Books & Arts in 2014

Explore the gory glories of forensic science, grapple with Tom Stoppard's take on consciousness, learn what it takes to live on Mars, re-enter Jurassic Park, dive into a coral reef and dally with Robert Oppenheimer. Daniel Cressey reports.

Aaron Hirsh celebrates the 75th anniversary of the marine-biology classic by Ed Ricketts, the bohemian scientist who inspired John Steinbeck.

Ewen Callaway reviews a biopic of Calvin Bridges, the wild-living, wild-haired genetics pioneer.

Matthew Bell reassesses German polymath Goethe's haunting 'chemical romance'.

Barbara Kiser reviews five of the week's best science picks.

Noel Sharkey ponders a riveting story of how social inequity can trump youth and scientific brilliance.

Alex Bellos savours a history of the 'new math' that swept US schools in the 1960s.

Richard Van Noorden considers a technical lecture that ultimately fails as theatre.

Ann Finkbeiner examines two books on the cold war's ethical and material legacies.

Ewen Callaway relishes a study tracing the chicken's eventful march from Asian jungles to global ubiquity.

Barbara Kiser reviews five of the week's best science picks.

Ted Nield ponders a history of how European science came to grasp Earth's age.

Barbara Kiser reviews five of the week's best science picks.

Robert P. Crease ponders a brace of biopics on Alan Turing and Stephen Hawking.

Thanks to theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, real science is embedded in Christopher Nolan's film Interstellar, in which explorers seek a new home for humankind. Thorne talks about what he learned from the film's unprecedented visualizations of black holes and wormholes, what it and his accompanying book can teach, and the likelihood of humans escaping the Solar System.

Theodore Gray revels in the ego-ridden story of the elements that never were.

Alison Abbott reviews the latest autobiography of Carl Djerassi, father of the Pill.

Barbara Kiser reviews five of the week's best science picks.

George Szpiro weighs up a life of John Napier, who gifted science with logarithms.

Tilli Tansey surveys a magisterial, historically rich biography of autoimmunity.