At 672 pages, Walter Jackson Bate鈥檚 鈥渨onderfully moving and informative鈥� Samuel Johnson (Chatto, 1978) is the weightiest book in philosopher Simon Blackburn鈥檚 pot-pourri of recent reads.
As someone who has 鈥渙ften wondered how on earth they manage to film the things they do,鈥� he thoroughly enjoyed James Gray鈥檚 Snarl for the Camera: Memoirs of a wildlife cameraman (Piatkus Books, 2002).
And Blackburn is very amused by Dr Tatiana鈥檚 Sex Advice to All Creation by Olivia Judson (Chatto, 2002), which 鈥渁part from making me glad that I am not a golden potto*鈥s a useful warning against some kinds of sociobiological theorising about sex.鈥�
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In a more serious vein, he says the extent to which modern scientific practice depends upon trust is nicely explored in A Social History of Truth by Steven Shapin (University of Chicago Press, 1994).