9781846145667

In a Different Key: The Story of Autism John Donvan and Caren Zucker. Crown (2016)

9780307985675

Hot on the heels of Steve Silberman's Neurotribes (Avery, 2015; see Nature 524, 288–289; 2015) comes another monumental history of autism. Journalists John Donvan and Caren Zucker (whose television series Echoes of Autism broke ground in the 2000s) trace the halting progress in understanding the condition, weaving in stories of, among others, Donald Triplett, the first person diagnosed as autistic; US medic Leo Kanner; and UK psychiatrist Lorna Wing. The scoop is historian Herwig Czech's claim that key player Hans Asperger contributed to Nazi 'social cleansing' of children deemed mentally ill.

Rebooting India: Realizing a Billion Aspirations Nandan Nilekani and Viral Shah. Allen Lane (2016)

9780241003923

India's telecoms network is the world's second largest, yet the country's rural poor often effectively run marathons in accessing services. In this audacious technological manifesto — now in a UK edition — entrepreneur Nandan Nilekani and software specialist Viral Shah argue that India's vast challenges in banking, health care and other systems are solvable, if approached like government start-ups run by handpicked entrepreneurs. Nilekani and Shah cite the e-Aadhaar biometrics identification card, open to all Indians, as a first step on the road to digitally streamlined governance and society.

The Naked Shore: Of the North Sea

  • Tom Blass
Bloomsbury (2016) 9781408815496 | ISBN: 978-1-4088-1549-6

Compared to the charismatic Mediterranean, Europe's North Sea can seem a workaday tract of “mists, miasmas and surliness”, notes journalist Tom Blass. But in trawling its depths for this vivid travelogue, Blass dredges up nuggets from an eventful cultural, military, industrial, economic and ancient history. Launching from the estuarine murk of the Thames, he takes in Dutch polders (tracts of land dubbed 'waking', 'sleeping' or 'dreaming', depending on distance from the sea), Frisian dialects, fishing fracases, puffins, porpoises and a future of warming waters and giant wind farms.

Six Steps Back to the Land: Why We Need Small Mixed Farms and Millions More Farmers

  • Colin Tudge
Green (2016) 9780857841230 | ISBN: 978-0-8578-4123-0

The much-chewed-over conundrum of how to feed a projected global population of 10 billion demands an agrarian renaissance led by scientifically run, small, mixed farms, avers biologist Colin Tudge. Using principles such as agro-ecology and a focus on “lots of plants, not much meat, and maximum variety”, Tudge's transformative prescription is fresh, pragmatic and packed with cutting-edge science. It is impressive, too, for its sound circular-economy thinking, not least an emphasis on an informed food culture.

The Wheel: Inventions and Reinventions

  • Richard W. Bulliet
Columbia University Press (2016) 9780231173384 | ISBN: 978-0-2311-7338-4

As innovations go, the wheel might seem the ubiquitous driver of cultural evolution. But Richard Bulliet's technological history reveals complexities. The wheel was invented 3 times (with fixed and moving wheels on axles both emerging 5,000 years ago, and casters a mere 300); defined differently by the rail and automobile industries; and eschewed by civilizations such as the pre-Columbian Olmecs. Hitched in turn to rickshaws, ox carts, Mongolian mobile homes, barouches and bicycles, this is a deft narrative.