Crack at the Edge of the World

by Simon Winchester

I looked at my last posting and realized it has been a ridiculously long time since my last book. I have been reading - I promise!

Winchester's book (another "I heard it on NPR" read), while a slow read, was very informative. He tells us not only about the events during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, but also about events leading up to that date. The thing that really grabbed me was the comment about the seismic activity prior to the 1906 San Francisco earthquake being the greatest in recorded history. This statement got to me as, while I was reading this book, we seem to be having another cycle of great seismic activity in the world.

Read and learn.

Comments

Reverend Guppy's Aquarium

by Philip Dodd This is a delightful book which gives us the origins of product names. One of my many "I heard it on NPR" books, this one has not disappointed this reader. I am halfway through the books and have loved learning the origin of the name "Jacuzzi" and "frisbee." Part of this is because I love WORDS and LANGUAGE. The other part is the beauty of invention. I'll have it for swap in October at our book swap session.

The Blooding

by Joseph Wambaugh While Wambaugh usually writes fiction, he broke from his mold and wrote this nonfiction book about DNA evidence. He wrote about the FIRST time DNA was used to exonerate a suspect, and also how DNA was used (in the same case) to convict a suspect. The book is a good tale of how the British government obtained blood from all men in a certain area of Britain (which would never happen in the USA) to use the new technology provided by Sir Alec John Jeffreys. Jeffreys's research had only been used once prior to this case, and that was to determine a citizenship issue. Being a police/crime writer, Wambaugh does get bogged down in the case work and the investigators, but read on - the science is good. I find copies of this book at every used book store I enter - and I buy them to place in the school library. And then read "Pointing from the Grave" by Samantha Weinberg - you'll be glad you did.

The Canon

by Natalie Angier Natalie Angier is the author of Woman, and a science writer for the New York Times. Her most recent book discusses science literacy for the nation. She has interviewed numerous scientists and quotes them throughout the book making statements like: "...studying the Kreb's cycle and Linnaean classifications...whips the joy of doing science right out of most people..." "...science is not a collection of rigid dogmas, and what we call scientific truth is constantly being revised..." "...if you must buy a microscope, then get a dissecting microscope... to look at the simple things like a feather..." "...part of critical thinking is to understand that science doesn't deal with absolutes..." "...many teachers who don't have a deep appreciation of science present it as a set of facts...missing the idea of critical thinking..." Natalie approaches many science topics in this book - from astronomy to molecular biolog...

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