The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation

  • Matt Ridley
Penguin, £8.99, $13.95

“The book is extremely well written with the sort of anecdotal detail and with that make for lively reading even when the most abstract topics are being treated”, Frans B. M. de Waal, Nature 383, 785 (1996).

Himself and Other Animals: A Portrait of Gerald Durrell

  • David Hughes
Pimlico, £7.99

Candid memoir of the famous conservationist by his friend and publisher of over 40 years.

Unravelling DNA: The Most Important Molecule

  • Maxim D. Frank-Kamenetskii
Addison-Wesley, $15

Reviewed by David Lilley in Nature 367, 330 (1994).

The Synaptic Organization of the Brain, 4th edn

Edited by:
  • Gordon M. Shepherd
Oxford University Press, $45

A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts

  • Andrew Chaiken
Penguin, $15.95

The History of Pain

  • Roselyne Rey
Harvard University Press, $18.95, £12.50

Cultural history. Reviewed by Lucy Bending in Nature 379, 129 (1995).

The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the Unification of Biology

Edited by:
  • Ernst Mayr &
  • William B. Provine
Harvard University Press, $19.95, £13.50

Classic essays by key players in the ‘modern synthesis’ of evolutionary biology.

Albert Einstein and the Frontiers of Physics

  • Jeremy Bernstein
Oxford University Press, £7.99

Biography for beginners.

Prisons of Light: Black Holes

  • Kitty Ferguson
Cambridge University Press, £15.95, $24.95

Popular introduction.

The Cells of the Body: A History of Somatic Cell Genetics

  • Henry Harris
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, $29