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The Anatomist

The Anatomist: A True Story of Gray's Anatomy

November 2008

The Anatomist is not just the story of the 1858 medical textbook we call Gray's Anatomy (originally titled Anatomy, Descriptive and Surgical).


Life in His Hands

Life In His Hands: The True Story of a Neurosurgeon and a Pianist

November 2008

Few diagnoses could be more terrifying than that of a brain tumour. Susan Wyndham tells us that brain cancer is the ninth most common cancer in adults and, after leukaemia, the most common in children.


Super Crunchers

Super Crunchers: How Anything Can Be Predicted

November 2008

The frighteningly well-qualified Ian Ayres – a professor at Yale University, both in the Law School and in the School of Management – is boundlessly enthusiastic about the wonders of statistical analysis.


The Body Hunters

The Body Hunters: Testing New Drugs on the World's Poorest Patients

November 2008

The subtitle of this confronting volume, Testing new drugs on the world's poorest patients, might serve as a warning to the squeamish reader. In this, her second book, Sonia Shah retells some of the darkest and most troubled chapters in the history of medical research and makes painful observations about the apparent incompatibility of the industry's commercial success with a credible morality.


Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics

Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics

November 2008

Robyn Williams is a science journalist, but Ockham's Razor, his weekly radio program, is more than a science program. It's a show about anything you can think of: science, politics, culture, technology, sociology, sustainability. Ockham's Razor lets guests argue whatever they want without interruptions from interviewers or contradictions from those who hold opposing views.


The Never-Ending Days of Being Dead

The Never-Ending Days of Being Dead

November 2008

Somewhere in the universe is an exact copy of you. But don't expect to meet up with your double any time soon. You would have to travel about 101028 metres. That's ten followed by a billion times a billion times a billion zeroes – far beyond the edge of the observable universe.


The Comet Sweeper

The Comet-Sweeper: Caroline Herschel's Astronomical Ambition

November 2008

Caroline Herschel is usually thought of as a relatively unimportant appendage to her more famous brother William, whose revolutionary astronomical work included discovering the planet Uranus, hypothesising that nebulae are composed of stars and developing a theory of stellar evolution.


Darwin's Gift to Science and Religion

Darwin's Gift to Science and Religion

November 2008

Francisco J. Ayala argues that Darwinian evolutionary theory is a gift not only to science, but also to theology. According to Ayala, it absolves God of responsibility for the cruelty, misery, destruction and poor functional design in the natural world.


Very Special Relativity

Very Special Relativity: An Illustrated Guide

November 2008

Does anyone really believe the clock on the wall of a spaceship will stop if it reaches the speed of light? If it really is so, it would be nice to know why. When Einstein published his Special Theory of Relativity in 1905, time and space were turned upside down.


Future Perfect

Future Perfect

November 2008

Here we are, poised at the brink of the future, as we have always been, about to enter heaven or hell. Which will it be? Most commentators relish the latter, probably because hell sells, but many of history's bold predictions of doom are today jolly japes for the optimists. We haven't starved or blown ourselves up. Maybe time won't shake off climate change so easily.


The Man Who Knew Too Much

The Man Who Knew Too Much

November 2008

At the Adelaide Writers' Festival, celebrated novelist Ian McEwan noted on ABC Radio's Conversation Hour that Alan Turing might well have received a Nobel Prize had he lived. Almost certainly: Turing is widely regarded as the father of the modern computer, and can reasonably be said to have shortened World War II in Europe by perhaps a year.


The Telescope

The Telescope

November 2008

Galileo invented the telescope, right? Nope. He stole the idea and then improved on it to produce an instrument far superior to anything else available at the time. With his superior instrument, he went on to make discoveries that heralded the beginnings of modern astronomy.


Simplexity

Simplexity: The Simple Rules of a Complex World

November 2008

When battling with the instruction manual of your new digital camera it is common to ask yourself through gritted teeth: why are things that should be simple sometimes so darned complex?


Outside the Gates of Science

Outside the Gates of Science: Why It's Time for the Paranormal to Come in from the Cold

November 2008

The latest book by Cosmos fiction editor, Damien Broderick, is a scrupulous study of parapsychology and the alleged phenomena commonly grouped as 'psi': paranormal links between individuals and the external world, including other people.


The Ferocious Summer

The Ferocious Summer: Palmer's Penguins and the Warming of Antarctica

November 2008

The Ferocious Summer is primarily the story of the time that Meredith Hooper spent at Palmer Station, a small U.S. Antarctic facility on Anvers Island.