Baruch Blumberg, director of NASA鈥檚 Astrobiology Institute, appears to have
had a misspent youth. He confesses to 鈥渉anging out in libraries instead of pool
halls鈥� as a boy. For Blumberg, reading isn鈥檛 just a pastime, it鈥檚 a passion.
Top of his reading list you鈥檒l find books that put astrobiology into a wider
context, such as Life on Other Worlds by Steven J. Dick (Cambridge,
1998), which recounts tales of extraterrestrial life from classical Greece to
the present.
Blumberg also takes an interest in books set in places familiar to him, like
Wallace Stegner鈥檚 Angle of Repose (Penguin, 1992), about a Californian
miner at the turn of the century.
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Bernd Heinrich is a real favourite. A professor of biology at the University
of Vermont, he writes 鈥渟ensitively about trees, ecology and the Maine forest鈥�,
says Blumberg. Blumberg recommends Heinrich鈥檚 Mind of the Raven (Cliff
Street Books, 2000).