This has to be the strangest August ever, with climate-changed weather making itself felt all over the place. It is also strange because new books are in short supply. That said, the shelves are by no means bare. We have books to recommend to you on everything from octopus ethics and designing the universe to endometriosis and talking to computers. So, whatever you end up doing to refresh and recharge, we鈥檝e got the book for you.
by Daniel Lieberman聽
Meaty palaeo? Going veggie or vegan? Eating Mediterranean? Fasting, intermittently or otherwise? Low or high carbs? Enough 鈥� before we all lose the plot! Enter Daniel Lieberman, an evolutionary anthropologist at Harvard University who, says his publisher, 鈥渢ackles this confusion head on with his trademark blend of lively storytelling and myth-busting science鈥�.
As you would expect, Lieberman draws on evolutionary biology, anthropology and physiology to figure out how we are going so wrong. He travels all the way back, moving from what humans evolved to eat through to how fire, farming and industrialisation transformed our diets, and right up to today as we learn how to combine all that history with rigorous medical science. It will be fascinating to see what former New 杏吧原创 staffer Chris Simms makes of it in our review, to be published shortly.
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by Jonathan Loh
To know where we are headed, it can help to have a reasonable grasp of where we have been. So, will some big-picture thinking from an independent scholar help? Jonathan Loh鈥檚 publishers call his book Life Story a 鈥減anoramic history of life, revealing the forces that have shaped our world 鈥� and could shape it again鈥�. We move through the rise of Homo sapiens, from foragers to farmers, from the Bronze Age to the industrial revolution, through 鈥渉idden patterns linking genetics and language, organisms and states, ecosystems and economies, mass extinctions and civilisational collapse鈥�.
Humans may dominate the planet, but, as machine intelligence gathers pace, is that supremacy only a phase? Loh is a biologist who has worked as a consultant to organisations such the United Nations Environment Programme and WWF on the conservation of biological and cultural diversity, so he should be well placed to build a deep chronicle of the past and lay out his big idea: culture as a form of life. What would that mean in terms of an AI future? We shall see鈥β犅�
by Xiaochang Li
The idea of talking to machines has been an enduring human fantasy. Divination Engines is a bit of a wild card: author Xiaochang Li, an assistant professor in the department of communication at Stanford University in California, shows her readers how that dream 鈥渂oth fueled the demand for data and set the stage for today鈥檚 generative AI鈥�. Sneak peaks reveal a book that is no easy read (brace for technical details), but one in which Li manages to explain the origins of what we call natural language processing, as well as the 20th-century debates between computer scientists, linguists and communication engineers that shaped today鈥檚 technology.
She sets out to show how computer speech recognition advanced technology by de-emphasising linguistic meaning in favour of statistical prediction 鈥� that is, how researchers gradually abandoned systems that tried to聽understand聽human language in favour of workarounds that just predicted聽patterns in speech and text data. The rest is, as they say, history鈥� and that鈥檚 before we even mention search engines, spam filters, content managers and the like. All this comes at the cost of needing more and more new data 鈥� forever! This will be a tough read for many of us, but one that鈥檚 worth the effort. Oh, and Kate Crawford, author of Atlas of AI, calls the book 鈥渁 landmark in the critical history of artificial intelligence鈥�.
by Catherine Heymans
No small ambition in this next book, either. Astrophysicist Catherine Heymans鈥檚 latest is, according to its subtitle, no less than a look at the 鈥渟cience of real and virtual worlds鈥�. At its heart is that wonderful, death-defying question: could we be living in a computer simulation, and how would we even know? It all sounds fascinating, as Heymans, the astronomer royal for Scotland, takes us 鈥渙n a humorous and mind-bending journey through the science of reality itself鈥�.
From subatomic particles and the cosmic mysteries of dark matter to the secrets of the human senses, we are promised an exploration of 鈥渨hether humanity could ever create a virtual universe as rich and diverse as our own 鈥� and what that means for our sense of self, free will and consciousness鈥�. Not much going on here, then.
by Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi
This is one for all of us who love silvery-grey snow leopards, those fabulous and elusive beasts, which live in the rugged mountains of central Asia, camouflaged against the rocks and cliffs. For the past 20 years, scientist, conservationist and mountaineer Kulbhushansingh (Kullu) Suryawanshi has studied them in the wild, exploring every aspect of their lives from habitat to prey to population 鈥� sometimes living for months in the world鈥檚 toughest, most remote environments. Suryawanshi, we are promised, has 鈥減ioneered new research that shines fresh light on these charismatic and vulnerable animals, showing how their fate is entangled with the local people and how their survival is central to preserving an austere, delicate ecosystem鈥�.
by Lani Watson
There is something wonderful about books with a single letter as their main title. Q (and here鈥檚 the subtitle so we know what we鈥檙e talking about: The hidden power of questions in a world that wants answers) is all about the art and science of asking questions, as the only creature on Earth that does so in any formal sense. But we鈥檙e trained to look for answers, not how to ask questions 鈥� so much so, says author Lani Watson, that we live in an answer-rich, question-poor world.
Yet, as the publishers remind us,鈥� from doctors鈥� surgeries to courtrooms to dating, the ability to ask questions determines our experiences. In a world obsessed by answers, asking better questions is powerful.鈥�
That sounds very wise, and we should be in good hands: Watson is a philosopher and honorary fellow at the University of Edinburgh, UK, as well as a former research fellow at the University of Oxford. Plug into what her publishers call a 鈥渃aptivating narrative from the death of Socrates to the age of AI鈥�, and you will soon learn how to think about the questions you ask and the ones you don鈥檛.
by Richard Schweid
With octopus blooms suddenly appearing in many places, journalist Richard Schweid and publisher University of North Carolina Press could hardly have hit on a more provocative subject. Billed as a 鈥済ripping, on-the-ground investigation into the global race to farm octopus and the ethical firestorm it has ignited鈥�, there is clearly a lot to chew on as we explore the 鈥渆thics and future of growing the world鈥檚 most intelligent invertebrate鈥�.
Among the issues is the fact that, in 2021, the London School of Economics recognised invertebrates such as cephalopods (octopus, cuttlefish, squid) and decapods (crayfish, crabs, lobsters) as capable of experiencing pain, distress and happiness, finding that high-welfare farming of them would therefore be impossible. But the enormous international demand for octopus meat continues to grow, even as wild octopus populations decline. Fishers in the UK鈥檚 south-west are already experiencing problems as the vast number of octopuses eat their typical high-value catch: adult lobsters, brown edible crabs, scallops and the like. What to do instead? Eat the octopuses? Apparently, recipes are proliferating鈥� a dilemma indeed.
by Evelyn Scott
This is no less than an expos茅 of medical misogyny, says the publisher of what looks like a forthright book about endometriosis, A Bloody Scandal: How medicine fails women in pain. There should be a huge market for it, given the sheer number who experience it (it is often said that 1 in 10 women do, but the real figure is probably higher), often in silence and for decades.
Author Evelyn Scott weaves in her own experience of the condition: she was just a teenager when she first had the symptoms of endometriosis. She shares 15 years during which she endured constant, agonising pain 鈥� and hopeless ineptitude when seeking support, ranging from dismissals on the grounds of hysteria to misdiagnoses. She felt completely isolated, until she discovered all the other women experiencing the same condition. Powerful stuff and, many will argue, long overdue.
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