Shaping Humanity: How Science, Art, and Imagination Help Us Understand Our Origins

  • John Gurche
Yale University Press (2013)

Palaeoartist John Gurche crafts hyperrealistic sculptures of extinct hominins, built up from casts or three-dimensional models of their skeletons. To bring these individuals from deep time to 'life', Gurche fuses his knowledge of comparative anatomy with forensic science and informed guesses about expressions and poses. His coffee-table gem showcases and contextualizes 15 of these finely judged creations, representing a span of 6 million years and ranging from Sahelanthropus tchadensis to the 'Hobbit' Homo floresiensis.

Polio Wars: Sister Kenny and the Golden Age of American Medicine

  • Naomi Rogers
Oxford University Press (2013)

Before the Salk vaccine was licensed in 1955, polio epidemics swept the United States. Naomi Rogers traces them through the story of Australian-born 'bush nurse' Elizabeth Kenny, who eschewed splinting in favour of early muscle manipulation. Her star rose, but her methods stirred controversy and she was forgotten with the vaccine's advent. Kenny's principal legacy, Rogers speculates, might be her idea — unacknowledged in the evolution of polio science — that the disease was systemic rather than neurotropic.

The Last Alchemist in Paris: And Other Curious Tales From Chemistry

  • Lars Öhrström
Oxford University Press (2013)

History offers a painless way to grasp the periodic table's 114 confirmed elements, notes chemist Lars Öhrström. So, for instance, we visit Cumbria in northern England, once an “information technology hub” that supplied the graphite used in pencils. And we follow the Swedish playwright August Strindberg as, gripped by psychosis, he set up an alchemical lab in Paris — leading Öhrström to ponder lithium carbonate (used to treat bipolar disorder), as well as gold. There is much more in this charming mishmash of a primer.

Fritz Kahn

Uta von Debschitz and Thilo von Debschitz. Taschen (2013)

The 1926 Man as Industrial Palace is only the most iconic of the images unleashed by infographics pioneer Fritz Kahn. A modernist genius, Kahn's illustrations were endlessly inventive, often darkly comic and occasionally macabre. His 1924 drawing Travel Experiences of a Wandering Cell: In the Valley of a Flesh Wound, for example, beautifully elucidates the living landscape of blood, nerves and tissue. In this biography in English, German and French that features 350 of his works, Uta and Thilo von Debschitz pay homage to the half-forgotten artist on the 125th anniversary of his birth.

Earthart: Colours of the Earth

Bernhard Edmaier and Angelika Jung-Hüttl. Phaidon (2013)

Distance lends enchantment to Earth's particoloured, pitted surface, as revealed by this photofest by two geologists, writer Angelika Jung-Hüttl and photographer Bernhard Edmaier. Terrestrial meanders, fractals and waves echo biological forms, and vivid hues remind the reader how earthly muds and minerals yield pigments from yellow ochre to ultramarine. A chance to enter an alternative vision of our planet, from the smoked-glass icebergs of East Greenland to the stupendous lion-coloured reaches of the Chilean Andes.