homogenization. Sociologist Richard Sennett says that the key is learning how to cooperate. In the second of his trio on constructive living, case studies reveal how the upheavals of the early modern era and unethical work practices have broken down cooperation. As a route to remaking it, Sennett advocates 'everyday diplomacy', an essential craft that could heal societal rifts from the inside out.