Beyond: Our Future in Space

  • Chris Impey
W. W. Norton (2015) 9780393239300 | ISBN: 978-0-3932-3930-0

Does navigating a pure vacuum while “strapped to a barely controlled chemical explosion” appeal? Yes — to a select proportion of us, notes astronomer Chris Impey in this bold, elegant and engaging exploration of space travel past, present and future. Impey ranges widely, over a variant of the dopamine-controlling gene DRD4 that may encourage astronauts to seek novelty; the work of visionaries such as rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky; the trajectories of national space programmes; advances in robotics and exoplanet discoveries; the potential for extraterrestrial life; and far beyond.

The Prime of Life: A History of Modern Adulthood

  • Steven Mintz
Belknap (2015) 9780674047679 | ISBN: 978-0-6740-4767-9

Coming of age, argues historian Steven Mintz, is not what it used to be. Characterizing adulthood as a “historical black hole”, Mintz sets out to trace the concept's trajectory from the nineteenth century to its 1950s apex, and its disintegration in our individualistic times. He looks at shifts in intimacy, marriage, parenthood and work, noting that some 80% of today's US citizens in their late twenties have yet to tick off all the traditional indicators of adulthood, such as leaving home. Yet we need to dig deeper to redefine adulthood, he avers — not least, by reinstating qualities such as judgement to the definition.

Einstein's Dice and Schrödinger's Cat: How Two Great Minds Battled Quantum Randomness to Create a Unified Theory of Physics

  • Paul Halpern
Basic (2015) 9780465075713 | ISBN: 978-0-4650-7571-3

Physicist Paul Halpern tells the entangled tale of Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger and their search for a Grand Unified Theory with humour and concision. Schrödinger allied himself with Einstein to counter the orthodox quantum view championed by Niels Bohr and others. But as Halpern reminds, Schrödinger was as contradictory as his famous thought experiment, and Einstein was prone to premature announcements of theoretical success. A spat between them, he shows, deprived them of further collaboration, and us of the fruits.

The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction

  • Matthew B. Crawford
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2015) 9780374292980 | ISBN: 978-0-3742-9298-0

In this follow-up to his Shop Class as Soulcraft (Penguin, 2009), philosopher-mechanic Matthew Crawford looks at the toll that the assault of constant advertisements, mobile-phone calls and more are having on our collective psyche. The resulting fragmentation and dissociation are well documented. Crawford's solutions — creating an “ethics of attention” and reclaiming “the real” through, for instance, craft — are pragmatic, but the rather belaboured philosophical overlay sometimes wars with his message.

The Archaeology of Sanitation in Roman Italy: Toilets, Sewers, and Water Systems

  • Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow
Univ. North Carolina Press (2015) 9781469621289 | ISBN: 978-1-4696-2128-9

From aqueducts to amphitheatres, ancient Rome was a hotbed of engineering. That ingenuity percolated downwards too, as classicist Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow shows in this uneven yet enlightening treatise on sanitation in Roman Italy in the first centuries BC and AD. Homing in on Herculaneum, Ostia, Pompeii and Rome, she explores sanitation design, concepts of hygiene and the role of scatology in the literature and public-toilet graffiti of the time.