Epigenetics in the Age of Twitter: Pop Culture and Modern Science

  • Gerald Weissmann
Bellevue 300 pp. $18.95 (2012)

A crackle of erudite energy leaps from this lively commingling of art, culture and science. In 28 essays, biologist Gerald Weissmann explores the complex territory of modern biology and epigenetics in this era of social media. In each, Weissmann finds links between research and elements of history and pop culture, which play off each other to illuminating effect. So US politician Sarah Palin pops up in a discussion of 'Marie Antoinette syndrome', in which hair allegedly whitens overnight; and the 'meltdown' of the mythical Icarus meets the nuclear version at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan.

The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation

  • Jon Gertner
Penguin 432 pp. $29.95 (2012)

Lasers, solar cells, prototype mobile phones: from the late 1930s to the mid-1970s, Bell Laboratories — the research arm of US telecommunications giant AT&T — was a powerhouse of innovation. The inventions and ideas emanating from pioneers such as Claude Shannon (information theory) and William Shockley (the transistor) have transformed society. Writer Jon Gertner interviewed employees and researched oral histories to tease out their stories and analyse the organizational ethos that made their achievements possible.

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty

Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. Crown/Profile 464 pp. $30,£25 (2012)

Why is the average US citizen 40 times as prosperous as his or her counterpart in Mali? The cause of such inequity, say economists Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, is politics. With 15 years of research under their belts, the authors argue that democratized economies and transparent, accountable and responsive governments are the roots of prosperity. Evidence from ancient Rome, the Soviet Union, Europe and the United States makes a compelling case for the power of inclusive institutions to fuel sustainable growth.

The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World's Wild Places

  • Bernie Krause
Little, Brown/Profile 288 pp. $26.99,£12.99 (2012)

Earth, says musician and sound recordist Bernie Krause, pulsates with the clicks, purrs and shrieks of creatures from the yellow-rumped warbler to the snapping shrimp (five times louder than the Grateful Dead, he tells us). Forty years travelling the world to record more than 15,000 species have given Krause a rare insight into the importance of 'biophony': the layered, organized soundscapes of nature. Its disappearance through habitat and species loss is as harmful for human culture and well-being, he says, as it is for ecosystems.

Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins

  • Ian Tattersall
Palgrave Macmillan 288 pp. £16.99 (2012)

In this succinct and masterful palaeo-chronicle, Ian Tattersall traces how Homo sapiens ended up as the world's sole hominin. Tattersall, co-curator of the Spitzer Hall of Human Origins at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, takes us from 6 million years ago in Africa's Rift Valley to the present day. On the way, he brilliantly describes humanity's cousins and rivals, from apes to the other hominins that competed with H. sapiens as, tens of thousands of years ago, our ancestors made the cognitive leap to symbolic thought.